Raptor

Don't apologize for speaking your mind, that's what discussion is for... In agree with much of what you are saying. One thing I The military and the civilian population is tired of watching the dead come home from another forgeign war(s) which we have no intention of, nor any hope of winning... Oh, I forgot, that was Viet Nam when the US population last saw body bags of OUR Nations Dead, off loaded at Dover AFB from C-141's.... We, the citizens, don't see the real cost of our military excursions today. I remember them, the media showing the dead being off loaded from C-141's at Dover AFB being handed over th their loved ones for burial... That is the REAL cost of our wars abroad... We don't see that today... Are we too desentized to the reality of war in our society... Too even care?... The Tornadoes were tasked with a mission from the "Soviet Era" style of mentality. That was to be their job in a Fulda Gap senerio, but adapted to the Gulf War as a result of the propensity of our Generals "fighting this war with the Last wars tactics" EX: The Civil War, rifled muskets with closed rank formation marches (1770's smooth bore Muskets) across a field"... Opps... We have seen the movie too. The state of the people I see here is as you said... Very Poor, and not at all as it should be. They are a mirror of the greater populace, I fear. Just enough effort to get by... Nothing More, Nothing Less... I see it here with the Vets who get hired to maintain front line aircraft. They have no passion for their chosen craft... Just making a paycheck... And Finland fought on BOTH sides of the conflict in WW II. They were invaded by the Soviets and fought against them, and they fought against the ##### as well later in WW II. Poliitcal expeniency to be sure, but it is history none the less. And I am not passing judgement here... Just looking at the history as it occured. By the way, so did France... Too many are saying the "Cold War" is over, and I agree with that. The Soviet Union is dead... But Russian Nationalism is alive and well, Putin IS Russian above all else... Don't confuse one with the other, they are not the same... "Mother Russia" isn't just a slogan, It means something more... Much More... The Afghan AF can't even fly a C-27 cargo plane... USAF pulled the planes from the region for a reason... The Afghans are not able to operate such equiptment, you are dealing with a peoples who live in the very distance past, not the present or even near future world. No One has ever conquered the region of Afghanastan. Ask the Soviets how they fared... 1980-1990... We the USA, did not learn from that war either... nor the fact that Afghanastan has never been conquered during it's long history... Bush had his head up his you know where to think otherwise...

Your interpretation of the Geo-Political situation is spot on in my opinion. Putin has totally out maneuvered Obama on all fronts thus far... The Chinese are Obama is still clueless on the world stage. He thinks "anti-cold war" doctrine, when cold war politics are still influencing events of todays real world geo-political stage. The "Russian Bear" is BACK... The F-16 ATG mission was the USAF way of justifing it's exesistence in the beginning, and it was designed in from the beginning, not a add on, like other programs were. But remember that it won the Bombing Competition in Europe early on in it's career and the competition weren't exactly slouches either. F-111, Bucaneers, and Jaguars, all lost the the new kid on the block. But, in the case of the F-16, it excelled at the ATG mission by design, not by default...

I agree with you... But one has to have air supremacy in order to operate effectively... One outstanding weapon system it is... Migs and effective AAA can change the enviromemt in a heartbeat... I remember the "cone of fire" from the AC's in Nam... 7.62 Minigun , 20 Mike-Mike and 40 MM Bofors were all seen long before Afghanastan.... Her trial by fire was long ago and and in an land forgotten by most, it was Viet Nam where she came of age... They were effective when operating in UNCONTESTED airspace.... Ask the boys who flew up on the Ho Chi Mihn trail chasing trucks... Their mission, still to this very day, relies upon the same set of parameters to be met, to be effective in combat. I am NOT belittleing either platform, just pointing out that both are hindered by the reality of the battle space they inhabit. If Migs are present in the AC-130's battlespace, then all bets are off. The AC is toast... PERIOD... If I can see you.I can and will kill you... If they were to operate in the Fulda Gap situation, the Ac's would be DEAD... That was my point, plain and simple... An AC-130 does me little good over the South China Sea in a conflict against the Chinese.... Give me a good old P-3 or a P-8.... Hi Tech is all great, But BLIND RELIANCE upon it is a fools folly... We have in the last wars held all the cards, Aghanistan, Iraq '91, and '03, "WE HELD THE ACES"...Well, Good for us.... We seem to think we will always have the upper hand, our last twenty years seem to bear this as factual.... YET... Against China in the S China Sea, or the Russians in God knows where... Are we going to be so fortunate in the reality of the battle space.... Dillion, I think you have a very good grasp of of the reality we face.... One of the most relevant posts I have seen. Carter did what Obama is trying to do today... History does repeat itself...

Valid points. Viet Nam was the most heavily defended airspace we have operated in to date, but wasn't nearly as bad as we would have faced in the Fulda Gap scenario. After the war, it was found that alot of the losses in Nam were attributed to the plain old gun, either the AAA gun, or the plain old AK-47 butt down, muzzle up spraying lead along the path of the US plane. We did have PGM's back then. Paveway I's were coming into the use with the F-4 and the Pavetack and Pave Penney systems, but free fall dumb munitions was the norm, as it was in the 1991 Gulf War as well. Maverick,HOBOS and Walleye were all in the inventory during the Viet Nam conflict. Understand, I am not advocating retiring the A-10, just clearing up that the A-10 wasn't originally designed for the mission it is being tasked with today. It does its present day mission, very well. But, Republic Aircraft always did excell at whatever mission was given to them, even if it was different from original design. P-47, Killed alot of Luftwaffe aircraft, both in the air, but especially on the ground, straffing airfields. Why the P-47, her air cooled radial engine could take hits that the Mustang's liquid cooled Merlin could not. Lose coolant from the Merlin and you are done, Lose a cylinder jug from the R-2800 engine and she keeps on ticking and gets you home. F-105, A nuclear bomber, that happed to have one of the highest speeds at low altitude. It just ran away from Migs... The same can be said of the F-16 Viper. She was sold as the "low" portion of the "High/Low mix" with the F-15 in the High role. A low tech dogfighter to supplement the F-15, a way of putting more tails on the ramp for X amount of money, given the unit cost of the F-15. But in service it was the F-16's ATG role that has been it's predominate mission, not it's air to air abilities. The same argument was used for the F-22/F-35 programs. The High/low mix was a selling point for both programs. As to your Asia scenario, the question becomes one of where will it happen. Korean Pensula or the S China Sea? Perhaps Red Dawn? That one was studied very seriously at Pentagon. Either version is plausable... My opinion is to retain capability, as you said, you never know what the threat will be a few years from now. And history tells us, the generals will fight tommorrows war as they did todays war... The American Civil War is one glaring example, a war fought with Revolutionary War tactics with 1860's tech weapons... AKA: the rifled musket... It has never been used in a "High Threat Enviroment". only when we have had the advantage of air supremency, as we did in Nam, and Afghanistan. The last few wars have been fought without the threat of the enemy being able to use it's airpower against our forces. We have become accustomed to that being the norm, but we haven't gone up against the likes of the Chinese or the Russians, or the N Koreans for that matter. We in the West value Quality over Quantity... High Tech vs brute numbers... as one Russian designer put it, Quantity has a Quality all its own... AKA, numbers have a certain advantage...

The A-10 was designed to replace the A-1 Skyraider in the CAS role, NOT the F-4. The F-4 was pressed into the strike role due to the lack of F-105s from losses and attrition during air operations over Nam. The A-1 Skyraider was the preferred CAS bird in Nam, due to long loiter times, big weapon loads, and slow speed to ID targets. Sound familiar... The A-10 was a low cost Anti-Armor/CAS alternative to the high cost and increasingly hi-tech attack aircraft of the day. The A-10 was designed to operate in similar anti-air enviroments as the A-1 did. AKA, low threat levels, like we found in Viet Nam, not the current highly integrated and deadly enviroment that the USAF will be likely to encounter in future conflicts. Remember, the A-10 was designed for fending off hordes of Soviet tanks running thru the Fulda Gap in Germany, and to operate in the European Threatre in the event of a Soviet invasion of Western Europe under the often less than optimum European winter weather, not the Counter Insurgency/Interdiction missions she is tasked with today in Afghanistan. If not for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan the A-10 would already be retired, as this isn't the first attempt to do so... Single mission aircraft have never had broad support in the USAF, look at the state of Electronic Warfare aircraft in the USAF today. The USAF doesn't have any, having retired the EF-111 Ravens, and has to get the EA-6B Prowlers to do this mission for it from the US Navy. It comes down to money in the end. The vast infrastructure is where the real savings are, not in the planes sitting on the tarmac. The airplane sitting there is just the tip of a vast network of support and suppliers the plane requires to fly, and that costs alot of hard currency to maintain. Look at USAF plans for the KC-10, she is to be retired before the KC-135R series. Why? Because it will take more money to rebuild 59 airframes to current ATC standards than it would to just keep the KC-135R fleet flying, as the -135's are already ATC compliant to current standards, even though the KC-10's are 20-30 years younger than the KC-135R's. And Gen. Adolf Galland told ######, give me ME 262 fighters and I can fend off the bombers, but Generals follow their orders, even if they don't make any sense...

And wise words they are... Thank you, brother... Proud to be Union too. Raptor

Consider the source. What knowledge does Aljazeera really have on the topic of aviation? Not much, as it shows in their "reporting", if one can call it that. The three crashes they give as examples are BS. It doesn't matter to Aljazeera that the crashes were ALL runway under/overruns, the cause in each case was pilot error. Oh No, it had to be the "bad parts" that were to blame. Even the National Inquirer has done better reporting than this Junk... The "whistle blowers" were all people who don't even touch the parts in question. One is a parts buyer, who sits at a desk and shuffles paperwork, never even seeing the part she is buying. Her job is to buy the part, not inspect it as it arrives at Boeing. You don't CNC machine those types of parts anyhow. The process is called stretch forming and often the parts are cut to length by hand after the forming operation. The "corrosion" one of the "whistle blowers is so concerned about, would be caught in the normal tear down the the planes go thru periodically. And a repair to a ring segment that he points out is routine and just part of the normal life of a plane. Raptor

"Their own agenda" is to negotiate the best contract for you AND your family. You are making what you make and have the benefits you have because of their efforts to negotiate a fair and balanced contract that is best for the membership which your union represents. Remember, a union is a democratic organization that is only as good as it's members and how well they are involved with the issues that you face at work. You have the right and privelege of voting for those officals who represent you at the bargaining table in your name. You get to choose who you think has your best interests at the bargaining table, that sit across from their lawyers and company reps, who damn sure don't have your best interests at heart. You don't have the choice of who is the CEO of the company. You do have that choice at the Union Hall. You have the right of grievance, should the "company" decide to fire you for some ridiculous reason. Too much time from work, while you were taking care of your sick wife is one example I have seen. Perhaps you weren't promoted to a position that your were qualified for and had more time with the "Company" than the guy who was promoted. Layoffs are beginning, you have 20 years of service and are layed off, but someone with 2 years gets to stay, even though you both do the exact same job. With a union you have recourse to right that wrong, without the union, there is nothing that you can do about it, it just stinks to be you. While the 2 year wonder is laughing at you. It's democracy in action, and only as good as its membership is... It called collective bargaining for a reason. The operative word is "bargaining". No one is holding a gun to the "companies" head and saying give everyone a 5.00 dollar raise. It is negotiated "in good faith", by both sides, and is a mutual agreement that both parties willingly sign, as a legal binding document. It is an agreement the "company" signed and is obligated to abide by, as is the union. Both are bound by its language. If you think your "Company" has YOUR best interests at heart, better rethink that one. They don't... Crossing a picket line isn't a good idea either. The company doesn't respect picketline crossers either. Raptor

Good points. The fill in is still done today. We call it aero-sealing for aero smoothing and for it keeps out the weather too. Raptor

They didn't self certify the "airworthiness certificate". They are allowed to "Self-Certify" certain build operations as does evey airframer in the business. It's called self inspection. You, the mechanic are inspecting your work as meeting the requirements of the airframe builder AND the FAA specifications. You are also held accountable if something breaks too. If it is found that you certified an operation that doesn't meet the criteria, then your self inspection capability is revoked. You are now required to get a company inspector to inspect your work as being acceptable. Boeing is licensed thru the FAA to build the aircraft, and Boeing certifies that it's workers are working to FAA regulations to build the airplane as the airframe builder. There are certifications and classes required for the production guys at Boeing to do the work. Anything that has "Safety of Flight" type of operations involved will have a Company inspectors buyoff requirement as well. AKA: There are not enough FAA inspectors to inspect every single operation to build an aircraft. Raptor

It's still a design change. Engineers changed the material, therefore they changed the specifications of the wings blueprint. To those on the factory floor, IT is a design change to be incorporated into the production line for the next applicable plane that engineering tells them to apply it to. If you change anything in the plane, you have to generate a design change to tell them to do something different from the last plane. One doesn't diviate from the blueprint without engineering approval. It requires a Drawing Change Notice, which changes the blueprint. And No, Boeing didn't do it out of the goodness of their hearts. They did it for the same reasons as Airbus did. They did it to bring the plane up to the design specifications they told their customers the plane would meet, AKA: the specified number of flight cycles the airfame would fly. AIrbus is modifying the existing fleet to meet that same promise. In other words, Airbus is doing the exact same thing as Boeing did... Modifiy the aircraft to meet the number of cycles promised. The composite issues for Boeing was largely due to Alenia not being familiar with composite layup and fabrication technics, in fact they were very new to the material. Boeings' problem was a lack of oversight of their subcontractor (Alenia). They would have been better off to subcontract that work to Northrop-Grumman with their vast expertise in the field of large airframe composite structures. The electrical system is the one area where Boeing overstreched the technology. Everything else has been done in other aircraft before, just not brought into the same airframe as Boeing has done in the 787. Raptor

"Finally, I think the reason why the USAAF stopped painting so many of its aircraft in 1944 was to save weight. On an aircraft the size of a B-17 or B-24 the weight saving was very significant." That was more for time savings during the build process. We had acheived air superiority by 1944 over Europe and we were at peak production rates in '44 as well. So USAAF made the decision to for-go the paint altogether as a way to save time. Given the speeds of the time, any weight savings would be neglible for the mission being flown. Saving fuel wasn't high on the list during wartime. Composites have to be painted, or at least some sort of topcoat applied. They are too porous to be left bare, unlike aluminum clad skins. "I'd imagine it's very much the same with an aeroplane." It is. If you have bare metal, out comes the Alodine, and the paint brush. Conversion coat first, then you apply the polyurethane paint to touch up. Raptor

The above are single system issues as is the case for the 787. What is going on with the Sukhoi is more than that. Different systems and areas of the plane are involved with the SSJ-100 Series. AviationWeek has a few articles concerning the aircraft that Sukhoi is trying to build and market. Seeing that Sukhoi's main customer isn't buying their products in mass today, it's trying it's hand at airliners. Perhaps it might be best to stick to what they know. Tactical military aircraft. Airliners are a very different animal from a military aircraft. Difficult to change ones mindset from military builds to commercial builds in real world practice. Raptor

It's a RF-84 Thunderflash alright. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Republic_F-84F_Thunderstreak Raptor