Keeping in line with random diversions on aviation, lol: https://www.aviation24.be/military-aircraft/belgian-air-component/air-force-f-16-destroyed-maintenance-collateral-damage-second/
Edit: and some more fail http://www.airforcemag.com/Features/Pages/2018/October%202018/Tyndall-F-22s-Left-Behind-Before-Michael-Hit-Possibly-Damaged-Beyond-Repair.aspx
BelgianWaffle sez "Watch where you point that thing; it might be loaded!!!"
I remember similar arguments about the F-22 to those made nowadays about the F-35 over the idiocy of making a few obscenely expensive aircraft vs lots of "merely capable aircraft" and training pilots properly to fly them. I still feel it's a valid argument, but FFS, we need to find some balance in the muddle between the two.
We are making plans to keep B-52s in the air for the next 2-3 decades... this is a purely analog design that is already 65 years old, and the newest of which are 56 year old airframes. That's an aluminum airframe of stressed-skin design, which is literally dependent on the inherent flexibility of the material it's made of to keep the wings from snapping off in midair.
I'm only 50, and I'll tell you... I lost most of my inherent flexibility decades ago.
At the same time, we have F-35 fighter craft that cost 25% more per copy (adjusted) than those B-52s did when they were new, and we can't keep them in the air for more than a few hours at a time. And we have to worry whether they'll BSOD and fly straight into a mountain with the pilot unable to do a thing about it.
Like I said... SOME balance between the two... and that balance is not the Resident Chump solution of beleaguering the manufacturer until they shuffle the numbers around so you can SAY you made them "cut the price" to less than $100 Mil a copy. That's just pissing off your supplier, and they're going to make sure you pay twice as much in the end.
Keeping in line with random diversions on aviation, lol: https://www.aviation24.be/military-aircraft/belgian-air-component/air-force-f-16-destroyed-maintenance-collateral-damage-second/
As I started reading the article at the link I was annoyed by the use of the of the weasel-word euphemism "collateral damage*" in the headline, until I read far enough to garner that it was a friendly fire** incident between aircraft inside a maintenance hangar. Someone's not getting their Christmas bonus...
Edit: and some more fail http://www.airforcemag.com/Features/Pages/2018/October%202018/Tyndall-F-22s-Left-Behind-Before-Michael-Hit-Possibly-Damaged-Beyond-Repair.aspx
The disadvantage of having a military airfield so far from any realistic action zone is the belief that it's OK to build your hangers out of cardboard as they won't ever have to resist enemy action. (*cough*) Pearl Harbour (*cough*) like incidents aside, wouldn't it be wise to keep prevailing weather in mind, even if you aren't expecting enemy action? Ah, yes, "Military Intelligence".
*Military/police jargon for "we murdered or maimed innocent bystanders"
**Nothing friendly about it at all. If your 'friend' is shooting at you, they ain't yer friend no more.
"MAXIM 5: Close air support and friendly fire should be easier to tell apart." Obversely:
"There's a reason we don't give handguns to monkeys." *
In short, training FAIL.
If it weren't for the influence of the Gulf Stream in the Atlantic, Ireland...and you...would be in a deep freeze right now.
That's okay... in a decade or two the Gulf Stream and the EAC will trade places, or worse, cease to exist at all. Our kids & grandkids will get to experience the seasons in a way never seen since apes started walking upright.
mnem
* Yet we give the nuclear button to an orange baboon with all his brain cells in his nutsack.