The next generation of warfare is going to be….interesting. Angry Cop shreds the new Army chopper that is replacing the Blackhawk, the Bell V-280 Valor.
What is the over/under on how many grunts die in these things?
I am not a military expert but this thing seems like a potential very expensive clusterfuck, although there isn’t a precedent in the military for a super expensive boondoggle when picking shiny new gear. As far as I know the Russians still use a variant of the ‘Hind’ chopper because they freaking work, but not us. Nope we are going with the “all the bells and whistles”.
Maybe this one will work but I sure wouldn’t bet the farm on it.
The new helicopter is based on the osprey which has been in service for years and been as safe as most helicopters once the kinks were worked out. My concerns are more to do with the transition from the two modes. It is vunerable during that time and she takes up a lot more space on the ground meaning she needs larger landing zones than other helicopters.
The Osprey may be relatively “safe” but it, like most of our other gold-plated programs, provide amazing capability to replace previous capabilities but at a cost which makes it pretty much impossible to do much more than “replace” a fraction of the obsolete capability.
We may be able to move, in one lift, twice as much PAX/cargo three times faster with a third of the maintenance time, but at some point, if we can only muster 8 of this wondercraft to replace 25 of the previous worn-out airframes, we start to have a problem with meeting commitments in different geographical spots- on both a tactical and operational level.
“there isn’t a precedent in the military for a super expensive boondoggle when picking shiny new gear”
I feel a whole lot better now!
yeah. funny thing about shit like this. who is getting the kickback ?
back in 1978, I was with the team testing out the Carl Gustuf 84mm rocket launcher. it was and still is a great weapon system. has a lot of different rounds that can be fired from it. has back up iron sights if you lose/break the optic
the army generals could not have cared less. the marine generals, there where 2 of them there that day.
got down in the dirt and fired them with us. asked a lot of questions and TOOK NOTES of what we thought about it.
a couple of years later, the army bought the dragon. a one shot weapon. the funny part was seeing the old 84mm
in use in the war on terror back in 2004 or so. and the wonderful write up it got.
it is the same system we tested back in 78. I often wonder who got the money on the stupid dragon deal.
or what the new one shot wonder weapon they have now ?
so, chances are if they changing something, someone getting the kickback money on it.
“…there isn’t a precedent in the military for a super expensive boondoggle when picking shiny new gear. ”
Heh. Smartass. 😉
All kidding around aside, though, pretty much every new-hardware venture from the military has been, going all the way back to the initially-disastrous P51 project at least. Eventually, the bugs do get ironed out–remember when the almighty M1 Abrams, to name just one, was derided as another typical “boondoggle”?–and the systems mature into some pretty good, useful iron.
Then again, though, there’s the F35 Turducken, as some wags call it, which thanks to a hopelessly underpowered engine among several other things probably won’t ever amount to much of anything more than the de facto albatross is right now.
I wonder if the people running the show now have the stuff needed to keep working out the kinks, and by kinks I don’t mean puppy play while in uniform.
why should any of us be sad if the GAE gears up with crappy equipment
At this stage I am all in favor of them buying shit that doesn’t work being used by trannies, fat chicks and faggots.
I’ve spent my entire adult life working in software engineering for a ginormous “Big Three” defense contractor, and all I can say is, I would not trust ANYTHING that rolled off the production lines for dot-mil in the last 20 years as far as I can spit. Sure, it may LOOK bad-ass, and it might weigh a metric fuck-ton. But the female-centric, diversity-obsessed assclowns and H1-Bs who are responsible for the software that DRIVES the damned things are so lib-fucked and SJW-drunk that I’d wait for the 5th-gen release before I trusted my life to ANYTHING produced today for the military.
That new B-21 Raider unveiled last week by Northrop-Grumman? I know several fellow software geeks working on the program, personally, and they ALL insist that the pressure to release was so intense that they suffer nightmares about what is going to happen when the prototypes take to the skies next year. This is no damned joke. That company, like all the others, is so damned fooked that skin tone and genitalia are far more important than competence when it comes to designing and implementing the controls that are supposed to keep those flying supercomputers in the air. Do NOT sign on as a test pilot in the modern era if you expect to live to a ripe old age.
I wonder how much of any of the new gear would work in a real fight against an enemy that can shoot back.
Very good question. But aside from the program-controlled equipment, it all comes down to a [poorly-trained, disinterested] HUMAN operator at the console. I can tell you for a bona fide fact that a plurality of those military recruits who “maintain” those ultra-sophisticated electronic systems are females, as there is no strength or physical fitness requirement to work on a fire control radar, for instance.
True story: Years ago I was flown out in the dead of night on 3 hours’ notice on an emergency mission to a deployed naval ship anchored off Bahrain with an inoperable missile defense radar system that was cas-rep’d (Casualty Report issued) under code red conditions. Limo to JFK. First-class airfare around half the world with three stops along the way. Buzz-cutted guy with more ribbons on his chest than I could count ushering me through customs like some Saudi potentate. Limo to base to Huey to ship at sea. The [senior][female][“officer-on-duty”] watched in wonder as I strode into the radar room, utterly ignoring the black chick charged with maintaining the gear, flipped up the breakers on the transmitter unit, and $13 million worth of navy gear suddenly roared back to life, ready to tango.
Time spent ‘troubleshooting’ a dead anti-ship missile defense radar: 12 seconds. Cost to you, the U.S. taxpayer: somewhere north of $10k. Look on Electronics Specialist E7 La’Queesha Bojangles’ face: priceless.
It’s all grift. All of it. chewnited snakes of griftmerica. Every stupid clusterfuck decision they make, we should celebrate.
The new optics by Vortex look damn nice, if maybe heavy. Garand Thumb has a video where he got to use one; it’s a game changer and because of that I am a bit skeptical it will have a civilian equivalent. Some will probably find their way on the market anyways through sticky fingers.
Think of the ability to make anyone shoot hundreds of yards accurately with ease (and batteries).
Yeeeeeah, aboot that ‘un… weight? Try as of now tips in at 5.4 pound w/out batteries… makes that new Sig Toy weigh more than an M-14, which IRL is all it is (AR-10 with a ‘wildcat’ bi-metal casing .277 boolit)… think ‘fragility’ when it comes to those toys… there’s reasons that the DotMil made us carray all them hi-speed-lo-drag NVGs/Thermals/Whathaveyous in foam lined hard containers… I wanna see it still work after being dropped off a one story building onto concrete THEN we can talk…
Like I said elsewhere, you gotta love it if you’re in the MIC. This like all the new hardware is just like the F35, useless and expensive.
As a Jet Mechanic with now more than 40 Years’ Experience, I ‘worked through’ the transition from Hydromechanical Fuel Control Units (FCU’s) to FADEC (Full Authority Digital Engine Control), and then saw the migration of Software-Controlled ‘stuff’ into every System on a Modern Jet. So I went back to Working “Old School” with my Howell Jetcal box that doesn’t need a FAA-Mandated “Software Update” every 6 Months to Check and Adjust Engines (Tune-Ups, if you will).
All of the more Senior Mechanics (and a lot of Engineers) who I learned it from (even some retired guys who Designed and Built the Moon Rockets) said that eventually, Increasing Complexity of Systems would Overrun the ‘efficiency’ that the Complexity gave.
And that’s not even factoring in the Dumbing-Down effect of the AA/Woke Brigade now being put into places where proper Troubleshooting Skills require a good knowledge of the Laws of Physics….