I don't think many would argue that our Defense procurement system functions as if it were serving up a soup sandwich to a guy in a chicken wire canoe as he swung his football bat while wearing bowling cleats and trying to open the screen door on his submarine. How's that for a mixed metaphor? But this tanker debacle has been going on since Christ was a corporal ( I can't stop). Our current tankers have been upgraded from their original design of a 55 gal. drum strapped to the back of a pterodactyl. After Boeing followed all the correct bribery protocols, somebody called BS on that and in the intervening century or two I think every defense contractor on Earth has won and then lost the contract. As a matter of fact they pretty much had the gig locked up when the Feds changed the rules at the last minute so only their plane could work, but wait! Somebody must have searched Boeing & tanker and found out about the last fiasco so we will now have another chance for Northrop & the Euros to get a bird in play. FFS people, entire generations of fighter pilots have been born and retired in the intervening eons. Unless this new tanker can refuel drones we might not even be able to use it.
Read the complete post at http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Blackfive/~3/SBOA_usJxY8/refueling-tanker-goat-rope-extended.html
Posted
Mar 31 2010, 09:09 AM
by
BLACKFIVE