Yes, there was an earthquake off the California/Oregon coast last night; and yes, I got 45 minutes of Tsunami warnings on the radio.
But that was it.
45 minutes of warnings that were cancelled as abruptly as they had been issued.
Rivrdog, who lives in northern Oregon got more warnings and his daughter who lives closer to the epicenter was nearly forced from her apartment.
Rivrdog has the tale of what ensued. It is a must read of true lunkheadedness.
So as to try and brighten up his day when he gets here, I would like to offer him some actual good news,
Boeing has installed a new set of avionics equipment that will keep the B-52 effective and in the air for at least another decade.
For $8.6 million, we do not have to do extensive testing of a new flight design *cough*ditch the F-22*cough*, all we have to do is bring the big birds into the shop, wham, bam, thank you maam (or sir as the case may be) and away we go into the middle of the 21st Century.
How cool is that!
Story found at Murdoc Online
The design engineers at Boeing Military Airplane Co built the ideal heavy bomber when they designed the B-52.
Having brought out 7 models, they then began to generate modification packages, starting with the “Big Belly” mod back in the mid-60’s that enabled the D models to carry 108 “iron” bombs.
The first bombing upgrade, the automatic off-set system, enabled the radar operator (me) to pick and choose from up to 10 aiming points, instead of two. The later package, which put the B-1 OAS offensive system into the B-52H, is the standard for today, and now this improvement package will upgrade that to 21st Century battlefield standards, with FACs (forward air controllers) on the ground (they’re SpecOps USAF people) being able to directly designate targets for JDAM and other Smart weapons.
This will probably be known as “dial-a-bomb” before it’s given a real name.
This pretty much guarantees that the B-52 will be flying for 100 years. There are no current plans for a follow-on heavy bomber, and by the time we get to 2050, the Century mark for the old warhorse, I suspect that gravity delivery of weapons will be pretty much a thing of the past.
There’s only so many B-52 airframes, and only so many hours you can fly each one. That goes double for fighters. We can keep heavy bombers limping along on the cheap for another ten years. Yay. What’s that got to do with the replacement for our main air superiority fighter? The F-15’s been in service since 1976. 29 years is a long time in aviation design. To give some perspective, imagine if we were still using F-86 Sabres when the F-15 Eagle came out…
Not to be argumentative, CL, but exactly who are we going to be fighting that has anywhere near the air power we have?
The only one that comes to mind is the Chinese, but they are still usung the last MiG the Soviets designed and our F-15’s 16’s and 18’s eat that bastard up.
Also, while precision bombing is cool to watch, if we do have to go up against China, we’ll be carpet bombing again and we need to keep a strong fleet of 52’s up for that. There is nothing else in our current arsenal that can lay down “The Heavy” like the 52.
Also, we can build a 15, 16, 18 AND 52 until the cows come home if we get tired of replacing parts for 1/10th of the cost of one F-22.
All of the systems they are planning on putting into the 22 will fit in everything we have, going all the way back to the F-4’s.
Or, if you want to think of it this way, we can recruit, train, equip, feed and mobilize an entire Army or Marine Division for the cost of one F-22.
As to the last comparison, which one of those would we use more?