His company buys these things and then has a contract with the Navy for when they do training. So IF I'm reading this correctly, it's not just some random dude buying all this stuff for fun, it's his company and they have a very clear business purpose for doing this.
"He was also one of the early pioneers of the then-fledgling, if not wholly experimental, adversary air support market. In the early 2000s, he joined forces with the Airborne Tactical Advantage Company (ATAC), which was blazing a trail with their contracts with the Navy to supply fast jet targets and electronic warfare pod toting adversaries that mimic everything from enemy cruise missiles to fighters for Navy and Marine fighter aircraft and Navy surface combatants to train against. "
Yeah I had to follow a bunch of the links to figure this out, but in short, he runs an air combat training company, and the Air Force and Navy pay him to field a training “adversary” for the military pilots to fight in mock combat.
From further reading it sounds like the idea here is to get a diverse and different field of aircraft. I guess the NATO forces can practice against each other, but it’s not realistic in the sense that any opposition they would face in a real war would theoretically be using very different equipment. So guys like Air USA are paid to conjure up a fleet of all kinds of aircraft, and pilots to fly them, which will act as more legitimate test.
Effectively privatised wargames. Many forces cross train in wargames scenarios on various scales, this is just a business that operates by providing services in one of those fields. Kinda neat in many ways and equally wonder how outsourcing would have financial gains for both parties. Certainly the combat/training dn flying styles will be different and with that offer some good training that flying against more formalised up for the ranks pilots would of been taught. So certainly adds a nice dynamic and that alone may be the value payoff for both parties.
Though I suspect that maintenance and other process can be more streamlined in the private sector and that certainly will be an area in which the cost/payoff may balance out well for both for the needs required. Why have a combat ready serviced aircraft with around the clock support and maintenance when the usage can be dedicated to just 9-5 support for the task at hand. Hence outsourcing in this situation would see a huge saving in that area from that aspect alone. Certainly be a large factor and this is a business, so clearly some profit to be made that can enable the purchase of those many non-cheap aircraft. So for this to pay off as a business over being done inhouse, does make you wonder and try to work out why that is.
> Yeah I had to follow a bunch of the links to figure this out, but in short, he runs an air combat training company, and the Air Force and Navy pay him to field a training “adversary” for the military pilots to fight in mock combat.
The thing that I don't get is why would the US hire him to provide adversary aircraft that it already operates? I could totally understand them hiring someone who operated a bunch of ex-Russian aircraft, but if they wanted F-18s why not just call the Navy?
he runs an air combat training company, and the Air Force and Navy pay him to field a training “adversary” for the military pilots to fight in mock combat.
Ask the RAF how outsourcing flight training is working for them.
"This guy figured it would be fun to own fighter jets and so figured out a business he could be in that would allow him to do so with the government's blessing."
I don't know if that is what he did of course, just guessing. It is a strategy I've seen employed successfully before. My daughter used this strategy by getting a research project approved for school on "studying organizing goal directed group behavior in online groups" where it was required she join several different raiding guilds in World of Warcraft to evaluate their strategies for co-operative goal seeking behavior. I thought it was pretty creative.
My favorite milblogger retired, hated having a "regular" job, joined ATAC and then died not too long later flying an old Israeli fighter. I'm glad if these companies are getting newer aircraft.
Sounds fairly straightforward, but what happens if that business plan changes? If private paramilitary aviation is anything like other private security services, then there’s definitely a market with some pretty deep pockets with questionable motives.
1) It's enormously expensive and difficult to arm disarmed 4th gen planes. You'd need another extremely expensive military contractor to equip them with (expensive) missiles, rockets, or whatever. Plus, in all likelihood, the defense contractors would refuse, if it did anything to risk federal contracts.
2) These planes (superhornets) are is a wildly inefficient way to arm a paramilitary. These things cost tens of thousands of dollars an hour to fly, are built to fight nation-states, and you can't exactly maintain them on an airstrip in the middle of nowhere. If you want to gun down rebels in the jungle, you'd buy Super Tucanos, for a tenth or less of the cost-per-hour fly time (plus, easier to arm and provision)
Edit: my bad, just regular hornets, not superhornets. read too quickly
But what if that man who owns that company, decides he wants to change his business model?
The private part is still important. It's a legitimate fleet of military aircraft that would rival the air forces of many small countries that is directed by a man who really isn't accountable to us outside our borders.
This isn't new territory, it's just that you have to go back a few hundred years to see small groups of private individuals accumulate this much physical force. Just think about some of the disagreements that have occurred over scare resources for responding to the pandemic. Imagine how that picture can change.
It would probably be accessible to ultra-high net worth folks. Something like a super yacht can cost 2 mil/yr. Back of the napkin math indicates that's about equivalent to taking an FA18 out for a few hours per week.
So if a wealthy person flew it one day a week for 8hrs, we are around $8m annual. For high net worth that's realistic. Cheap than a lot of super yachts on the 10% running cost rule. And likely would fly less.
As far as I know, the last operational Cheetahs were sold by the SANDF to similar contractors. If you look in the article, you'll see:
> Kirlin says that he looked at all the aircraft his competitors have bought, especially the Mirage F-1s from Spain and France and Atlas Cheetahs from South Africa that his competitors ATAC and Draken USA have snapped up, and passed on them. He actually showed me the approved ATF forms for importing these jets dated years ago as proof of his claim. Three primary reasons were behind his decisions. The first was concern that they simply weren't the right plane for the job—he wanted something more advanced. Second, that working with certain foreign original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) would be a major hassle.
> Finally, he is a firm believer in buying flyers, not aircraft that have been mothballed for years, if at all possible.
Edit: By the way, the Pilatus PC-9 airplanes shown in one of the images is the same plane that the South African acrobatics Silver Falcons use.
This is such weird phrasing. I imagine the corporate prison industry uses the same words: "She was also one of the pioneers of the fledgling private incarceration market. By creating this dynamic new industry, unlimited synergies can by unleashed within public-private partnerships".
I 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, while he focuses on a fleet that can provide lowest cost options to provide appropriate training data.
A lot of that fleet is made up of trainers fit with electronics packages and Cessnas similarly Frankensteined. Then the military and manufacturers rent it out vs maintaining their own limited-use fleet.
The hornets are great, not just because they’re sweet jets, but because of the electronics packages and maintainability.
...and then he has a paramilitary nut/Bond villain vibe that keeps the story less dry and probably appeals to the intended audience.
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 guy buying up a private air force. We have several guys building space vehicles. If Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos wanted a nuclear-armed ICBM could we actually stop them? Or, maybe more likely, some QAnon nutjob getting his hands on an armored vehicle and driving it through a shopping mall in Atlanta?
You do realize that there's a ton of precedent for privately-owned heavy weaponry in the US, right? As the 2nd Amendment folks would point out, there used to be US citizens who owned warships.
F/A-18s without guided weaponry aren't really that much of a change. (they've got cannons, but afact no JDAMs, JSOWs, AMRAAMs or even dumb bombs)
> Or, maybe more likely, some QAnon nutjob getting his hands on an armored vehicle and driving it through a shopping mall in Atlanta?
Well, you can literally buy WW2 era tanks. And it doesn't take all that much to make them street-legal. This isn't new. And yet, we DON'T see nutjobs abusing it.
What exactly are nutjobs going to do with any of these weapons?
We've had cases of nutjobs getting their hands on tanks, or building their own armored bulldozers, and going on rampages. It's a pain, but it's not a complete disaster. These vehicles aren't invincible. They generally get stuck somewhere, and then the police break open the hatch and shoot the nutjob. Tanks really can't do much by themselves besides drive around and run into some things (or over them, but again, you have to be careful or it can get stuck, break a tread, etc.). Tanks armed with 120mm cannon rounds, of course, can do some serious damage, but private individuals aren't allowed to own that kind of weaponry at all.
It's the same with an older fighter jet. What are you going to do with it? Fly it into a building? Sure, that'll be worse than flying a Cessna into a building, but still, it's not like a WMD. Even if you could fully load the 20mm cannon, you're not going to do that much damage; they don't hold that much ammo anyway (only enough for something like 5-10 seconds of sustained fire I think). Yeah, being able to drop a bunch of 500lb bombs would be a disaster, but again, you can't get that stuff.
Yes, if Elon or Jeff wanted a nuclear-armed ICBM, the government would certainly stop them. Building a rocket is one thing, building a nuclear warhead is something else entirely, and is not something trivial that just anyone can do. Iran (an actual nation-state) has been trying for some time and still hasn't succeeded as far as we know. It takes a lot of facilities and special materials to build something like that.
It doesn't set a legal precedent of much significance, because in the USA there are people who own tanks, artillery and helicopter gunships.
It doesn't make sense to be so alarmed by it. People who own heavy weapons overwhelmingly use them for lawful purposes. This is true of people who own guns, as well. We can't treat every potentially dangerous thing as if it is a clear, present danger: that is like treating all drivers as "potential drunk drivers". You can't write policy around that.
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.
You mean these jets aren't demilitarized? I've read about civilians buying surplus military aircraft but they lacked radar and weapons at the very least.
Air 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 be hard scheduled.
• Cost per flight hour is much lower for common aggressor platforms (A-4, L-39, F1M, and now these legacy F-18s) than the aircraft the Air Force is training in.
• Private companies can more easily maintain and source parts for aircraft the military cannot (Migs, for instance).
This particular sale was the remainder of the RAAF's retired F-18 fleet, which Canada started buying in early 2019. These are _not_ Super Hornets.
Some of these companies have been around for decades. Some competitors:
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.
I'm amazed that this is even possible. I seem to recall that there are countries with unusable fighter jets, because the U.S. will no longer supply parts and expertise for maintenance. The article indeed states: "the purchase does include all of the RAAF's F/A-18 spare parts inventory and test equipment, valued at over a billion dollars alone."
I too am amazed that this is even possible, but for different reasons. Do other first world countries allow non-government companies to hold this much sophisticated military hardware? Maybe so, I just haven't heard of it.
The other day I was reading about some Saudi prince's half a billion (!!!) dollar yacht.
Sometimes I wonder if I live in the same planet as these people. It is hard for me to imagine such wealth and power
> Do other first world countries allow non-government companies to hold this much sophisticated military hardware?
No, they don't. And neither does the US.
The F18 is now nearly 40 years old. Typically the advanced and sophisticated aspects of airframes are not allowed for sale, to private entities, or even non-us government ones.
The advanced avionics, weapons systems, etc, are all tightly controlled.
USAF is also looking to award a large contract for operating tanker aircraft for supporting training exercises of the USAF. Private companies will be operating aircraft to offer mid air refuelling for USAF training activities.
> I seem to recall that there are countries with unusable fighter jets, because the U.S. will no longer supply parts and expertise for maintenance.
Fighter jets are heavily dependent on spares and expertise, but Iranian F-14 Tomcats managed to score something like 50 or 60 kills during the Iran-Iraq war, which happened after the US stopped playing nice with them. They're still flying a few of them today.
If this makes you wonder how they're doing this if everyone is playing by the export rules involving selling arms to Iran, you wouldn't be the first. They have some native production capacity, but...
> I seem to recall that there are countries with unusable fighter jets, because the U.S. will no longer supply parts and expertise for maintenance.
Turns out the US has this problem as well... my brother is a Harrier pilot, and it seems to me like the US has mostly run out of spare parts for them. They bought a number of RAF Harriers for parts, but even so, it's a question of whether the F-35 will actually be ready in time to replace those squadrons.
I grew up in the town where Mr Kirlin and his businesses are based, have lived there on-and-off, and know him through various personal and professional circles. I also am formerly of the aerospace industry myself.
The Kirlin’s occupy a very particular role in the city.
once operating the largest franchise of Hallmark stores for nearly 60 years before quickly going out of business a few years ago. Other Kirlin defunct businesses include “The Fly”, a Blue jeans only store in the 80’s, KSNI (Kirlin Super Net Inc) a dial-up ISP in the 90’s.
The mentioned Kirlin of the story used to run “The World Freefall Convention” the largest skydiving convention in the world. For about a week and a half the small Airport would be beset by 10,000 skydivers and cessnas. One quirk of Quincys airport is a super long runway that can support a DB Cooper style 737 jet landing, so one would be chartered to allow 100s of skydivers to do high altitude jumps.
Unfortunately the convention ended because of the Bible-thumping city leaders didn’t care for the weeks of debauchery that were part of the festival attendees.
I lived in Quincy for about ten years and grew up in Hannibal.
I've met several members of the Kirlin family and Don's a sharp, cordial guy. I find it interesting that he's made so good a go at such an unconventional business when other members of the family have had such problems in speciality retail. I wonder where the Hallmark store business would be if Don had been in charge.
I'll not comment on the ISP because I used to work for a competitor with a fierce rivalry.
It is the longest runway I’ve ever landed on that did not have a tower system. After doing a few general aviation flights into that airport at rare times of congestion, I can see why the United crash happened.
But surely the private pilots training against US military pilots get to see the current tactics, and the private radars and electronic warfare pods get to record the current combat settings of US military radars and electronic warfare systems. There is no way this is not all classified top secret and a major target for foreign intelligence. So all his personnel, pilots and technicians, need clearance as if they were active military (maybe more, because advanced tactics and information on all different NATO allies and aircraft, not a single squadron like most service member know).
Even if for some reason it is cheaper for the US military to have this in a private company instead of maintaining aggressor squadrons with Migs, how is this secure?
That's not the secret sauce, in the same sense that keeping source closed doesn't usually improve code quality from a security standpoint.
The other counter is there are 26 operators of the F-16. Frankly it would be easier both in practice and legality to get cooperation from some dude in Pakistan or Venezuela than a US citizen who can at least sorta be watched over.
Most of the tactics are not terribly advanced in the sense of some mysterious secret martial arts kick that defeats all. Most of the time battles are won logistically long before the fighting starts. Everyone in the business kinda knows what F16s do, not any more of a secret than knowing what Mig29s do, the struggle is always having enough resources in the right places at the right times to do anything about it.
Something that often surprises civilians is most US military manuals are freeware and have always been that way. If you want to learn how an Army Brigade Combat Team operates, you don't join the KGB and steal documents, you just download FM 3-96 and read it. This is why actual veterans get annoyed about fictional hollywood military stuff; if you don't understand the role of a BCT's information operations officer sufficient to portray one in a movie, its just sheer lazyness to make something up instead of simply reading the FM.
Its all part of the interesting strategy to handling massive public communications networks; half a century ago you could have an edge if it depended on having a secret sauce. Now that anyone with a web browser can download the official F-16 flight manual your strategy for having an edge relies on other forms of secret sauces.
A good analogy for the problem is that excellent world class scientific documentation exists for weight loss and athletic performance, yet most people will not train in those areas. Olympic athletes are not high performers because the textbooks for weight lifting are kept secret and only for their reading.
"A serious problem in planning against American doctrine is that the Americans do not read their manuals, nor do they feel any obligation to follow their doctrine."
Sigint agencies hoard 0days and know they get "burned" by using them against a serious opponent that records traffic and can analyze and reverse engineer malware. If the 0day is useful against your own systems, you would hesitate to use it before your systems are patched. I think electronic warfare and ECCM systems can have similar dynamics.
I always assumed (without any evidence) there is secret firmware or settings for these systems that will only be used in time of war and not used during training.
I guess Israeli Air Force knows countries like Iran have the Russian hardware and personnel/training for dealing with the Elta gear that Israel exports, but I also guess the Israeli Air Force has secret sauce, maybe using the same hardware, that they don't export and use only for striking strategic targets, knowing each strike teaches the opponent something.
There are simulators for military aircraft. Falcon BMS simulates the F-16. DCS World has an entire collection of simulated aircraft. They come with manuals too. I don't know what actual pilots think of the accuracy of the simulation but they're clearly no ordinary video games.
Nearly all pilots are former US military (or allied countries) and contractors often get military security clearances. All the pilots flying these jets will have a vetted, active clearance commensurate with the types of tactics they are simulating / seeing from the military planes.
All the pilots will be retired US (or close ally) instructor pilots. They equipment and scenarios are still classified. The jets live on US bases or similarly secured facillities (e.g. Boeing).
It's not really an "air force" in the military sense, as these planes are unarmed and can't shoot anyone down unless the pilot carries a handgun or rifle.
EDIT: Actually it looks like they do have machine guns with rounds, but nothing such as guided missiles.
I 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.
It ends up being a cost optimization & liability thing. Lets be honest, at least in the USA, our Government isn't terribly efficient with money. However, a corporate is driven by profit so they will be smarter.
If you had an Air Force squadron of older planes, they need their own dedicated mechanics who are certified. Government certified vendors, who've gone through the vetting/price bidding process (likely the vendors selling you the latest F35 or whatever will want in on it too...). Dedicate pilots certified to fly these planes and likely only these planes... etc. Instead you shift the logistics to a smaller and more agile group who can optimize for their very specific and small use case.
The private contractor can also go out and train people from other military forces (like Canadians, eh?). That allows them to make money from multiple sources, where as the US Government would not. Sure maybe join training exercises, but that's not the same thing.
There are a lot of cases in business where outsourcing something specialized to another party makes a lot of sense - unless there is a huge scale for it. Just look at The Cloud. For a lot of companies, it doesn't make sense to pay the overhead of datacenters, datacenter techs, etc etc. For a few companies, that do it at scale, it makes a ton of sense (Ex FAANG).
These are all real cost reasons, but there is an important reason you are missing: people. Firstly, pilots don't receive much training benefit from being cannon fodder for other pilots; they are not learning to operate their system (whether Super Hornet or JSF) but emulating another aircraft (e.g. a Sukhoi). The situation is slightly different for the agressor squadrons, as they are emulating the most dangerous threats (like J31 or PAK FA). But for everyday readiness training, spending time as the red force is not a joy.
Second, the USAF has a pilot numbers problem. The more experienced pilots are getting out as fast as they are able; there are many reasons for this, and COVID-19 will slow it down, but it will continue. To compensate they are trying to ram more in at the front of the funnel. This will cause other problems, not the least of which is a massive shortage of training personnel, causing overwork, causing more FCIs to leave, and so on.
The ex-USAF (and ex-RAAF) pilots flying these jets are enjoying not being sent overseas to shitty bases on long tours, or having to move their family interstate regularly, or dealing with braindead administrative detail and mandatory fun exercises some Colonel dreamed up. They are some of the best pilots around, and normally they would be lost to the airlines.
Well there is always at least one competitor as the military could in source the job. I am not surprised at all about the ability to do the job at lower costs.
Readit News
"He was also one of the early pioneers of the then-fledgling, if not wholly experimental, adversary air support market. In the early 2000s, he joined forces with the Airborne Tactical Advantage Company (ATAC), which was blazing a trail with their contracts with the Navy to supply fast jet targets and electronic warfare pod toting adversaries that mimic everything from enemy cruise missiles to fighters for Navy and Marine fighter aircraft and Navy surface combatants to train against. "
From further reading it sounds like the idea here is to get a diverse and different field of aircraft. I guess the NATO forces can practice against each other, but it’s not realistic in the sense that any opposition they would face in a real war would theoretically be using very different equipment. So guys like Air USA are paid to conjure up a fleet of all kinds of aircraft, and pilots to fly them, which will act as more legitimate test.
Though I suspect that maintenance and other process can be more streamlined in the private sector and that certainly will be an area in which the cost/payoff may balance out well for both for the needs required. Why have a combat ready serviced aircraft with around the clock support and maintenance when the usage can be dedicated to just 9-5 support for the task at hand. Hence outsourcing in this situation would see a huge saving in that area from that aspect alone. Certainly be a large factor and this is a business, so clearly some profit to be made that can enable the purchase of those many non-cheap aircraft. So for this to pay off as a business over being done inhouse, does make you wonder and try to work out why that is.
The thing that I don't get is why would the US hire him to provide adversary aircraft that it already operates? I could totally understand them hiring someone who operated a bunch of ex-Russian aircraft, but if they wanted F-18s why not just call the Navy?
Ask the RAF how outsourcing flight training is working for them.
(Hint: not well at all)
"This guy figured it would be fun to own fighter jets and so figured out a business he could be in that would allow him to do so with the government's blessing."
I don't know if that is what he did of course, just guessing. It is a strategy I've seen employed successfully before. My daughter used this strategy by getting a research project approved for school on "studying organizing goal directed group behavior in online groups" where it was required she join several different raiding guilds in World of Warcraft to evaluate their strategies for co-operative goal seeking behavior. I thought it was pretty creative.
2) These planes (superhornets) are is a wildly inefficient way to arm a paramilitary. These things cost tens of thousands of dollars an hour to fly, are built to fight nation-states, and you can't exactly maintain them on an airstrip in the middle of nowhere. If you want to gun down rebels in the jungle, you'd buy Super Tucanos, for a tenth or less of the cost-per-hour fly time (plus, easier to arm and provision)
Edit: my bad, just regular hornets, not superhornets. read too quickly
The private part is still important. It's a legitimate fleet of military aircraft that would rival the air forces of many small countries that is directed by a man who really isn't accountable to us outside our borders.
This isn't new territory, it's just that you have to go back a few hundred years to see small groups of private individuals accumulate this much physical force. Just think about some of the disagreements that have occurred over scare resources for responding to the pandemic. Imagine how that picture can change.
That would seem pretty unfeasible / unlikely for a private owner, even a wealthy one to fly it much at all.
> Kirlin says that he looked at all the aircraft his competitors have bought, especially the Mirage F-1s from Spain and France and Atlas Cheetahs from South Africa that his competitors ATAC and Draken USA have snapped up, and passed on them. He actually showed me the approved ATF forms for importing these jets dated years ago as proof of his claim. Three primary reasons were behind his decisions. The first was concern that they simply weren't the right plane for the job—he wanted something more advanced. Second, that working with certain foreign original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) would be a major hassle.
> Finally, he is a firm believer in buying flyers, not aircraft that have been mothballed for years, if at all possible.
Edit: By the way, the Pilatus PC-9 airplanes shown in one of the images is the same plane that the South African acrobatics Silver Falcons use.
New headline: A man owns the most advanced private air force and uses it to antagonize the US Navy for profit
> Private security company takes over as leader in air capability after recent asset purchase
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, while he focuses on a fleet that can provide lowest cost options to provide appropriate training data.
A lot of that fleet is made up of trainers fit with electronics packages and Cessnas similarly Frankensteined. Then the military and manufacturers rent it out vs maintaining their own limited-use fleet.
The hornets are great, not just because they’re sweet jets, but because of the electronics packages and maintainability.
...and then he has a paramilitary nut/Bond villain vibe that keeps the story less dry and probably appeals to the intended audience.
The US already has ludicrously expansive personal rights to weapons ownership for any reason. We have a guy buying up a private air force. We have several guys building space vehicles. If Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos wanted a nuclear-armed ICBM could we actually stop them? Or, maybe more likely, some QAnon nutjob getting his hands on an armored vehicle and driving it through a shopping mall in Atlanta?
F/A-18s without guided weaponry aren't really that much of a change. (they've got cannons, but afact no JDAMs, JSOWs, AMRAAMs or even dumb bombs)
> Or, maybe more likely, some QAnon nutjob getting his hands on an armored vehicle and driving it through a shopping mall in Atlanta?
Well, you can literally buy WW2 era tanks. And it doesn't take all that much to make them street-legal. This isn't new. And yet, we DON'T see nutjobs abusing it.
We've had cases of nutjobs getting their hands on tanks, or building their own armored bulldozers, and going on rampages. It's a pain, but it's not a complete disaster. These vehicles aren't invincible. They generally get stuck somewhere, and then the police break open the hatch and shoot the nutjob. Tanks really can't do much by themselves besides drive around and run into some things (or over them, but again, you have to be careful or it can get stuck, break a tread, etc.). Tanks armed with 120mm cannon rounds, of course, can do some serious damage, but private individuals aren't allowed to own that kind of weaponry at all.
It's the same with an older fighter jet. What are you going to do with it? Fly it into a building? Sure, that'll be worse than flying a Cessna into a building, but still, it's not like a WMD. Even if you could fully load the 20mm cannon, you're not going to do that much damage; they don't hold that much ammo anyway (only enough for something like 5-10 seconds of sustained fire I think). Yeah, being able to drop a bunch of 500lb bombs would be a disaster, but again, you can't get that stuff.
Yes, if Elon or Jeff wanted a nuclear-armed ICBM, the government would certainly stop them. Building a rocket is one thing, building a nuclear warhead is something else entirely, and is not something trivial that just anyone can do. Iran (an actual nation-state) has been trying for some time and still hasn't succeeded as far as we know. It takes a lot of facilities and special materials to build something like that.
Frankly your concerns are completely unjustified.
It doesn't make sense to be so alarmed by it. People who own heavy weapons overwhelmingly use them for lawful purposes. This is true of people who own guns, as well. We can't treat every potentially dangerous thing as if it is a clear, present danger: that is like treating all drivers as "potential drunk drivers". You can't write policy around that.
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.
• Reduced flight hours and maintenance on fleet aircraft.
• Instructors do not need to be pulled from schedules.
• Fleet aircraft do not need to be hard scheduled.
• Cost per flight hour is much lower for common aggressor platforms (A-4, L-39, F1M, and now these legacy F-18s) than the aircraft the Air Force is training in.
• Private companies can more easily maintain and source parts for aircraft the military cannot (Migs, for instance).
This particular sale was the remainder of the RAAF's retired F-18 fleet, which Canada started buying in early 2019. These are _not_ Super Hornets.
Some of these companies have been around for decades. Some competitors:
• ATAC
• Top Air
• Draken
The other day I was reading about some Saudi prince's half a billion (!!!) dollar yacht.
Sometimes I wonder if I live in the same planet as these people. It is hard for me to imagine such wealth and power
No, they don't. And neither does the US.
The F18 is now nearly 40 years old. Typically the advanced and sophisticated aspects of airframes are not allowed for sale, to private entities, or even non-us government ones.
The advanced avionics, weapons systems, etc, are all tightly controlled.
The trick is buying ammunition for them and also undoing some decomm work that requires expertise and equipment.
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-pepsi-briefly-became-the...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Ma...
Fighter jets are heavily dependent on spares and expertise, but Iranian F-14 Tomcats managed to score something like 50 or 60 kills during the Iran-Iraq war, which happened after the US stopped playing nice with them. They're still flying a few of them today.
If this makes you wonder how they're doing this if everyone is playing by the export rules involving selling arms to Iran, you wouldn't be the first. They have some native production capacity, but...
Turns out the US has this problem as well... my brother is a Harrier pilot, and it seems to me like the US has mostly run out of spare parts for them. They bought a number of RAF Harriers for parts, but even so, it's a question of whether the F-35 will actually be ready in time to replace those squadrons.
Is this another example of the DoD contracting out something that would cost half as much for them to do themselves?
I’m happy to answer questions people may have.
The Kirlin’s occupy a very particular role in the city.
once operating the largest franchise of Hallmark stores for nearly 60 years before quickly going out of business a few years ago. Other Kirlin defunct businesses include “The Fly”, a Blue jeans only store in the 80’s, KSNI (Kirlin Super Net Inc) a dial-up ISP in the 90’s.
The mentioned Kirlin of the story used to run “The World Freefall Convention” the largest skydiving convention in the world. For about a week and a half the small Airport would be beset by 10,000 skydivers and cessnas. One quirk of Quincys airport is a super long runway that can support a DB Cooper style 737 jet landing, so one would be chartered to allow 100s of skydivers to do high altitude jumps.
Unfortunately the convention ended because of the Bible-thumping city leaders didn’t care for the weeks of debauchery that were part of the festival attendees.
I've met several members of the Kirlin family and Don's a sharp, cordial guy. I find it interesting that he's made so good a go at such an unconventional business when other members of the family have had such problems in speciality retail. I wonder where the Hallmark store business would be if Don had been in charge.
I'll not comment on the ISP because I used to work for a competitor with a fierce rivalry.
Dead Comment
Even if for some reason it is cheaper for the US military to have this in a private company instead of maintaining aggressor squadrons with Migs, how is this secure?
The other counter is there are 26 operators of the F-16. Frankly it would be easier both in practice and legality to get cooperation from some dude in Pakistan or Venezuela than a US citizen who can at least sorta be watched over.
Most of the tactics are not terribly advanced in the sense of some mysterious secret martial arts kick that defeats all. Most of the time battles are won logistically long before the fighting starts. Everyone in the business kinda knows what F16s do, not any more of a secret than knowing what Mig29s do, the struggle is always having enough resources in the right places at the right times to do anything about it.
Something that often surprises civilians is most US military manuals are freeware and have always been that way. If you want to learn how an Army Brigade Combat Team operates, you don't join the KGB and steal documents, you just download FM 3-96 and read it. This is why actual veterans get annoyed about fictional hollywood military stuff; if you don't understand the role of a BCT's information operations officer sufficient to portray one in a movie, its just sheer lazyness to make something up instead of simply reading the FM.
Its all part of the interesting strategy to handling massive public communications networks; half a century ago you could have an edge if it depended on having a secret sauce. Now that anyone with a web browser can download the official F-16 flight manual your strategy for having an edge relies on other forms of secret sauces.
A good analogy for the problem is that excellent world class scientific documentation exists for weight loss and athletic performance, yet most people will not train in those areas. Olympic athletes are not high performers because the textbooks for weight lifting are kept secret and only for their reading.
(Attributed to an unnamed Soviet Staff Officer)
I always assumed (without any evidence) there is secret firmware or settings for these systems that will only be used in time of war and not used during training.
I guess Israeli Air Force knows countries like Iran have the Russian hardware and personnel/training for dealing with the Elta gear that Israel exports, but I also guess the Israeli Air Force has secret sauce, maybe using the same hardware, that they don't export and use only for striking strategic targets, knowing each strike teaches the opponent something.
The company has to follow US industrial security rules. Written by US DoD.
The employees are vetted and hold clearances.
Why do you think the USAF (or US Navy) hadn't thought about this?
EDIT: Actually it looks like they do have machine guns with rounds, but nothing such as guided missiles.
Deleted Comment
Looks like some sort of elaborate public money scam to me.
If you had an Air Force squadron of older planes, they need their own dedicated mechanics who are certified. Government certified vendors, who've gone through the vetting/price bidding process (likely the vendors selling you the latest F35 or whatever will want in on it too...). Dedicate pilots certified to fly these planes and likely only these planes... etc. Instead you shift the logistics to a smaller and more agile group who can optimize for their very specific and small use case.
The private contractor can also go out and train people from other military forces (like Canadians, eh?). That allows them to make money from multiple sources, where as the US Government would not. Sure maybe join training exercises, but that's not the same thing.
There are a lot of cases in business where outsourcing something specialized to another party makes a lot of sense - unless there is a huge scale for it. Just look at The Cloud. For a lot of companies, it doesn't make sense to pay the overhead of datacenters, datacenter techs, etc etc. For a few companies, that do it at scale, it makes a ton of sense (Ex FAANG).
Second, the USAF has a pilot numbers problem. The more experienced pilots are getting out as fast as they are able; there are many reasons for this, and COVID-19 will slow it down, but it will continue. To compensate they are trying to ram more in at the front of the funnel. This will cause other problems, not the least of which is a massive shortage of training personnel, causing overwork, causing more FCIs to leave, and so on.
The ex-USAF (and ex-RAAF) pilots flying these jets are enjoying not being sent overseas to shitty bases on long tours, or having to move their family interstate regularly, or dealing with braindead administrative detail and mandatory fun exercises some Colonel dreamed up. They are some of the best pilots around, and normally they would be lost to the airlines.