Another Joe Copalman Special.

Joe has been at it again and I don't know why but I absolutely love this airplane.  Yeah its old as dirt...almost prehistoric but its strangely beautiful.  I don't know why but I do like it.  Check out his Flickr page for more aviation photos.

Bill is at it again!

Click the pic to get the full effect!

Yep!  The Dark Lord returns....  He has a story out on the grounding of the JSF.  Mind you no info is out yet but Bill still finds time to dazzle us.  Read the whole thing but check out this passage from his story....

Details are scant: A statement from the JSF program office reads that "aircraft AF-4's Integrated Power Package (IPP) experienced a failure ... The engine was immediately shut down and the jet was secured.  No injuries to the pilot or ground crew occurred."

The halt in operations "is the prudent action to take at this time until the F-35 engineering, technical and system safety teams fully understand the cause of the incident. Once the facts are understood, a determination will be made when to lift the suspension."

Notice that I highlighted 3 words....

DETAILS ARE SCANT!

In other words lets not do like Sweetman.  Lets wait to see exactly what happened, and what it will take to fix it.  The last grounding lasted for 6 days and the APA crowd was crowing like Rooster on a bright sunny day.  Later they buried their heads in shame.

Lets wait. 

Lets see.

Vago's notebook: F-35B is worth the investment

Thanks Marcase.

More RV than Fighting Vehicle?

Think Defense caught this, and I was shocked and amazed by it.  Suffice it to say that a toilet is the last thing I would expect to see on an APC/IFV....but the Boxer has it.

A Stability Police Force for the United States

This study by the Rand Corporation is going gang busters on certain internet websites...to be honest I had never heard of "A Stability Police Force for the US" and thought that someone was playing a bad joke.  You can download and read it for yourself here. 

But between the economy going south, our government in disarray, and our citizens being on a hair trigger edge, its obvious that things will probably get worse before they get better.

Back to our regularly scheduled posting.

Stack it deep!

*Sidenote*

Another issue that the Pentagon could easily explain away are the reports of "massive" troop movements around the US.  My first thought was that ok, its just the Army moving gear to NTC or Korea....but that doesn't quite get it.  I believe that the Army changed up its deployment protocols when it comes to NTC and units fall in on equipment left there.  Next if its Korea then it wouldn't be this continuous movement of gear.  A one time thing bringing in the new and removing the old.  Regardless, this stuff is catching more and more eyeballs and it would be nice if a simple statement was given to blow away all the conspiracy stuff.  Here's a sample.

An absolute must read!

Elements of Power Blogspot hits back on Sweetman's latest post with cold hard facts.  Its a must read.  Go to his site for the whole thing but here's a tidbit.

Sweetman was taking what turned out to be a fairly gratuitous swipe at the F-35B’s raison d’être. Gratuitous, because he immediately changed the subject for the rest of the post with an awful(ly) lightweight critique of the ‘LHA/D-as-aircraft-carrier’ idea. I won’t dwell too much on what turned in to the main thrust of his agitprop in this post. Instead, I’d like to focus on his ‘damning with faint praise’ sucker-punch on the B’s STOVL capability as quoted above.

 That's within the first paragraph and it only gets better from there.  Elements of Power, you rock guy!

Carriers then and now.

The debate that occurred because of Sweetman's post on the F-35 got me to thinking.  What does a 44 plane airwing look like on a carrier designed to carry 100 plus airplanes?  I present to you the following pictures of the USS Enterprise.

First from back in the day...

What you see above is a fully realized airwing.  Strikers to go far and conduct alpha strikes.  Recon planes to conduct post strike analysis in real time and to ferret out targets of opportunity...long range anti-sub airplanes to keep enemy subs away from the carrier battlegroup...even helicopters to do the close in anti-sub work and to rescue downed air crews.

Then the aircraft carrier today...

What do you see here?  A largely empty deck.  Helos to do the traditional anti-sub, logistics and rescue work and one type of fighter to do fleet defense, strike, recon and other work.

Gone are the still modern A-6F (prototype), the S-3 Viking, and the potentially potent F-14 Super Tomcat.

Naval Aviation is broken.  Its underfunded and stretched thin.  11 carriers is way too much and only adds strain to the aircrews and the ship crews.

A move to 8 or even better 6 big deck carriers should be more than sufficient.  3 on each coast with one in refurbishment, one in deployment and one in training/refit prepping for deployment should be more than adequate.

If a big war were to arise then they can be surged to the trouble location.   Name one time when we needed more than one carrier on location and didn't have time to surge it to the area?

You can't.  Because its never happened.

6 will do fine and will allow the Navy to fully utilize its assets while saving money.