Well, John McCain was a terrible pilot. Crashed like 3 times and was shot down. So I guess of this guy's daddy is well connected enough he could go on to become a Senator?
My understanding was that your primary space based sensors for this are radar and sigint. I believe that’s only possible from much lower than the geo orbit.
Looks like it was more pilot error than anything. Should have waved off when he lost lift and gone around. Sure as hell is a lot worse than a arresting cable breaking.
#RIMPAC2022 is a cool hashtag to explore on twitter So many neat ships on their way to Pearl, seems like a lot of countries are sending their flagships or newest boats
its not even as capable as an Arleigh Burke right? thr f35 takes a lot of shit but the rail gun stuff, the LCS and this are unmitigated disasters
I think it ended up being a lot more sea-worthy than initial reports stated, but yes, it’s still a 22 billion dollar failure with no primary weapon, and no mission, with vague plans to add rain guns (they wont). I bet they end up using hem as missile test platforms like the Russians do with their last Typhoon.
They had some initial problems with handling (cuz it’s a trundle design) and rusting, which have mostly been fixed, but the main issue is because the govt went from building 20-30 of them to building 3, the ammunition cost skyrocketed due to not needing as many, and so is now about a million dollars a shot for a high tech cannon ball, and so they basically said “we’re not using the primary weapon because it’s too expensive”. So it’s an incredibly expensive ship with no real mission and no primary weapon system.
Lockheed finesses THE FUCK out of the USG by underbidding to massive procurement programs, then up charging the shit out them to fix schedule and engineering problems. It is tried and true and well known. The problem is the USG workers and officers in charge of these programs do not want to be stuck being the person watching over a boondoggle, so admiral whatshisname goes to congress and says this is a grave national security issue and they must pony up.
This is how all gov contracts go. Lockheed makes a shit ton of money off the F35, and so do Lockheed’s subcontractors (my company).
Not all contracts. My company has some DOD contracts and they audit the fuck out of us, like checking our invoices twice a week. If we over charge them by as much as a quarter we get into deep shit. These are contracts that can’t be more than $2-3 million per year. It’s just the big money shit where I’m sure kickbacks are coming back to congress while the little guys like us get our anuses probed deeply and regularly.
Yeah I say that but my previous employer had a contract with a naval base in Japan and they rejected my $250 upgrade to economy plus on the 12 hour flight to Japan.
Have a quasi friend that is pretty progressive Democrat, but her husband has worked for Koch Industries for last 15 years. She was pissed at me for awhile when I asked what kind of mental gymnastics that took to make sense.
In theory the B21 and the Air Force’s and Navy’s 6th gen fighter programs are avoiding a lot of the standard government contractor bullshit. It’s amazing how streamlined the process gets when you have an actual adversary again.
Knowing full well I'm feeding the troll here, the adversary is China. Incredibly rapidly expanding navy, only other country producing 5th-gen fighters in any sort of numbers, and might be slightly ahead of us on missile technology right now. And since their economy seems to be teetering, they're dealing with a number of population issues in terms of an aging population, their chance of taking over Taiwan without dealing a massive insurgency because the people there see themselves more as "Taiwanese" and less "Chinese" with each passing year, the temptation for a "short victorious war" to shore up domestic support gets pretty big. See basically what Russia does every few years with Georgia and Crimea until they bit off more than they could chew. Evolution of radar technology makes first or second generation stealth a lot less effective (see the F117) , we have less than 20 B2s, and the rest of the bomber fleet is based on, at best, 50 year old technology and has been worked to death in 20 years of Afghanistan/Iraq/Syria. The F-22 is also 40-year old technology and there's fewer than 200 of them (roughly the same number of Chinese J20s) and the F35, although better than we make out in this thread, is no Air Superiority fighter.
I'm not trolling. I want to know why China is our adversary? What are they doing to provoke the US into a war? Are they surrounding the US with military bases, like we are to them? I understand that it's just been IS foreign policy to try and start a war with China ever since the 50s, but back then it was the Communism Boogeyman. Now they are just an authoritarian Capitalism, so why do we need to go to war? Sure their economy is "teetering", but American media has been saying that for 30 years yet they just keep growing.
They're building islands in the Pacific to expand their economic and military footprint. The make-up of their navy is becoming much more offensive than defensive (greater proportion of destroyers, carriers, Amphibious warfare ships, and nuclear powered attack subs). And us "both being capitalist" means nothing; there's hundreds of years of capitalist wars, a century of communist-on-communist cold and hot wars; there's always more power hungry asshats about.
Their power, influence, and control is growing and threatening ours, so they are an adversary. Simple as.
Not my power. Not my influence. I don't give a fuck about China. They are not my adversary. Simple as
But.....uhh...... Nobody was talking about YOU. We were talking about the US military. And they absolutely are the adversary. Simple ass
They aren't a fucking adversary! They've done literally nothing to us! We've surrounded them with military bases for 70 yrs and tried to provoke a war with them several times. And what have they done back at us? So fucking what if they want a bigger slice of global influence? Who the fuck says that America should get it all?
1) adversary does not always mean enemy, nor does it mean person we’re in an active fight with. It just means “power who’s strategic interests are opposed to ours. We were adversaries with Great Britain from about 1920 to 1935. We were adversaries with Japan between the annexation of Hawaii and WW1, then allies, then adversaries, then enemies. There’s shades of grey. 2) They hacked the US Govt Office of Personnel Management and stole my social security number, banking details, and fingerprints. They’ve shot down a number of US military aircraft over the years in international airspace. And they’ve done a number of classified things I can’t talk about here. 3) And we”ve gone very deliberately out of our way to AVOID war with them on a number of occasions: Not invading mainland China after they entered on the side of North Korea in the Korean War, not targeting Chinese technical experts helping the North Vietnamese, to name a couple. They’re also proven expansionists and (arguably) genocidal with the annexation of Tibet to start and the then forced migration and settlement of Mandarin speaking Han Chinese into non-Han areas. 4) No one here is saying they can’t have a piece of the global pie. And the US has (oh so very obviously) done and continues to do horrific shit around the globe. But China isn’t the Middle Kingdom of sunshine and dreams; ask the Hong Kong protestors. They’re easy to find with China’s extensive facial recognition programs.
The decades long research and execution plan to design, build, test, and ultimately field hypersonic weapons that are SOLELY designed to defeat the US layered missile defense system is not nothing. Like everyone else, definitely not looking to go to war with China or even get close to it. But they are 100% not sitting there minding their own business.