XBradTC

AN EDINBURGH-born aviator who was dubbed the world’s greatest test pilot has died at the age of 97.

Captain Eric “Winkle” Brown, from Leith, a veteran of the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm holds the world record for flying the greatest number of different aircraft and also piloted Britain’s first supersonic flight.

via www.edinburghnews.scotsman.com

RIP, Captain Brown.

Among is many other accomplishments, he has more traps aboard a carrier than anyone else in history.

I never got to fire one, but I did get to use the tracking trainer demonstrated later on in this video, and watch a live fire exercise (though that exercise used Ballistic Aerial Targets rather than the RCATs use in this vid).

Key Points

• The USAF is studying potential acquisition strategies to replace its UH-1N Twin Hueys
• The service is considering a sole-source contract for the portion of the fleet designated for ICBM security

The US Air Force (USAF) has budgeted nearly USD2.5 billion over five years to replace its fleet of Bell UH-1N Twin Hueys and is considering a sole-source contract for the portion of the 72-aircraft requirement designated for security operations around its 450 Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile silos, according to a senior service official.

"About half the fleet supports the missile fields where ICBMs are," Lieutenant General Mike Holmes, USAF deputy chief of staff for strategic plans and requirements, said during a 18 February Air Force Association event.

"One of the things we're considering is splitting the missile field requirement off from the rest of the requirement, and then if we do that, we'll determine about whether we want to go sole-source or competition within that," he said.

via www.janes.com

This is part of what is so frustrating about the DoD procurement system. The endless studies over what is a relatively minor procurement that an O-6 program manager should be able to execute in one day.

Flip a coin. Buy new Blackhawks and piggyback off the existing Army multiyear buy (which would help drive down unit costs, by the way) while yielding a more capable platform, even if hourly operating costs are somewhat higher. That cost would be offset by lower maintenance costs per flight hour compared to the decrepit UH-1N fleet.

Alternatively, the Air Force could adopt the UH-72A Lakota for either both the missile support role and other uses, or split the mission. UH-60s for missile support, and UH-72s for other missions.

But no, we're going to spend a couple more years studying the problem.

Scene: A dimly lit Tactical Operations Center inside the Combined Operations Center, or COC. The low glow of computer monitors casts a romantic hue over the workspace. A map is projected onto the wall with graphic overlays depicting ongoing military operations. The smell of Simple Green lingers in the enclosed space. A copy of “50 Shades of Multicam™” by Doctrine Man lies on the table. The S-3 (operations officer) and the S-2 (intelligence officer) are preparing to wargame for an upcoming operation, a tasker given late in the day. Naturally, most of the staff has fled, leaving only these two to develop the plans for victory.

via angrystaffofficer.com

Mmmmmmmmm……
Hot, steamy doctrine.

Read the whole thing.

Grab a cup of coffee, folks. This is a long one, but fun and interesting nonetheless. 

Imagine you've never flown an airplane before. Zip, nada, nothing. And yet you want to fly a 737. Ordinarily, you'd be looking at about three years, minimum, of training. 

Our host here does it in 30 days. It's Belgian, and in, I think, Flemish, but the important stuff has been translated. And yes, he really does fly it. 

Fred Cherry, an Air Force fighter pilot, was downed by enemy fire over North Vietnam in 1965, and he spent more than seven years a prisoner of war.

He had grown up in the Jim Crow South, and his captors made it clear he could mitigate the harshness of his incarceration, including routine torture, and improve his living conditions by speaking out against the racial injustice and discrimination that he had faced as an African American in the United States.

When beatings failed to bring him around, his jailers tried another tactic. They assigned a self-described "Southern white boy" as his cellmate, hoping that racial antipathy between the two men would weaken his resolve and produce a propaganda triumph for North Vietnam.

The plan failed.

Instead, the two men, Cherry and a Navy fighter pilot, then-Ensign Porter Halyburton, became fast and lifelong friends. Each would credit the other with having saved his life.

via www.stripes.com

That is one tough man.