Posted on 02/06/2016 7:44:03 AM PST by don-o
The Pentagon's top weapons tester has condemned aspects of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program in a new report, raising questions about the $1.5-trillion effort's ability to meet its already slipped production schedule, synthesize information on the battlefield and keep aircraft available to fly.
The 82-page report was distributed to Congress last month, and released publicly this week. It was completed by Michael Gilmore, the Pentagon's director of operational test and evaluation. He reports directly to Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter, and carries out independent assessments for both Carter and members of Congress.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
“Care to explain?
Curious statement as we have dogfights, even to this day. ...”
I did ponder several lines of response, but then recalled what Hulka had already posted, in Post 57:
“...to keep it simple, we have two types of aircraft. . .fighters and targets. . . ...”
This boast is repeated endlessly. All it does is state the most elementary truth: that fighter pilots haven’t yet learned to distinguish friend from foe. Personnel who cannot succeed at that basic task are a hazard to a military organization, not an asset.
24 years and more on active duty taught me that they are unreachable.
Ego is never removed from any interaction with fighter pilots:. And they all believe everyone else (by definition, we lesser mortals) wants to be just like them. Well, who wouldn’t want to travel that easy route? Hot machines to have fun with, courtesy of the taxpayer. Hero worship from every angle, no meaningful maturity required. Long on panache, short on judgment.
“Easy route”?
Okay. Believe that if you chose.
Targets and fighters. . .joke. Subtle and hard to convey via a post.
Re-read please the post wherein I addressed your biases and the opinion that dogfights are passe and flying fighters is easy.
Not everyone can be the tip of the spear. No shame in that. Be proud of your service. 24-hrs is a long time.
Did we serve together someplace? Did we deploy somewhere? What was your AFSC?
Ping to Post 82
“who wouldn’t want to travel that easy route? Hot machines to have fun with, courtesy of the taxpayer. Hero worship from every angle, no meaningful maturity required. “
“truth: that fighter pilots haven’t yet learned to distinguish friend from foe. “
Something tells me you were never in the Air Force if that’s what you think. It ain’t easy to be a good pilot, hero worship isn’t from every angle (very few actually), and without maturity a pilot flunks out. I wasn’t an AF pilot (flew spacecraft instead, and currently a private pilot), but I know many military and civilian pilots (many civilian pilots were military pilots) and without maturity the career is very short lived.
Not sure that you mean by “distinguish friend from foe.” If that is from the air then get up in the air and let us know your genius thoughts on how a two dimensional looking flat brown Earth distinguishes friend from foe without some help from friend.
“...Targets and fighters. . .joke. Subtle and hard to convey via a post.”
Some among the fighter pilotry may believe it to be a joke.
But I’ve heard it repeated too often, and seen in reprinted in too many wartime journals and memoirs, to believe it’s anything except the very core of their self-justification and the moralistic excuse for their overbearing attitude. Sometimes they add the very explicit caveat that they are superior to all friendlies, specifically because they can shoot down friendly aircraft.
“Re-read please the post wherein I addressed your biases and the opinion that dogfights are passe and flying fighters is easy.”
The maneuvering portion of any given aerial engagement does not last long - neither in absolute terms nor percentage terms. Doesn’t mean it’s passe’.
And I convey my apologies if Hulka misunderstood my brevity as an attempt to imply that flying fighters was easy (though mere flying isn’t as tough as he wants us to believe).
I do know that the people who succeed as fighter pilots lack the qualities of intellect and the attributes of character that are indispensable in senior leaders.
“Not everyone can be the tip of the spear. No shame in that. Be proud of your service. 24-hrs is a long time.”
Yes ... the fighter pilotry does believe implicitly that as the tip of the spear, they are superior to all, everywhere, past present, and future, and that this entitles them to tell everyone else what to do - regardless of rank, experience, or understanding.
“Did we serve together someplace? Did we deploy somewhere? What was your AFSC?”
We may have crossed paths someplace.
After graduating from USAFA, I became a nav (eyes not good enough to pass the vision test, when standards magically tightened after Southeast Asia) and served on a number of bomber crews. USAF put me through AFIT from which I earned an MS in operations research; I paid the system back by conducting operational testing and a number of less readily definable activities, via which I was privileged to work with just about every technical specialty in every US armed service, and those of a number of allies. After being medically grounded, I was assigned to mid-level leadership in OT&E and systems engineering, then finished off my stint on active duty as a scientific analyst for US Strategic Command.
Standing by for the nav jokes and the half-baked objections. I’ve heard it all, more than once. But some of it may be new to some Freepers.
“...Something tells me you were never in the Air Force if that’s what you think.”
CodeToad might be able to make more sense of the situation if he found a “something” with higher accuracy. See my post #85 in response to Hulka’s comments.
“... It ain’t easy to be a good pilot, hero worship isn’t from every angle (very few actually), and without maturity a pilot flunks out. ...”
It’s laughably easy to be a “good pilot” in the sense of driving the airplane. (Yes, I’ve a private pilot ticket too. My total taildragging time exceeds that of most USAF pilots).
In fact, many modern combat aircraft were deliberately built to be easy to fly. I participated in more design studies, acquisition milestone reviews, data collection/analysis taskings, after-action report analyses, and the like than I can recall at the moment, but some glimmer of understanding dawned evnetually. Frightening sums of the taxpayers’ money have been thrown at the problem.
“I wasn’t an AF pilot ... without maturity the career is very short lived. ...”
CodeToad’s claims are not supported by any evidence.
I spent my career working for senior officers who were pilots; “maturity” (as understood by us lesser mortals) was not a required character attribute for advancement. In truth, maturity was a hindrance as they pursued endless rounds of rough-and-tumble and one-upmanship. “Short-lived” is not a term that applied to their careers.
And the hero worship arrives from more angles than one can find on a compass rose (for those of you who follow GPS everywhere, there are 360 degrees of them). Even from official sources: note how many fighter pilots are placed in command of units that haven’t any association with things fighter. Said fighter pilots are assumed to know everything about everything - and to have the abilities to artfully employ their unbounded knowledge in executing leadership duties. Reality is 180 degrees out of phase with such assumptions.
“Not sure that you mean by ‘... distinguish friend from foe.’ ...”
In actual action, fighter pilots need all the help they can get to do this right. Not that they admit it; more than once, people like me had to force it on them. Our efforts were not always successful: lethal screw-ups still happen. Then they leap to cover up for each other.
But my remark was in response to Hulka’s citation of the “fighters and targets” commonplace. Since some forum members apparently have trouble reading, I’ll restate:
Hulka (and any number of fighter pilots) might claim that stuff like this as a joke (in public anyway), but they all believe the truth of it. Indeed, it’s a bedrock belief, and does extra duty as moral justification for much lower-order nonsense. I’ve seen it in journals and diaries dating to the Second World War, written by fighter pilots, who were not joking at all as they scribbled quotidian thoughts into their private record. Even pilots who flew other machines wrote it, usually to the accompaniment of whines about not already being a fighter pilot, and complaints about the personnel bureaucracy, which was still (still!) turning a deaf ear to their never-ending requests for transfer to a fighter outfit.
And I’ll reiterate what I posted to Hulka: standing by for all the smart remarks, sneering condescension, and middle school bathroom humor that is invariably directed at navs.
I do have to confess my puzzlement at people who are not fighter pilots, but who take such indignant umbrage when some other lesser mortal dares to utter the stray doubt about the probity of the fighter community: seen it happen among USAFA grads (used to think we were better than that, but I was wrong). Do you live in hopes the fighter pilotry will toss a bone or two your way? I must warn you that you hope in vain: none of your kowtowing or genuflecting will matter in the end, and you will collect a knife in the back when they find it convenient.
Blah, blah, blah, all I hear is jealousy from you.
“Blah, blah, blah, all I hear is jealousy from you.”
Oops. Missed this at first, in the welter and muddle of other stuff.
The fighter pilot’s last refuge: everyone wants to be him (her), therefore no critique can possess merit.
I concede a basic point: flying a super-hot sportscar, all alone with no tiresome authority looking over your shoulder or telling you what to do, has got to be more fun than any number of other military duties. I’ve heard from a number of acquaintances that they could not believe the Air Force paid them to do such fun things. One made it all the way to four stars and flew the space shuttle. Power, fun, adulation: who wouldn’t want that? Who could forgo jealousy? Especially when the ones who had the good luck to get picked for the job are overbearing egomaniacs, snorting in derision as they dismiss the misgivings of the rest of us lesser mortals? And moral justifications - excuse-mongering - are supplied by acolytes. No extra charge.
The fun gets even funnier when you only have to spend 1.2 hours aloft, or less if you do too many power-setting changes and throw that sportscar around the sky for a few too many high-g acrobatic maneuvers.
By contrast, mere training sorties for more capable aircraft routinely run into double-digit hours: the gs are fewer, but the physical toll can become just as grueling.
But let us agree that there can be a difference between “fun” and what the military establishment requires of its members, exalted or lowly. It’s not about fun, it’s about effectiveness. Sportcars are purely devices for timewasting: playthings, not weapons.
As a cadet, I was relentlessly indoctrinated (propagandized) by the instructors at USAFA, that to be anything less than a fighter pilot was to fail to live up to the predestined potential decreed for us by our own egoes, in concert with our junior partner the Almighty (most were combat veterans of Southeast Asia, so they were feeling more than a little frustrated at that point).
They were wrong.
Effectiveness: if it’s not about that, then what is the point of the entire military establishment? Disquietingly, all too many forum members (and not a few members of the uniformed military) do not realize it. To confuse one’s fun with the mission and purpose of the military is to practice megalomania on the grandest scale. Not a few dictators, absolute monarchs, and senior military officers have staked their very existence on it, though.
I can readily imagine CodeToad belittling my response if he(she) was a fighter pilot - they often dismiss verbiage they cannot understand as meaningless - but to hear it from one who claims not to be a fighter pilot is unusual. Lots of people claim to be fighter pilots who are not, but someone who is, and claims not to be - that’s unprecedented.
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