Chris Lynch's slanted view on sports, politics and entertainment. Please send thoughts or comments to chris.lynch@gmail.com
Stuff I found interesting or amusing and wanted to share.
- Damien Harris announced his retirement from the NFL. May the road rise to meet you.
- Jonathan Haidt on banning smartphones for kids. Reminder his new book is coming out. It's on my list.
- The biggest purveyor of misinformation has proven time and time again to be the government.
The 2008 defense bill passed last week by Congress designates $3.15 billion to purchase an additional 20 F-22 Raptor jets, , a successor to the F-15, from Lockheed Martin. Over the next several years, the Air Force wants to maintain or even step up spending on both Raptors and the F-35 Lightning II (aka the Joint Strike Fighter). But some in Congress have been pushing to limit Air Force spending in order to beef up ground forces. According to the online rumor mill, the well-publicized shutdown of F-15s is meant to provide the Air Force with some leverage when the bean counters come knocking.I - for one - don't buy into this being a intra-service maneuver to gain the upper hand in any budget situation. I see this as an offshoot of having fighter jets in service that should have been rotated out for newer models years ago. The F-15's in service today (as I understand it) range in vintage from 1975 models to 2004 models. Those older models are the equivalent of asking the state police to make due on the highway with 1975 Fury III's.
Although the F-15E models are newer, they only represent about one third of the Air Force's F-15s. The older majority of the F-15s are of more concern for Air Force officials.I've said it before - anyone who has ever owned an older car knows that at some point it is more cost effective to get a new(er) car than to keep putting money into repairs on the old one. It is a scandal that our airspace security and the lives of the airmen flying these planes has been put at risk the way it has been.
"What we've got here is an example, in the C model, of what happens when you have an airplane that's about 25 years old," said Maj. Gen. David Gillett, ACC director of logistics.
The Nov. 2 crash also demonstrates the importance of recapitalizing the Air Force's fighter fleet, said the general. ACC's current fleet is the oldest in Air Force history. New systems are more capable, cost less to operate, require fewer people to maintain and can survive modern threat environments, ACC officials have said.
