KC-46A Begins Production With the Loading of the Wing Spar

reply to post by LittleBlackEagle


It's $44B total for 179 aircraft.

Again, I don't delude myself as to what these are used for. But look at our history, and how many things have come to us from the military.

Wow I never thought I would see so much hatred for our armed forces. Do you know what it's like to serve in the military,? Somehow I doubt it. We don't question the mission, we get it done. We may not agree with the reasons for going to war (I didn't agree with OIF, but I flew over 100 combat missions over Iraq without questioning my orders). Yes tankers are the last thing most bombers and fighters hit before dropping the missiles or bombs so we are accessories for the bloodshed, but it's not because we agree with what were doing. We follow orders to the T or someone could die.

But what about the tsunami relief we did? Grand forks deployed almost all of its tankers to the Pacific for humanitarian relief as soon as the tsunami hit. I was in Diego Garcia when it hit, right in the middle of its path towards Africa. We went straight to the most damaged places and took on a humanitarian effort. Where's the bloodshed in that? God's hand perhaps?

Serve in the military and then you can talk about bloodshed my friend.

reply to post by boomer135


im unsure who you are talking to, but if it's me i do not hate the military, never said i did. what i dislike is the corrupt gov. and corporate fascists that send our people to war over greed, drugs, weapons contracts and power.

if you're asking me to honor them, no thanks i'll pass but a soldier i will always honor.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by LittleBlackEagle

 

It's $44B total for 179 aircraft.

Again, I don't delude myself as to what these are used for. But look at our history, and how many things have come to us from the military.

i would rather pass on the "good" things the military has given us when the bad outweigh them tenfold.

reply to post by LittleBlackEagle


Ok, then you can start to give up the things the military has given us through the years in protest. Let's see, there's the internet, GPS, antibiotics, some types of bandages, and god knows how many other things. If you actually looked, you would see that the good outweighs the bad by far.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by LittleBlackEagle

 

Ok, then you can start to give up the things the military has given us through the years in protest. Let's see, there's the internet, GPS, antibiotics, some types of bandages, and god knows how many other things. If you actually looked, you would see that the good outweighs the bad by far.

The military didnt invent any of those things except maybe your bandages. Scientist from the DoD developed GPS. and antibiotics were discovered by many different scientist most notably penicillin which was discovered by Alexander Fleming who's Scottish. The military might have been the first people to implement the use of these things but they far from invented them

Originally posted by LittleBlackEagle
reply to post by boomer135

 

im unsure who you are talking to, but if it's me i do not hate the military, never said i did. what i dislike is the corrupt gov. and corporate fascists that send our people to war over greed, drugs, weapons contracts and power.

if you're asking me to honor them, no thanks i'll pass but a soldier i will always honor.

Couldn't have said it better myself.

And as for not questioning the mission, well, I think many SS said that in WWII. And I'm NOT comparing recent US military exploits to SS operations in WWII - but I think it is obvious where not questioning missions or orders can lead to.

Originally posted by BriGuyTM90
Scientist from the DoD developed GPS.

And they weren't the military? Funny, I thought DoD stood for Department of Defense, which oddly enough, is what the military is under.

But hey, here are a few more you can give up.

mentalfloss.com...
www.csmonitor.com...
www.ehow.com...
www.highestfive.com...

reply to post by Zaphod58


And here's a few more;

Inventions that came from war

I'm sorry I always thought the DoD as a supervising body and that the military was one of the things it supervised. I didn't realize they were the same thing. My apologies should have looked into it better. But the internet and antibiotics were not invented by the military. Like I said the military may have been the first people to implement them, but that's only because they have the most money. Also just because a technology was invented for war doesn't mean that it would have never been invented if there was no war or military. The military just happened to be the people that develop them because so much money is given to them.

reply to post by BriGuyTM90


J.C.R Licklider
"A network of such [computers], connected to one another by wide-band communication lines [which provided] the functions of present-day libraries together with anticipated advances in information storage and retrieval and [other] symbiotic functions." —J.C.R. Licklider, [2]



That was a quote from J.C.R Licklider, from the paper 'Online man computer communication.' Licklider was hired by the information techniques processing office which was within DARPA (defense advanced research projects agency.) His mission was to provide communication from the department of defense computers In Cheyenne mountain with the Pentagon and SAC (strategic air command) HQ.

So the Internet was created under DARPA which is a research agency for the DOD.

Eh, lets try to get the thread back on track.

Zaphod, i know nothing about tankers but i do have a passion for everything that flies. What do you mean by that the KC-46A is a "frankentanker"? I suppose it hints to beeing an aircarft initially not desgined to be a tanker but are not most of this large aircraft types designed as "platforms" for conversion into whatever gets the job done?

reply to post by tomra


Not Zaphod, but there was a cartoon picture going back a while now showing the 767 stitched together from different parts from other aircraft eg; 767-200, 300F, 400ER. Ill see if I can find the pic for you.

Are here we have the 'Frankentanker'!

Ah, i see, thank you :-)
I wonder how different, if at all, a dedicated tanker plane buildt from scratch would look like. It was mentioned earlier in the thread that tanker planes (KC-135) have been used for other purposes which in turn lead me to believe that the plane is not 100% optimized for its purpose?!

reply to post by tomra


The current incarnation is using the 767-2C airframe, being converted to a tanker platform after completion for the first one, and purpose built as tankers later. It's going to use the 787 digital architecture for the power bus, and the cockpit instruments.

The original design used the 767-200 airframe, the -300 landing gear, and the -400 wing, along with some other mixed up parts and pieces internally for the cockpit and power bus. It was all different types just stitched together.

Actually the KC-135 and KC-10 were optimized for the purpose. The original contract called for an aircraft that could not only transfer fuel, but could transport maintenance crews traveling with the aircraft being refueled, as well as spare parts for those aircraft. So it was required to be an airlifter, as well as a tanker. It does both quite well.

Originally posted by Zaphod58
reply to post by LittleBlackEagle

 

Ok, then you can start to give up the things the military has given us through the years in protest. Let's see, there's the internet, GPS, antibiotics, some types of bandages, and god knows how many other things. If you actually looked, you would see that the good outweighs the bad by far.

imagine what we could have if we didn't need to spend more on our military than any other country in the history of mankind. if we acted in defense of ourselves only and not offensively in the name of fake freedom. imagine the breakthroughs my friend if your planes would have thousands of scientists working "together" instead of hundreds working separately against the others.

i know it sounds like a fantasy and i don't mind ridicule if it finds it's way to me, but i have to start somewhere. i have to begin thinking, feeling and discussing the things that don't feel right any longer. i now go to bed thinking of the thousands of people killed, maimed and families destroyed by drones, aircraft missions, chemical weapons, depleted uranium rounds all in the name of what?

my family has sacrificed plenty to the service of my country, my father survived in the battle of the bulge, ardeness campaign, my brother vietnam, i myself am of the age i didn't get drafted but we gave. i want to see soldiers cared for, their families and their service never forgotten, long after the battles. they couldn't even find my fathers war records so we could bury him with a flag and some honor.

i cannot celebrate a military with so much wrong within it that it throws away it's used up soldiers and their families. when you look at a military plane, do you see the faces of all those affected by them as well.

i think you're an exceptional person OP and find nothing wrong with your hobby btw, you have continued a conversation without resorting to negatives or name calling and that's refreshing around here. thank you for allowing me to share my thoughts in your thread.

reply to post by LittleBlackEagle


Being a military brat myself, with a mother who was a VA nurse at the psych ward for many years, I know the good and the bad with the military. There's a lot that they do that pisses me off as well, but sadly, until the rest of the world is willing to buy everyone a Coke and sing Khumbaya, we need some kind of military force.

I would love to see acquisitions go back to the way they were in the days of Kelly Johnson and Ben Rich, where they would design a plane, go to the Air Force and say "Hey, this is what we came up with. You need it." And three or four years later it was in service and going, instead of this crap where we spend hundreds of billions of dollars, and 20 years later are still fixing initial development problems.

That's one thing that I love about this particular contract. It's reasonably priced for the number of aircraft they're getting (which if you've followed the history of this debacle is an amazing turn around), and any cost overrun comes out of Boeing's pocket instead of the Air Force.

And this particular plane will have so many uses that will save lives it's not funny. This aircraft is larger than the current KC-135, so it can fly more supplies into areas that need them. It can carry more people out to hospitals that can care for them, much faster than almost any other method. Yes, it's a military plane, but military doesn't always mean it's a killing machine. Sometimes they really do go in and save a lot of lives.

I really wish we didn't need them, and would personally love to see what we could do with thousands of scientists working on things, but the black projects developed by the military that will eventually come out, will blow you away (not literally). But sadly, until we can learn to get along, which hasn't been since Thag hit Ungh over the head with a rock, there will be a need for a military. A smaller leaner military would be better, but there will be a need for them.

reply to post by Zaphod58


very refreshing to hear the contracts are structured in a more favorable way. perhaps with people like you having a hobby like yours, can lend itself to helping people by keeping an eye on the bigger picture such as you do. i learn something new everyday, thanks for that amigo.

reply to post by LittleBlackEagle


That's always been one of my biggest problems with the military the way it's currently structured. But you don't really think that screwdriver or toilet seat cost $5,000 do you? Or that aircraft program "accidentally" ran over budget by $450 million per airplane? All that overrun gets put into the operating fund for the black programs, and no one is the wiser. But to be honest, just put in the budget that there's a classified amount for black programs. Or add it to the operating cost line for the wing, or something besides the way they currently do it, that makes a lot more sense.

The other being big problem I have with the current structure (not the warfighting which goes without saying, but the actual structure of the force) is the fact that most generals who end up as Chief of Staff come up through Air Combat Command, which almost always means fighters. That means tankers and bombers get ignored, so they can buy their shiny new stealth toy.

As boomer135 is fond of saying, and how true it is, nobody goes anywhere without tankers. That's a lesson that has been forgotten repeatedly through the years. Tankers are the ultimate multi-use platform. Need a medevac to fly someone to a better hospital? Hey, there's a tanker there. Need to fly supplies to somewhere but don't have a dedicated airlifter? Hey there's a tanker! Need fuel somewhere fast? Hey look! A tanker! The bad part is that 20 years ago I would see fighters sitting for so long that they had to perform several Functional Check Flights (after they sit for a week without flying they have to perform one to ensure that all systems are working), because they couldn't get a tanker to get them where they were going. And then the Pentagon started selling tankers to other countries.