“And as you've seen, I've been in hearings for the last three days. Shit, I think I should get some kind of award going through that crap.”
Air Force
Navy Pilot Who Shot Down U.S. Plane Makes Admiral
And you thought McHale’s Navy was cancelled back in 1966. It was one of the most bizarre stories Battleland ever covered. And incredibly, the perpetrator – the young Navy officer who mistakenly shot down a U.S. warplane 25 years ago – is being promoted to the rank of admiral (granted, it was an Air Force plane the Navy …
F-16s, A-to…V?
The F-16A first flew in 1975, followed by the F-16B (Battleland once sat in a B-model backseat for a stomach-tickling ride), F-16C. F-16D, F-16E, F-16F, F-16I, F-16IN, F-16N, F-16Q, and now: the F-16V. Manufacturer Lockheed …
Building Weapons: Where 70% Trumps 100%
There’s a lot of talk these days about reducing the cost of military technology projects. The most intelligent conversations on this topic inevitably converge on the idea of building the proverbial “70% solution.” These …
The Pentagon’s Top Weapons Buyer Wrote This Headline: `Acquisition Malpractice’
Frank Kendall shined a spotlight Monday into the F-35 program – the biggest weapons buy in the history of the world — and didn’t like what he saw. The Pentagon’s top weapons buyer said:
This will make a headline if I say it, but I’m going to say it anyway: putting the F-35 into production years before the first test flight was
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More Stars on Female Shoulders
Lieut. General Janet Wolfenbarger is slated to become the Air Force’s first female four-star general, the Pentagon said Monday. Assuming Senate confirmation, she will become commander of Air Force Materiel Command at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. AFMC spends $40 billion annually developing weapons and other gear …
Telephony Irony Alert!
The Air Force is looking to hire someone to set up and run cellular phone service for some 500 phones at the Manas transit center in the Kyrgyz Republican in central Asia, a key U.S. logistics hub for the war in Afghanistan. Security concerns rank pretty highly in that part of the world, but this one takes the cake:
Newt Sure Moves Fast!
Alas, this weekend headline from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper had nothing to do with GOP presidential candidate New Gingrich’s pledge to establish a U.S. colony on the moon by 2020. Instead, in an increasingly familiar refrain, it’s a story about local lawmakers fighting an Air Force plan to close the 911th (gotta love that …
The Costly F-35 Fighter: Positive Angle of Attack
The F-35 Lightning II fighter program has struggled recently: then-defense secretary Robert Gates put the Marine version on “probation” for two years, before new defense chief Leon Panetta let it off a year early – apparently something to do with good flying behavior. Such positive news has led to this video, complete with the …
Whoosh! “What Was That?” Chinese, To Go
Military aviation guru Bill Sweetman has the latest on China’s stealthy J-20 fighter – you know, the one that kicked up a stink a year ago when it flew while then-defense secretary Robert Gates was visiting the Middle Kingdom – and finds some surprises in the latest issue of Defense Technology International:
“While it was …
Missileer Tom Amlie, RIP
Navy and Air Force missile expert Thomas S. Amlie has died at 85. His fingerprints – he was part of the simple-is-better school that waxes and wanes in the U.S. military — date back to the Eisenhower Administration:
Tom Amlie worked on the Sidewinder project as a young Navy lieutenant, and he later became technical director at
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F-35: Out of Altitude, Airspeed, and Ideas — But Never Money
No program better illustrates the pathologies of the weapons acquisition process as it is currently practiced by the Military – Industrial – Congressional Complex (MICC) than the entirely predictable, and in this case, predicted, …
Disappearing Into Thin Air
Thursday’s budget details contained several sky-high decisions worth noting:
— New unmanned aircraft aren’t necessarily cheaper and/or better than old – and Battleland means very old – manned aircraft. (Interesting how the military seems to be able to go back to the future with reconnaissance aircraft, but not fighters or …