His company buys these things and then has a contract with the Navy for when they do training. So IF I'm reading this correctly, it's not just some random dude buying all this stuff for fun, it's his company and they have a very clear business purpose for doing this.
"He was also one of the early pioneers of the then-fledgling, if not wholly experimental, adversary air support market. In the early 2000s, he joined forces with the Airborne Tactical Advantage Company (ATAC), which was blazing a trail with their contracts with the Navy to supply fast jet targets and electronic warfare pod toting adversaries that mimic everything from enemy cruise missiles to fighters for Navy and Marine fighter aircraft and Navy surface combatants to train against. "
Yeah I had to follow a bunch of the links to figure this out, but in short, he runs an air combat training company, and the Air Force and Navy pay him to field a training “adversary” for the military pilots to fight in mock combat.
From further reading it sounds like the idea here is to get a diverse and different field of aircraft. I guess the NATO forces can practice against each other, but it’s not realistic in the sense that any opposition they would face in a real war would theoretically be using very different equipment. So guys like Air USA are paid to conjure up a fleet of all kinds of aircraft, and pilots to fly them, which will act as more legitimate test.
Effectively privatised wargames. Many forces cross train in wargames scenarios on various scales, this is just a business that operates by providing services in one of those fields. Kinda neat in many ways and equally wonder how outsourcing would have financial gains for both parties. Certainly the combat/training dn flying styles will be different and with that offer some good training that flying against more formalised up for the ranks pilots would of been taught. So certainly adds a nice dynamic and that alone may be the value payoff for both parties.
Though I suspect that maintenance and other process can be more streamlined in the private sector and that certainly will be an area in which the cost/payoff may balance out well for both for the needs required. Why have a combat ready serviced aircraft with around the clock support and maintenance when the usage can be dedicated to just 9-5 support for the task at hand. Hence outsourcing in this situation would see a huge saving in that area from that aspect alone. Certainly be a large factor and this is a business, so clearly some profit to be made that can enable the purchase of those many non-cheap aircraft. So for this to pay off as a business over being done inhouse, does make you wonder and try to work out why that is.
That certainly would of played a part and in bidding for the contract the military may of needed 3 quotes. So h usual suspects quote, large amount as case of if they accept, then we can afford to just do it and still cheese happy, if not, no investment beyond a fat large quote. So only takes one serious player to do a quote more realistic and yet profitable and they are up and running.
So even without any buddy buddy contract factors, the whole bidding process and list of approved suppliers and viable suppliers would of seen the usual suspects asked to tender no matter what. Now any new party actively seeking that type of work in a new field like this would if anything be more at risk of underquoting compared to the other tenders. So be interesting if those tenders for this contract was known. Certainly be very insightful into this whole process. As it is not how this company won the contract, it's how the others lost it and I dare say, quotes so large that if taken, be impossible to lose money and if not, no investment lost. Take it or leave it type quotes though will often play out in many contracts and with that, make any quote realistic (even too realistic) stick out. Hence known people who will always pick the middle quote if down to personal choice. Business, gets down to the lowest and some various degrees of vetting if that company can do what they see, varying from none down to proven track record and some serious auditing. Hence the usual suspects quoting for many things plays out as track record and vetting and auditing done already.
I see that more and more recently, English spelled phonetically. Like "their" instead of "they're" and the example above. Very curious whether it's an American thing or foreigners writing a non-native language.
In my case it is aspergers and kinda how it logically ingrained upon my brain, with spelling and grammar rules being fraught with exceptions. It is and always will be, my kryptonite area.
So curiosity in this instance falls outside your suspicions, but then every rule has an exception. Native British language autistic spectrum in this instance.
Still, thanks for the corrections and appreciate any constructive feedback. Also help curiosity quelled, I know what it is like to have a question and not know the answer.
With the most common North American accent "would've" and "would of" sound very similar. My suspicion is that the error tends to arise in people that have learned language more from speaking than reading.
In my instance, that would have a strong correlation and never read fictional material, autistic spectrum imagination thing for me, but love burning thru an RFC.
So in my instance, I would tend to agree with that observation and support that as a large factor from personal experience.
No, it's an error. "Woulda" is the correct way of spelling a regionalism. "Would of" is an incorrect spelling of "would've", which is a contraction of "would have".
Not necessarily due to muscle memory and easy of access upon keyboard or mostly soft keyboard layout for punctuation access. But mostly muscle memory. Heck could even view having to add the extra layer of shortening a two words into one is a process born out to save ink in a time when ink and print space was more costly and perhaps a form of lazyness that is more accepted than just having the full words.
Like most things, perspective plays a part in how you view such things and we are all aware that such oversights can trigger people as much as those triggered responses being triggers for others. Which is odd as the meaning of words is how to communicate and in the instance of shorting words, nothing is lost in translation.
But then standards in words and layout, styles, when it comes to standards are more complex than any coding standards and we all know how legacy code works out when it comes to standards. Another way to view that is, imagine if COBOL had as many verbs as we do English words - yeah scary what legacy code would look like then and sorry if that becomes the source of any nightmares in old COBOL programmers with that analogy.
No. It takes more effort to clearly remember and apply all such distinctions.
These are the sorts of mistakes typically made by native speakers for whom they sound the same and inability to remember that they are spelled differently has zero bearing on spoken fluency. It's a different skill set and a different part of the brain.
WHat may be seen as a mistake, is in many ways akin to local accents and in the UK, we have many local accents that can and do make verbal communication just as much throught with interpretation more than wording. Yet verbal accent and localisms are more accepted than the written forms.
After all - how many of us have the internal verbal processing rule now that hears the word "good" when we hear the word "Bad" based around the age and maturity of the speaker? Many I suspect and that is just one of many you end up having to mentally compile into your rule list, just to communicate with people who are not yourself.
Imagine a coding language that gained new verbs daily, new rules and interpretation rules that change the dynamics of those words - yes languages can be hard to keep abreast with if you try to grasp every nuance as what is correct today, is not tomorrow. Jst try reading Chaucer and then wonder how fast until what is written today is viewed as another language in years ahead, even if the same language as languages evolve and English like many move faster than we imagine. Composing words into sentences that stand the test of time, now that is a skill. However even time can be cruel on the best intentions.
I doubt it's that involved of a decision process when it's much more simply explained in terms of liability. I'd think it's a no-brainer to end the possibility of telling someone that their kid died being used as practice bait, and that this almost certainly ;) has value to the military.
> Yeah I had to follow a bunch of the links to figure this out, but in short, he runs an air combat training company, and the Air Force and Navy pay him to field a training “adversary” for the military pilots to fight in mock combat.
The thing that I don't get is why would the US hire him to provide adversary aircraft that it already operates? I could totally understand them hiring someone who operated a bunch of ex-Russian aircraft, but if they wanted F-18s why not just call the Navy?
It's often more expensive to create specialized training capabilities in house. Contractors have an advantage with both equipment and personnel costs.
A contractor can maintain their jets however they want as long as it's safe and they can meet their contract requirements. The contract maintainers can stay at their job as long as they want. The USN and USAF maintainers move every few years and have pretty good retirement benefits (which used to be better but are still better than what most private companies give), and have to get lots of additional training and all that needs to be paid for. A contractor is still supposed to follow all the safety regulations, but contractors seem to be able to generate sorties at rates that military units couldn't manage even with double the manpower.
Contractor pilots are paid strictly to fly. Naval aviators and USAF pilots are both subject to "up or out" policies, where officers that aren't promoted are told to leave. This means military pilots have to serve as staff officers to keep themselves promotable. During a staff tour they either quit flying or they fly less, which kind of wastes the money spent on training them. There are good reasons for requiring this (and some good arguments against it), but the bottom line is that contractors don't have to worry about it and can operate cheaper because they aren't wasting 20% of their personnel budget with a fighter pilot working behind a desk.
It might also be beneficial to have a training combatant, who is not in the same chain of command as the trainees. Gives external perspective, and reduces the chance of collusion to show "good results" if done right.
This isn't an advantage of contractors since the military aggressor units already do a great job. They are a separate unit and do all their tactical planning separately. They attend the mass safety briefings before a mission and they provide training feedback during debriefs, but they are serious about maintaining the integrity of their training. There is no incentive to cheat- you don't win a prize for a victory and cheating might result in one of your friends dying if they had to go to war with inadequate training. There are several reasons a pilot can lose $5 during a mission but they can't win it back by cheating.
I once asked a pilot after a test mission, "if you're pretty sure they're going to do [tactic X] why don't you do [tactic that works great against tactic X]?" His response was that his mission isn't to win, it's to provide the most authentic simulation of an enemy as he can. If they don't think an enemy pilot would do something, they won't do it- even if they know they could gain an advantage using inside knowledge.
However, wouldn't the same pressures that apply to someone in a chain of command, also not apply to a contractor?
So, for example, if someone tasked with testing the current military strategy comes up with a wargame tactic that would embarrass the military (i.e. their bosses) they may not want to do that because embarrassing their bosses is probably not good for them.
However, in the same vein, someone reliant on those military bosses awarding them contracts would also not want to embarrass them, because it wouldn't be good for their ability to get contracts in the future.
In the former scenario, you at least have the case of a conscientious individual or team still going forward with what they think is the right thing to do.
In the latter there is no such compulsion either, so if anything, the chain of command argument makes things worse for contractors.
It's a pro and con type of thing. For example you can go out and hire a former Soviet MIG driver and get him to drive the the Hornet just like he say taught the Iranians to drive their MIGs (limiting the performance of the Hornet to match that of the older aircraft, etc).
For the military to directly hire a foreign national who served in a different military is a ton of paperwork. It's much easier to have the contractor do it.
There obviously is a security risk, but as long as you compartmentalize the risk it's okay. It's also the issue of keeping said Soviet MIG driver busy, in that maybe you have 6 months of work for him a year. Other six months of the year he can't exactly hang around the Pentagon and help with reports since as you mention, it's a security risk. The contractor can keep him working by say doing 6 months a year of training with the American military, 3 months of training with the Canadians, 2 months with the Swedish, etc.
There are proven models for minimizing risk. The intel agencies often like to hire foreign nations because they have local expertise with regard to their home country, but the CIA can't exactly just make a Chinese national a W-2 employee and let them run around Langley.
I won't say that they offer perfect security, but these are military contractors, not part-timers from a temp agency. They are mostly ex-military (you can't get trained Hornet drivers anywhere else except for a few civilian test pilots), still have to maintain their security clearances, and are subject to security audits.
They probably have vulnerabilities but I don't think a training contractor is as juicy of a target as you might think. They only maintain information on the capabilities of the enemies they are supposed to simulate- aggressor units don't have information on the blue air capabilities. It not useless information, but it mostly doesn't make sense for Russia/China to spend their effort finding out what the US thinks Russia/China is capable of. They already have a pretty good idea.
" but it mostly doesn't make sense for Russia/China to spend their effort finding out what the US thinks Russia/China is capable of"
What? Quite the opposite, it is totally valuable information, if you know, what your enemy thinks you can do. Because then you can adjust, to surprise him in real combat. Or you find out that they over- or underestimate you in a certain area, which is very valuable tactical information as well. So they surely are a target for foreign intelligence agencies, but I am pretty sure they know that.
> ‘... spies?' I thought we were chums with the Low King!’
> 'Of course we are,’ said Vetinari. ‘And the more we know about each other, the friendlier we shall remain. We’d hardly bother to spy on our enemies. What would be the point?’ - Lord Vetinari - Thud (Sir Terry Pratchett)
Technically, it's not what the US thinks they're capable of, but rather what the contractors the US hires think China/Russia are capable of. The US may know that that China/Russia's actual combat abilities are greater than the contractors do.
>They probably have vulnerabilities but I don't think a training contractor is as juicy of a target as you might think ... It not useless information, but it mostly doesn't make sense for Russia/China to spend their effort finding out what the US thinks Russia/China is capable of. They already have a pretty good idea.
This is contradictory. Classified information is, by definition, that which could cause harm to the national interest if disclosed. Either their information is valuable or it isn't.
Most intelligence about US military capabilities is managed by private companies. Most of the people who provide security to protect US military intelligence work for private companies.
Sounds to me like the military is simply shooting itself in the food with its "up or out" policies. Why force highly-trained and experienced people to leave just because they've gotten to a plateau in their career where they're both competent and comfortable?
Seems like part of it would be to ensure that you will always be training new pilots.
If you have a lot of 'comfortable' pilots, you have less need to do the training, so when you fight a war and start losing pilots, you have less bandwidth to create new ones.
So there's a couple of things:
You could always recall and retrain the ones you've released if you're low on pilots, that's pretty straightforward for a wartime government if they're desperate.
It is much harder to scale the recruiting / training pipeline if it is insufficient to comfortably replace the losses you're taking. So you run your pipeline at a higher rate than necessary so that in wartime you can maintain your forces.
I think this also explains why the US would allow Boeing to sell things like advanced air-force fighters to other countries. At the surface, it makes no sense to give away your best stuff to another country. But if you think about it, it lets you run your pipeline at a higher rate, and the other guy can't replace his stuff when it starts getting blown up, you get priority. So you get to run at closer to a wartime production rate, with maintenance subsidized by other countries.
It may be cheaper to do the pilot training another way, but the last thing you want is to end up with a shortage of pilots when you actually end up needing them. It is not about cost so much as it is about winning wars and the supply chain therin.
I suspect a lot of countries don't have this policy because they have a grand total of 22 planes and no way to replace them, so if they get blown up there's nothing for new pilots to fly.
tldr; think about them resources that get expended and that you will inevitably have to create more of, rather than as highly skilled professionals
I've always thought the most fascinating part of such sales is if and where backdoors would be put into aircraft and other military exports and how they would be utilised in a scenario. It think I read somewhere about France doing this at one point with fighters.
For example there is no way I'm gonna believe a Saudi F15 doesn't have something that the US could manipulate to its advantage if it chose to.
Of course building a backdoor would mean if an event found it, then could also utilise it. And it would be bad for business if it was found.
In WW2 Germany specificallydidn't take skilled pilots out of combat. This is why lists of WW2 aces are dominated by the Germans, but it also had the side effect that those experienced pilots weren't around to train new pilots, contributing to the degradation of Germany's air capabilities towards the end of the war
Because they clog up slots that could be used by someone ambitious. If you've got 500 Major slots, but 400 of them are occupied by people who don't want to get promoted, then you only have 100 Majors who can get promoted. So they either have to spend less time in the job than you really want, because you need a certain number of Majors to get promoted to Lt Col each year... or you don't get enough Lt Col promotions, so you don't promote to Colonel as fast as you should. Repeat for every other rank.
That said, of late in the USAF, the promotion rate for every rank below Lt Col has been 95%+. And I think Lt Col has been fairly high as well. The issue isn't kicking them out once they reach a rank, but rather them deciding to get out before then.
Because those pilots theoretically move "up" to being staff officers, and then a few of them reach the highest levels of command, with the benefit of a diverse background.
It turns out that being Erich Hartmann, Maverick, or the Red Baron doesn't really translate well into being a good executive leader, and while western militaries want officers who have experience "at the sharp end", the also require leaders who understand how a headquarters works, logistics, politics, etc.
Most likely a big percentage of these contract pilots are retired ex-military. Enjoying decent military healthcare benefits retirees get while raking in contractor pay.
"Aggressor squadrons" train very differently, to mimic potential adversaries combat doctrine. The aircraft may also be modified to perform more like the aircraft they're simulating. They're even painted differently, like this F-15 in Russian-style camo:
Kind of. For various budgetary reasons and capex vs opex and stuff like that, the US only has two aggressor squadrons now, the 18th and 64th. The 65th shut down recently. We're kinda getting out of that business.
Something quietly muttered about is we don't have the labor force anymore, so better off having our pilots in fighting squadrons instead of training squadrons.
Another topic not mentioned much is the whole concept of aggressor squadrons and Top Gun etc came from fighting similar tier adversaries in the 60s and, while not losing, not winning at a high enough ratio, and cold war REFORGER war plan against the Soviets was to use our higher tech to hold back their larger numbers. We needed each of our F-14 to shoot down at least 7 of their Mig-21 to win WWIII in 1985, or at least to not lose too quickly. None of this has really been relevant since 1990 and drone and cruise missile tech and so forth make the whole concept pointless. So political bureaucracy rules of warfare are such that if you can't shut down an obsolete program directly, you can outsource it all on a contract that coincidentally will not be renewed in 2025 or whatever year. We're just never going to see future air combat where its a war of attrition between our small number of high tech F-14 tomcats vs a larger number of mig-21s. Put the money where it'll actually be used in the future, such as drones, cruise missiles, smart bombs, fancy AA and AG missiles, etc. The idea of training F-14 pilots to do air combat maneuvering using guns and 70s performance missiles against a number of Mig-21 is VERY 1980s.
Or future adversary isn't going to send 8 Mig-21's against each of our F-14, they're going to launch 240 anti-personnel quadcopter drones toward the airfield per day to shut down operations. Sure at a thousand bucks per drone plus COTS grenade, thats a quarter mil per day to deny air operations... now is that quarter mil cheap or expensive? Compared to the damage a functioning air force base can do to an opponent, that's cheap. Or they'll build $100 cloud steerable laser pointers and deploy them randomly across the land by the thousands to lase the eyes and sensors of every vehicle in the air that's not one of theirs. They'll win that war of attrition if they deploy 10K semi-autonomous weapons that each cost $1000 and we only have 1K ATG missiles in theater which cost $100K each, either way they win.
Well, generals always like to train to win the last war, not the next one, thats been true for a couple thousand years now.
Most UAVs are highly susceptible to ECM. The smaller your UAV the less likely it is going to be well equipped against ECM. Inertial navigation systems can be exceedingly expensive so a cheap drone will be reliant upon GPS. Something that should be obvious but is always skipped is that the operational range of quadrocopters is incredibly low and they cannot carry any significant payloads.
When you consider these reasons it becomes obvious why missiles cost $100k each. Once you actually start building a UAV that is actually useful in the roles that you describe you will exceed the cost of a single missile. The costs aren't going down. The MQ-1 cost $4 million. The MQ-9 which replaced the MQ-1 has a greater payload and costs around $16 million. The strategy clearly isn't to increase the number of drones.
> Another topic not mentioned much is the whole concept of aggressor squadrons and Top Gun etc came from fighting similar tier adversaries in the 60s and, while not losing, not winning at a high enough ratio
> Well, generals always like to train to win the last war, not the next one, thats been true for a couple thousand years now.
I disagree. Wasn't part of the problem in the 60s that the generals were training to win the next war, which they though would be fought at stand-off distances with guided missiles (i.e. suicide drones) carried by planes with little need to maneuver [1] [2]? It turned out they were wrong, and had to subsequently rethink their tactics and procurement requirements, which led to stuff like Top Gun and the F-14.
> [Our] future adversary isn't going to send 8 Mig-21's against each of our F-14, they're going to launch 240 anti-personnel quadcopter drones toward the airfield per day to shut down operations... [more speculation about drone swarm warfare]...
Betting that some new, hot technology will obsolete old techniques can be a bad bet that puts you in a bad situation.
I don't think quadcopter drones are going to be anything near the game changer you think they'll be. For instance: if you're close enough to launch a swarm attack like you describe, you're several times closer than you need to be to launch an artillery bombardment:
> Existing 155mm artillery rounds, fired with precision from mobile and self-propelled howitzer platforms, have a maximum range of about 30 kilometers; the new ERCA weapon is designed to hit ranges greater than 70 kilometers, Army developers said.
> Wasn't part of the problem in the 60s that the generals were training to win the next war, which they though would be fought at stand-off distances with guided missiles (i.e. suicide drones) carried by planes with little need to maneuver [1] [2]? It turned out they were wrong, and had to subsequently rethink their tactics and procurement requirements, which led to stuff like Top Gun and the F-14.
Yes but not really. They were preparing to use the technology of the time to fight a total war against a peer adversary, a la WWII, and in that kind of war those tactics would have been effective. As it happened, Korea and Vietnam were a very different type of war: the RoE were such that BVR engagements were rarely permitted, and it became necessary to develop tactics that would work in a counter-insurgency situation where distinguishing hostile targets from civilians or friendlies was more important than winning the engagement. It so happened that WWII-style dog-fighting with cannons was one of those tactics, but that feels like more of a coincidence than a generally applicable observation.
Top Gun used a lot of planes, including -18 and F-16. There was a F-16N for awhile. Navy aggressor squadrons also fly F-5s and just bought some from the Swiss.
I meant culturally in the USN. TOPGUN used to be all air to air, all day. Now it's strike fighter training, E2 training, as well as the classical A2A.
This may be better in some ways since the entire goal of TOPGUN was to train the trainers who would go back to their squadrons and improve capabilities. And that role has changed dramatically since the 80's where being the best pilot meant you might leave the Gulf of Sidra alive. A2A combat hasn't been important for over 20 years. We'll need to reinvent it for the future I fear.
Israel is good in air combat, but I don't know how much of that is dogfighting anymore. Maybe the Brits, but the Eurofighter is more of an interceptor than a dogfighter. The French don't get much publicity, but arguably have the best military on the Continent.
The story is that tax payers gave his company money to buy our F18s from us so that he can accumulate a force of enemy aircraft. His company will also train pilots specifically as the enemy would.
And while he will do this at a considerable profit, it will theoretically be better executed per dollar that the military doing it in a separate division. Another post claims he will generate sorties more than twice as efficiently.
So the above is either true or false.
If it is false and the contract costs taxpayers more than the military would then, as you suspect, it is entirely a pork-barrel waste of money. The fact that other nations with highly regraded military don't do this theoretical efficiency boost strongly supports this.
If it is true and the contractor is somehow more efficient, then that is even more worrisome. Scarier still is that it is taken as an inevitable state of affairs and no one seems concerned about it. That US destroyers have a catastrophically bad helm UI supports this, even though that would be conspicuous pork-barrel in it's own right.
Same with the fact the sale was F18s. Either the enemy has them or not. In one case it's pork-barrel, in the other case the US has somehow sold fighters to an enemy.
> That US destroyers have a catastrophically bad helm UI
Hadn't heard of this. Apparently the US Navy are reverting an 'upgrade' to its destroyers which gave them a dangerously poor touchscreen-based helm control UI. The decision was made in the wake of a fatal collision with a civilian vessel in 2017.
That is the purpose of the Navy, just like all the rest of USA armed forces. They haven't won a war in my parents' lifetimes, but just think of all the trillions of dollars that have gone to armaments manufacturers!
We never stopped fighting in Iraq, so in what sense did we "win"? More to the point, we never left Saudi, which was the direct cause of 9/11, which also was not a win. Except, of course, for the armaments manufacturers. For them, 9/11 was most definitely a win.
"Serbia/Kosovo(ish)", whatever specifically is meant by that, is about like "Grenada" mentioned above. When you grasp at such tiny straws, you confirm the point rather than refute it: USA military exists to funnel money to weapons manufacturers and their employees in politics and media while killing mostly innocent, mostly brown people.
The strategic objectives of the two main phases of those conflicts was achieved. Remove Saddam from Kuwait and remove Serbia enough to stabilise Kosovo.
I don't disagree about the Saudis and US military industrial complex but that wasn't the point I was making
I guess he uses a bunch of training, simulations and electronics to degrade the performance of the F-18s so they match the characteristics of various "enemy" aircraft types. Its hard to come by spare parts for Russian aircraft so emulating them by degrading the performance of American aircraft seems like its maybe more cost effective.
he runs an air combat training company, and the Air Force and Navy pay him to field a training “adversary” for the military pilots to fight in mock combat.
Ask the RAF how outsourcing flight training is working for them.
"This guy figured it would be fun to own fighter jets and so figured out a business he could be in that would allow him to do so with the government's blessing."
I don't know if that is what he did of course, just guessing. It is a strategy I've seen employed successfully before. My daughter used this strategy by getting a research project approved for school on "studying organizing goal directed group behavior in online groups" where it was required she join several different raiding guilds in World of Warcraft to evaluate their strategies for co-operative goal seeking behavior. I thought it was pretty creative.
My favorite milblogger retired, hated having a "regular" job, joined ATAC and then died not too long later flying an old Israeli fighter. I'm glad if these companies are getting newer aircraft.
Sounds fairly straightforward, but what happens if that business plan changes? If private paramilitary aviation is anything like other private security services, then there’s definitely a market with some pretty deep pockets with questionable motives.
1) It's enormously expensive and difficult to arm disarmed 4th gen planes. You'd need another extremely expensive military contractor to equip them with (expensive) missiles, rockets, or whatever. Plus, in all likelihood, the defense contractors would refuse, if it did anything to risk federal contracts.
2) These planes (superhornets) are is a wildly inefficient way to arm a paramilitary. These things cost tens of thousands of dollars an hour to fly, are built to fight nation-states, and you can't exactly maintain them on an airstrip in the middle of nowhere. If you want to gun down rebels in the jungle, you'd buy Super Tucanos, for a tenth or less of the cost-per-hour fly time (plus, easier to arm and provision)
Edit: my bad, just regular hornets, not superhornets. read too quickly
1) like the article states, infact these things are not disarmed at all. and yeah federal contracts... Who else was he contracting again currently and what's the purpose of the whole endeavour then (there's definitely more money there except for fleecing the air force...). I would understand allowing such a business when it was a direct front for CIA-CAS (which it very well might be), but just to extend the private contracting business to freaking jets seems borderline crazy
2) well, the company seems to offer the whole package (see the final sections about him storing 80000 HE-rounds for his two dozen hawks). And once the US hegemony over who runs military conflicts on this world goes the way of the dodo, well... I guess you might easily fend of someone like Kenia intervening in your nice cobalt business in congo with a dozen of NATO-grade fighters... And there is definitely a private sector available to secure your bases in a "friendly" third country.
Unless your cobalt mine in the Congo is generating billions in revenue, fending them off with modern combat aircraft is probably going to be a net loss. It's not uncommon to have maintenance costs of $10,000 or more per flight hour (the F-35 is apparently $20,000). A fleet of 46 aircraft flying, say, 8 hours per day is going to cost $110,400,000 per month at a $10,000 flight hour cost.
you won't need the full fleet to fend off any neighboring country – and as I said they offer the whole range now: from small prop-based CAS to state of the art (at least for everyone non-NATO, China or Russia) air superiority.
And I wouldn't really worry about the amount of cash available in such conflicts. In the past it generally was enough for leaders to bribe their way into being accepted citizens of the western hemisphere, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabel_dos_Santos
Now suppose, EU drops any support for the angolan government, she wants back her power: probably easy for her to start a civil war. Some neighbors (Namibia, SA) might step up (like they did in Somalia) to help the government if it holds out the initial 1,2,3 ... weeks. Normally they would have uncontested air superiority. Now Ms. dos Santos asks Mr. K.: "How about 4 of your hornets, I heard they kick ass, do you want some diamonds?" (and yeah, they can easily operate from a number of airfields there, I just counted >20 of more than 2km lengths of asphalt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_Angola). And that is how private contracting basically already works for advisors/spec-ops – great to see that extended to state-of-the-art aircraft.
Really great, good progress, all hail the capital!
Right, but now you're talking about using mercenaries to fight a civil war and vie for power over a sovereign nation. That's much higher stakes than a cobalt mine. Mercenaries in air forces have existed, but usually in the form of hiring pilots and maintenance crews to operate aircraft owned by one of the belligerent nations. This is what occurred in the Eritrean-Ethiopian war. These countries brought up former Soviet aircraft and munitions following the end of the cold war, and also hired ex-soviet pilots and ground crews to operate them. But this is a significant war with hundreds of thousands of combatants on both sides.
ahem, the DR Congo is basically in a state of civil war. And yeah, basically the air superiority is currently held by the nation state and its allies. A private force can turn this easily. Also, the soviet caches have dried up (while I doubt the demand did) and today in most conflict areas, it should be a lot easier to put a box of cash on the table to get a service than import/export a lot of stuff on your own (you need people and control for that).
as I outlined in the other answer, you don't need a lot of weapons to counter non-NATO/China/Russia-air forces. And I'm sure, a person buying state of the art fighter jets can buy some surplus Sidewinder or Maverick missiles as well...
These seem to be F/A-18A/B models so just regular hornets. Which also tracks with their acquisition since the RAAF is selling off and replacing their aging A/B hornet fleet (the US has already retired theirs, except for the Blue Angels). That said I agree with everything else you said, just wanted to point that detail out.
My understanding is a F/A-18 would probably cost Mr Kirlin $10k/hr to operate. A Super Hornet actually costs about the same in variable costs per flight hour, as they require less maintenance and are younger in age, than a legacy Hornet. Of course, depreciation on a $70m jet is not cheap, which can only be flown for 8k hours, without a major rebuild.
those aren't super hornets by the way (no civilian would get an authorization to fly a super hornet). They're the A/B, original hornet version, and any superhornet would fly circles around one.
But what if that man who owns that company, decides he wants to change his business model?
The private part is still important. It's a legitimate fleet of military aircraft that would rival the air forces of many small countries that is directed by a man who really isn't accountable to us outside our borders.
This isn't new territory, it's just that you have to go back a few hundred years to see small groups of private individuals accumulate this much physical force. Just think about some of the disagreements that have occurred over scare resources for responding to the pandemic. Imagine how that picture can change.
It's not that simple. Owning a fighter jet (or even trainer like an Aero L-39) requires both the nod from the ATF, and a bunch of FAA waivers. For a high end jet like an F/A-18 or F-16, It practically requires the Secretary of Defense himself to approve it. Without that approval, Boeing or Lockheed Martin can't provide parts and support for the aircraft.
Notably, Erik Prince of Blackwater/Academi notoriety played fast and loose with weapons import/export/ownership rules, and came very close to being criminally prosecuted for it. Retired Admiral William 'Fox' Fallon resigned in disgust when he realized how far outside the rules Erik Prince was operating.
When Erik Prince suggested letting his private firm handle security in Afghanistan as an outsourced contractor, then SecDef (General) Jim Mattis was dead against it, and blocked it all the way.
Presumably, the same thing that would happen if General Dynamics suddenly decided to change its business model, the major difference being that General Dynamics actually manufactures the weapons you're worried about private companies wielding, and Air USA acquires them.
You’re right, technically. He has rounds of ammunition for the guns. What I meant was that they’re lacking the missiles. Not that you couldn’t do some damage with the guns, but those are weapons of last resort on these jets. They can’t carry many rounds.
If they went rogue or something like that and the US government shut down their supply chain they'd be unable to fly in almost no time. Fighter aircraft take an enormous amount of maintenance to keep in an up status.
This was one of the big concerns if the US/NATO ever went toe to toe with the Soviet Union. With the way modern weapons systems work if they both went all at it, it would not be long before one side or the other had enough of an edge up - just through attrition - that there would only be two options left to the losing side - surrender or go nuclear. You can't have two fully capable super powers fighting one another all out for years any more. You'll run out of stuff that works too fast.
Fighters are export controlled items. Illegal to remove form the US, illegal to show to a foreign national etc.
The US has every legal right to enforce how he uses them outside the country.
Do these jets even have radar and other equipment necessary to actually employ weapons? IIRC most aggressor jets have some hardpoints and avionics removed.
It would probably be accessible to ultra-high net worth folks. Something like a super yacht can cost 2 mil/yr. Back of the napkin math indicates that's about equivalent to taking an FA18 out for a few hours per week.
Most people can't pilot a super yacht either; they hire a full crew. The FA18 can seat two. Also, anyone who has the money to buy and operate one of these vehicles has more than enough money to get someone to teach them how to fly it.
i'd guess that the per hour operating costs of a super yacht would be similar or higher to the operating costs of an FA-18.
i think people like larry ellison would agree. afaik he has a few ex-military jets, including a MIG-29 (a lot more capable than an FA-18 in many respects).
So if a wealthy person flew it one day a week for 8hrs, we are around $8m annual. For high net worth that's realistic. Cheap than a lot of super yachts on the 10% running cost rule. And likely would fly less.
As far as I know, the last operational Cheetahs were sold by the SANDF to similar contractors. If you look in the article, you'll see:
> Kirlin says that he looked at all the aircraft his competitors have bought, especially the Mirage F-1s from Spain and France and Atlas Cheetahs from South Africa that his competitors ATAC and Draken USA have snapped up, and passed on them. He actually showed me the approved ATF forms for importing these jets dated years ago as proof of his claim. Three primary reasons were behind his decisions. The first was concern that they simply weren't the right plane for the job—he wanted something more advanced. Second, that working with certain foreign original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) would be a major hassle.
> Finally, he is a firm believer in buying flyers, not aircraft that have been mothballed for years, if at all possible.
Edit: By the way, the Pilatus PC-9 airplanes shown in one of the images is the same plane that the South African acrobatics Silver Falcons use.
This is such weird phrasing. I imagine the corporate prison industry uses the same words: "She was also one of the pioneers of the fledgling private incarceration market. By creating this dynamic new industry, unlimited synergies can by unleashed within public-private partnerships".
I think a lot of folks are skimming the top of this and missing the really interesting parts.
Their focus doesn’t seem to be providing adversaries against pilots, but adversaries against weapons systems.
He’s essentially selling organic data to train JTACs against.
The goal here isn’t as much great avionics, but great combinations of sensors and sensor jamming.
The military focuses on having a combat ready fleet, while he focuses on a fleet that can provide lowest cost options to provide appropriate training data.
A lot of that fleet is made up of trainers fit with electronics packages and Cessnas similarly Frankensteined. Then the military and manufacturers rent it out vs maintaining their own limited-use fleet.
The hornets are great, not just because they’re sweet jets, but because of the electronics packages and maintainability.
...and then he has a paramilitary nut/Bond villain vibe that keeps the story less dry and probably appeals to the intended audience.
I read it all and while it's great that he has a legitimate reason to own these, it doesn't change the fact that he owns a private air force, heavy weapons and state-of-the-art countermeasures. It's a terrifying legal precedent and he's opened the door for a new market niche that less savory people can sneak into.
The US already has ludicrously expansive personal rights to weapons ownership for any reason. We have a guy buying up a private air force. We have several guys building space vehicles. If Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos wanted a nuclear-armed ICBM could we actually stop them? Or, maybe more likely, some QAnon nutjob getting his hands on an armored vehicle and driving it through a shopping mall in Atlanta?
You do realize that there's a ton of precedent for privately-owned heavy weaponry in the US, right? As the 2nd Amendment folks would point out, there used to be US citizens who owned warships.
F/A-18s without guided weaponry aren't really that much of a change. (they've got cannons, but afact no JDAMs, JSOWs, AMRAAMs or even dumb bombs)
> Or, maybe more likely, some QAnon nutjob getting his hands on an armored vehicle and driving it through a shopping mall in Atlanta?
Well, you can literally buy WW2 era tanks. And it doesn't take all that much to make them street-legal. This isn't new. And yet, we DON'T see nutjobs abusing it.
Well there was the killdozer guy, who did just that with what was basically a homemade tank. Which in a way proves that a sufficiently motivated individual isn't going to be stopped by silly laws against owning this stuff.
Laws are for making certian undesirable strategies/behavior uneconomical and therefore less enticing to those who would otherwise commit them by making the resulting situation less attractive.
For example right now there is nothing stopping you from just grabbing a paring knife and stabbing/killing a random person on the street but you sure as hell aren't going put yourself in a better situation having done so.
I know. There's a document out there somewhere with John Adams signature telling a merchant captain it's fine to put cannons on his vessel. Privateers were even recruited to fight the British in 1812. That's what the 2nd amendment was actually written for. And the last time it was relevant.
And I think just saying it hasn't happened yet is like saying we haven't had a giant pandemic yet in 2019. I'd rather not wait for a catastrophe to decide we should do something about it.
The thing is, the WORST case for an asshole with a tank is a few dozen deaths. Tanks are designed to be operated by more than one person, and so a loner operating a tank gets at best the driver's seat and a machine gun. And when it comes to a few hundred deaths, Timothy McVeigh [0] says hi.
Point being, a tank like that isn't really worse than a large ANFO truck bomb.
"Do something about it" like what? The 2nd amendment specifically says the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. If some nutjob wants to hurt people, he can figure out a way to do it with some household chemicals and gasoline. And if we're truly worried about that, shouldn't we be addressing the mental health problems that would cause somebody to drive a tank through a mall? I know it's a cliche, but guns don't kill people... people do.
Have you ever killed someone without a gun? Not trying to be metal, but I was in a self defense situation many years ago and and something terrible happened.
Shooting a gun vs using "household chemicals and gasoline" to attack someone, to say nothing of knives or bare hands, are so apart from each other that I know for a fact that you have no experience with violence or how much easier it is to do violence with a gun vs other methods. You are just parroting teenager-level philosophy.
Besides all that, we have huge amounts of data over more than 100 years. Turns out, and this will shock you, when you have more guns you are more likely to shoot people and kill overall.
I don't want people to die because Bubba finds it badass to own an AR-15 they will never use except maybe to kill themselves or a family member (statistically, these are the no1 and no2 most likely people an American is to kill with their gun). Do as you will I guess but almost nobody needs to own a gun privately.
And I don't want people to die because a tyrannical government decides it needs to occupy the population. It's acceptable to me that some people will die as a result of gun violence, if it means the citizenry keeps its right to bear arms. Every homicide is a tragedy, but the weapons are not the problem nor the cause.
If you want to restrict the rights afforded by the 2nd amendment, would you like to restrict some others too? After all, the "freedom of the press" was designed at a time when newspapers were literally printed on a printing press. The founders couldn't have imagined the internet, so do people really need access to such a powerful way of disseminating information?
I would like to restrict only the second amendment. I don't see how a slippery slope argument is remotely relevant. There are dozens of liberal democracies in the world that have robust personal freedom and no right to bear arms. In fact, our right to bear arms is a direct descendent of the British Common Law version that existed for centuries and has been almost completely removed in the 20th century with no loss of free speech or press and no descent into tyranny. The country whose tyranny the founders were worried about.
That’s probably the worse example to use for your argument. Britain is a place where cops will come to your door to investigate over non-death threat tier posts on Twitter.
> I would like to restrict only the second amendment.
At least you admit it.
There are ways to do this. You can get a supermajority in congress to agree with you, or you can get 34 state legislatures to agree to call a convention of states. Then, and only then, you can change the constitution.
Barring that, no law or executive order can restrict the second amendment and be constitutional. Fortunately our current president has appointed justices who will ensure this remains true.
You completely misunderstand reality. When the F-35 comes to liquefy your house, I’m sure your gun will do a lot to defend yourself.
You don’t have the smallest chance of defending yourself from the government, the only thing gun ownership does is let people shoot each other for no good reason. This is an incontrovertible fact proven by statistics of gun ownership countries a.k.a. the US versus others.
Gun ownership is, in aggregate, about as dangerous to the US population as car ownership.
Millions of lightly armed people have stood up well to the US military. What you're talking about isn't a fact at all -- it is a myth, that overwhelming technology can decisively determine the outcome of wars. It is certainly a factor but there is no way F-35s would be sent to bomb houses (for example): the cost, relative scarcity and long periods of maintenance for advanced weapons systems like that are all factors that limit their deployment. In limited war -- which is what all insurrections are -- application of advanced weapons is difficult.
If you truly believe this, I would urge you to take a look at the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan and the decades long occupations thereof by the US. I'd also recommend reading The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks by Josh Ramo, which examines this phenomenon in depth.
"If you want to restrict the rights afforded by the 2nd amendment, would you like to restrict some others too? After all, the "freedom of the press" was designed at a time when newspapers were literally printed on a printing press. The founders couldn't have imagined the internet, so do people really need access to such a powerful way of disseminating information?"
Slippery slope. Keep talking about how you're fine with some people killing other people but not different people killing other people, it's a philosophical point and has something resembling a legs and not a total logical fallacy.
"I was in a self defence situation and needed to kill someone" and "almost nobody needs to own a gun privately" seem to be incompatible statements to me.
As for the difficulty of killing large numbers of people, I'd stand by the assertion that it's easier with chemicals (explosives or incindiaries) than it is with guns.
They aren't incompatible statements. Certainly the parent's experience, devoid of context could easily be seen as evidence in favor of permitting the possession of firearms. But just because they may have benefitted from, or could have benefited from the owning a firearm at one point doesn't mean that they accept the broader societal trade-offs that ubiquitous gun ownership entails.
I hold a number of political convictions at odds with my personal interest, or which could/will hurt me as an individual in the future, as do many around me. But I stand by them because they would bring us closer to nation in-which I'd be happy to live.
I'm firmly on the side of gun ownership. I'd like the NFA to be revised or repealed so as to make it more coherent, and less restrictive.
Nevertheless, I can respect the parent's position, because their experience doesn't make them hypocritical or subtract from their point (though it can be used to) so much as it's a sign of social conscientiousness, and a willingness to potentially put what they believe to be the needs of the whole before the needs of the self.
The reality is that many large terrorist attacks have been conducted with explosives, toxic gas and other methods.
Treating every gun as though it were a clear, present danger, is no more reasonable than treating every car that way. There are ~75 million gun owners in the USA; they are overwhelmingly harmless. Targeted policy is how you address something that is occasionally misused; and targeted policy seems to be the one thing that people keen on gun control do not want to think about.
I don't want people to die because Bubba finds it badass to own an AR-15 they will never use except maybe to kill themselves or a family member (statistically, these are the no1 and no2 most likely people an American is to kill with their gun).
It's true that most people who die from firearms are people ending their own lives; but the next largest group are criminals shooting one another, not "family members". The average American, not otherwise inclined to end their own life, is very unlikely to be shot with a gun.
The way you are defining "use" in your statement is just wrong. People who don't shoot other people still "use" their guns, just for sport or for hunting. It's like you're saying the only people who "use" guns are killers. What if we applied the same concept to another area? "I don't want people to die because Bubba finds it badass to own a Cessna they will never use except maybe to crash and kill themselves or a family member...". It seems absurd. There is a diminishing returns element to policy and you just can't write them in a such a way that it perfects safety.
Repeal or at least disincorporate the 2nd amendment. It's kinda ludicrous that conservative justices claim to be strict constructionists yet decided states and municipalities can't make their own rules. And yes, we should be addressing mental health regardless.
And if guns don't kill people, what vital purpose do they serve? Defend your home with a bow and arrow because it's exactly as effective as an AR-15 with 100-round clip according your reductive assertion.
What exactly are nutjobs going to do with any of these weapons?
We've had cases of nutjobs getting their hands on tanks, or building their own armored bulldozers, and going on rampages. It's a pain, but it's not a complete disaster. These vehicles aren't invincible. They generally get stuck somewhere, and then the police break open the hatch and shoot the nutjob. Tanks really can't do much by themselves besides drive around and run into some things (or over them, but again, you have to be careful or it can get stuck, break a tread, etc.). Tanks armed with 120mm cannon rounds, of course, can do some serious damage, but private individuals aren't allowed to own that kind of weaponry at all.
It's the same with an older fighter jet. What are you going to do with it? Fly it into a building? Sure, that'll be worse than flying a Cessna into a building, but still, it's not like a WMD. Even if you could fully load the 20mm cannon, you're not going to do that much damage; they don't hold that much ammo anyway (only enough for something like 5-10 seconds of sustained fire I think). Yeah, being able to drop a bunch of 500lb bombs would be a disaster, but again, you can't get that stuff.
Yes, if Elon or Jeff wanted a nuclear-armed ICBM, the government would certainly stop them. Building a rocket is one thing, building a nuclear warhead is something else entirely, and is not something trivial that just anyone can do. Iran (an actual nation-state) has been trying for some time and still hasn't succeeded as far as we know. It takes a lot of facilities and special materials to build something like that.
I guess there are two sides, it took just ten nutjobs to get the forever wars going. On the other hand they didn't need more sophisticated weapons than knives.
Though I don't know why a nutjob couldn't do just as bad with something heavier.
I don't think so. I have no legal training but I think there is a difference between a firearm and a nuclear weapon on grounds that the interpretation of the second amendment is at a personal/militia level rather than some kind of national threat that would warrant use of nuclear weapons.
No, since no one has ever put up the money to buy one and been turned down or sought access to an appropriate test range and been turned away. The common law is like that: it doesn't solve problems we don't have.
It doesn't set a legal precedent of much significance, because in the USA there are people who own tanks, artillery and helicopter gunships.
It doesn't make sense to be so alarmed by it. People who own heavy weapons overwhelmingly use them for lawful purposes. This is true of people who own guns, as well. We can't treat every potentially dangerous thing as if it is a clear, present danger: that is like treating all drivers as "potential drunk drivers". You can't write policy around that.
No it actually is to train pilots, but that training is not about 'flying' so much as 'flying while fighting', understanding the engagement envelope of red vs blue weapons, jammers and sensors.
Basically you need to have something tough to go against the JSF or it is a cakewalk and no training is achieved. These Hornets are an excellent 4th gen platform because they have had excellent maintenance and relatively gentle operation. They have all had the HUG 2.2 upgrade and are incredibly capable -- more so than many aircraft operated by the Air National Guard -- but they are too long in the tooth to be going up against modern competitors and be survivable.
JTAC training doesn't need high fast flyers, so just like the article says, using them is pointlessly expensive. Hawks and propeller aircraft are more useful. Fast jet flyers often have type certifcation on them from initial training, perfectly adequate for practicing 9 line briefs.
You mean these jets aren't demilitarized? I've read about civilians buying surplus military aircraft but they lacked radar and weapons at the very least.
Air USA (Don Kirlin, president), along with a bunch of other companies were selected as contractors for the U.S. Air Force to provide "Red Air" (adversary training) services. This is not new; the Air Force uses private companies for training as the cost savings are immense:
• Reduced flight hours and maintenance on fleet aircraft.
• Instructors do not need to be pulled from schedules.
• Fleet aircraft do not need to be hard scheduled.
• Cost per flight hour is much lower for common aggressor platforms (A-4, L-39, F1M, and now these legacy F-18s) than the aircraft the Air Force is training in.
• Private companies can more easily maintain and source parts for aircraft the military cannot (Migs, for instance).
This particular sale was the remainder of the RAAF's retired F-18 fleet, which Canada started buying in early 2019. These are _not_ Super Hornets.
Some of these companies have been around for decades. Some competitors:
Let us not forget the hemorrhaging of pilots from the USAF, largely due to the hostile work environment and the general bullshit they have to endure. They simply don't have enough experienced people to provide this function.
> What if you could fly the F-22, the preeminent fifth-generation air superiority fighter in the world? According to internal data from the Aircrew Crisis Task Force, last year even that community retained just 30 percent of pilots eligible to leave.
... Wow.
Years ago I read a discussion between two people interested in USAF careers. One of them wanted to fly the F-22. The other told him to get the credentials and apply for the position. I remember wondering: you can just apply to pilot the world's most advanced supermaneuverable stealth fighter? Why would any F-22 pilot want to give up their position? I assumed it was because of the problems with the life support system:
I'm amazed that this is even possible. I seem to recall that there are countries with unusable fighter jets, because the U.S. will no longer supply parts and expertise for maintenance. The article indeed states: "the purchase does include all of the RAAF's F/A-18 spare parts inventory and test equipment, valued at over a billion dollars alone."
I too am amazed that this is even possible, but for different reasons. Do other first world countries allow non-government companies to hold this much sophisticated military hardware? Maybe so, I just haven't heard of it.
The other day I was reading about some Saudi prince's half a billion (!!!) dollar yacht.
Sometimes I wonder if I live in the same planet as these people. It is hard for me to imagine such wealth and power
> Do other first world countries allow non-government companies to hold this much sophisticated military hardware?
No, they don't. And neither does the US.
The F18 is now nearly 40 years old. Typically the advanced and sophisticated aspects of airframes are not allowed for sale, to private entities, or even non-us government ones.
The advanced avionics, weapons systems, etc, are all tightly controlled.
The article claims that the configuration will not change from what the RAAF had been flying, and that the planes have been more or less fitted with the most modern upgrades available.
So, nothing rivaling next generation hardware but also nothing to sneeze at either.
Also no munitions. Unless you are worried about info leaks to China (who else is sophisticated enough to take advantage of it?) I’m not seeing your concern.
Exactly, the sale of these aircraft has to be approved by the US Govt. The sale of a squadron to Canada was also approved by the US. It is only because of the close AU-US relationship that these are supplied with electronics -- everything about them still being classifed TS.
USAF is also looking to award a large contract for operating tanker aircraft for supporting training exercises of the USAF. Private companies will be operating aircraft to offer mid air refuelling for USAF training activities.
True, but the whole reason this worked is that they were a sovereign international personality separate from Italy, not just a private Italian organization.
> I seem to recall that there are countries with unusable fighter jets, because the U.S. will no longer supply parts and expertise for maintenance.
Fighter jets are heavily dependent on spares and expertise, but Iranian F-14 Tomcats managed to score something like 50 or 60 kills during the Iran-Iraq war, which happened after the US stopped playing nice with them. They're still flying a few of them today.
If this makes you wonder how they're doing this if everyone is playing by the export rules involving selling arms to Iran, you wouldn't be the first. They have some native production capacity, but...
> I seem to recall that there are countries with unusable fighter jets, because the U.S. will no longer supply parts and expertise for maintenance.
Turns out the US has this problem as well... my brother is a Harrier pilot, and it seems to me like the US has mostly run out of spare parts for them. They bought a number of RAF Harriers for parts, but even so, it's a question of whether the F-35 will actually be ready in time to replace those squadrons.
Maybe. The text hints that they also maintain their own adversary fleet in addition to hiring contracting firms like the one in the article.
> These Israeli-designed pods are pretty much the world standard in modular self-protection jamming systems and are used on the Pentagon's own aggressor fleet...
I grew up in the town where Mr Kirlin and his businesses are based, have lived there on-and-off, and know him through various personal and professional circles. I also am formerly of the aerospace industry myself.
The Kirlin’s occupy a very particular role in the city.
once operating the largest franchise of Hallmark stores for nearly 60 years before quickly going out of business a few years ago. Other Kirlin defunct businesses include “The Fly”, a Blue jeans only store in the 80’s, KSNI (Kirlin Super Net Inc) a dial-up ISP in the 90’s.
The mentioned Kirlin of the story used to run “The World Freefall Convention” the largest skydiving convention in the world. For about a week and a half the small Airport would be beset by 10,000 skydivers and cessnas. One quirk of Quincys airport is a super long runway that can support a DB Cooper style 737 jet landing, so one would be chartered to allow 100s of skydivers to do high altitude jumps.
Unfortunately the convention ended because of the Bible-thumping city leaders didn’t care for the weeks of debauchery that were part of the festival attendees.
I lived in Quincy for about ten years and grew up in Hannibal.
I've met several members of the Kirlin family and Don's a sharp, cordial guy. I find it interesting that he's made so good a go at such an unconventional business when other members of the family have had such problems in speciality retail. I wonder where the Hallmark store business would be if Don had been in charge.
I'll not comment on the ISP because I used to work for a competitor with a fierce rivalry.
It is the longest runway I’ve ever landed on that did not have a tower system. After doing a few general aviation flights into that airport at rare times of congestion, I can see why the United crash happened.
But surely the private pilots training against US military pilots get to see the current tactics, and the private radars and electronic warfare pods get to record the current combat settings of US military radars and electronic warfare systems. There is no way this is not all classified top secret and a major target for foreign intelligence. So all his personnel, pilots and technicians, need clearance as if they were active military (maybe more, because advanced tactics and information on all different NATO allies and aircraft, not a single squadron like most service member know).
Even if for some reason it is cheaper for the US military to have this in a private company instead of maintaining aggressor squadrons with Migs, how is this secure?
That's not the secret sauce, in the same sense that keeping source closed doesn't usually improve code quality from a security standpoint.
The other counter is there are 26 operators of the F-16. Frankly it would be easier both in practice and legality to get cooperation from some dude in Pakistan or Venezuela than a US citizen who can at least sorta be watched over.
Most of the tactics are not terribly advanced in the sense of some mysterious secret martial arts kick that defeats all. Most of the time battles are won logistically long before the fighting starts. Everyone in the business kinda knows what F16s do, not any more of a secret than knowing what Mig29s do, the struggle is always having enough resources in the right places at the right times to do anything about it.
Something that often surprises civilians is most US military manuals are freeware and have always been that way. If you want to learn how an Army Brigade Combat Team operates, you don't join the KGB and steal documents, you just download FM 3-96 and read it. This is why actual veterans get annoyed about fictional hollywood military stuff; if you don't understand the role of a BCT's information operations officer sufficient to portray one in a movie, its just sheer lazyness to make something up instead of simply reading the FM.
Its all part of the interesting strategy to handling massive public communications networks; half a century ago you could have an edge if it depended on having a secret sauce. Now that anyone with a web browser can download the official F-16 flight manual your strategy for having an edge relies on other forms of secret sauces.
A good analogy for the problem is that excellent world class scientific documentation exists for weight loss and athletic performance, yet most people will not train in those areas. Olympic athletes are not high performers because the textbooks for weight lifting are kept secret and only for their reading.
"A serious problem in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine."
Sigint agencies hoard 0days and know they get "burned" by using them against a serious opponent that records traffic and can analyze and reverse engineer malware. If the 0day is useful against your own systems, you would hesitate to use it before your systems are patched. I think electronic warfare and ECCM systems can have similar dynamics.
I always assumed (without any evidence) there is secret firmware or settings for these systems that will only be used in time of war and not used during training.
I guess Israeli Air Force knows countries like Iran have the Russian hardware and personnel/training for dealing with the Elta gear that Israel exports, but I also guess the Israeli Air Force has secret sauce, maybe using the same hardware, that they don't export and use only for striking strategic targets, knowing each strike teaches the opponent something.
>I always assumed (without any evidence) there is secret firmware or settings for these systems that will only be used in time of war and not used during training.
I believe the military takes training realism incredibly seriously, and wouldn't dream of "testing in production" with a weapons system.
There are simulators for military aircraft. Falcon BMS simulates the F-16. DCS World has an entire collection of simulated aircraft. They come with manuals too. I don't know what actual pilots think of the accuracy of the simulation but they're clearly no ordinary video games.
Nearly all pilots are former US military (or allied countries) and contractors often get military security clearances. All the pilots flying these jets will have a vetted, active clearance commensurate with the types of tactics they are simulating / seeing from the military planes.
All the pilots will be retired US (or close ally) instructor pilots. They equipment and scenarios are still classified. The jets live on US bases or similarly secured facillities (e.g. Boeing).
It's not really an "air force" in the military sense, as these planes are unarmed and can't shoot anyone down unless the pilot carries a handgun or rifle.
EDIT: Actually it looks like they do have machine guns with rounds, but nothing such as guided missiles.
I don't understand what's the point of having a private contractor instead of say, a dedicated Air Force squadron. A private contractor who effectively has a monopoly is necessarily more expensive, as he needs to make a profit, while an Air Force squadron doesn't.
Looks like some sort of elaborate public money scam to me.
It ends up being a cost optimization & liability thing. Lets be honest, at least in the USA, our Government isn't terribly efficient with money. However, a corporate is driven by profit so they will be smarter.
If you had an Air Force squadron of older planes, they need their own dedicated mechanics who are certified. Government certified vendors, who've gone through the vetting/price bidding process (likely the vendors selling you the latest F35 or whatever will want in on it too...). Dedicate pilots certified to fly these planes and likely only these planes... etc. Instead you shift the logistics to a smaller and more agile group who can optimize for their very specific and small use case.
The private contractor can also go out and train people from other military forces (like Canadians, eh?). That allows them to make money from multiple sources, where as the US Government would not. Sure maybe join training exercises, but that's not the same thing.
There are a lot of cases in business where outsourcing something specialized to another party makes a lot of sense - unless there is a huge scale for it. Just look at The Cloud. For a lot of companies, it doesn't make sense to pay the overhead of datacenters, datacenter techs, etc etc. For a few companies, that do it at scale, it makes a ton of sense (Ex FAANG).
These are all real cost reasons, but there is an important reason you are missing: people. Firstly, pilots don't receive much training benefit from being cannon fodder for other pilots; they are not learning to operate their system (whether Super Hornet or JSF) but emulating another aircraft (e.g. a Sukhoi). The situation is slightly different for the agressor squadrons, as they are emulating the most dangerous threats (like J31 or PAK FA). But for everyday readiness training, spending time as the red force is not a joy.
Second, the USAF has a pilot numbers problem. The more experienced pilots are getting out as fast as they are able; there are many reasons for this, and COVID-19 will slow it down, but it will continue. To compensate they are trying to ram more in at the front of the funnel. This will cause other problems, not the least of which is a massive shortage of training personnel, causing overwork, causing more FCIs to leave, and so on.
The ex-USAF (and ex-RAAF) pilots flying these jets are enjoying not being sent overseas to shitty bases on long tours, or having to move their family interstate regularly, or dealing with braindead administrative detail and mandatory fun exercises some Colonel dreamed up. They are some of the best pilots around, and normally they would be lost to the airlines.
Well there is always at least one competitor as the military could in source the job. I am not surprised at all about the ability to do the job at lower costs.
> He now holds eight licenses with the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), allowing him to own military machine guns and cannons, as well as thousands of rounds of ammunition to fire through them.
I'm very curious what these licenses say about how he is allowed to use these machines.
What kind of work is he allowed to take? Who is he allowed to shoot at?
Just to answer. None of your concerns are covered by the license he has (Special Occupation Tax aka SOT). With a SOT7 + one of the other ones you can own and transfer machine guns and Destructive Devices legally. This is the same license a gunsmith will get to manufacture and sell(transfer) firearms incidentally.
Certain firearms like short-barrel rifles (SBR), suppressors, calibers > 50, and machine guns require an ATF license. That said - these aren't hard to come by. Many people file multiple ATF form 4's (with a $200 tax) to acquire suppressors, machine guns, and SBR's. 8 is nothing special, you'll see people on r/guns with more.
The tl;dr is if you have the mone and time and clear background, its not hard.
It's quite interesting that Australia wants to let these go in favor of the F-35, rather than maintaining them in a reserve capacity. Letting the F-111 go in favor of the F/A-18 made a lot of sense because they were obsolescent and expensive to operate. In this case, I wonder if they might regret it if they ever face a period of increased military tensions.
As early as 2012 the RAAF Hornet fleet flight activities (12-13000 hours per year) were estimated to exhaust the fleets' lifetime airframe limits (6000 hours) in 2020.[1] Keeping them in the air beyond this year was going to get more and more expensive and consume maintenance resources (and pilot training) that could otherwise be directed to the Super Hornets and F-35s.
Frankly I'm kind of glad someone took them off our hands before they became even more of a liability. We've got enough on our plate dealing with the F-35's corrosion issues (most of the fleet will be kept in moist salt air at Williamtown and be plugged into big dehumidifiers when not flying) and other things like its limited range.[2]
Which, now I put it that way, makes me wonder if maybe we should have kept a few Hornets.
[1] "43. The F/A-18A/B Hornet was designed for a safe life of 6000 airframe hours. At the current fleet flying rate of 13 000 hours per year, reducing to 12 000 from 2013–14, there is capacity on that basis for the Hornet fleet to continue flying until the end of 2020." https://www.anao.gov.au/work/performance-audit/management-au...
That all makes sense, and I guess I agree on all points. Not knowing anything about the RAAF's resources (or the buyer's feelings on the deal), I would have leaned toward selling half and keeping half in a reserve capacity if it were at all feasible. If you need a reserve, you probably need it really badly, and it's not exactly unfathomable that the fancy-but-fragile F-35 might be grounded someday because of some automotive airbag recall-like "whoops" screwup by the manufacturer.
edit: it looks like you've still got two squadrons of Super Hornets until 2025, so you've got that going for you
We don't have enough pilots to fly them. And against the type of opponent that could overcome F-35s, Classics wouldn't stand a chance. And the cost of maintaining them, a dual stream training pipeline, armaments, etc, would significantly detract from other capabilities (like AEW&C, ISR, unmanned jets, training & readiness, etc).
F35s are undeniably costly, but criticisms on the capability front usually come from the uninformed lunatic fringe (like APA), who are really the equivalent of climate change deniers, and groups with an axe to grind (Boeing would prefer to make more Super Hornet sales).
Your comment and some of the others above brought something to mind: with the F-35 you'll miss some capabilities you had with the Hornet just because of its limited range, just like you lost some of the capabilities you had with the F-111 when you moved to the Hornet. Being able to fly an extra 50% (or whatever) further before firing a missile might have a tremendous amount of value if you have to do something like that, mid-air refueling tricks notwithstanding.
If it were me, I'd want half F-35s and half of the most advanced variant of the F-15 Strike Eagle I could afford, keeping in mind the F-15s would cost as much as the F-35. But you know, even keeping those two squadrons of Super Hornets they've got up to date would count for a lot.
A2A refuelling is still absolutely required for effective air combat, you can only fight for a short period before you are bingo. For strike you'd want a stand off weapon, but if absolute stealth was not required you can use conformal or off-board tanks.
If you used Strike Eagles you have the same problem as Supers -- they are 4.5G, not low observable, which gives warning of a strike. But I suspect the Supers will be in service for decades.
Extreme range strike is arguably complimentary to submarines, but there are no manned F-111-like platforms available to buy, and no one thinks that is a role UAS can do.
To be honest I wasn't thinking much about air-to-air combat. I guess New Guinea might get some ideas, but otherwise... anyway, the F-35 will probably perform admirably for that.
I think being able to hit ships at a distance is what the RAAF is most likely to want to do. I'd be intrigued to read a real analysis that indicates otherwise.
> Extreme range strike is arguably complimentary to submarines, but there are no manned F-111-like platforms available to buy, and no one thinks that is a role UAS can do.
I assume the Strike Eagle could achieve something not far off from the F-111 in terms of range with conformal fuel tanks. Although it looks like the Super Hornet has CFT available now, which can only be a good thing for the RAAF.
> If you used Strike Eagles you have the same problem as Supers -- they are 4.5G, not low observable, which gives warning of a strike.
The newer anti-ship missiles are meant to have a long enough range that that is less of a concern. I don't know so much about whatever version of the Harpoon missile the RAAF is flying. (or what they'd be up against, or their electronic warfare capability, which actually matters a lot...)
A businessman and aircraft collector in South Africa has one of the last flying examples of a Blackburn Buccaneer [0] and English Electric Lightning... Paint scheme on both: Jet Black!
Interesting. A good family friend of ours is a maintenance supervisor in the RAAF. Last time he invited me down to the hangar to let me see the F/A-18s up close, he was lamenting how the first batch that the RAAF purchased (which I assume are among the ones this guy bought) were getting really fatigued and increasingly difficult to maintain. He mentioned that instead of the routine 4 hours maintenance required for each hour of flying time, they were requiring upwards of 10+ hours maintenance per flying hour.
Sounds like these beasts will be expensive money pits to operate nowadays.
This is also a great way to keep several squadrons of reasonably capable fighters maintained and in operation. In a time of national emergency they (and their pilots) could be drawn on.
F/A-18's are a dime a dozen right now (not literally obviously). There's a bunch of old ones coming off the line and being refit as ... no joke, drones for target practice for other drones.
There's a remote-fly-by-wire package they install that apparently has been around for quite a while. I guess this means they're also developing a remotely controlled or AI based fighter platform but they wouldn't confirm, just that these new "drones" get shot down by other "drones".
Source: I was given a tour of the facility and told what they were doing with the old F-18's. Pretty wild.
They did the same thing with a lot of classic fighter jets, including all of the century series and the F-4. (I imagine plenty of F-16s have been used as drones as well.)
It's reminiscent of the way you can buy spectacular used luxury cars for a song once they've got a certain amount of wear and miles on the odometer. Maintaining them and accounting for the future cost of repairs makes their value drop precipitously.
Those are ex-USN (or shudder original USMC) F/A-18s, that have seen very hard use. I wouldn't be happy flying in one. In contrast the RAAF Hornets are almost mint.
I don't know about using them for drone target practice though, Loyal Wingman (ugh, what a name) only got to WoW the other day. More likely advanced tactics development for manned aircraft.
I just saw a netflix documentary, 'operation odessa', where two guys were buying russian helos and even a sub for the Cali cartel. I am not amazed at the resourcefulness of the human animal. Anything we make (including information) gets weaponized for bad actors. And that's only the stuff we know about.
Any chance a FSDO or DPE is on here? What's the registration process for these aircraft? Do they get N-numbers? I'm assuming they're registered as experimental or experimental-exhibition. Do the pilots need type certificates? Who provides the training?
Did anyone else notice the mention of the M61 20mm Vulcan cannon that's staying installed? Have these guys got live weapons and ammunition for these craft?
It’s a great solution to a problem of conflicted interests. If the USAF gets a massive budget to protect us against air threats, how can you trust them to conduct honest tests? They are motivated to only ever report great news on how awesome a job they are doing always. Here you create an incentive structure for people to really try to figure out how to beat them.
It’s the same reason a company might hire an outside firm to do penetration testing, rather than ask its head of cyber security, “Hey why don’t you conduct a test to see if you are doing an awesome job, as we need to figure out whether to fire you or give you more money”.
I'm guessing that paying a contractor to support both the Navy and the Air Force is easier than figuring out who from the Navy and Air Force will lead the combined training effort.
I assume this is like one department of a company using Azure and the other using AWS because nobody wants to share their turf. Writing a check is easier than talking to your coworkers.
I used to have a single shut-down in 2nd amendment arguments. When my opponent would claim that the 2nd amendment gives civilians the power to overthrow a government, my favorite response was to compare poorly armed and trained americans to essentially the Taliban, and follow that up with: and then the US would drone/bomb you to oblivion with their air force superiority, like how Israel dominated the no-air-force Middle East in The Six Day War
Looks like the joke is on me, now: People now actually have an option of building their own Air Force. Greaaaaaat,
The argument you're describing is missing the point. Historically, most government abuse occurs at the local level and this is where a personal right to bear arms becomes relevant. Decades ago, a gun could prevent a lynching by a racist sheriff. Today, perhaps it prevents a rape during a rural traffic stop.
Government is a diverse collection of entities. It's a mistake to assume that resisting the government means overthrowing the entire federal system.
If you're interested in hearing more on this subject I recommend reading "This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible" by Charles Cobb.
"Guns rights" for minorities in America has rarely ever been about personal protection or what not, it has been about keeping those in power in power and keeping the.
Large swaths of American history of American history are likely being ignored with assertion like "gun ownership could prevent a lynching". Take pre-Civil War laws making gun ownership of African Americas (free and enslaved) illegal, the continuation of those laws under "Black Codes" in both the North and South post Civil War, and the extension of similar acts post Civil Rights Act with laws like California's 1967 Mulford Act.
I agree those are examples of maintaining (often racist) power systems. But what you're providing aren't examples of gun rights, they're examples of gun control initiatives -- which are the opposite of gun rights.
This extends beyond such obvious examples as the Mulford Act (California's foray into gun control, banning open carry in response to armed protest by Black Panthers). Gun control often focuses on removing access to arms by any poor and disenfranchised groups. So called "Saturday night special" legislation seeks to ban cheap guns, with disproportionate impact in disadvantaged communities.
Access to arms has historically been a key element of people maintaining their freedom from government abuse. Your examples of gun control indeed do undermine this freedom.
The history of gun control in the US is deeply tainted by racist motivations.
Yes, and the foundation for much of it the NFA, could be kicked over tomorrow. Its precedent is really weak (miller) or as you point out racist/financially disadvantaged.
But even without the Second Amendment, the criminal could still get a gun. The difference is, with the Second Amendment, the civil-rights activist can also get a gun.
Not much of the current personal arms policy debate in the US is about whether we should strive to make it impossible for criminals or civil rights activists to get a gun. It's about the margins of ease, how that can or should vary by person, how capacity or type of weapon matters, legal exposure of different kind of carrying, and other matters that could reasonably fall under "well-regulated."
For example, some people think a recent domestic abuse record should trigger a very high level of scrutiny for firearm purchases (or even continued possession). This isn't the sort of rule that would prevent anyone from committing a crime with a gun, perhaps not even an impenetrable wall for those with such records. But it increases the practical difficulty and compounds the crime (and risk) for certain cases.
Margins matter -- seatbelts can't save all lives but they absolutely produce a safety margin.
Some other countries allow private ownership of firearms without a Constitutional amendment, so latter case is theoretically possible with or without the 2A.
America has a lot of gun availability and yet getting shot isn't the most common cause of on-the-job death for a police officer. In fact, law enforcement isn't a particularly dangerous line of work.
I think a better question would be asking how arming either police or civilians changes the policing dynamic. These types of questions also need to be set against the larger cultural context of how a society keeps control of its policing activity.
I feel like you learned the wrong lesson from Afghanistan. Not only has it been the longest military conflict in American history we also lost and are too proud to admit it, so we are just stuck in an infinite war.
If there was a credible war between the American government and the citizenry I don't think it would be as one sided as you think it would be.
It's not about the civilians being able to overthrow the government, it's about the government not being able to overthrow the civilians. When wrongthink starts being criminalized, would you prefer to be defenseless in your home, or have some - feeble sure, but some - means of protecting yourself? Or would you rather just prefer to think wrongthink will never be criminalized?
I believe The Clash puts it best:
When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun
When the law break in
How you gonna go?
Shot down on the pavement
Or waiting in death row
You can crush us
You can bruise us
But you'll have to answer to
Oh, guns of Brixton
The criminalization of drugs was put in place to target hippies and minorities. So... yes.
"We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
- John Ehrlichman, Nixon's Aide during time of the war on drugs.
The 2nd amendment does not give the citizenry the ability to overthrow the government, it prevents the government from restricting the right to bear arms because bearing arms is necessary for a free state.
The people, in a Democracy, are the arbiters of power and the government serves the people. If the government does not serve the people, the people have an a priori right to reform that government.
>The 2nd amendment does not give the citizenry the ability to overthrow the government, it prevents the government from restricting the right to bear arms because bearing arms is necessary for a free state.
Why is the right to bear arms necessary for a free state if not to give the citizenry the ability to overthrow the government? It's not as if indian raids or an invasion from Spain or Britain are causes for concern, nor does the second amendment make up for the lack of a standing army anymore. Overthrowing the government is the only thing left that it's good for, as far as a free state is concerned.
>If the government does not serve the people, the people have an a priori right to reform that government.
What other means of "reform" does the second amendment offer the people, than revolution by force of arms?
This is going to sound fussy but it's a really important point to understand. This is not the case of a bunch of farmers rebelling against a king, or a duke staging a coup. The people reforming the government is akin to the CEO of a private company firing their mid-level managers. That's the right of the people, and the members of the government serve the people.
The reason why the right to bear arms is important to a free state is because both sides of a negotiation must possess power. Kent State was a tragedy, but it's aftermath happened in a court room with lawyers and journalists. Tienanmen square on the other hand saw a government run over it's people with tanks and then pretend it never happened.
When one side of a power dynamic has no power, the opposite side can do whatever it wants - install a president for life, promote the president to a position without any checks, directly compromise basic human rights for short term political wins, and so on.
A "revolution by force of arms" isn't very likely, but a large well armed group of protestors is a great way to convince a government to show up in court and use words and lawyers instead of tanks.
it's probably not possible for armed citizens to actually overthrow the US government without support from the conventional armed forces. but it's not necessary to completely overthrow a government to extract concessions. a credible threat of widespread chaos and violence might tip the scales against a very unpopular policy.
> it's not necessary to completely overthrow a government to extract concessions. a credible threat of widespread chaos and violence might tip the scales against a very unpopular policy.
And how often does that actually succeed? The American Civil War caused the South to lose out on slavery, at great cost to its economy; while The Troubles didn't induce the UK to give any concessions it wasn't already willing to give beforehand.
Most insurgencies ultimately fail in their aims, and this is already when we're talking about insurgencies against weak governments and civil societies where monopoly of force is close to nonexistent in the first place.
while The Troubles didn't induce the UK to give any concessions it wasn't already willing to give beforehand.
Quite the contrary. The Troubles in Northern Ireland were not a unilateral insurrection, but an emergent response to aggressive incumbent paramilitarism when confronted with demands for greater civil rights for the minority population. Military strategists favored withdrawal of the occupying forces; political hardline thinking won out, but was unable to win a conflict of attrition and eventually settled for power-sharing and de-escalation. At the present Northern Ireland is as likely to see reunification with the rest of the island as continued membership of the UK.
> while The Troubles didn't induce the UK to give any concessions it wasn't already willing to give beforehand.
You're saying that the Brits would have agreed to let Northern Ireland vote to join rejoin the rest of Ireland at some point in the future WITHOUT force of arms? I don't believe you. And yes, that was included [0] in the Good Friday Agreement.
And even if most insurgencies fail, "let's not do that because it might provoke an insurgency" is valuable all on its own.
Scotland got its devolution referendums and independence referendums without severe political violence, so I suspect that the British would have been willing to let such a vote happen if the Sunningdale agreement had lasted longer.
An alternative interpretation is that Scotland got its independence referendums because London had seen how much of a clusterfuck the "no, let's ignore the desires of this not-a-colony" route could end up being.
>while The Troubles didn't induce the UK to give any concessions it wasn't already willing to give beforehand.
If you look farther back in Ireland's history, it seems like Ireland's independence from UK was achieved mostly by violent resistance. After there was too much violence, England finally decided it wasn't worth it, and came up with an agreement allowing most of the island to become independent, with the exception of a handful of northern counties.
this seems like a weak argument to begin with when, after eighteen years of war with the US, the taliban still controls a significant part of the country. not sure what the current status of the accord is, but earlier this year the US was negotiating a peace deal with the taliban rather than the "legitimate" afghan government.
"Bombing to oblivion" might be a less attractive option when directed against things that produce the wealth to support an advanced air force in the first place.
Also, as a counterpoint, Vietnam did get bombed to oblivion and persevered through it.
He has to have at least 6 various ATF licenses to arm, and load, weapons on his planes. Incidentally, if we were going to let civilians arm themselves, imo that's the only way to go about it - make it an extremely licensed, yet free, process.
But you're still not wrong - I have the same opinion. In any case 2nd amendment arguments on fighting the USA are moot - the 2nd amendment doesn't legalize fighting the USA. Guns or not, if the USA decides you're the enemy, you're automatically a terrorist regardless. And terrorists have not had any issues getting guns.
This contributes to my concerns about mechanization and AI. Previously, in the case of insurrection a (perceived to be overthrow-worthy) government might eventually have to convince air force pilots to bomb their own countrymen, possibly relatives. It radically changes the equation, shifting power towards insurrectionists with mere rifles.
Automated drone strikes makes it easier for a totalitarian regime to wage war against its own people.
It's extremely useful when you are vastly outnumbered in the opposing population and much of the ground forces would rather desert than execute their own people. See Syria.
The only reason it worked in Syria is because of Foreign support. And because a large faction of the population decided that actually they were fine with Assad.
If you were vastly outnumbered and tried to wage war against your population they can just strike. And just like that all your advanced weapons won't be able to be maintained.
If you want to force people to work on your factories, bombs won't be very useful, but guns will be.
Or you could compare them to the partisans that conducted sabotage against the Wehrmacht in Eastern Europe, for instance. The military would grind to a halt without a functioning supply chain, and it's very difficult to protect all of the links in that chain against an armed and hostile population.
Many more of those links would be physically inside the US than were inside Afghanistan.
Besides which, the Taliban has arguably won in Afghanistan by virtue of simply continuing to exist. Hostile military occupation is unsustainably expensive, doubly so when the terrain in question is unfavorable.
Anyway, you'll probably see the same thing play out here in the coming years.
The Chinese and the Russians seem to have figured out how to own the US without having to deal with an insurgency. What are people going to do, seize the Walmart?
If Americans want to be well armed, they need to start visiting the library instead of the gun shop.
Would the Holocaust have been quite as terrible if every citizen (Jewish included) owned a gun, and it wasn’t just the bad guys backed by the government who were armed?
Also, to talk about how it’s hopeless to have a gun versus a drone — there aren’t enough drones, and Vietnam is a great counter-example for “tech always wins.”
>Would the Holocaust have been quite as terrible if every citizen (Jewish included) owned a gun, and it wasn’t just the bad guys backed by the government who were armed?
Maybe, maybe not. The Nazis weren't just "bad guys backed by the government who were armed," they were a political party, which included much of the German populace, who supported its anti-Semitic ideals. It's possible more guns would have ended the Holocaust sooner, but it's also possible they would have just made it more efficient.
I imagine that any German, if they desired to commit genocide, could join the Nazis and acquire a weapon. Those who disagreed with the party in power could not.
Citizens being armed would both change the calculus of a genocide, making it harder to execute and possibly preventing it.
If attempted anyway, it would be much messier for the Nazis.
It's not clear aside from the fig leaf of 'being a Navy contractor' whether this is a mercenary for hire airforce. I wonder what regulatory control there is on a private airforce located in the US?
It's actually pretty clear, since it says what they do right in the article:
> He was also one of the early pioneers of the then-fledgling, if not wholly experimental, adversary air support market. In the early 2000s, he joined forces with the Airborne Tactical Advantage Company (ATAC), which was blazing a trail with their contracts with the Navy to supply fast jet targets and electronic warfare pod toting adversaries that mimic everything from enemy cruise missiles to fighters for Navy and Marine fighter aircraft and Navy surface combatants to train against.
In other words, they provide targets for training for Navy aircraft.
I did read the article. What they say they do and the regulatory oversight of what they might actually be allowed to do or prevented from doing is what concerns me.
Just because they have been hired to pretend kill Navy pilots doesn't necessarily rule out that they are a "mercenary for hire airforce" that could also be hired for other more violent tasks. OP was questioning what regulation exists to stop that from happening.
A big one is that you can't buy air to air missiles.
There's talk that these types of aggressor squadrons might be a last-ditch aircraft reserve for the US or allies, but they're not exactly primed/ready for war without armament or modern radars.
(No, the fact that some of their aircraft have functional cannons and cannon rounds doesn't count).
Do these not have modern radar? The article said they were being purchased without any downgrades from their time flying with the RAAF.
Also does this mean they can be legally outfitted with air to ground armaments? I don't know much about these aircraft, but I imagine since they are used for simulated combat that they have decent evasive capabilities even if they can't directly engaged other aircraft.
> Do these not have modern radar? The article said they were being purchased without any downgrades from their time flying with the RAAF.
They have something that would be considered a nice radar for a 4th gen fighter, 20 years ago. Whether that's a modern radar today...
And I imagine they can legally be outfitted with all sorts of things! Getting approval to actually use those bombs would be a bit touchy though. (And it's not like these have a huge strike radius, either - without tanker support, they won't be making it much past 500 miles before having to turn for base)
A big one is that you can't buy air to air missiles.
That's the sort of thing that can be easily circumvented and where the legal environment can also change rapidly. I will not be in the least bit surprised if a private military company deploys air power within the next 5 years.
> He now holds eight licenses with the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms (ATF), allowing him to own military machine guns and cannons, as well as thousands of rounds of ammunition to fire through them.
Dude is totally not an intelligence asset of any kind. Just an enthusiast.
I mean, I've known people
who owned ATF-licensed automatic weapons. They're scarce because no new licenses have been issued since the '86 ban, but prices for grandfathered weapons tend to run in the order of tens of thousands of dollars, depending on what you want and who's selling.
If you're looking for conspiracy theories, looking past the ownership of large numbers of military jets, to the handful of rich-enthusiast-grade small arms, seems like a weird flex.
You are aware that the vast majority of defense articles employed by the military are not manufactured by the military right? Lots of companies have such licenses. The article even lists his competitors in this particular space.
"He was also one of the early pioneers of the then-fledgling, if not wholly experimental, adversary air support market. In the early 2000s, he joined forces with the Airborne Tactical Advantage Company (ATAC), which was blazing a trail with their contracts with the Navy to supply fast jet targets and electronic warfare pod toting adversaries that mimic everything from enemy cruise missiles to fighters for Navy and Marine fighter aircraft and Navy surface combatants to train against. "