While, the Northrop/EADS Tanker is bigger and can transfer more fuel. It’s size often works against it. As it will not be able to operate within much of the existing KC-135 infrastructure.

Load of crap. No idea who came up with that one, but they’re fooling themselves. Tanker aircraft are parked on the ramp at home station. Given that the KC-135s are probably not going to be replaced on a 1-1 basis, that means that ramp space at CONUS locations isn’t going to be a problem. OK, maybe they meant at deployed locations, such as in the Middle East. I’ve been over there on more than one occasion, often to support the air refueling mission. Every location I went to had the KC-10 AND KC-135 operating out of it at one point or another. If the KC-10 can operate out of, say, Al Udeid AB just fine, then the NG tanker wouldn’t have a problem either. So where is the infrastructure that will not support the NG tanker?

Also, let’s not forget a couple other very important points. One is the current tactical aircraft fleets of the US Armed Forces will require vastly less Tanker Support in the Future.

Don’t count on a huge reduction in tanker support requirements. I seem to recall the number or AR sorties not changing all that much between 2003 and 2004, even though the number of tasked combat sorties dropped considerably after the Iraqi military was obliterated.

The latter carry much more fuel internally and will require less tanker support than current 4th Generation Types on top of that.

See above. Combat aircraft are often refueled multiple times to ensure they have a decent fuel load onboard should the need arise. The B-2 should’ve been able to get nearly all the way to the FRY, but they refueled multiple times to keep fuel loads where they wanted them in case of issues.

Anyway you look at it the European based Tanker is going to have less American Content. Which, means less jobs for Americans. Really, for these reasons and many more I don’t see the EADS Tanker being the Right Choice the US Military and its Citizens.

It is the right choice for the US military in terms of capability offered, which should be all that matters in the acquisition process.

What we will most likely do is give flame baiters between two and four weeks off for a first offense, and boot them permanently should they persist. The main argument right now is determining exactly what kind of off-topic rambling is considered flame baiting or trolling. Sometimes threads go off topic for logical reasons due to the path a debate takes. That’s not what we’re trying to obliterate here. We are aiming to defeat the users who consistently take threads off-topic into areas where they have no business going. The key word there is consistently, if someone makes a point that is out of the ordinary and it is an isolated occurrence, they are likely to be handed a private warning. We’re after the users who do it on a consistent basis. Make sense?

I’d think that the next big move in naval aviation would be if the USN ever decides to give the sub-launched UCAV concept a serious go.

‘pooping crude oil’ is a bit over stating the case

Maybe, but it made for a catchy title 😀

Well the F-15E is heaver because the airframe was strengthened in part due to the large ordnance loads now expected to be carried, and also partly because of the different mission profile over the F-15A/C.

China does appear to have replicated the Su-27SK as the J-11A in a relatively short period of time, also incorporating changes to the aircraft to take Chinese systems and engines. Who’s to say they couldn’t produce a J-11C based on the Su-35BM?

Has MiG provided any assistance to CAC? All of their designs bear striking resemblance to the 1.44.

We are thinking about ways to deal with users who are repeat, persistent offenders of the troll variety (and that includes the infamous off-topic trolls who make arguments based in no part on anything aviation related). Frank and I had a back-and-forth about this last night and we should be on to something. The main limiting factor right now is that the Webmaster is on vacation this week, and we don’t want to enact some new sweeping policy without his consent, obviously.