The only thing loaded for each mission is any pre-planned route-related files and any new UAI weapon data.

Threat data is NEVER erased for the simple reason as you could not quickly react to an attack as you would need to wait around for the MDF to upload.

–Update

Any time-sensitive data is also loaded as needed like crypto-keys, freqes, etc. That only takes a few seconds so not big deal there. They are also created & maintained locally so no dependence on US for them.

Development does not stop for groundings, so you can’t blame them. They do however affect flight testpoints so there is some affect there. Looking at the historical testpoint schedule does not show any substantial hit to testpoints due to groundings.

On the budget issue and how it affected the SDD schedule, it’s quite simple. Whenever issues were found that required more dev resources, they chose to slide the SDD to the right instead of increasing the annual resources available. The affects of this were several fold from delaying IOC to the appearance of decreased confidence in the program.

The biggest single “actual cut” (that I could find on short notice) to the SDD program was the removal of two SDD planes from the schedule. This turned out to such a large mistake that the SDD program had to take back the two LRIP 1 jets and make them part of the SDD program.

I’ll start digging into the annual budgets to get a better picture of the annual SDD contracts vs what they had originally planned.

The Growlers are for the Classics & Supers, not the F-35 for which they don’t have the range to keep up with.

They “may” keep the Growlers for their own sake as they are very capable in what they do and are the only non-USN Growlers flying.

As far as the tankers, only the USN does not need them so that is nothing new that has not been factored in.

On the range for it’s mission.. seems fine to me.

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If the SH can do the job then why can’t the F-35 when you state that your concern is range?

btw, The F-35 is only 5 years late and most of that was due to the downturn in the economy.

So, according to you, having several hundred unfinished aircraft needing to return to factory to be of any real use is a good thing?

In normal world it is called waste of resources and money… but, hey.. in F-35 wonderland money is not the problem, right? it just keeps flowing, and flowing… and flowing…

I think that you are under the misconception that Block upgrades “need” to be make at the factory. There have been several articles recently that talk of maintainers doing Block upgrades at the local level. They spoke of the ease of the upgrades and how by doing them locally, they were able to do them without interrupting the flight schedule.

btw, You are aware that the transition from Block 3i to 3F is mostly software, right?

Do you have the bandwidth numbers for Link16, TILDS and MADL?!
How many Mbps in Up/Down for each of them?

MADL is classified (or my GoggleFu is not up to snuff) but I did find that Link 16 is about 115kbps.

The environmentalists that opposed this are complete and utter idiots.
1. The oil will be used, either in the US or in China.
2. If it’s sent to the US, then it will be in RR cars which just means that it will impose a higher Carbon & Pollutant Footprint (CPF) in the transportation of the oil.
3. If it’s sent to China, then not only will there be a CPF increase due to transportation, but the Chinese refineries & cars will have a MUCH bigger CPF thanks to their crap standards & corruption.

Congratulations Environmentalists :very_drunk: , your opposition to the pipeline will actually make the environment worse. :stupid: