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)

Ray, I apologize. I would MOST CERTAINLY include your likes amongst the aviation fraternity. Typical pilot response on my part, thinking the world revolves around us! I should have said something more to the effect of "pilots, professionals in the aviation industry, or actual aviation enthusiasts..." Unfortunately now a lot of people here think that because they have once RIDDEN on an airplane, that somehow makes them experts on all things aviation.

(Written on 01/15/2021)(Permalink)

It used to be that almost the only people on this forum were pilots, ranging from PPL up to ATP, with a shared love of aviation, and the discussion was mostly aviation related. Now, it seems that an overwhelming number of respondents are non-aviators, who are simply looking for yet ANOTHER online forum to troll and spout their ignorance. It's sad. Mike, you clearly weren't implying that you use the terminal monitors to do your actual flight planning. I think all of those who actually ARE pilots can attest that even when we're just riding along as passengers, you can't completely put the pilot mindset to rest. And many of us crave having that SA about what is going on and how our flight(s) might be affected. I'm right there with you... I would find that way more informative than the drivel that spews out of the CNN monitors.

(Written on 01/15/2021)(Permalink)

Well those military "drones" don't operate autonomously. Every single one of them has a human operator(s) "flying" them. Sometimes they're essentially just programming them, and sometimes they're full-blown flying them, but there are always human operators involved. On top of that, the military loses literally DOZENS of drones a year to a myriad of issues from lost data links, to basic mechanical or weather issues that an onboard pilot might be able to recognize in time to correct or overcome. And lastly, the cost and complexity of all the additional systems that have to be put on board the UAVs in order to replace the pilot usually adds up to millions of dollars per aircraft. UAVs that were originally marketed to the Air Force as "not putting a human pilot at risk" have become so expensive that the military is just as risk averse to sending the unnamed aircraft into harms way as they are to sending in the manned aircraft.

(Written on 07/31/2020)(Permalink)

Well that FLIGHT you referred to out of Frankfurt was a different aircraft. But, the problem aircraft in question, after finally making it from NRT to SFO to ORD to FCO (Rome) had to air abort and return back to Rome almost immediately after takeoff on the 7th. As of early afternoon on July 10th, it made it across the pond and is about an hour out from landing at Newark.

(Written on 07/10/2020)(Permalink)

I'm pretty sure that shorter version of the 787-800 you are talking about would be..... the 787-3 that this article is talking about.

(Written on 02/14/2020)(Permalink)

Even better (sarcasm) than the press, I heard tonight that Barbara Boxer just introduced legislation mandating TAWS in certain aircraft. Great, another self-proclaimed aviation "expert" (aka politician) who knows absolutely ZERO about aviation is now jumping in the action to demand a "fix" to something that wouldn't have made a hill of beans difference in this horrible accident.

(Written on 02/05/2020)(Permalink)

The media is suddenly infatuated with this TAWS story. Based on the reported attitude and descent rate of the helicopter, it sounds like a loss of control inflight. The obvious speculation being that that was a result of spatial disorientation due to the weather, but we'll leave it up to the NTSB to ultimately determine the cause. Regardless, TAWS is great for preventing CFIT, but is of little use in a LOC-I situation. Just another noise in the cockpit as the aircraft is plummeting towards the ground.

(Written on 01/31/2020)(Permalink)

It's a little bit of a "chicken or the egg" type question. Did the plane bounce because the gear collapsed, or did the gear collapse because the landing was so hard that it also caused the bounce(s)? I heard what you're saying on the news too, but they played all of about a 2 second soundbite from a former investigator, and I have very little faith in the media to trust that their soundbite accurately captured the full intended message of that man's statement. Thankfully, rather than us all coming up with our own conclusions online, we will eventually get a detailed NTSB report that will tell us what actually did (or did not) cause the accident.

(Written on 08/17/2019)(Permalink)