$$$BILLION DOLLAR AIRCRAFT BOONDOGGLES FROM THE NAVY/MARINE CORPS
The Navy is buying a $40 million dollar "enlarged" F/A-18E/F jet that isn't flying right, and is not even close to being a radar invisible "stealth" aircraft. Instead of admitting the Naval Aviation community in love with its "Top Gun" image had overlooked its mission of penetrating enemy air defenses while in a drunken stupor from its carrier-landing bragging "Tailhook" parties, and buying navalized F-117 "Stealth" fighters used successfully in combat by the rival U.S. Air Force, the Navy puts the Hornet on "growth hormones" and wonders why it flies bad. $40 million dollar jets that crash at a rate of half-dozen a year do us nothing to win an urban fight like Hue city or Mogadishu.
The Super Hornet should be cancelled immediately. Funds should be transferred to buy 50 M8 Armored Gun System light tanks for the 2d ACR to support the XVIII Airborne Corps, America's first to fight with air-droppable shock action.
An inside joke is how many "A" model Harriers does the mc fly? The answer is "none" because the Mcjarheads crashed them all. The only one left is on static-display at the gate leading to Cherry Point Naval Air Station. The dirty little secret of the "B" model Harrier learned the hard way---by crashing the entire fleet of "A" models---is that it must take-off rolling like any other attack jet to carry a useful bomb load. Another one learned by aircraft losses in the Gulf War is that its engine's thrusters are along its centerline--a heat seeking missile strike sets off the fuselage fuel tank and destroys the entire aircraft--the Harrier is not survivable.
Today, the corps is going ahead half-cocked again with an untried aircraft, the Osprey tilt-rotor which is also an unsafe vertical lift aircraft. The Osprey tilts its twin rotors forward at the end of its wings to gain 250 knots in forward flight, but if one of those engines fails in helicopter mode, a hydraulic nightmare of cross-shafting must instantly transfer power to the dying propeller from the surviving engine or it will flip over, crash and burn like prototype #4 did, killing several unfortunate people. A small fire the size of your hand weakened the aluminum cross shaft so that at the critical second it was needed, it failed.
It gets worse: the designers of the Osprey forgot to make it big enough to carry the "bread and butter" wheeled vehicle of the U.S. military: the HMMWV. If the Osprey sling-loads a HMMWV it becomes the most expensive billion-dollar helicopter ever = 150 knots is no better than any other helicopter carrying a sling load now.
The Oprey must take-off like a helicopter (rotors too big to be horizontal on the ground) and its doubtful that on a high/hot day that it can carry more than a couple of squads of foot-sloggers inside--it will take an entire squadron to move just an infantry company--to what end? Men on foot with only light weapons and no vehicles of their own are no match for a motorized or mechanized regiment coming down to the beach to destroy them.
"Some may note that I have not mentioned the V-22--the new tilt-rotor, aircraft coming soon into the marine inventory. The reason is that I don't think the V-22, as currently designed, is a good buy for the Army. It just doesn't do enough things more or better than the UH-60 or CH-47 to make it worth the money or effort to add it to the inventory. However, that does not mean that there is no future for tilt-engine or tilt-wing airlift. These types of craft have the advantages of speed, range, endurance, and lower fuel consumption over helicopters and the advantage at VSTOL over fixed-wing. It is very possible that either the utility or the medium-lift aircraft of the future Army fleet might be tilt-engine/wing. But if so, it should be simpler, cheaper, and have greater capability than the V-22. The V-22 is the Model A of tilt-engine airlift. The marines may be able to make good use of it for over-the-horizon, ship-to- shore operations. But the Army ought to let the marines work out the bugs and then consider the Model B or C version when it comes along."
All of this done as a secret agenda of the McBureaucrats to make themselves a pseudo-Airborne force via gadgetry without having to empower its men to be self-reliant, thinking Paratroopers that can parachute. The sad truth is that men will die flying a squadron of unsound, unstealthy, Ospreys struggling to get a company ashore when a single USAF C-17 Globemaster III can airdrop a company of Paratroopers AND 2-3 armored fighting vehicles; easily accommodating the G.I. HMMWV if desired. The Airborne force can fly at 600 mph to any spot on the earth within hours to do a victorious "Entebbe" without the pitfalls of a mc piloted helicopter "Desert One".
The ugly secret of the Osprey is that its all unnecessary.
The already in service CH-53E Super Stallion can be modified with a pusher propeller (no tail rotor needed) and aircraft wings to fly at the high 250 knot speeds and long ranges sought for by the Osprey WITHOUT the technical flaws of the tilt-rotor. The AH-56 Cheyenne attack helicopter just began to show the high speeds possible by a pusher propeller; now shown by Piasecki's PATHFINDER demonstrator. Instead of being a huge radar target like the Osprey, a Heavy-lift compound helicopter or "CH-53X" could have a radar-invisible body like the RAH-66 Comanche so it doesn't get detected and destroyed by enemy air defenses since even 250 knots doesn't outrun a 2,000 mph missile. A heavy lift compound helicopter can also take off rolling like a fixed-wing aircraft on high/hot days to carry a FULL useful payload. The Secretary of Defense should cancel the billion-dollar Osprey program and buy Super Stallions to replace the CH-46s, Wiesel light track AFVs, and develope a compound heavy lift version, so we actually GET SOME MILITARY CAPABILITIES FOR THE BILLIONS WE SEND ON AIRCRAFT. The transport aircraft is just a MEANS TO AN END--NOT AN END UNTO ITSELF. That END is the combat power delivered to the ground of our choosing.
The good news is that the U.S. Army is going to need a CH-47D Chinook replacement that CAN carry vehicles--if its smart it will buy a compound heavy lift helicopter like the "CH-53X" with a stealthy body not an "enlarged" (Mistake of the Super Hornet all over again) tilt-rotor. Then, it would have a heavy lift helicopter to move around armored vehicles around the battlefield--not just foot troops---that can fly itself to the spot of the world where its needed--freeing up USAF airlift from having to airland Army helicopters so it can instead airdrop the U.S. Army Airborne away from defended runways--and avoid the boondoggles of Navy/mc aviation hubris.
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