Free Republic

With no fanfare and little media notice, an extremely famous American will turn 60 years old this Sunday. It was on Tax Day in 1952 that the Boeing B-52 Stratofortress, hulking symbol of the Cold War, accident-prone target of the unkind acronym "B.U.F.F.," the bomber several generations believed would usher in the death of humanity, made its first flight. Some interesting points about the B-52: • It was considered old-fashioned even before its operational life began. In the late 1940s the Air Force almost shut down the plane’s development out of concerns that it would be obsolete by the time...

India on Wednesday ruled out joining the US in developing the F-35 Lightning II fifth generation stealth fighter aircraft. “We have already entered into a partnership with Russia in developing our own fifth generation fighter aircraft (FGFA),” Defence Minister A K Antony said. “No other country has previously offered such technology to us… There is no question of going back now,” the Defence Minister told reporters during the Aero India 2011 which began in Bangalore on Wednesday. Washington had recently offered New Delhi to join its Joint Strike Fighter (JSF) programme that would have ultimately led India to purchase the...

A good deal of our coverage of JSF has been focused on flight testing, and that is the focus of the latest program changes revealed since the turn of the year. However, there are also problems affecting the JSF production effort. As noted in yesterday's post, briefings by JSF program office leaders (then-director Maj Gen Charles Davis in September 2008 and deputy director Brig Gen CD Moore a year later) set out the planned first flight and delivery dates for the remaining systems development and demonstration (SDD) aircraft. All were missed with one exception - the first flight of BF-2...

(Reuters) - The Pentagon overhauled the Lockheed Martin Corp F-35 fighter program for the second time in a year and said it would buy 41 Boeing Co F/A-18 warplanes over the next three years to offset slower production of the Lockheed plane. Defense Secretary Robert Gates announced on Thursday a further restructuring of the radar-evading F-35 as part of a broad cost-reduction plan, saving it would result in net savings of about $4 billion over the next five years. The Pentagon's biggest arms program, the new fighter is being developed with eight international partner countries at total cost of $382...

Defense: While America has stopped production of its stealth fighter, China prepares to challenge U.S. air supremacy in the Western Pacific with its own. China is on another Long March, one it hopes will lead to military supremacy over the U.S. at least in the Western Pacific. It is deploying a carrier-killing mobile missile, the Dong Feng 21D, and is expected to launch its first aircraft carrier this year, the refurbished ex-Soviet carrier Varyag. China is also conducting preflight tests on a fifth-generation stealth fighter expected to challenge the best the U.S. has to offer. Photographs reportedly showing China's J-20...

China has officially admitted for the first time that it has embarked on an aircraft carrier building program, part of a grand strategy to "build itself up as a maritime power." A report published by the State Oceanic Administration says the country's leaders decided last year to back plans to build China's first aircraft carrier. The Chinese government and military had kept the program under wraps until now. The annual national ocean development report says that asserting China's power at sea is "indispensible to accomplishing the great resurgence of the Chinese people." Chinese military sources said initial plans had called...

USAF officers disagreed over the cause of the first combat loss of a V-22 Osprey tilt-rotor, according to a report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, with a senior general ultimately overruling the investigation team and declaring the cause to be pilot error. The April 9 accident killed four people, including the pilot, and injured 16. The full report is here. A major complicating factor was that the CV-22B wreckage was bombed hours after the accident to prevent sensitive equipment from being removed, and the flight incident recorder was never recovered. The CV-22B unit had ferried its aircraft into Afghanistan eight...

Super Hornet Could Launch From Electromagnet Catapult By Christmas The U.S. Navy might achieve the biggest breakthrough in catapult design in more than 50 years this month if it can launch an F/A-18E/F Super Hornet from its new magnetic catapult system. According to Chris Cavas at Defense News, the sea service is prepping a Super Hornet to be launched from the electromagnetic launch system (EMALS) before Christmas. “The shot should take place within a couple of weeks,” said Rob Koon, a spokesman for Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR). Asked if the engineers were trying to make the launch before Christmas,...

Raptor over California. Via http://ChamorroBible.org/gpw/gpw-20060917 (medium, large, huge)  

Super-Er Hornets? Posted by Bill Sweetman at 5/6/2010 6:30 AM CDT Boeing and its teammates are getting bolder in talking about improvements to the Super Hornet and Growler - a development which coincides with debate over the cost and schedule of the Joint Strike Fighter. At this week's Navy League show in Washington DC, Boeing unveiled an early concept mock-up of a big-screen cockpit for the Super Hornet, aimed at export customers. It looks rather like the JSF cockpit, except that Boeing plans to use one-piece screens rather than two fused panels. Also, rather than eliminating the head-up display completely,...

Assistant Commandant of the Marine Corps Gen. James Amos told defense trade publication Inside the Navy last month that his service has no plans to delay fielding of the F-35 fighter despite the fact that the development plan is 13 months behind schedule. In fact, the Marine Corps is so confident that its short-takeoff-vertical-landing (STOVL) version of the plane will debut on time that it hasn't even drawn up contingency plans to deal with the possibility of problems. This is in marked contrast to the Air Force and Navy, which have deferred the initial operational capability of their planes several...

It was conceived in TAC's darkest hour, developed out of a revolutionary concept, designed without role compromise and created for its pilot above all. The F-15 Eagle has since matured and it is without doubt the world's foremost air superiority fighter, having destroyed scores of opponents, from Foxbats to F-4s, in aerial combat without ever sustaining losses. It is the Ultimate MiG-Killer. The F-15 Eagle was born as FX or Fighter eXperimental and just like its nominal predecessor, the F-111, it was another child of the USAF Tactical Air Command (TAC). The Vietnam war was a very rude awakening for...

South China Sea, 16N, 114E, 2018. Captain Charles (Charlie) Brown is flying Number 2 in a battle formation of four F-35Cs acting as Offensive-Counter-Air ‘sweepers’ for a flight of four Super Hornets inbound for a JSOW strike on Woody Island. A large military deployment on the Island is denying free passage throughout the South China Sea, and several new oil drilling platforms have been active around the Spratly and Paracel Islands. The United Nations is not amused by this claim of sovereignty over the region, and has resolved to remove the deployment by force. The task has been assigned to...

WHEELER, Ore. - In a heavily wooded area somewhere near this small coastal town, a piece of World War II history was found scattered in dozens of pieces - hidden for more than 60 years - and unknown until last week. According to local officials and the U.S. Navy, the find is a Curtiss SB2C Helldiver, the Navy’s primary attack and bombing plane during World War II. Even more intriguing, is that it may also contain remains of the two crew members.

The debate over the F-22 Raptor has been carried out at the customary level of simplemindedness we've become used to with Congress handling military questions. Since the early 60s, the favored method of killing a military program has been to come up with an argument easily expressed in a sound bite and stick with it. This time, the sound bite was, "Why do we need two fighter planes, anyway?" The answer is even simpler: we need two fighters because need two fighters. The historical record clearly reveals this: every air campaign carried out with two distinct and particularly formulated fighter...

Ever since the U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey cast doubt on the efficacy of aerial bombardment in World War II, and particularly after its failure to bring victory in the Vietnam War, air power has acquired a bad reputation. Nowadays, killing enemies from the skies is widely considered useless, while its polar opposite, counterinsurgency by nation-building, is the U.S. government's official policy. But it's not yet time to junk our planes. Air power still has a lot to offer, even in a world of scattered insurgencies. More... Military aviation started off splendidly in 1911, when the Italians pioneered aerial bombing in...

The U.S. military has been here before: fighting an enemy who wears no uniform, one who hits and runs then disappears, blending in with local villagers. It has pursued before, with overwhelming technological superiority, guerrilla fighters who improvise weapons and use the terrain to hide. The rugged mountains along the Afghanistan-Pakistan frontier, where the Taliban and al Qaeda hide, are as effective at concealment as the dense swamps and forests of Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia. In Vietnam, the U.S. military learned that when striking an elusive enemy, high-performance jet fighters were much more successful when they were directed by lighter,...

India and the United States are pressuring France not to allow Pakistan to buy advanced radars and other electronics for the Pakistani built JF-17 jet fighter. This is because China did most of the development on the JF-17, and Chinese personnel would be involved in any effort to install French electronics in these aircraft. China has a brazen reputation for stealing foreign technology, and putting high tech French electronics into Pakistani JF-17s, is seen as just giving the stuff to China. Pakistan also has a reputation for passing on military technology it had promised to hold close. While the Chinese...

Defense: The administration decision to scrap a proven aircraft in favor of a supposedly cheaper, more flexible replacement is proving to be an expensive mistake. We may wind up defenseless and broke. The F-35 Joint Strike Fighter that was supposed to be America's frontline fighter for the foreseeable future is in big trouble. Defense Secretary Robert Gates fired the general in charge of the program this week amid concerns of spiraling costs and program delays. Gates also announced he is withholding $614 million in fees from the prime contractor, Lockheed Martin. Daniel J. Crowley, one of Lockheed Martin's project managers,...

The North American P-51 Mustang has been heralded as the best Allied WWII fighter ever and made a significant contribution to the defeat of Nazi Germany and the Luftwaffe. With over 15,500 of them built, in all variants, this aircraft found its way into the European, CBI and Pacific theaters. Powered by a Packard-built Rolls Royce Merlin V-1650 V-12 piston engine, drawing ~1700 hp, the P-51 reached speeds of 700 km/h, and with a pair of drop tanks, it had the range to escort bombers from the UK to Berlin and back, from Iwo Jima to the Japanese home islands...