Who the fuck likes going to concerts?

Still plenty of time, bucko. They’re buying “new” f-15s in 2023, why NOT a revamped F-16 later on? Everyone with a type certificate in the civilian world is already stuck rehashing old approved aircraft. Why not the military, too?

They’re trying to bring back the Catalina flying boat from WWII, the super thirsty beast governments sold off like, 70 years ago for being too expensive. And they want to make new ones.

Not nomore. You’ll never get the air force to do it. They absolutely hate the low and slow stuff, at least the boomers in charge do. They love to pretend they can’t find pilots for anything like it, but the small COIN stuff is as close to a WWII dogfighter today as anything else.

They just don’t want to spend a CENT on anything but top of the line fighters, tankers, and logistics. That’s it. You could explain the how and why, and they would just say “yeah but we could just get them to buy us an F-16 instead”

They’re like spoiled rich kids who need a truck, but can get whatever car they want, so all they choose is Subaru STI’s, GTR’s, Hellcats, and Corvettes. Even though what they really need is a truck to haul some stuff.

One of the most acrimonious poast arguments I ever had was about how utterly retarded the US gov was to not procure lightweight coin fighters throughout the GWOT phase. The majority of their patrolling could have been performed by lighter, smaller, more efficient aircraft in order to keep us from burning through our expensive airframes to shoot at pashtun tribesmen once a week.

There were attempts, at least. The USAF wanted to get some tucanos, but the faggots at textron threw hissy fits and lawsuits about how they couldn’t pick an Embraer aircraft…that was already in use, production, etc. They wanted the gov to springboard their T-6 attack variant…which they didn’t design to begin with. It’s a licensed swiss pilatus, so not too “american” anyways.

Had we run a bunch of these, then we wouldn’t be fussing around with new production eagles and 20,000 airframes getting spinal surgery - they’d be barely hitting their original life limits today

Collapse-core skins

Seems in character based on his memoirs, too.

I HATE THE MANAGERIAL REVOLUTION SO

AND EVER HAVE I HATED THE MANAGERIAL CLASS