This man is an inspiration. He has a clear purpose for doing this incredibly fun thing. Living the dream!
A man owns the most advanced private air force after buying 46 F/A-18s
211–220 of 349 posts
Re: A man owns the most advanced private air force after buying 46 F/A-18s
#212I 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.
Re: A man owns the most advanced private air force after buying 46 F/A-18s
#213I 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.
Welcome to the way American government works. We create needs and give the money to corporations to fulfill those needs.
Re: A man owns the most advanced private air force after buying 46 F/A-18s
#214I 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…
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.
Re: A man owns the most advanced private air force after buying 46 F/A-18s
#215I 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…
He's a contractor for the USAF. Are you concerned that Boeing has planes?
Frankly your concerns are completely unjustified.
Re: A man owns the most advanced private air force after buying 46 F/A-18s
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
"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…
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…
You're right, Bubba doesn't need an AR-15, but Rosa Parks didn't need to sit in the front of the bus, the back of the bus was more than good enough to get her to work.
Re: A man owns the most advanced private air force after buying 46 F/A-18s
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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…
> 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 i…
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.
Re: A man owns the most advanced private air force after buying 46 F/A-18s
#218Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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!
Re: A man owns the most advanced private air force after buying 46 F/A-18s
#219Air 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…
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.
Re: A man owns the most advanced private air force after buying 46 F/A-18s
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The munitions come from the US. They can be fitted if desired.