Category: Military Flying

US considers launching drones from Indian Ocean coral atolls

The US is looking to use the Australian-administered Cocos Islands – a group of tiny coral atolls in the Indian Ocean – to launch unmanned drones as it continues its strategic pivot away from the Middle East towards Asia Pacific.

 

We hopefully never completely do away with brave men, and women, hurling down runways and flight decks, flying into harms way to put warheads on foreheads but the writing’s on the wall.  Unmanned drones are going to play an increasingly important role in the combined arms package in the future and having a few cheap and “unsinkable” bases in the Indian Ocean would be a thorn in China’s side in any regional conflict.

Chinook helicopters a vital supply line to soldiers.

I spent twelve years in the Minnesota Army National Guard as a UH-1H “Huey” crew chief getting out just as the Blackhawks were coming on line.  And while the Hawks get all the press and look really sexy the Chinooks are the real work horse of Army aviation and don’t get the respect they deserve.  I love the “ROUGN’N REDDY” nose art on the Australian Chook.  Can’t have anything like that on US. aircraft, might offend somebody.

 

Yeovilton Air Day 2011 « Fast Air Photography.

More great shots from across the pond.

Flightdeck Friday — The Ties That Bind (II): Remembering Ned Geiger | Steeljaw Scribe.

Another good man gone, far too soon.

 

As with all frustrated fighter pilots I could watch videos like this all day, well not all day, Mrs. Scary still has a long honey do list that I’m doing my best to avoid, but I digress.  We all wish someone would give us a multi-million dollar fighter to bust clouds and drop JDAMs with but the closest I’ve come to that playing with the clouds in a jump plane worth literally hundreds of dollars on the way down from dropping meat bombs.  The Navy pilots have one other advantage over jump pilots, their bombs aren’t flying around in the pattern when they’re trying to land.

 

 

So uh, yeah. That awkward-looking thing is Boeing’s Phantom Eye high-altitude UAV design doing a 30-knot taxi test at Edwards Air Force Base on March 10.

 

Enthusiasts Call For More, Faster US Bombers | AVIATION WEEK.

I recently read that the latest upgrades on the B-52 will extend it’s service life until 2040.  With the price tag of a new bomber fleet, especially one with supersonic capabilities,  higher than than anyone is willing to pay our air crews could someday be flying 100 year old airframes.  Personally I think drones and flying bombs make more sense than sending heavy bombers into heavily defended targets.  When you think about the cost of training air crews and maintaining them, i.e. pay, housing, medical costs and retirement it has to be cheaper to build flying bombs that can take off, or be launched, fly hundreds of miles and strike the target.  Why send bombers when you can just send the bombs? 

 

They might not be fifth generation fighters but that many F-16s will ruin anybody’s day. 

Quantity has a quality all it’s own.