I was in the (fairly) high levels of the USAF public affairs effort during and after the Top Gun craze and more than a few generals were upset that the USAF didn’t have a PR bonus like that.

But the truth is, that even if it were offered, they’d reject it as being too dangerous to their careers to approve (the Navy was always a bit more relaxed in those things, something I learned while working in a joint assignment…as an example watch Cher’s If I could turn back time video on youtube…if she had worn an outfit like that infront of a B-52 instead of a battleship, the approving general would have been running the Pentagon resturant the next day).

I have lots of examples and stories about how senior officers shied away from TV and movie projects for fear of ending up with eggs on their faces…(two of which involve the BBC) I’d love to write them up for FlyPast or AFM sometime…

Heck, in Texas, a local TV station offered to show the base airshow on live TV. I thought it was a great dea since the purpose of an airshow is to show the capabilities of the service to the public. (by comparison, in the UK, the local radio station wanted 500 pounds to cover the event at Bentwaters).

The TV offer was rejected out of hand at a when I mentioned it at a planning meeting, not by the General, but by his wife who cut him off before he could answer. She was afraid that a Thunderbird would auger-in and destroy his chance for a second star.
That general was the worst boss I had in the military. Of course he got his second star…

Actually the Navy is just as bad. Recently PBS aired an excellent documentary called “Carrier”, it was about the Nimitz’s 2005 deployment and all about the crew, not the equipment like you see on those stupid Discovery channel specials. Even though it was approved and the Navy only asked for 2 things to be left out because of security concerns, several admirals apparently shat bricks over this and decided to come out with an “official message” complete with a very lame website with the “truth”, their reaction hurt a heck of a lot more than the show did.

to add more fuel to the the fire
http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Farms-tass.su%2F%3Fpage%3Darticle%26aid%3D56932%26cid%3D25&hl=en&ie=UTF8&sl=ru&tl=en
Batch contract for the modernization TAKR “Admiral Gorshkov” may be revised and will be 3.4 billion dollars
sorry its a translated artical

100 million dollars for fuel for a one year sea trial? What are they running it on, diced lions? Liquefied diamonds?

The M2 is simple and rugged. It can stand up to the salt water environment better than a more complicated weapon. Most USN ships leave their mounts bolted in place all the time, especially when operating in an area such as the Persian Gulf so you don’t want anything overly complicated compared to a well understood and proven gun.

I’m a Lighting fan (which in part explains why I don’t find the x-32 revolting).

Came across this one:

Photochop.

I always thought that Tacit Blue always looked weird.

http://www.airfarewatchdog.com/Portals/0/tacit%20blue.jpg

I’ve noticed some similarities between the the Iowa BB fans and the F-14 fan bois both have one thing in common, they both seem to think that upgrading those old platforms would result in a weapon platform that is cheaper than anything else around, more effective than ANYTHING!!!!!! and dig up spurious proof that they are correct.

I liked the show, but I was not to happy when the young man painted over paint. In my days we chipped the paint before painting. Painting several levels of paint on a ship is not good for the weight of a ship.

Hate to break it to you but that is the way it is done now a days. I’ve hardly every been given enough time to PROPERLY do preservation, heck I’ve hardly even been given time to just chip the old off and then toss on a coat of primer and paint.
Recently a ship failed INSURV and they found several extra tons of paint over old paint over the whole ship while other parts (non-skid areas mostly) were dangerously corroded, so I suspect this is a fleet wide problem.