funny l, other allied countries have been flying it for years. The hold up is unnecessary AF requirements like MLS for example, that no one uses, but some General likes. It makes the plane impossible to build.

the Air Force is making it expensive. Not Boeing.

Ahahahahahah it’s always Westerners producing the the hard, creative, and time consuming intellectual property. Much easier to cherry pick and plagiarize. This is nothing new, it’s in their culture.

See also:

Boeing and Bombardier: Comac
Porsche:Great Wall Motor Manufacturing
Rolex and Louis Vuitton: some piece of crap some clown on Canal street reverse engineered.

Yes, for many years now.

What's in their culture (more the totalitarian political aspect) is severe hierarchy and reluctance to stick one's neck out. Hence a reluctance to innovate.

The PRC, unlike many other similar governments, at least recognizes their own limitation and makes the effort to plagiarize. Rather than believing their own propaganda that their way is better, and finding out the hard way that it's not.

That gets them into the near-peer category.

But what I was referring to is that they sit up straight and pay attention when *we* get into a conflict, because they want to observe how we do, and also how the opposition does.

Gulf-I was a *huge* wake-up call for PRC, when the largest army in the world, with soviet doctrine and hardware and eight years recent war experience got rolled up by the US in a matter of hours. Of course China had the same soviet hardware and doctrine. That kicked off the PRC's Revolution in Military Affairs, which is still progress today.

https://www.airandspaceforces.com/ai...modifications/
An excerpt:

Granted, military procurement thoroughly sucks, and considering all the cr@p and delays that went on in the KC-46 program, it won’t be on time or on budget, but considering it’s already flying in export versions, they may actually not be too late.

The Australians are allegedly supplying one or more of their Wedgetail to the gulf effort.

https://www.airforce.gov.au/aircraft/e-7a-wedgetail

Well aware of the 2 major war strategy. It finally got phased out shortly after I was commissioned as we came to terms with post Cold War budget realities. I think there has been a major sea change WRT the “military industrial complex” over the last 2 decades or so. It used to be that companies like Boeing would spend as much time looking at threats and requirements as their uniformed planner counterparts. Hell, the KC-135 was designed and prototyped well before DoD put out a request for proposals. Defense companies at least publicly acknowledged that it was part of their charge to help defend the nation, even if General Eisenhower’s thoughts on the industry were beginning to prove prescient. Today, they don’t even pretend. Oh, you wanted the cameras on the KC-46 to actually work in all lighting conditions? That’ll be another billion please. Meanwhile, we are rapidly entering an era where our enemies can rapidly adapt and cheaply and quickly produce weapons that take full advantages of our weaknesses. If the Iranians have managed to get inside our OODA loop, you can bet your speedjeans that the Chinese are way out in front of them. Whether or not the Chinese choose to act when we’re bogged down somewhere else, it has become readily apparent that we are no where near ready for future conflicts. And I’ve heard very little from any politician or candidate of any stripe about how we’re going to go about fixing that. Just like GWOT, spending billions on the operational costs of war while wearing out people and equipment, all the while neglecting real modernization or focusing on developing tactics of the future, is going to come back to bite us.

Superb post.
Concise and to the point.

Interesting read by United CEO saying "some airlines may not survive" (with caveats) with where oil prices are headed.

Demand is still strong though.

Budget airlines face headwinds.

https://www.independent.co.uk/us/tra...-b2947727.html

That bonehead is always yapping about other airlines going out of business. What a buffoon.

Could be.

But it depends. Mil procurement is inherently wasteful, but with congress throwing a trillion $ per year at it the uniformed leaders (if they have some competence) should be able to distill *some* quality goods and services out of the inherently wasteful process. I don't really expect a three star to fix a process that existed before he was born, involves congress, the industrial complex, and the revolving door. But I do expect him to ensure that his stovepipe equities are functional, despite the system. For example, several uniformed leaders pushed back against boeing on the KC-46, and they pushed hard.

WRT to PRC, I think the trick is to not exhaust and deplete capabilities and munitions inventory below a certain point on other adventures... so as to not tempt the PRC too much. Of course that's up to the administration, and this one seems to like his adventures.

Also unlike some talking heads, I'm not convinced that PRC will actually attempt to seize (or blockade) TW, even if the conditions seem more favorable than usual...

1. Invasion of TW is a *very* hard thing to accomplish (too many reasons to list here).

2. Blockade probably only works if the US lets it happen. The entire PLA navy wouldn't be enough to blockade TW while they're getting hunted by numerous US SSN's. Surface warships normally evade subs by staying very mobile... but that's not how blockades work.

3. PRC has observed the global allergic reaction to RU's UA excursion... the backlash was worse than they had hoped (worse than many even in the west had expected).

They have also observed RU's military flail miserably for years against an opponent that they were expected to roll up in a few weeks. They have then watched us demonstrate that we still know how to exert multi-domain combat power on the other side of our world.