A man owns the most advanced private air force after buying 46 F/A-18s

Post by foota » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 12:47 AM UTC

parsimo2010 wrote: post #94

dv_dt wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is "cheaper" like - its cheaper to to have supply chains for critical medical gear in China. Makes for a great target for espionage on military tactics and capabilities for one risk.

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 targ…

Post by mkl » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 1:39 AM UTC

jowsie wrote: post #269

t0mas88 wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I'm a brit and do it out of lazyness.

Post by pmarreck » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 1:50 AM UTC

blakesterz wrote: post #8

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 fo…

Post by secfirstmd » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 2:29 AM UTC

ohyes wrote: post #237

magduf wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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? Do foreign militaries also have these policies?

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 wartim…

Post by valuearb » Sat, Apr 11, 2020, 2:38 AM UTC

tootie wrote: post #95

salmo wrote: post #82

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, whi…

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…