Will we to propeller fighter planes?

@1490wayb not sure if this is sarcasm. Thats why they moved the Island farther back - to better suit newer types of planes. But trump doesn’t like the way that looks.

@1490wayb what ship? These are his proposals.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow Thank you for your very interesting post highlighting the F 15 EX.

I’m going to fall back on my ACSC and AWC classes to frame a response and hopefully stir up more discussion.

Col John Warden, who strategized our air campaign in the First Gulf War and who was later named the Commandant of ACSC/AWC, addressed the issues of maintaining a viable modern defense, rising costs (R&D, production, support, training, etc.) of our rapidly evolving weapons systems vs obsolescence.

Col Warden gave us the “Instant Thunder” strategy which proved so effective in the first Gulf War. His “five rings” targeting resulted in very rapid degradation of Iraq’s defenses and command structure and (for the most part) resulted in the “strategic paralysis” he envisioned which, when coupled with Stormin’ Norman’s ground war proved very effective to lead to a victory that was decisive, minimized collateral damage to civilians/non-combatants, and perhaps the best possible outcome.

Following Operation Desert Storm and as the Commandant of Air Command and Staff College, Warden transformed ACSC and AWC from basically a career step for mid level officers toward promotion, into a dynamic and innovative program that dramatically influenced military professional education that reaped benefits to all service branches. Sadly, Warden wasn’t as accomplished at politics and selling himself and was passed over for flag rank—he might have accomplished so much more with such a promotion.

At ACSC, Warden laid out his scheme to keep Air Force innovation, readiness, budget, and eyes-on-the-future all in balance.

He wanted to strengthen research and development by expanding those teams and their budgets. He pushed for ever newer and more sophisticated projects while keeping the facilities and staffs/crews needed for rapid production runs when called for. As I understood it, it was keep stressing innovation, cost containment, the ability to push out the latest arms quickly upon need, but don’t over commit to projects and have adequate reserve funds for when the need arose. He had the managerial expertise to make this possible. An expertise that the USAF didn’t fully appreciate and that many of his successors lacked.

@KunsanVeteran That is interesting. But I don't think this is something that can ultimately be solved by the various branches.


All branches are basically chained to about 3 mega corporations that at the end of the cold war were redesigned to generate new mansions in Maclean, Virginia and not so much about national defense or military readiness.


And with this you have decades of rampant corruption at the Pentagon where they failed 8 audits in a row and can't account for 63% of their assets and they just keep getting blank cheques.

@KunsanVeteran In fact the US military is so dependent on a handful of companies they still do business with Boeing that according to US law should be banned from any government contracts. This is because Boeing was caught and found guilty in court of defrauding the USAF.

But they make stuff the USAF is dependent on so the only thing that has changed is they need a waiver to bid on new contracts.