Book 'em, Danno.
From a Homestead ARB press release, via the Usual USAF Source...
Members of the Homestead Police Department and Homestead Air Reserve Base, Fla. transport an F-4 static display to the base, Aug. 4. The process of moving the aircraft, which took more than five hours to complete, started at 5 a.m. and involved coordination between the base, local law enforcement, a crane company, and a truck company. The static display, which normally resides near the intersection of U.S. Highway 1 and Southwest 304th Street, will undergo a three-month process consisting of repairs and repainting. (U.S. Air Force photo/Senior Airman Jacob Jimenez)
This isn't the first time we've posted sumthin' like this. From three years ago:
Umm... No, Officer... How Fast WAS I Going?
The SR-71A Blackbird that is part of the Air Force Flight Test Center Museum at Edwards AFB, Calif., is towed over public roads to the base’s corrosion control facility for refurbishment, Aug, 8, 2009. This aircraft, serial number 17955, will have its sun-damaged paint redone in time for Edwards’ air show and open house in October 2009. Air Force photo by TSgt. Trisha Winters
Plus ça change, and all that.
Both of those photos make me sick--and not just from nostalgia. We retired a perfectly good Wing's worth of "Wild Weasel" anti-SAM F-4Gs for NO OTHER reason than to free up budget dollars for the F-22 buy. They had capabilities that are STILL unmatched by anything in the current inventory. SAME rationale for making the SR-71 go away. IT came out of the AF budget, while, the far less capable U-2 (which came out of the CIA's budget) was retained. Again, there are STILL some missions that neither current sats nor the U2 can perform as well or at all. Once again, yet another tragic example of letting the bean-counters drive nat. security needs..
ReplyDelete(An additional reason the big kids in the AF let the Blackbird go is that some of their best pilots were "stovepiped" in the program and when it came time to sit promotion boards for O-6 and beyond they didn't have the same breadth of "command experience" as their contemporaries and thus--in the eyes of critics of the program--some of the AF's "best&brightest were being denied higher command by dint of being stuck in the SR-71 program.)
Hmmm. Didn't ya just say the same thang about the EF-111? ;-)
DeleteYes, yes I did, Buck. And again, it went away for the exact same reasons and we lost some capabilities we've never recovered.
DeletePS: And of course the cryin' shame of it all is that we gave up those capabilities for NOTHING when Gates cut short the F-22 buy. We got the worst of BOTH worlds--not enough F-22s and ZERO F-4Gs or SR-71s.
ReplyDeleteThat's gonna bite us in the future. Just sayin'.
DeleteVX and Buck - It gets worse, many are the times I've seen critical engineering decisions on weapons systems made by the bean counters, not the engineers. So not only are the bean counters driving national security needs, they're also driving the capabilities of the few systems we may or may not see down the road.
ReplyDeleteThat's scary to read. But I don't doubt it.
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