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

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

#11

Post by whatsreal »

ForHackernews wrote: post #9
SloopJon wrote: post #4

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."

His company is a US Air Force contractor, so I'm sure they don't have a problem giving him parts and maintenance help. Is this another example of the DoD contracting out something that would cost half as much for them to do themselves?

From the article he is saving the DoD some money on JTAC training operations. I'd imagine their role here would also save some money.

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

#13

Post by burlesona »

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…

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.

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

#16

Post by haberman »

> 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?

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

#17

Post by 0xff00ffee »

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,

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

#18

Post by 0xff00ffee »

tomcam wrote: post #5

> 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.

Right? How does one "contractor" obtain so much power?

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

#19

Post by bpodgursky »

save_ferris wrote: post #10
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…

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

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

#20

Post by ardy42 »

burlesona wrote: post #13
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…

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 th…

> 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?

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