If you believe in OMFTS and STOM the America class make sense and not heavily flawed. After all there are two other ships with well decks in a ARG: the LPD and LSD. It’s not a SCS.
If you believe in OMFTS and STOM the America class make sense and not heavily flawed. After all there are two other ships with well decks in a ARG: the LPD and LSD. It’s not a SCS.
Doh...hit publish.
It may be a bit of revisionist history but the Navy has been claiming a long time that after Tripoli the well deck was always planned in the follow-on ships.
Neither did the Buran. There’s a long path from first successful launch to man rated.
Yes, because Russian launch vehicles never fail.
Great work? When he seems to think block 50/52 is the same thing as block 50/52+. An “military aviation journalist” should probably fact check whether the Block 50s can use the CFT as he suggests (hint: no) or if any of the newest USAF F-16s are block 50/52+ (Hint: no).
I read that some users of the CFTs have dedicated CFT crews because they were always taking them off for maint and those guys would spend their entire day putting them on and taking them off.
It’s because we haven’t bought any for almost a decade and a half. We got our most recent F-16 a decade ago.
USAF Block 50/52s do not have the plumbing and frame support for CFTs. The newer block 50/52+ do. Our last F-16s arrived in 2004 purchased in 2001. CFT flight testing didn’t start until 2001.
Is it odd that I always feel a bit sad that the HMS Iron Duke is a mere frigate? Her predecessor was the 29,000 ton battleship that was flagship at the Battle of Jutland.
My point is in 1922 Aircraft Carriers were completely unproven technology. Following you and Tyler we would not have spent money on the USS Lexington and USS Saratoga which cost $45M to complete as carriers because it was “unproven”. Certainly we would not have built the USS Ranger...which turned out to be a dog.
“But an aircraft carrier? The outlay of cash for such a huge project is such that you’d hope the tech is proven up before you pay for it.”
And yet the F-35 has a decent safety record. It's not luck.
I wrote A-4 when it was the A-7. Amusingly they disqualified the F-4 and A-7 because they were primarily Navy designed and then procured by others but included JSTARS as part of their cost model.
The EOD robots that didn’t work took care of decommissioning themselves...
Even handed about the F-35? Lol...did you even read the RAND report you cited?
The RAND study is deeply flawed.
It’s not an AUG but a SIG SG 550. Steyr is a Austrian maker. I guess SIG is sorta German now (and now Swiss Arms AG) but still...
No it can’t. Throw F-16s into a combat environment with double digit SAMs and there will be more takeoffs than landings.
Given that the Marines have the UH-1, MV-22 and CH-53s they don’t have a homogeneous air transport force. They diversify platforms by having different mission areas (light, medium and heavy lift).