FYI
Until Naval TacAir gets off of the F/A-18 BrainWash BandWagon TacAir will NEVER be on the “UpSwing”. The Grumman AirCraft Company was not called the “Iron Works” for nothing.
There is no doubt that the Navy’s plan to replace 1991’s 351 P-3s with several dozen P-8s plus an unknown UAV (BAMS) is a non-starter. We have, again, abandoned ASW (plus anti-mine warfare, too) as budgets shrink. We will pay the price in the next war.
It takes too long, and costs too much money, to build aircraft carriers. Can the whiz-kids in the Navy design an aircraft carrier barge that could be built in 8 weeks? Put a couple of catapaults on it, and tow it around. That fancy anti-ship missile don’t care if the target is moving at 30 knots or 10 knots. Build an aircraft repair barge with a crane on it to fix the broken planes. I’m betting that for the cost of an aircraft carrier, you could build several barges.
They are just now recovering from the loss of all the aircraft Juan McPain destroyed during his illustrious career./snic
ping
I thought it was the hoky-poky.
It was a bad decision even then. The R&D had been paid for and done, the only saving was the production cost. And the A-6F would have been a better aircraft than whatever was built with that mpney instead.
They might not be in the strike role today, but the USNavy could sure use 100+ KA6-H (converted from the A-6F between 2005-2010) instead of using strike aircraft as buddy tankers.
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The biggest risk we face right now is from a fundamental military principle that has always existed. This is that “Quantity and quality are a balance. Emphasizing one at the expense of the other will leave you vulnerable.”
Right now, a modest UAV could be built for the price of an economy car. And many countries around the world could afford to set up a mass production line to make enormous numbers of such simple weapons.
A single F-22 Raptor has a production cost of $150m. If the price of a UAV could be kept down to $50,000 each, a country could produce 3,000 such UAVs for the cost of a single F-22.
If they wanted to be more elaborate, and produce a $100,000 UAV, they could still produce 1,500 such UAVs.
If they wanted a serious, high performance UAV enough so that they cost $1,000,000 each, they could still make 150 of them.
A Lear Jet costs about $5,000,000 each. That is still 30 aircraft, for the price of a single F-22 Raptor.
So how many enemy aircraft can the F-22 Raptor shoot down at once? Maybe six or eight? But then it has to return home to be rearmed. And even with the most expensive option, that would leave 22 enemy aircraft in the air.
With the cheapest option, 2,992 enemy aircraft heading for their targets.
“On 7 January 1991, Secretary of Defense Richard Cheney cancelled the A-12, citing design shortfalls and cost overruns.”
Yes, I was there that day. I watched thousands of employees (for then General Dynamics, now Lockheed) walk out the door with their boxes of personal processions to the unemployment line. I was “lucky” and sent to Egypt for 3 years. I have never forgiven cheney for that...it was all political. Yes, we were overweight. Yes, we could have fixed it given time.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A-12_Avenger_II
Pensacola is the home of Naval Aviation
For a truly great day, Visit the Museum of Naval Aviation at NAS Pensacola. The old guys, the naval Aviators guide the fantastic tours and describe the wonderful real thing, the air planes.