The following letter to the editor in the WASHINGTON POST of January is interesting for a few reasons. First, Winston Wheeler of the Center for Defense Information, as cited in the article, is one of these people who garner the name "analyst" but never know a thing about what they are supposedly analyzing. I've seen some of his work in the past and judged it to be thoroughly incompetent. CDI is a left-wing, anti-military outfit that never met a military weapons systems that it didn't outright hate, just on the face of it. The MV-22 Osprey is one of there more recent targets and, as usual, they simply mouthed the same ill-informed nonsense that the media always regurgitates on the aircraft. It has served in Iraq for several months now without any reported incidents or losses that I am aware of, even though the doomsayers screeched that it would be a deathtrap and crash and burn in a heap within minutes of hitting Iraq. People like Wheeler have long been opposed to the F-22 on the basis that the F-15 has an excellent record, has never been shot down in air-to-air combat despite its large kill record in the hands of several Air Forces. The perception is that there is no need for anything new. The F-22 was seen as a gold-plated waste of money to give generals shiny news toys. The same argument was made about the F-18E/F Super Hornet. Why do you need a $50 million Super Hornet when your $28 million dollar regular Hornets do just fine? Well, for one thing, if you tried to build new F-18C/Ds today, they probably would not cost that much less than the Super Hornet, for starters, and you get so much more capability from the F-18 Super Hornet. Not only that, there is something most people don't know about military aircraft--as time goes on, they adopt new missions and they meet emerging new threats. As such, more and more electronic equipment has to be added within a finite amount of space. By the time the decision about what to replace the F-18C came about, the plane had a single cubic foot of empty space available within its airframe for incorporation of new black boxes. Not only is it a space issue, but when you cram so much into an air frame and leave no "empty" areas., virtually every bullet or piece of shrapnel that hits the plane and penetrates the skin is guaranteed to hit something vital and help to disable or bring down a jet. And the interior of such planes is so complex that you cannot simply move things around. Doing so requires major expensive rework. In most cases, it is simply cheaper to build a new bird from scratch. Years ago, in my Air National Guard unit, during the early 1990s, we flew RF-4C reconnaissance jets that had been around since Vietnam. Over the years, hundreds of modifications had been performed on the aircraft systems and miles of wiring had been added, spliced or re-routed. When the decision came to re-wire the jets so that they would carry defensive armament for the first time, with AIM-9 Sidewinder missiles, it was decided that while the troops were inside the wing installing the new hardware for the missile systems, they would go in and save weight by cleaning out a whole bunch of the old wiring bundles. After the first couple of examples, the Air Force and Air National Guard decided to drop that idea and simply add the new wires, leaving well enough alone. As it turned out, the wiring was so complex, so convoluted and so confused over nearly 40 years of mods, changes and re-routes, that it was an absolute production AND maintenance nightmare. In the case of the F-15, the bird is an excellent fighter but it has been showing signs of structural fatigue for years. I remember taking photos of several of the same Oregon-based ANG F-15s mentioned in the article below and being shocked to see that small patches had been riveted onto the skin of the top of the vertical stabilizers. It looked like somebody had hammered out used beer cans and then, after downing those beers, attacked the plane with a rivet gun. It was atrocious looking and of great concern. Vibration, stress and age had caused numerous cracks that had to be reinforced with sheet metal patches. I have flown in two F-15Ds in simulated combat, when the planes were brand-new, and the abuse that they endure in a furious dogfight us unbelievable. Unless you have witnessed, firsthand, the kind of vibration, intense G's and teeth-rattling stress of such maneuvers, you really cannot appreciate how hard it is on both pilot and plane. So-called analysts who sit behind desks in comfy office chairs and dismiss the need for replacement planes only embarrass themselves when they make such absurd statements. The F-15 is not stealthy, it cannot fly at Mach 2 for extended periods of time without fuel-guzzling afterburners, and it is no match for the F-22 in the air. As for the absurd idea of telling pilots to "go easy" on their planes or somehow limit their maneuvers so they don't overstress the plane, that is sheer ignorance and idiocy speaking. Once you get into an airborne furball with somebody, it is a fight for survival where you are trying to track your enemy's position relative to you, check for other bogeys sneaking up on you, operating your own controls and weapons systems, and trying to avoid the ground. The last thing you need to worry about is whether or not the rivet-popping dive that you just put the plane into in order to avoid your enemy is going to cause rivets to actually pop. It is unrealistic to expect pilots to watch out for such parameters, and it is unfair to them. People like Wheeler only wind up costing us more money with their faulty so-called "analyses." If the USAF had been able to procure the F-22 in the numbers it originally wanted, rather than constantly downsizing the number for budget considerations while idiots like those at CDI constantly whined about price as their only concern, we could have procured long-range contracts for multi-year buys of the F-22 and lowered the per-unit cost. Just another example of so-called experts who have no clue as to what they are talking about. Ron http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/01/03/AR2008010303 593_pf.html A Gap in Our Air Defenses
Friday, January 4, 2008; A20 A Dec. 22 front-page article, "Structural Flaws May Ground Older F-15s Indefinitely," detailing the grounding of aging F-15 fighter jets and the issue of whether to purchase more of the new F-22 Raptor fighters, gave me great cause for concern. As mayor of Vancouver, Wash. <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Vancouver+(Washington)?tid= informline> , I believe that the most important issue this or any other administration should concern itself with is the protection of the homeland. Here in the Pacific Northwest <http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/related/topic/Pacific+Northwestern+States ?tid=informline> , that protection is provided by the Oregon Air National Guard, but its F-15s are grounded. The article quoted Winslow Wheeler, an analyst at the Center for Defense Information, as saying that the F-15s' structural problems are "no big deal" and that the solution is just to "fix it." That is appalling. Given the condition of the F-15s, there should be no debate about what position to take. Our young warriors, many of whom live in my city, willingly place themselves between us and those who would do our country great harm. We have the responsibility to provide them what is clearly the best fighter for the defense of America, the F-22. ROYCE E. POLLARD Vancouver, Wash. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
