Has the President tee totally lost his mind?

[gp100man]

First the A-10 Warthogs are threatened, now ammo for the SSGN's and all SSN's are in the Presidents crosshairs.

As if there ain't enough of an ammo shortage at Wal-mart, now da prez wants to have an ammo shortage for submarines(and other navel craft).

Has this man lost his mind?

http://www.teaparty.org/obama-kill-toma ... ign=social

[giovanni]

Re: Has the President tee totally lost his mind?

The A10's are 40 year old technology. The F-35's and the drones can pick up the slack and do it with better precision and less cost, especially when drones are pilotless.
All the Tea Party wants to do is spend more of the federal treasury and defend the corporations that get the funds from the treasury.

[thor]

Re: Has the President tee totally lost his mind?

Guys,

Let's stay away from politics, please.

Matt

[robert]

Re: Has the President tee totally lost his mind?

Politics aside, the A10 should be kept because it's a highly effective and cheap ground support aircraft. That it's 40 year old technology is not an issue. The .45 handgun is being reissued and it was designed in 1911. The 50 caliber HMG dates from WWII. Etc.

The F35 is an overpriced piece of garbage. Pilots don't like flying it because the oxygen system is buggy. Fighter pilots scared of a plane should tell you something.

Finally, it's my understanding that it's the Air Force who wants to trade the A10 for the F35, not the president per se. And this isn't the first time they've targeted the A10. I think they just don't like ground support aircraft, plus, of course, they're probably heavily lobbied by Aerospace companies, who also hire their retired officers.

'nuff said.

[ccontrol]

Re: Has the President tee totally lost his mind?

Politics aside, the A10 should be kept because it's a highly effective and cheap ground support aircraft. That it's 40 year old technology is not an issue. The .45 handgun is being reissued and it was designed in 1911. The 50 caliber HMG dates from WWII. Etc.

The F35 is an overpriced piece of garbage. Pilots don't like flying it because the oxygen system is buggy. Fighter pilots scared of a plane should tell you something.

Finally, it's my understanding that it's the Air Force who wants to trade the A10 for the F35, not the president per se. And this isn't the first time they've targeted the A10. I think they just don't like ground support aircraft, plus, of course, they're probably heavily lobbied by Aerospace companies, who also hire their retired officers.

'nuff said.

This. I think they should transfer them to the Marines, they will know how to use them. The Air Force doesn't like any aircraft type that doesn't start with an F or a B. They begrudgingly accept K and C as well. The Marines know the value of A.
I remember how Tom Clancy & Larry Bond used the A10 as a maritime strike aircraft in Red Storm Rising I believe. Imagine what 1lb 30mm shells would do to a modern ship.

[thor]

Re: Has the President tee totally lost his mind?

Guys,

I can personally attest to the troubles of the F35. While it was a magnificent concept, the end result has been a disaster. I spent several years as a design engineer on the project. It is an over weight, over stuffed, mission over burdened, fragile aircraft. It is a multirole aircraft that was designed to do many things. Unfortunately is does none of them well. We would be better to resurrect the F22 as the Air Superiority fighter that is was designed to be. Scrap the F35 and design a smaller, lighter aircraft that truly is a replacement for the F16, not try and replace the F16, A10, F15, A6, F18, and F22 in one airframe. No aircraft can replace all of those birds and be successful. The A10 is the finest purpose built ground attack aircraft ever conceived. It has no equal any where in the world. The F35 is a very poor substitute.

Matt

[tom dougherty]

Re: Has the President tee totally lost his mind?

Matt, Thanks for your insightful comments on the F-35. They confirm what I have been reading in the trade magazines and elsewhere. Apparently we are going to be relearning the entire F-111 experience all over again. No matter how great the technology is, it is very difficult to make one plane cover such widely divergent missions and capabilities.

I would also echo Matt's comments about leaving the politics off of the board. You are entitled to you opinions, but please stick to submarine modeling & technology. Personally, I get my news from Comedy Central and my comedy from Fox news.

As for

F35 is an overpriced piece of garbage. Pilots don't like flying it because the oxygen system is buggy.

It is the F-22 that has the oxygen problems, not the F-35. On the other hand, the F-35 has a lot of other issues at present. I would agree that transferring the A-10 to the Marines would be preferable to retiring it. There is still reasonable life left in the airframes, and you can update the electronics (such as they are).

BTW, gp10 man, do you actually read what you are writing?? What exactly does the "tee" in the title mean?

[gp100man]

Re: Has the President tee totally lost his mind?

Tom, Not sure where tee came from, but all my life growing up in Ohio, Massachussetts, Georgia, and now in North Carolina. I've heard many many people put tee in front of totally to emphisis the meaning of the word. I guess it's like verbally captitalizing the word TOTAL.
Anyhow, please forgive my lack of spelling. I gots whut yood call a buckeye ed-you-kay-shun, so bare wit me.(done on purpose-being silly again).
When it was mentioned above about the F-35 trying on to many duties at once. I thought of, I hope that's not true in the submarine world. I've seen in print somewhere, that future Virginia class submarines might be expanded to take the place of the SSBN's. In other words an elongated Virginia that would take on the role of SSN, SSGN, and SSBN? Don't know if that information is true, but I wonder if that is a good idea.
Maybe it's a great idea, and maybe not, I'm really not sure on that one.
I still think that it would be wise to have at least a few diesel/electric/AIP American made submarines available, if they are so very quiet as is claimed. Just sayin.

[tom dougherty]

Re: Has the President tee totally lost his mind?

I think it may be a mutation of the phrase teatotaller (i.e., a non-alcohol-drinker). That's as close as I can imagine!

Right now, EB is indeed working on a design that is a derivative of the Virginia hull plans. It's interesting in that if you look at the 1950-60's, the US tried out a number of different concepts in submarines (e.g. Seawolf's Sodium reactor, the smaller Skate class, Halibut in its SSGN role, Tullibee's turboelectric drive, etc.). We now have settled down on pretty much tweaking the same design, which admittedly is fairly well optimized at this point. We do try to squeeze a lot of capabilities into the hull]Nautilus[/i] basically attacked the surface fleet at will. The diesel boats of the time also participated in the exercise and in 5000 simulated attacks, the diesels were judged as "sunk" 300 times. Nautilus was "sunk" three times. The Navy submarine fleet went nuclear and so far, has never looked back. But it might do well to again reexamine that idea based on technical advances in AIP.