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62 Comments

  • April 8, 2016 at 8:34 pm
    H_B

    He hates the side he got from his “typical white woman” grandmother.

    • April 9, 2016 at 12:27 am
      Pamela

      Bet he doesn’t hate the Social Security number she got for him.

      • April 9, 2016 at 4:49 am
        MasterDiver

        That SSN is as phoney as he is, unless he was born in Connecticut.

      • April 9, 2016 at 6:39 am
        Bob

        The number is based on where the card was issued, not place of birth.

      • April 9, 2016 at 7:01 am
        GWB

        Until the 90s, SSNs were not issued at birth, but upon application. The numbers are based upon the application, not a birth locale. (Mine has a TX prefix, because that’s where I was in middle school, when we did the application.)

      • April 9, 2016 at 7:32 am
        H_B

        Wait, they give you an SSN at birth now?

      • April 9, 2016 at 8:32 am
        markm

        H_B: You need the kids’ SSNs to claim them as dependents on your income tax.

      • April 9, 2016 at 8:40 am
        noncom

        He was out one day for a ride over in jolly old Connecticut when he decided it would be a great idea to stop in at the social security office there in Westport to pick up his Social Security card, which he had never applied for before….and if you believe that…..

      • April 9, 2016 at 11:07 am
        Pamela

        The number he’s using “allegedly” was issued to a naturalized citizen who never paid into Social Security and never received benefits. The original recipient died. So why would SSA issue a used number when there were so many new numbers to draw upon?

  • April 8, 2016 at 8:48 pm
    Ed Woods

    Two sides to everything including his face.

  • April 8, 2016 at 9:00 pm
    janejs

    Face it, Obama hates all whites.

    • April 9, 2016 at 6:08 am
      Bunkerbuilder

      It is my understanding Mr Obama/Sotero is 5/8 “white” so that would explain some of his self loathing….

      • April 9, 2016 at 8:17 am
        mtnforge

        He is 100% red diaper baby

    • April 9, 2016 at 8:47 am
      mtnforge

      It is why his race is indeterminate to begin with, for the very reason of fooling the useful dupes, he can be anything he needs expediently to suit the political needs of the moment. One minute he is a Christain, next a musloid, he is not black over there, and around the corner he is the jive master, an effeminate sodomiser one moment, commander in chief indicating red lines the next, its all part of an ever manipulated illusion of legitimacy, just like his birth certificate, and deliberately flubbing his oath of office, misdirection, and a fig leaf of legitimacy. The entire regime is essentially one long crisis as a means, it IS the false flag event. Obama is the false flag, all else flows from this.

  • April 8, 2016 at 9:05 pm

    Yea, too bad they don’t have to scrounge parts for Obama’s Air Farce One party plane…

  • April 8, 2016 at 9:06 pm

    As a guy employed by the DoD, I assure you that there is waste that can be trimmed, and measures that can taken to help enhance our defensive posture.
    American voters can assist by not electing statists to the White House in November.

    Obama can’t make the transition to private life fast enough.

    • April 8, 2016 at 10:31 pm
      capn

      Agreed itzWicks and thank you for serving. I have been out since 1969 and have gradually discovered that the voting process has been corrupted since oh say 1810 or so. (Since the “Party System” was adopted.)
      “If voting could solve or cure any of the political problems or processes it would be outlawed.” (paraphrasedauthor unknown to me)

      • April 8, 2016 at 10:34 pm
        capn

        missed the space bar between paraphrased and author …
        fumble fingers strikes again

      • April 9, 2016 at 3:24 am
        H_B

        “If voting made any difference they wouldn’t let us do it.” -Mark Twain.

      • April 9, 2016 at 11:30 am
        Kafiroon

        Voting? Yeah, right. That solves everything. Sorry to be such pessimist but, new version same old thing.

        https://hotgas.net/2016/04/your-votes-are-being-stolen/

      • April 9, 2016 at 12:22 pm
        Old Codger

        “It is enough that the people know there was an election. The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.”
        Joseph Stalin

        I think that pretty well covers it, don’t you think?

        Of course old Joe also had this sage advice “Death solves all problems – no man, no problem.”

    • April 9, 2016 at 3:50 am
      pyrodice

      how can you elect someone who isn’t a statist?

  • April 8, 2016 at 9:10 pm

    Another page of the link: http://usmclife.com/2016/04/best-general-mattis-memes/
    “I put the laughter in manslaughter”
    Gotta love the Marines.

    • April 9, 2016 at 12:30 pm
      Old Codger

      Thanx for the link, PC. Lotta very good stuff there.

  • April 8, 2016 at 10:11 pm
    Kafiroon

    Two sides of paper thin both facing left. As substantial as paper, the rest of the world walks all over him, laughs at us and wipes their feet.

  • April 8, 2016 at 10:39 pm
    B Woodman

    Well, Josh got it 3/4 correct. Just missing a “c” at the beginning to make it complete “c-r-a-p”.

    Thank you, C-h-r-i-s, for the poetry.

  • April 8, 2016 at 10:49 pm

    Plenty of credit to go around here, 15 years pissing away trillions of our treasure and thousands of our young patriots, meddling with peoples and places where their hatred of us is exceeded only by their hatred of each other…so good to see such bilateral cooperation of gopes and dems alike to attain their common goal of the castration and destruction of the American Republic.

  • April 8, 2016 at 11:15 pm
    eon

    The procurement process for A/C for all services has been completely fucked up by the F-35 scam. Every single cent DoD can scarf from every part of the budget, especially maintenance, and jam into Lockheed’s hot little hands for F-35 has been, in a desperate attempt to actually get the thing to actual IOC. Trouble is, it will probably never get there for several reasons;

    1. Software issues are not resolved and may be unresolvable. Weapon control hierarchies are complex and contradictory; among other things, the F-35 FC can’t fire its gun, period. Disposable ord selection and targeting is “hit or miss”, i.e., it may not release because A/C system tells you “no weapon there”, or insists it’s something else. (Call for AIM-9X, it wants to unload a J-SOW, and vice versa.) There are many others, even more serious. Patches on top of patches are Lockheed’s answer; anybody familiar with any version of Windows knows what that means.

    2. Pilot survivability issues are in the same boat. Ejector seat instant-onset G-loads (IOGL) can kill pilots weighing under 70kg, so forget women pilots for the most part. A “super” helmet with so many widgets in it that its mass can snap a pilot’s neck under G-loads is definable as an Incredibly. Bad. Idea. Said helmet is, however, necessary for the pilot to ‘run’ the aircraft without a total redesign of the control system’s hardware, which ain’t happening at this late date. O2 system is having worse problems that the F-22’s. And so on.

    3. The design has become a vision of the “Ultimate Swiss Army Knife”, with every user wanting a bell or whistle on it to make it Perfect For Their Use. The old saying is that sooner or later you have to fire the designers and start production; the corollary is that at some point, you have to tell the customer “this is what you get, sorry it isn’t everything you demanded”. Lockheed ‘sold’ it as “tell us what your wishes are, we’ll make them happen”; the result has been a replay of the F-111/TFX debacle’, except that unlike the ‘Vark, the F-35 isn’t even an effective bomber and never will be.

    The battle over the A-10 (remember, “speaking in favor of the A-10 is treason”?), and parts procurement shortfalls are pretty much due to the Lockheed project consuming more and more of the budget with nothing to show for it. And a lot of careers in the Pentagon are riding on getting the F-35 into service, even if it isn’t mission-capable; the idea being, “If we can fly it in airshows and recruiting videos, good enough, and Lockheed wants to build the whole order of 4000+ and get the dough”.

    So if you wanted to know why our A/C mechanics are scrounging parts for Plastic Bugs at Davis-Monthan, well, now you do.

    As for The One, He. Does. Not. Care. An air force and naval and Marine aviation that are not able to “project force” cannot protect the “evil, materialistic West”, and thus cannot threaten the “mystical, enlightened East”. Which has been his game plan from the start.

    And all his cronies agree. Even the ones looking to make serious $$$$ under the table off this deal. As long as the money goes to “all the right people”, that’s all that matters to them.

    clear ether

    eon

    • April 9, 2016 at 3:52 am
      pyrodice

      I’m frankly amazed that all of what you said is unclassified enough to spread, in the open…

      • April 9, 2016 at 5:30 am
        H_B

        Every few months they have a congressional meeting with Senators and Congress-critters to receive an update on the F-35 program. They don’t go into classified specifics about actual capabilities, but they detail what problems they are currently experiencing and how they plan to address those problems. You can download the reports online and watch the hearings on youtube (suggestion: bring coffee). I’ve actually written a rebuttal to eon’s comment, but I put two different links in it, so it’s awaiting moderation… Oops.

    • April 9, 2016 at 4:45 am
      H_B

      Eon, I’m afraid most of this is false. I used to hate the F-35 program from reading about it in the news, and wanted “the people responsible” held accountable. If you’d posted that eight months ago, I would have echoed you with loathing for the airplane.

      But then I did what I always do and dug further down into the issue to really clamp down on the details of it (the better to strangle someone with them in an argument). When I did that, I discovered that most of the criticisms of the plane were either outright-false, twisted to look frightening, or not actually relevant to what the plane does.

      It certainly fits with the tradition of incompetence in military procurement we have, but the hysteria surrounding the F-35 is kicked up by desperate, financially-starved aerospace companies that really, really want to have contracts again. For example, “everyone knows” the F-35 can’t use its gun.

      Here’s the F-35 firing its gun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=69Nv3FIHNK0

      As to your numbered points: 1. Software issues are not “unresolvable”. They are currently seeing lots of “issues” with software because they have pushed Block 3i (initial) software to the 200+ aircraft already produced and finished writing Block 3f (final) software a few months ago. Now they are in a period of intense bug testing and fixing with 3f before it gets pushed to the fleet in late 2018. Of course they’re finding lots of software issues. That’s the whole point of the current round of testing! They wouldn’t be doing their jobs if they weren’t “finding problem after problem”. But they are also fixing issues in a “finished” software block, not one still being written.

      2. The issue with the ejection seats isn’t that they will “kill” someone under 136 pounds, it’s that they have “a higher risk of neck injury” according to engineering analysis. Thing is…there is the SAME RISK OF INJURY FOR EVERY PLANE WE CURRENTLY FLY! (F-18s have a minimum ejection weight of 152 lbs with Martin Baker Mk10 seats!) It’s just that A) no one bothered to look at it before and B) some of the nations we’re partnering with to develop the plane have significantly smaller average body mass than Americans. The current weight restriction on pilots (136+ lbs) only affected one pilot – a male. The female pilots in the F-35 program were above that limit.

      But the issue has already been addressed. The fixes are A) a switch in the cockpit to alter the timing of the ejection seat boosters if you are below 136 lbs, B) additional risers on the parachute harness, and C) altering the helmet padding foam and sun-visor attachment to shave SIX OUNCES of weight off the helmet (which isn’t that heavy to begin with). That’s it. That’s all they have to do “resolve” this issue and get “risk of injury” from 23% to 15% (the same risk of neck injury every other ejection seat has) with the F-35’s much lower pilot-weight limit.

      Since it doesn’t really effect the performance of the aircraft and only invalidated one pilot (who wasn’t a sainted female) it’s not an immediate testing priority and confirmation of fixes’ effectiveness is scheduled for months and years down the development track.

      3. What is currently being built is the base model, and only a few countries were allowed direct input into development, depending on how much money the put forward to begin with. Block 4 development, scheduled for the 2020s, is when they will look into bell-and-whistle items. (Israel wants external conformal fuel tanks. Most everyone want’s a four-bomb rather than three-bomb internal rack for each weapons bay. etc.) But with this point you also touch on a generic “the plane doesn’t do what it’s supposed to”, which is so broad I’ll direct you to Dragon029’s “Busting Myths” series:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31oJIo8EVwY

      He does one every few months to address new memes criticizing the plane.

      As to the A-10, I love the ‘Hog. I had an exploded engineering diagram of one in my room in High School. But the dirty secret of the Warthog is that during the first Iraq war, they got chewed to rat**** by ground fire. We lost more of them than any other aircraft type in the conflict, and those we didn’t lose were removed from service for repairs – then they stopped sortieing them entirely while the fight was still going. As a consequence, today they are not employed in the “down in the dirt” style they were actually designed around in the first place. Instead they most commonly drop guided bombs from mid-altitude – just like an F-16 does. In that kind of flight profile, with the better, longer-ranged sensors, faster travel time, and Superior Loiter Time (!) the F-35 has, I will absolutely take it as a replacement of the A-10. (Even if it does mean poor Arizona Congresswoman McSally can’t campaign as having been the pilot of a still-serving aircraft anymore.)

    • April 9, 2016 at 4:53 am
      MasterDiver

      You would think they would remember the lesson of McNamara’s Switch-blade Edsel, the FB-111.

      • April 9, 2016 at 5:25 am
        H_B

        They did. Once you cut through all the BS and look at how the plane is built and what it can do, it’s amazing.

      • April 9, 2016 at 8:50 am
        John D. Egbert

        Remember also that it was McNamara, then-CEO of Ford, who rammed the original Edsel down the corporate throat and nearly bankrupted FoMoCo. And then Kennedy made him SecDef in the “Whiz Kids” cabinet, whereupon he promptly destroyed the excellent Navy/Marine Corps/Coast Guard and Air Force aircraft designation systems because they were too hard to understand.

      • April 9, 2016 at 9:07 am
        markm

        That was designated the F-111A through E, except for one FB “stretched” version – but all of them flew like bombers, not fighters. I’ve seen an F-111D flying with an F16, and it looked like a semi-truck trying to hold formation with a Lotus.

        H_B: I was an F-111 electronics tech. What the planes could do when everything worked was amazing – but keeping them working required far too much in parts and man-hours. Usually nearly half of the planes were down for one thing or another. Also, if a plane sat waiting for a part for a week, other parts would have been cannibalized from it to fix the other planes. Eventually word came from on high that there were to be no permanent hangar queens – so we’d strip parts from several others to put one back into operational status.

        And all those breakdowns were incurred just from _training_ flights! Imagine how much more maintenance they’d have needed in a war. There was a parts kit that was reserved just for the actual deployment that never happened, but there were two problems with that. One was that the electronics boxes didn’t have to be used to go bad – they’d break down just sitting in the hangar, so I wouldn’t have much trust in the ones that had been packed away and untested for years. The second is that the manpower to do the maintenance for a full flight schedule just wasn’t there. My team worked overtime every week just to keep up with the breakdowns from a few flights per week; in a crunch we might have been able to put in twice as many hours, but fatigue would have soon made us slow and stupid.

      • April 9, 2016 at 9:20 am
        H_B

        markm, I was talking about the F-35, not the F-111. They did learn from the mistakes of the F-111, and what the F-35 can do is amazing.

    • April 9, 2016 at 7:11 am
      GWB

      “Patches on top of patches are Lockheed’s answer”
      It ain’t jut Lockheed’s answer. I’m dealing with this in a procurement issue right now, and no one seems to understand how each individual patch introduces a possibility for error.
      The main problem with the F35 (and most of our current procurement) is twofold: 1) procurement of magical items – technology so fabulous the plane is invisible and maneuvers based on thoughts and can hit a pinhead from 200 miles away and…, and 2) non-competitive cost-plus contracts.

      Oh, and eon? The A10 isn’t on the chopping block jut because of F35 money. The PTB in the AF have never liked it. It’s not glamorous. And it doesn’t do that Knights Of The Sky bit, jousting with enemy aircraft in the effort to secure dominance of the air. That really is somehow inculcated into our leadership, despite not having been a real factor in air warfare for 40 years.

      • April 9, 2016 at 7:30 am
        H_B

        F-35 went on a fixed-price contract when Congress took a critical look at the program in 2011. The program was mismanaged and both the development schedule and the expected cost figures were sheer fantasy. They “rebaselined” the program with a more realistic schedule and cost estimate, the people at Lockheed responsible were fired, and they were put on fixed price so that Lockheed eats any mistakes they make. They’ve been on-schedule and on-budget since then.

        Because of the experience with the F-35 program, the LRSB bomber program is supposed to be cost-plus during early development and fixed-price in late development and production of the aircraft.

        As to the “Knights Of The Sky” duels not being a factor for decades, that’s because anyone who comes up to meet us dies – and they know it.

      • April 9, 2016 at 10:29 am

        The Warthog is a tank buster. Ground troops love the sound of its guns, that ‘brrrrrrrrrttt!’ and the snarl as it flies by.

        The USAF bimbos don’t want it. It should go to the Marines, the Navy and the Army. Revive the Army Air Corps.

    • April 9, 2016 at 10:26 am

      So the F-35 is, as I suspected, the current version of the 1980 Chevy Citation, a lemon’s lemon. My very own Chevy Cite came off the factory floor with vapor lock. There was a recall for ‘whatEVER’ about every 4 to 6 months. The odometer was not designed to roll over at 99,999 miles. I dumped it and got a Toyota.

      The F-35 is the personification of The Lemon. I think it should be bronzed and dropped off at that jackass’s house in Chicago, right in his backyard.

      It’s a shame that the USGov can’t use the consumer lemon law to smack Lockheed for this waste of time called an airplane. Contracts. Suckers!!!

  • April 8, 2016 at 11:16 pm
    rickn8or

    General Mattis is the kind of leader the troops all pray for.

  • April 9, 2016 at 12:06 am

    As to his “sides”, I’m sure the zero’s black side would proclaim that if he had a son, he would be just like this poor innocent “homeless teen”…

    http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/homeless-teenager-arrested-in-killing-of-texas-dance-student-police/ar-BBrww7d?li=BBnb7Kz

    But his white side could never claim this beautiful, talented teen student…

    Tell you one thing, if that is my daughter, that filthy piece of shit could not hide from me anywhere on this earth; vengeance would be mine as I tortured and killed him, consequences be damned…and God could take His vengeance on his soul, if he has one.

  • April 9, 2016 at 12:37 am
    TheOldMan

    Not being expert, novice, or even slightly clued, were the latest F15/16 revisions really outclassed? IOW was there in fact a crying need for F22/F35?

    • April 9, 2016 at 5:23 am
      H_B

      Whether there’s a “need” for an aircraft depends entirely on what you want to do with it. Are the F-15/F-16 outclassed by the F-22/F-35? Oh Sweet Christmas, YES!!

      During their first combat exercise in Alaska during 2006, the first F-22 squadron flew against the best F-18 and F-15 pilots the Navy and Air Force could send to the exercise. The F-22s obliterated the cream of both air services with a final score of 144 “kills” to zero.

      The F-35 has longer-ranged, wider-viewed sensors than the F-22 does, and according to statements pilots have made in public about it, is even stealthier than the F-22!

      I linked the third “Busting Myths” video in my reply to eon above, but it’s relevant to your question specifically. Here it is again, cued up to the part you’re asking about: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31oJIo8EVwY&t=5m30s

      • April 9, 2016 at 10:24 am
        PaulS

        They could not even get a human to read the narration!? Hmmm….

      • April 9, 2016 at 12:03 pm
        H_B

        He says he’s really nervous about public speaking…

  • April 9, 2016 at 6:03 am
    Bill G

    Two sided and double tongued.

  • April 9, 2016 at 8:35 am
    mtnforge

    Usurpers usurp. Everything. It is his job. Divide and conquer. Remember order out of chaos. From the top down inside out. Along the way you “redistribute” the wealth to your crony buddies.
    These fuckers don’t care about any of us, we are the dirt people, chattel, to me milked dry of our intrinsic wealth, control energy, land, food and water, the great essentials of modern age, and you can control everything. It is why the fuckers executed LeVoy Finnicum in the snow up in Oregon, and turned the other ranchers from Burns and the Hammond and Bundy cattle ranches into political prisoners. Those ranchers where getting too close to the truth.
    It is all rigged by a mere handful of oligarchs. They do not want anyone to know how corrupt they are and how they are managing to acquire power and wealth. Same old story through time. It is why they do everything they can to undermine the tireless minority of people who resist and defy them, it is always through history a determined fearless minority who have ever changed the world for good. The sonofabitches declared war on us really. But one thing they forget, It is the human terrain which is on top, culture is always upstream of tyranny and politics of it.

    ……………………./´¯/) 
    ………………….,/¯..// 
    …………………/…./ / 
    …………./´¯/’…’/´¯¯`·¸ 
    ………./’/…/…./……./¨¯\ 
    ……..(‘(…´(..´……,~/’…’) 
    ………\……………..\/…./ 
    ……….”…\………. _.·´ 
    …………\…………..( 
    …………..\………….\

    Thats my answer to the fuckers.

  • April 9, 2016 at 8:36 am
    AlexJ

    The bad news is what OBozo has done to our country.

    Good News? He’ll soon be out of office and eligible to receive the same treatment as say… Rick Scott!

    • April 9, 2016 at 10:56 am

      Flagov Rick Scott? Expound please.

  • April 9, 2016 at 10:47 am
    Brasspounder

    I’m old enough to remember when the “one drop of blood” theory of racial tagging was reviled and despised. It’s apparently a celebrated concept today, e.g. 1/64th Cherokee Fauxcahontas Warren.

  • April 9, 2016 at 1:03 pm
    RCO

    I’m seeing a couple references to getting James Mattis nominated in a 2nd or 3rd round ballot in Cleveland. I’d vote for him. Of course, I’ll vote for anyone running against Mrs Clinton. However …

    I wasn’t excited about voting for Senator McCain nor Governor Romney. I could get excited about voting for General Mattis. I can’t get excited about voting for Mr Trump. He may know business, he doesn’t know how to govern or serve as commander in chief. Mr Cruz is exciting, but I’m not sure how the Republicans in Congress would support him. Significant quandary. I’m starting to wonder if the great experiment is over … That terrifies me.

    • April 9, 2016 at 3:18 pm
      NotYetInACamp

      The fact that Mr. Trump is aware of and has spoken of the great dangers to our nation, society and civilization puts him ahead all of the other candidates, especially in the manner that he has made no really soley dogmatic based answers to what faces us. he puts national survival ahead of national suicide. Our current white house occupier is engaged in national suicide to bring abut his worked for transformation into the situation where that many times desired and attempted over the eons Utopia will come forth from the destruction created.
      Even the wall, while the thousands of miles required will be built, he knows that internal enforcement of the rights of Americans over the foreign Americans and other invaders trumps suicidal importing of armies desiring our destruction, many desiring that destruction more times over than any German troops in World War Two excepting the die hard Nazi elite.
      I see someone that many in the military will welcome, again excepting many placed in power after the successive purges of non politically correct military over the past years. We have seen a similar purging in the past when Stalin had his political commissars purge the Soviet officer corp prior to WW2 of all of those not meeting communist doctrine. The political commissar was the most powerful officer in any soviet unit.

      I am exicted that I voted for Trump. he needed to use experts sooner than he has. he had many enthusiastic people running aspects of his campaign who had never done the details of winning in politics. I hope some of the new blood that have worked in Republican efforts over the decades can help him close the votes he has already won, and enable him to justly win the people who should vote for him considering what he would deliver rather than all others.

      The great experiment is over only if we end it. That is terrifying. The education, knowledge, and critical analysis (real versus communist destructive critical theory) abilities of many progressive educated students and people leads them to support free lunches. Unless the product is produced, there is no bread for all of the Little Red Hens to distribute, sell and spread about society so that all can benefit from the wealth that such action has created in our nation over the last two centuries plus.

      There is no easy path in front of any of us, unless it is a path to Hell and Damnation.

      The future is in our hands. What a time to live. We have such opportunity to matter.

  • April 9, 2016 at 3:17 pm
    John Greer

    So long as our glorious leaders are buying votes by doling out government benefits and tax credits, the military will always get short shrift. It won’t make any difference whose party is at the helm. They will collectively parasitize the system until it dies (and we die) in agony. And of course they will make sure we will have no legal recourse against the people who wrote the laws.
    Today we have just enough money to keep the Ponzi Scheme rolling by sacrificing essentials. When the interest rates rise (and they must) we won’t.

  • April 9, 2016 at 4:07 pm
    Arkelk

    Thank you for the discussion above on the F-35 and related aircraft.

    There is one thing that has long bothered me on US aircraft (and tanks). We design and build the most glorious machines, that are then too expensive of maintenance-intensive to be used much or buy many of. At some point, we need to be concerned with the question of “how many of these can we lose and still fight effectively?”

    • April 9, 2016 at 5:41 pm
      H_B

      You can get into trouble quoting aircraft “prices”, because the companies will charge different amounts to different countries with different features ordered by each, but the F-35 (which is currently in low-rate production) has been falling in price every year and is projected to cost $81 to $83 million when it goes into full-rate production around 2019. Total production is somewhere north of 3,100 aircraft, with the US accounting for 2,443. Those will be replacing all of the elderly F-16s, F/A-18a/b Hornets, AV-8B Harriers, and A-10s.

      In comparison, a new F/A-18e Super Hornet (different plane than the Hornet) for the Navy would cost somewhere around $76 million. A Eurofighter Typhoon costs around $103 million. A French Rafale costs about $90 million. An F-22 (if we still had the factory for it) would cost $152 million. The troubled no-we-still-can’t-buiild-the-engines-for-it, no-it’s-not-that-stealthy, no-we-can’t-get-the-radar-to-work Russian PAK FA “stealth aircraft” is projected to cost $100 million apiece (India is really mad at Russia over the plane!).

      Thing is, the F-35 will bury all of the listed competition there, except for the F-22. That’s quite a bit of value and extremely affordable for what we’re getting. On the other hand, just keeping what we have now and paying the spiraling maintenance costs would be three times what purchasing the F-35 would be.

      Furthermore, the lion’s share of F-35 software problems that they are currently racing to fix aren’t with the aircraft itself. They’re with the ALIS logistics system. The F-35 is being built with an automatic logistics system that records what actions were taken in flight for an aircraft, schedules targeted maintenance for those stresses, orders new parts ahead of time, schedules shipping of old parts back to the factory, and communicates with other F-35 facilities about unforseen maintenance issues that may make a larger trend not obvious at a single base. It’s complicated so they’re struggling with it. But the intent is to make the plane as easy to maintain as it is to fly (and every interviewed pilot says it is incredibly docile and obedient in flight).

      As an aside, the F-35 is also designed from the ground up to be completely modular and open-architecture. That means upgrades and alterations to the aircraft are simpler and cheaper. Going from the Block 2 to Block 3i software required more computing power than the aircraft had to offer at the time (this was planned beforehand). Instead of yanking and replacing all the computers in the aircraft like unitary “black boxes”, they just opened them up and switched out the CPUs for new ones – just like you would do with your home PC.

      So, they are indeed paying attention to what you brought up.

  • April 9, 2016 at 4:08 pm
    Arkelk

    Oh, and going back to the cartoon, I don’t think TheOne acknowledges his white side (despite that this was the family that raised him, apparently with a lot of love) except under duress.

    • April 9, 2016 at 4:46 pm
      Pamela

      Only when he can profit from it

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