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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

#201

Post by dTal »

voxic11 wrote: post #35
ardy42 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-…

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.

I question the tacit assumption that all "enemy" aircraft types they might wish to simulate will have worse performance than an F-18.

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

#202

Post by chipsa »

magduf wrote: post #148
parsimo2010 wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 retire…

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?

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.

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

#203

Post by fsckboy »

Grakel wrote: post #131
Zenst wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Would have." "May have."

his spelling error was "would've" and "may've"

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

#204

Post by manfredo »

fock wrote: post #65
bpodgursky wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 th…

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 c…

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.

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

#205

Post by lobotryas »

justaguyhere wrote: post #43
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."

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…

Why not? As a civ you can buy even a decommed tank if you got the money and stomach for beurocracy.

The trick is buying ammunition for them and also undoing some decomm work that requires expertise and equipment.

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

#206

Post by rhizome »

Zenst wrote: post #33
burlesona wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 forma…

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.

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

#207

Post by lobotryas »

mthoms wrote: post #141
balls187 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

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

#208

Post by crocodiletears »

DuskStar wrote: post #167
xnyan wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"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.

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

#210

Post by mattclase »

haberman wrote: post #16

> 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?

I'm no expert, but its a very vague statement.

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.

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