For those who ridicule the NEED for a Space Force, they are woefully unaware of the threats and challenges that we face in the space environment today... and they aren't getting any better. They also echo those who, 75 years ago, argued that the air domain was nothing but long-range artillery, and ridiculed the idea of an independent Air Force. For those who ridicule the idea simply because of which president ended up putting his signature on the legislations, well that's just pathetic. The need for a USSF was in discussion YEARS before the previous president every even announced his intent to run. The fact that he was the one who got it across the finish line is no reason to rally against a service that clearly puts the security of our country first. Sometimes it's okay to actually put our country's well-being ahead of political partisanship.

(Written on 11/11/2022)(Permalink)

Pretty sure it cost a helluva lot less than the $60+ million it would have cost to write the jet off as a total loss.

(Written on 11/04/2022)(Permalink)

Dave, I agree with you about how this forum has really degraded. Having said that, I don't know the actual percentages, but I think a relatively small number of the folks here these days have a pilot's license. Just my speculation, but as word about FlightAware as a tracking tool started to spread outside the pilot community, to the general passenger population, the quality of the commentary here seems to have gone downhill. Not that pilots don't ever make stupid posts, or that non-pilots don't have insightful things to add, but as a whole it definitely seems to have become more toxic and less thoughtful.

(Written on 07/01/2022)(Permalink)

You seem to have missed the entire point of this story. Simultaneous takeoffs on parallel runways probably happen thousands of times a day around the world. That wasn't the point. They were highlighting the fact that those two rival airlines coordinated a symbolic simultaneous departure to highlight the full reopening of those routes that had been so dramatically curtailed over the last 20 months. It was a deliberate PR event, hence the reason the media covered it.

(Written on 11/15/2021)(Permalink)

The people downvoting this comment apparently don't understand what (I think) JMARTINSON was getting at. Pilots don't "get ejected from" aircraft, as the story says. Getting XYZ'd from something implies that the action happened to them involuntarily, ie... a person getting thrown ("ejected") from a vehicle in an accident because they weren't belted in. Pilots "eject from" a disabled aircraft because THEY are the ones initiating the sequence. It doesn't happen to them accidentally. As Forrest says, people may think this is a small point, but it isn't. The English language matters, and semantics matter because the misuse of even a word or two can dramatically change the context of a story. There are few places in which this is more important than amongst the media, who sadly often seem to be amongst the worst offenders.

(Written on 09/27/2021)(Permalink)

I was about to post the exact same observation. "Journalism" at its finest. Never mind how many BASIC details about the incident that she didn't bother to include in the story. I would imagine her "research" into the story amounted to about 3 minutes worth of Google searching.

(Written on 06/18/2021)(Permalink)

We fly single-engine fighters over the open ocean ALL THE TIME.

(Written on 06/18/2021)(Permalink)

The F-35s are in Alaska, in Utah, in Arizona, in Florida, in Japan... to name a few places. But not in Hawaii. So, hence, you scramble the F-22s that ARE in Hawaii, to respond to a "threat" near... Hawaii.

(Written on 06/18/2021)(Permalink)

iais513 is spot on. Again, the OVERWHELMING amount of "Red Air" that we train against are 4th Generation, US built fighters. With the fall of the Iron Curtain...??? That was THIRTY TWO years ago now. Yeah, there are probably plenty of 35+ year old 2nd and 3rd generation Soviet fighters we could buy. Utterly worthless. Maybe a fair number of 4th Gen MiG-29s, but they would still be of limited training value. We definitely could never acquire enough (or ANY) Flankers, J-10s, J-20s, or Su-57s to put together an actual adversary squadron to train against. So the best you could possibly realistically hope to do is take a good quality 4th Gen platform (like an F-16) and then do your absolute best to replicate the tactics and capabilities of the adversary as best you can with what you can ACTUALLY procure and operate.

(Written on 02/14/2021)(Permalink)

I know. I don't know why Russia and China don't just sell us their best fighter planes so we can get better practice learning to defeat them! Seriously!?! Do you instead think the CIA can secretly just acquire like a few hundred enemy aircraft instead? You obviously don't have any idea how "Red Air" actually works, or how threat replication is done. With a few VERY limited (and covert) exceptions, it is pretty much ALWAYS done with "friendly" aircraft because those are pretty much the only kind of aircraft you can procure.

(Written on 02/09/2021)(Permalink)