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Subject:
naval air: what could've been
Reserva120@hotmail.com
3/21/2002 5:50:34 PM
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| I think the naval air arm is in real trouble across the board, and it's not due to what can only be called superhuman efforts of the fleet servicemen to keep things going,despite very worn equiment(due to very high deployment rates of that bastard Clinton while he at the very same time was cutting spares and defered replacement of ships and aircraft.....Some and not a small part can be blamed on the navy brass,despite any ads to the contrary, the fleet is painfully slow to buy or retro-fit up-to-date items...and while some things are for Navy reasons(time proven) and thefore good,most are not commo,sat re-lays, recon pods(sharps),land attack missiles etc etc....But the two big killers that's hard to fully understand is why their ships(mainly aircraftcarriers,their backbone and the one thing they will go to the mat over) along with the aircraft that go on them are and have been for some time right out of the steam age.Even with the cold war requiments any method of carrier deployment showed long range in-land airstrikes to be their major tasking.And as with all things hindsight what really hurt them was how little they were part of the attack forces in the gulf-war.Due to many reasons,it was a air....land............................sea campainge, but the one that comes to mind the most is one where a down naval airmen upon being rescued by Air Force SAR and coming across F-15 strike-eagles "thought is was seeing something out of Star Wars,something echoed by many naval airmen since. What i found to be the more telling was that while these naval airmen were in complete awe of what they saw, Strike-Eagles drivers and the rest of the air force were (rightly so ) complaining about the lack of items the air force was holding back from them, items they knew they had or at least were in the pipe-line. I don't know if that mindset can be fully overcomed, Mybe CVX and the new F-35 will put them back in the running, but one can't help but think what if the navy had addressed manpower requiments and high-tech retro-fits to carriers, got on board a navlized F-22( very doable even today) and what of the ill-forgotton A-12 long-range attack plane and the sub-systems they would have bringed ...as well as the change in thinking they would have brought, wow what could have been......Allan.................P.s i've heard that as a thank you to Blair that the navy is REALLY looking at the MR4 Nimrod aircraft as a replacement,odd how whole fleets the world over CAN NOT find true modern four engines patrol aircraft that are not less than 35 years old in design,hell mybe it is a navy thing..... |
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