The Navy has done pretty well. The Ford class carriers seem to have come in pretty close to forecast.

(Written on 20/03/2021)(Permalink)

I don't disagree that our military spending is too high. However, I think, though, that the 50% number is of "discretionary" funding, which makes up 1/3 of the US budget. The latest numbers that I saw were $0.7 billion to the military ("national defense") and $4.8 billion total US budget, which is just under 15%. (sorry that I posted this twice .... replied to the wrong posting above)

(Written on 19/03/2021)(Permalink)

I don't disagree that our military spending is too high. However, I think, though, that the 50% number is of "discretionary" funding, which makes up 1/3 of the US budget. The latest numbers that I saw were $0.7 billion to the military ("national defense") and $4.8 billion total US budget, which is just under 15%.

(Written on 19/03/2021)(Permalink)

KRFD has had a difficult time since the recession in the 1980's. Janesville (WI), Beloit (WI) and Rockford (IL) and that whole region go hit hard. With the recession, businesses closed, schools were closed, and the downtown had many empty buildings and storefronts. Only recently has there been a partial and slow recovering, with an attempt to make the Rock River riverfront more attractive. Chrysler came to Rockford in the 1960s and this whole region supported American car manufacturing. (You can still see one of the reactivated car plants on the north side of I-80 as you drive towards Chicago.) The recession killed many of these plants. The airport tried to rebrand itself as Rockford Chicago International, as reliever airport for KORD, but that had limited success. Now, the majority of commercial flight activity is due to the UPS hub. And now, we're seeing more Amazon Air flights as well. These folks are good for airport use because most of the activity is in the wee hours

(Written on 19/03/2021)(Permalink)

This plane has had more than it's share of design issues from the very start. Personally, I find that Lockheed Martin's oversight as prime contractor has been deficient. 15 years ago, when the plane was brand new and not yet in regular production, it was discovered the the avionics and control systems, coming from more than a dozen different vendors, couldn't talk to each other. Technically speaking, they had designed a communication bus (more like a local network), but didn't define a synchronization protocol that would keep the various boxes from interfering with each other's communication. Each vendor defined its own mechanism, which weren't interoperable or compatible. The prime (LM) had clearly failed to establish such a protocol early on. DoD asked ONR (the Office of Naval Research) to get a few academic folks like me on series of long conference calls between LM and the vendors to try to sort this out. Weeks of marathon conversations got things moving in the right directio

(Written on 19/03/2021)(Permalink)

The fact that his issue comes from Boeing makes it more difficult to accept. It would be great to set that aside and try to understand the core engineering and safety issues. With 5000 flying hours, I have always understood that having the fuel in your wings and not fuselage is a major risk for post-crash survival. Post-crash fire is a serious issue and I would never buy a plane that had tanks anywhere in the fuselage. Both of the big plane manufactures are pressured to push their aircraft to higher and higher performance levels. And they are taking their smaller single isle planes into roles taken previously by much larger planes. When you ferry a small plane across the ocean, such as the Oakland (Calif) to Honolulu route, you remove the extra seats and put a fuel take in the cabin, and allow the plane to be loaded over its certified gross weight. Of course, this requires a special ferry permit and no passengers are allowed. Fuel inside the plane is considered high risk.

(Written on 05/03/2021)(Permalink)

Most air travelers have very short memories. And most have no idea what model plane they’re on.

(Written on 25/12/2020)(Permalink)

DC-9 —> MD80 —> MD90 —> MD95 —> (rebranded) B-717. Plus a bunch of intermediate models. Solid and reliable with a long history. Very few big changes in this development path.

(Written on 28/09/2020)(Permalink)

Hmmm. Textron website says “ Takeoff Field Length 3,300 ft”. Probably accelerate-stop distance. Not bad.

(Written on 14/08/2020)(Permalink)

The Caravan has been an incredible success. Rugged and reliable plane, with FedEx as primary customer (tho makes an awesome float plane too). Anyone know the SkyCourier’s TO and landing distance numbers?

(Written on 14/08/2020)(Permalink)