Saw Corpse last when I was at the 117 CoC last August. During the outgoing CO’s speech the hanger fire supression system (AFFF) went off due to heat from the sterno cans keeping the food warm on the buffet in the hanger. It made for a memorable affair.

JJ, Barely & Stix were probably after my time. Rainman, Rude Asian, NAFOD, Uncle Buck (“UB”), and Elvis are some of the front end guys from my time there.

Brian (CS “Whiz”)

Hell, it still rotates, don’t it? May be “fancy” but it ain’t advanced.

re “sewer pipe” We need one out there to do several missions but because everything is a tradeoff we have what we have. I’ll not hang my hat on CSA. It was DIW when it was Hornets or nothing,..By bringing it up I was just trying to drag the tired old E-1-E-2 concept into the jet age, by showing you what you could have had. Sure there were no prototypes, it was killed in the cradle. No company produces something so Revell can make a model like the 196o’s. Developing prototypes takes a serious infusion of govmint bucks, early. Something had to give in 1997, but that was before 9-11, if you can grasp the significance. What have we actually IOCd since? Just a bunch of extended lawn darts with an IFR capability. And for any three Rhinos you put on the flight deck, one MUST be configured as an overhead tanker with ZERO warfighting capability. How many subs, surface ships have we launched lately? Dude, we are going the way of the 1920′s Navy ala “The Sand Pebbles”..Unfortunetly, all this couldn’t come at a worse time..the world beng as fuKKed up as it is. And that’s the shame of it, I am sure you would agree.

Despite all of that I still bleed blue and I know we can still prevail in any encounter. I am just concerned our “prevailing” will come at a high
cost and I ain’t talking bucks…

UAV’s do your mission? Check out how many KW your own aircraft generates with 2 big turboprops. Can you imagine the size UAV vehicle that would take? Not in my lifetime.

I ought to just S.T.F.U., but I am dismayed when we only have 11 carriers with 65 aircraft apiece and a CSG is 4 ships. Talk about being optimum, Dude, we are underpowered…

b2

Yes, I was dribbling popcicles down my Shazam shirt when you were shaking the deck plates, but CSA was never more than a concept. Concepts can have any capability we can dream up…make it 500% greater range and endurance, it’s no basis for comparison. CSA was so fuzzy, even the boys at Revell (makers of fine plastic planes…not to be confused with Boeing) wouldn’t take a whack at it; and they WERE confident enough to sell an F-19 Stealth Fighter based on probable cause…whatever that is.

Whenever the 50-lb craniums can create a data pipe robust enough, that fancy E-2D radar should go on a CVN-launched UAV. Let the battle managers control live via satellite from an office building in India; might as well outsource and save some $ that way too.

The USAF euthanized the E-10 already. Looks like their future is still in the past, along with our Navy’s.

I don’t know if there’s a bottom line statement, but the portfolio mismanagement and underinvestment in lifecycle replacement during the Clinton reign may be something we never recover from. Rhinos and JSF’s are nice, but can we build them fast enough…

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ac/csa.htm

Cheers, HummerDude

P.S. lex, that’s just an HF (nothing Extreme about it) antenna trailing behind the older models. EHF antenna could fit in your gym bag. Didn’t you save your EE notebook?? The Spring Fest bier is on sale now! (bottles which you could fit an SHF antenna in, but over to the Melvins at NSA for that mod)

- CSA was a jet concept (goes high)and would make Skippy happy.
- Range/endurance would be 50% greater than any E-2 proposal.

BTW, you’ve missed something significant. SuperHornet replaces Bombcat and JSF will replace legacy Hornets..at least that’s what I heard.

Let me go one step further on the E-2 IFR concept. It’s not levitating it’s simply an optical allusion…

On the contrary, I revel in airwing diversity. Persistent am I.

What we’ve got going is a shell game at worst, a Ponzi scheme at best. Same with shipbuilding. LOL (cynically).

Re P-3′s Nose: MMA is a cash horse right now and the P-3 is in trouble. Ever hear of the bathtub effect? Sort of like being real low in the middle. View time vs power and equate that with time & $$’s. You won’t read that in AW&ST but trust me..a helluva lot of .ppt pixels are spent spinning numbers…

b2

Concur with both of you guys, but we spent all the recent money on a new P-3 (something we really need!) and replacing all those old legacy hornets.

Playing with the HF in the A320 today. Temped to dial up 11176 and call Thule for a phone patch home. Bet the wife would remember to say “over” after she talked! And we don’t have to drag a wire to make it work.

Refuel probes have been placed on hummers – IAF did it. Probably a non-starter for us though, we don’t train/fly night form (hell, we barely train to form!) and like B2 said, what would we tank off of?

I’m sure there are some AEW pods in work for the F-18H.

Brian – some of my best friends are gay…er… I mean Liberty Bells. (Not that there is anything wrong with either of those). Flew with JJ, Corpse and Stix in 120, and Barely and Stix in 78, all good dudes.
When were you there?

Nose

I remember some talk back in the day about putting a refueling probe on Hummers. Made my head hurt even thinking about it – just imagine quad cycles – ugh! ‘Course we were wearin’ the old-style double visor helmets that left a big ol’ rising sun smack in the center of your forehead. I remember doing an AWACs swap-ex and all them AF folks walking on that passenger jet carryin’ brand new shiny made-to-fit leather-lined helmets that were light as a feather (now standard issue in the Navy as well). I asked one what he did with that nice helmet once on board, and he promptly stowed it under his seat. I probably coulda swapped his helmet for a bag of rocks and he never would’ve been the wiser.

Re: that HF wire hanging way back there…good for phone patches back to Atsugi via Insurlik and for TFOA paperwork.

Brian