Seen on the street in Kyiv.

Words of Advice:

"If Something Seems To Be Too Good To Be True, It's Best To Shoot It, Just In Case." -- Fiona Glenanne

“The Mob takes the Fifth. If you’re innocent, why are you taking the Fifth Amendment?” -- The TOFF *

"Foreign Relations Boil Down to Two Things: Talking With People or Killing Them." -- Unknown

“Speed is a poor substitute for accuracy.” -- Real, no-shit, fortune from a fortune cookie

"If you believe that you are talking to G-d, you can justify anything.” — my Dad

"Colt .45s; putting bad guys in the ground since 1873." -- Unknown

"Stay Strapped or Get Clapped." -- probably not Mr. Rogers

"The Dildo of Karma rarely comes lubed." -- Unknown

"Eck!" -- George the Cat

* "TOFF" = Treasonous Orange Fat Fuck, A/K/A Dolt-45,
A/K/A Commandante (or Cadet) Bone Spurs,
A/K/A El Caudillo de Mar-a-Lago, A/K/A the Asset., A/K/A P01135809

Saturday, July 5, 2014

F-35 Flammenwerfer

The troubles keep piling on for the F-35:
U.S. military officials have grounded all F-35s while continuing to investigate a runway fire involving one of the fighter jets at Eglin Air Force Base in Florida.

In a statement issued Thursday, the Pentagon's press secretary said Air Force and Navy officials ordered the F-35 fleet grounded after initial findings in the incident in Florida on June 23.
Back in the day, when these things weren't so fucking expensive, the Army/Air Force often would buy two different airplanes and fund them through initial production in case one of them turned out to be a failure. Even now, they get the top two flying.

But in this case, I doubt if the XF-32 would have been any better. The services have "christmas-treed" too many mission requirements onto the F-35, from VTOL close-air support to air-superiority. The Air Force, Navy and Marines publicly expect the F-35 to do every fixed-wing mission except trash-hauling and strategic bombing. That strikes me as being borderline locked-ward grade insanity.

If you read between the lines of this story, the Navy is hedging its bets on the F-35.

2 comments:

The New York Crank said...

And it started out as such a simple idea:

"Hey, I know what! Let's take a Swiss Army Knife and put wings on it."

Yours crankily,
The New York Crank

CenterPuke88 said...

See Fighter, Experimental, TFX...nuff said.