Defense insanity: U.S. military is dependent on Russian pilots and planes

The U.S. is hiring the Russians to deliver sensitive equipment and supplies to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Why? Because the U.S. military doesn’t have enough of the highly dependable and amazingly versatile C-17 airlifters. To make matters worse, we have no credible plan to resolve this problem. The need for C-17s will continue to grow because each year older, less reliable and less capable C-5A airlifters — some of which are over 40 years old — are being retired from the fleet because they are beginning to fail.

The list, ping

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Isn’t part of the reason that the Russians have those humongous cargo planes? When my former employer needed a reactor vessel head delivered from France to Florida, they had to get the Russians to do it because there wasn’t anything else big enough.

Ha ha whatta laugh

That ain't the half of it kiddies

American intel satellites are launched on Atlas V rockets...which are powered by Russian RD-180 engines

We can't even launch unless Russian engineers at the Cape say go...maybe they have to check with Vlad first

Ta ta kiddies, the games over, the U.S. is history

Maybe China can make some KOOL-AID for us...

Things might have changed, but last time I looked, most of the drawings and all tooling were marked MacDac, not USG.

It'd be interesting to watch a "we don't want it but you can't sell the drawings" debate.

The initial invasion of Afghanistan was a mistake. By that I mean we should have paid the Ruskies as mercs to go in there (and Pakistan too) with a free fire zone to take country(s) and acquire Osama with a bonus of X millions for each of the taliban and al quiada (i.e. Mullah Omar, bin Laden, etc.) with the agreement that the US would deal with Iran and Iraq under the same terms. Minimum requirement was a free state, without sharia law, and every square inch of the place swept of terrorists.

Wow. What happened to America?

I ask myself that very question nearly every time I watch the news.

We’re borrowing money from the Chinese and giving it to the Russians!

Lenin/Marx/Stalin/Mao are laughing like hell, while in hell, over this.

Buy more rope, America!

Or maybe we as a nation should reconsider what the hell we are doing all over the globe. Between the collection of wars and relief operations it has become apparent to me that there is no sense of priority or plan of any kind. I don’t think there has been one since WWII. We are cop and ambulance to the planet, pay for it all with ? $.

Not to worry!

As soon as those ass-kicking GOPers finish:

shutting down PBS,
defunding HHS and deathcare,
stopping O's marxist federal court appointments,
slashing all non-essential spending,
defunding the "Czars",
defunding EPA, and,
doing something that restores some semblance of a Constitutional form of government...

they will stop this insanity.

I wonder what the cost per ton for C-17 airlift might be and what the current utilization of those aircraft are?

It could be that our airlift is not over taxed...we just buying it cheaper.

It could be that our airlift is not over taxed...we just buying it cheaper.

Our military? Cheaper?

uh... if you say so

Thanks Nachum.

Because the U.S. military doesn't have enough of the highly dependable and amazingly versatile C-17 airlifters. To make matters worse, we have no credible plan to resolve this problem. The need for C-17s will continue to grow because each year older, less reliable and less capable C-5A airlifters -- some of which are over 40 years old -- are being retired from the fleet because they are beginning to fail.

The story behind the story:

-and-

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