hey, Hey HEY !! Wrong Forum! :p 😀

Even good photos of 141s and the jets look so tired. 😀

BTW you can post that F-15 in the Slats / Leading edge Flaps thread. All though it aint one of those, The moveable intake ramps on the jet, do put airflow over the top of the wing as shown in that photo. Doing some of the work of a leading edge device. As the leading edge of the wing is non-moveable. In can be moved down even further than shown in that photo.

Cool Photos !!

I am not sure the F-16 is best bang for your money anymore looking how Poles got 48 F-16sblk50/52 for 3.6 bn dollars=75million/piece, aint that a rip off even if it includes all the support equipment, maintenance & crew training, even with all of this the F-16 should not be more than 40 mil.

The Polish deal was exactly my point above. Hardly a sale. By the time the whole deal is completed it will be the U.S. tax payer that picks up a good chunk of the tab. That deal includes a lot. A LOT of new tech A2G munitions including JSOW. So it’s pretty complete in hardcore firepower. Offsets pumped back into the country might and/or could benefit Poland as much as 6 billion. Thats a pretty sweat deal. Made by flashing U.S. taxpayers cash in the face of the customer.

Poland and the United States finalized a $3.5 billion agreement on the F-16s in April, which also includes $6.3 billion in U.S. investments in Poland. An initial agreement had been made on the F-16s in late 2002.

To facilitate the deal, Congress offered cash-strapped Poland, which is struggling to fix its finances before joining the EU, a low-interest loan for the jets, which delays principal repayments until after 2010.

http://www.f-16.net/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=934&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

In any event. Selling combat aircraft isn’t in the best interest of the U.S. taxpayer.

Offset Deals: Is Half a Loaf Better than None?
http://www.fguide.org/Bulletin/offsets.htm

The whole deal is almost money laundering.

I hope you are right. That covertable mishap is the perfect example. Old airframe issues. They can come up and bit you.

The KC-135 exploding in mid air thing is a good comparison of how safety methods are done. People die first. One of those was from running a fuel pump in a dry tank. Something you don’t do with a whole type of Boeing fuel pumps ( 747 flight 800 etc ) And of course no big fix happens until people die. A Class A KC-135 mishap in the future where it turns out to be corrosion that brought the jet down will bring the attention forward. Thats the way it goes lots of times.

Originally posted by flex297
I don’t have to have any of the mentioned 509th Wing Classified Ops/Plans/Procedures Publications. I am holding to the facts published by French AF officials (or unofficials? :).. I have serious doubts you got the proofs for all statements you have ever made at this forum. Maybe you have found hard to believe that the stealth technology which has cost your country (including yourself) tens of billions dollars is not the almighty solution to everything, but that is your personal problem alone..

Flex

Nope. Actually I know some people in the biz. But that is neither here nor there. I do know stealth does not make a jet invincible. Something that a lot of low skill morons don’t seem to understand. It is a team effort of the tech, and the proper use of that tech.

Using stealth in a stiff air defense is always better than sending in a conventional combat jet. The steatlh platform is at risk, but it is at a lower risk than a conventional design. Thats the point. That has been proven in combat, in a stiff air defense. As for the B2, it has more firepower than a couple squadrons of aircraft. With a few aircraft in one sortie, most of the known, important, fixed targets will be taken out, the first night of a war, in any weather. That a lot of targets hit for less aircrew risk. That by itself is worth the cost.

It all depends on the air arm. Sometimes it is a comfort zone thing and sometimes it is a real hard need. When its a comfort zone thing, sometimes it is hard for senior air staff to change their ways. JSF is great but you have to have all the fancy PGMs to go along with it to keep that workload down, and to justify the existance of the jet. If it had to do radar bombing with dumb iron , it is still too much workload for one person when you are getting shot at and the fact that the dumb iron exposes you to the threat of small SAMs and AAA. Doing this with a JSF would be a waste.

A good forged 9 iron is useful. Better yet, a maglite flashlite ( D cell )

You just said Flood is a waste of space. It is there in plain writing !!! 😮 😮 😀