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The Air Farce strikes again

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posted on Nov, 17 2013 @ 10:02 PM
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I want to start off saying, I love the Air Force, and always will. However, their leadership apparently needs to be treated like small children, and dealt with the same way.

After looking at some of the things they've done over the last few years, I'm starting to think that the GAO needs to take control of their budget, and tell them the things they're getting, and allocate the funding to keep it out of the leadership's hands.

First, we have this thread by Boomer135, about the first 12 KC-135R models going to the boneyard. The KC-46 won't fly until 2015, but the Air Force has begun retiring R models to make room for them. This is going to lead to fewer aircraft to fly the tanker/airlift mission, which means more flights required, more money for maintenance, etc.

Next we have the A-10. Congress has ordered the Air Force to not retire the A-10, like they want to, without answering some tough questions about them. So, the Air Force, in its infinite wisdom, has proceeded to cancel A-10C upgrades, cut squadrons, and scaled back the pilot training program.

medium.com...

And finally, my favorite one, the 144th Fighter Wing (and others). The 144th Fighter Wing is the California Air National Guard, who just received F-15Cs to replace their F-16s. The F-15s came from Montana.

Here's the kicker though. Montana just got them a few years ago. They transitioned to the F-15C, and shattered records getting the squadrons ready, and standing up. They also spent millions on infrastructure for the new aircraft. All to lose them within a few years, and go to C-130s.

This isn't the first time they've done this either. Portland, Oregon got KC-135Rs and had to shuffle their search and rescue aircraft around for them. They spent millions building new hangars and infrastructure for them, only to have the Air Farce leadership "realign" their refueling assets, and move all the KC-135s out of Oregon.

aviationintel.com...



posted on Nov, 17 2013 @ 10:24 PM
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I wonder what if any reasoning they had behind these moves. I'm no expert on aircraft but I'm guessing swapping f-16s for f-15s may not be horrible but the f-15s for the c-130s? pretty sure those are a lot bigger lol.

Wonder if its senators making deals with other senators. Swap these for those and you will get millions and create jobs?

So when they send, say the c-130s somewhere new, does the whole squadron go? Pilots, crew, mechanics and their families or does everybody learn the new aircraft?



posted on Nov, 17 2013 @ 10:26 PM
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reply to post by tinner07
 


In this case, since they're Air National Guard, they all stay there and retrain from F-15s to C-130s. They did it to Kansas too. They went from F-4s, to F-16s, to B-1s, to KC-135s.

California really needed the F-15s though, because they have the legs to cover the entire state a lot better than the F-16 can.



posted on Nov, 17 2013 @ 10:30 PM
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reply to post by Zaphod58
 


All jokes regarding "military intelligence" are hereby incorporated by reference...



Waste & inefficiency thy name is [insert branch of gov't/military here]

Seriously, it does make you wonder exactly who is minding the store at times...



posted on Nov, 18 2013 @ 04:56 AM
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reply to post by tinner07
 


I wouldn't doubt politics have something to do with it. Things seam to always get screwed up when politics gets involved with the military decision making process.



posted on Nov, 18 2013 @ 01:45 PM
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reply to post by Zaphod58
 


This is one of the biggest problems with Military budgets in the US, Maleficence and mis-management ballon almost anything the Pentagon tries to do...

There was a book I read, that they made a tv movie about the Bradly fighting vehicle.

Its an excellent example of the type of BS that goes on with anything the Military tries to get done.

Practicality goes out the window with a near unlimited credit, and when the purse strings get tightened everyone freaks...

maybe if they managed their projects properly and their wasn't so much waste, people would feel better about their tax dollars going into defense.

ETA:

Corrupt from the top to bottom


IN the 10 years between the inauguration of Ronald Reagan and the advent of the Persian Gulf war, the Pentagon spent up to $400 million a day researching, developing, testing, evaluating and buying new weapons. The money bought a tremendous array of military power. But untold billions of dollars and an invaluable measure of public trust were squandered. In "The Pentagon Wars," James G. Burton, a retired Air Force colonel who scrutinized the buying of weapons from his post inside the Pentagon, argues that moral and ethical corruption, incompetence and overweening ambition characterized the process.


The Pentagon Wars: Reformers Challenge the Old Guard by Colonel James G. Burton, is an excellent look into the world that allows for the type of thing the OP is talking about.
edit on 18-11-2013 by benrl because: (no reason given)



posted on Nov, 18 2013 @ 09:49 PM
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reply to post by Zaphod58
 


I can only speak for the Army but the AF procurement geniuses must go to the same school of finance. Too many individuals making spending decisions who have no clue, no experience, and little oversight.

We could spend half the money and have twice the force. Unfortunately there is little profit in that for the MIC.

In short: Dummies with too big a checkbook being advised on how to spend by greedy strap hangers.



posted on Nov, 18 2013 @ 10:46 PM
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benrl

There was a book I read, that they made a tv movie about the Bradly fighting vehicle.

Its an excellent example of the type of BS that goes on with anything the Military tries to get done.

Practicality goes out the window with a near unlimited credit, and when the purse strings get tightened everyone freaks...


That movie was one of the most accurate depictions EVAR of pretty much half the military contracts we work on.

A lot of times you can see who's running the project and who's managing it, and figure out a good estimate of how Bradley the project's going to be. But sometimes it goes bad and you weren't expecting it.

We worked on a project years ago for the Marines. They're usually a good bet. With Marines or SOCOM projects you are generally immune from gross stupidity. But in this case, we got lassoed into a project that had exploded into bits and died. One of the primes and several second tiers had actually gone out of business during the thing, always a bad sign. So they called us in and said "here's what we have, here's what we want, and it's doing this" and showed us tapes of the thing failing miserably in tests.

I crawled into one, ran it, looked at the schematics, we took a good two days peeling it apart and delivered the verdict 'it's not only a piece of crap, it's an irreparable piece of crap, it's dangerous, and you're going to have to toss the implementation you've got and restart, with about half the garbage trimmed off'.

Since the thing actually DID something, albeit badly and undependably, they wanted to 'fix it'. We laid out our arguments on why you COULDN'T 'fix it'. They accused us of trying to vulture their dead project, we replied by offering to eat the NRE if they'd let us redo the architecture into something you'd let your kid take into combat. They wanted it to stay the same. We declined the contract and vamoosed.

It had started out as something really clever. Probably the sort of thing you could really use. Heck, I could have sold the thing to SOCOM. But then they got some jackass brass attached to it, they took what was basically a covert approach vehicle, and started turning it into a sci-fi death machine reminiscent of the Homer-mobile. Along the way, the contractors forgot little things like basic safety, redundancy and the like. They grafted on more and more horsecrap until it was unusable, and everyone involved started looking for an exit.

Sort of like Project Sheriff. Went from ok to nuts and died. Mission creep is pure poison.



posted on Nov, 18 2013 @ 10:54 PM
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reply to post by Zaphod58
 


That would be like being forced out of a reserve special forces unit to fuel support.



posted on Nov, 18 2013 @ 10:55 PM
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reply to post by cavtrooper7
 


Exactly. It's utterly ridiculous that it happens at all, considering that the states are technically responsible for National Guard equipment. Which instantly says "politics".



posted on Nov, 19 2013 @ 06:54 PM
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reply to post by Bedlam
 


www.youtube.com...

"You can't hurt anybody with that pansy-ass gun! Add on some firepower!"



posted on Nov, 19 2013 @ 07:14 PM
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Tajlakz
reply to post by Bedlam
 


www.youtube.com...

"You can't hurt anybody with that pansy-ass gun! Add on some firepower!"


That's sort of what happened, to be honest. Or at least, it was what exposed the inherent systems architecture issues.

Debating on telling the tale. Technically, we're still under NDA on that one. Argh. There's no "ATS" to the story, just sadness and a waste of tax money. I'm still proud to have been the first to throw the brick during the contract decision meeting. In truth, that was one of only three customer dumps we've done. I have shot a lot of vendors into the toilet, but only three projects.

This one with the death project, we had a funded Army contract to evaluate a virus filter we bricked (O....M....F....G that would be a thread unto itself), and we bricked an offer to try ONE MORE TIME to do free standing holograms.

Not that we're averse to taking chump money - we did get funding for something shameful once that I still blush about, and we have possibly made the most $ per hour of any contractor EVAR by holding someone to a contract that involved me pulling out an avionics board, looking at it, asking for a half dozen more fresh out of the box to look at, and saying "You've got a bad solder joint, it's a process problem, you need to add a solder fountain to your wave to fix this shading issue. Which way is the best bar?"



posted on Nov, 19 2013 @ 07:28 PM
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And yet we had to armor our own Humvees in Iraq. Not to mention the fortune I'd have given for batteries and q-tips there...scarcer than hen's teeth.



posted on Nov, 19 2013 @ 08:13 PM
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reply to post by Zaphod58
 


Growing up as a pilot and the apprentice of the man who invented carbon fiber, and standardized JP4, I always felt The American Airforce was a thing of beauty. It was home to the true American dreamer child, and imbibed all the things that made America great. The love of engineering, the mastery of man and machine, to fly like a bird, and reach to the outer edges of our atmosphere. Poets and artist living the life of the eagle.

The problem has always laid with those who would use these souls for political purposes; sacrificing them on the alter of cash and destruction. Waste has always been part and parcel in the air force, but the true evil infecting the brass became evident back during Nam. Stories like that of the boys from the 135th in F4's being sent in to blow up strategic targets they knew were light poles the VC had painted to look like rockets but had surrounded with AAA just to avoid the embarrassment of having to change their advertised plans, were an almost daily occurrence. Thunderchief pilots thrown to the wolves to test out enemy capabilities. Having to buy back millions of Korean war shells sold for scrap to the Germans just to give the b-52's something to drop, because men were being sent on combat sorties without ordnance. What a waste. Then to top it all off, thousands of POW's forgotten and left to be tortured and immolated because of a clerical error, the airforce having neglected to update their combat loss lists at the time of the 73 treaty signing.

Now they write blank checks for overpriced lacklustre plastic aircraft, and convert what is left of the real flight platforms into drones. They have taken away all judgement from the pilots, and replaced them with video gamers and psychopaths, go pills and weekend warriors, and yet the money keeps coming. Planes are being delivered directly from the manufacturer to the bone-yard, and orders are still being made for aircraft they know to be of little or no use. Not since the end of the second world war have more aircraft been destroyed in so short a period. Obsolete, yet being replaced with much of the same of less. No they would rather buy drones. lots of drones. Drones which are not much different in concept than the V-1's that terrorized the world at the hands of the Nazi's. Just flying merciless random death platforms. That's what you get for replacing the aviation engineers who brought us victory with those who threatened it. So much for the sacrifices of the the boys in the p51s and the b-17. People who had courage and honor, and above all else skill. Whether or not you believe in Chemtrails, the notion of a person calling themselves and pilot and purposely destroying the sky would never have come from those men in those days. All they wanted to do was fly.

AX
FTNWO




edit on 19-11-2013 by AlphaExray because: spelling







 
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