IT'S ALMOST MUTINY

This came as something of a surprise here at chateau defiant. Navy instructor pilots across the board are refusing to fly and train up and comers because the oxygen systems in the T-45 jet training aircraft are poisoning them. The rates are staggering as are the pilots. The navy has known about this problem for years and done nothing to correct it beyond, apparently, telling the lads to be careful out there.

EXCLUSIVE: More than 100 U.S. Navy instructor pilots are refusing to fly in protest of what they say is the refusal of top brass to adequately address an urgent problem with training jets’ oxygen system, multiple instructor pilots tell Fox News.   

The boycott started late last week and has effectively grounded hundreds of training flights. “The pilots don’t feel safe flying this aircraft,” one instructor pilot told Fox News. 

In the last five years, physiological episodes, caused in part by problems with the oxygen system, have nearly quadrupled on the T-45 training jet, according to Capitol Hill testimony last week by senior naval aviators.
The Navy is now looking at grounding the entire fleet of T-45s for the next few days, according to multiple pilots. 

“There is no question that there are problems that are being covered up,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, R-Texas, said. “I am very concerned about the issue. It’s been getting worse over time and if you look at the statistics, the older airplanes are having bigger problems than newer airplanes.”

A meeting Tuesday in Meridian “got heated,” Fox News is told.  The pilots told the civilians from Navy Air Systems Command their complaints about the oxygen system were being ignored. When a senior Navy pilot showed photos of a faulty oxygen system he claimed had been sent up to NAVAIR’s headquarters in Maryland, the engineers said they never received the photos. 

Asked about the protest, Navy spokeswoman Cmdr. Jeannie Groeneveld acknowledged that 40 percent of instructor pilots refused to fly their training flights Friday. A flight instructor said the number was closer to 75 percent, because the Navy reduced the flight schedule knowing more than half the pilots would refuse to fly. 

Shoemaker said following a meeting in Kingsville, flights there had resumed.
Just last week, the vice president’s wife Karen Pence visited her son at Naval Air Station Meridian, where her son is in flight training. A source told Fox News she told the commodore in charge of flight training, “Take care of my son” – and a day later the senior Navy officer told a group of instructor pilots he feared he was unable to do that because of the danger posed by the faulty oxygen system.  

Across the Navy, training squadron skippers and commodores are telling their instructors to follow their instincts -- and not forcing them to fly -- much to the appreciation of those boycotting until they feel the issue is resolved, Fox News is told. 

“There is not a, you know, ‘Fly or else,’” Shoemaker said. 

Some instructor pilots point to Rear Adm. Dell D. Bull, chief of naval air training, as the culprit in ignoring the unsafe conditions. 

“He is telling us to just, ‘shut up and color,’” one pilot said. 

I'd have thought we knew how to do this, we've been flying high for over 60 years

Evidently there is some wriggle room for pilots who refuse to fly. They get to toss the BS card when they, in their own minds, determine that it is unsafe to fly. That's a standard we can mostly live with but perhaps not so much. How safe, after all, is it in a SAM or AAC environment? In this case I'd abide with the protesters because they have a point and it has evidently failed to percolate up to the admiralty in charge.

Read the whole article. It won't take long and it really doesn't make the admirals look very good. What we said in the surface forces was that if we lose power we gradually slow and come to a complete stop; afloat upon the surface of the sea. Our submariners can't say the same and our aviators most definitely cannot say the same. Nevertheless, we take propulsion very seriously indeed (except LCS which is something of an inside joke).

I really don't know the hierarchy of the navy safety center and aviation but it appears to me that somebody ought to take a flame thrower to the people that have been kicking this can down the road without any concern for the pilots, students, aircraft or the innocent people under the falling wreckage of what once was a pretty good jet trainer.

I MISS THE OLD SOUTHWEST

Nooooo, not. Wait a minute. Yeah, I miss that too. But, I was referring to the spunky little airline of that name.

THE LOST WERE FOUND

Astute readers are aware that my glasses experimented briefly with flight two weeks ago. They're not terribly aerodynamic which doesn't even slow them down when they feel the call of the wild. As I surmised, they didn't get very far and it was just a tedious matter of beating the bushes most carefully for a few hours in order to track them down at the end of what could only be described as a ballistic arc. I just had to wait until all the snow and ice melted. I enlisted a helper today since it was a glorious Spring day and test dropped two other pair of glasses out the same window. The results indicated that roughly a quarter of an acre of land needed to be searched. The third test article was never seen again.

I don't think that's poison ivy but my track record at identifying poisonous and carnivorous plants is about 10 to 1 against.

IT HAS TO BE SAID

For many years Congress flew in the face of military opposition and funded an Alternative Engine for the F-35 fighter plane. They did so because history has shown that the OEM always screws up the engine and delivers an unreliable or underpowered pantywaist of an engine. Well, they knew when they let it die on the Obama barricades they refused to climb that it would come back and bite somebody on the ass.

It takes an interesting departure from controlled flight without, you know, an engine. Fortunately, we are assured by the engine manufacturer that only 10% of the engines fail.

Pratt & Whitney spokesman Matthew Bates said in an e-mail that its quality management “is designed to ensure safe, reliable products” and the company “is investing significant resources in advanced quality inspection techniques and continuous improvement in our supply base, which has lead to year-over-year improvement.”

The reliability of installed engines is exceeding 90 percent “which is well ahead of 2020 requirements,” he said.

Gives one pause doesn't it. I don't imagine F-35s glide all that much more efficiently than space shuttles.

SAN DIEGO THIS WEEK

UPDATED

We dropped in on the I Bar at NASNI today.  It hasn't changed a bit since the first time I went there.

October 1941 at Naval Air Station North Island (NASNI) a Marine SBD-1 landed on Quarters #56

Would you believe the Marines fixed the plane and flew it home after this 'hard' landing?  The Navy repaired the building (BLDG 56) and use it today, 75 years later. The bar was full of popcorn, old old old aviators and a couple of young ones. The youngest was bleating about some milk but they wouldn't let the stroller in the bar.

NOT ME. NO WAY

Would you fly anywhere with Bernie Sanders right now or in the foreseeable future or do you reckon he's going to suffer from a terrible, swift, fatal, accident any minute now? I mean, right now, somewhere in DNC headquarters, an obit is being written.

IT IS THE 21ST CENTURY

I can imagine whole schools of them slowly, endlessly, patiently, circling the White House and Congress waiting for the moment...

We'd need a somewhat more vigorous shark to get the right effect there, at the end.

FUN WITH LADDERS AND GRAVITY

There is no place a man with a ladder cannot reach. Admittedly, most of them are in the down or falling direction.

TYRANNUS TYRANNUS

We have an exhibit in our local deadwildliferesort and it has an interesting example of a Tyrannus Tyrannus sitting on a fence pole looking wistfully off into the painted distance on the wall next to it. For all it's name, it seems to be relatively peaceful.

Eastern Kingbird

Evidently they're very tolerant little birds.

WHY JUMP

This is sort of sad but I don't understand why. The very best outcome when attempting to tie the record for lowest altitude flight is second or third. You can never win.

Came that close to a runway snow plow

FLIGHT TRACKER

Interesting that there are still commercial airliners flying over Syria from Turkey. After the tragedy in Ukraine and the sudden European realization that it is madness to send commercial airliners over a war zone with modern Russian anti-aircraft missile systems deployed, I would have thought United Arab Emirates Airlines and Qatari Air would have elected to fly around Syria. It's like running with scissors. Not even a senseless foreseeable tragedy will get kids to stop.

I'm not flying over Syria and particularly not on a southerly heading out of Turkish airspace.

THE HOOFBEATS OF AN AIR APOCALYPSE

The consequences of an unprovoked attack on an aircraft usually result in some fairly drastic changes to air operations. I don't think Turkey really gave it any thought when they shot down a Russian aircraft going about its business in Syria. The Russians know that the stateless enemy in Syria has no meaningful air force but now Russia has been forced into deploying weapons designed to destroy NATO stealth aircraft at ranges of up to 250 kilometers. It's a fascinating mobile air defense system complemented by a Russian Air Defense cruiser off the Turkish coast.

I would like to congratulate Turkey and all their friends at the Combined Air Ops Center on bringing about the deployment of a missile system that will haunt the rest of their days in Syria. Every single aircraft that flies in that part of the world can fully expect to have that beast's fire control radars lock on at maximum range and remain locked on for the duration. Every military aircraft equipped with a threat warning receiver is going to freak out when that happens and they will never know if there is a missile riding the beam heading their way until it gets there.*

The intensity goes way up at the 3 minute mark. These were F16s engaged by Russian export version air defense systems in Iraq back in 1991. Thanks to Turkey, Russia will deploy their most modern air defense systems to Syria and turn every single NATO sortie over eastern Turkey and Syria or the eastern Mediterranean into a thrill ride. Way to go Turkey! 

*Yes, yes, we know. Beamriders are practically extinct and have been for decades but we're talking about Russia! Those little Russian land attack missiles last month were quite the surprise.

NAZGULS GOTTA EAT

In a remarkable turn of events, Erdogan ordered his American made Air Force F-16s to shoot down a Russian fighter-bomber over Syria. The plucky Putin probably has a few teapots full of polonium and several cases of Bulgarian umbrellas stuffed into the next diplomatic pouch for the Russian embassy in Ankara. Assad suffered a minor injury when he laughed so hard he fell to the floor.

I have heard that we have some sort of treaty with Turkey that binds us to assist them in the event that they are attacked. I am sure that we can count on President Obama to give any calls from them asking for assistance the same due deliberation he has given every other weighty matter of state and take roughly as long as the Keystone Pipeline Decision or Surge II implementation took, given the risks involved. I'm equally sure that the U.S. Army will be willing to entrain the 1st Armored Division at Fort Hood and send them rushing to assist Turkey once they find their weapons, ammo, a few tanks and a reliable bit of train track connecting Fort Hood to Istanbul. The Army has given up on shipping Army Divisions by sea to Turkey for any reason involving national defense or war.

I'd have sent the ready 4th Infantry Division but Turkey has refused them entry so many times they gave up and mailed all their passports back to the State Department. They figure they'll aid Turkey when Hell freezes over and if you think we got global warming going on now, you should visit Kurdistan Hell.

Anybody but OTAN would probably start to wonder if their so called "peace" dividend doesn't bear some resemblance to a check from Bernie Madoff. Sure sure, the peace is in the mail. Trust us.

ANYBODY SEEN OUR LITTLE CLOCKMAKER

As I looked at the cartoon posted from Last of the Few I wondered, 'what happened to our little muslim clock maker after he left the White House last month? Did he head for Egypt enroute to Qatar and take a vacation at a Red Sea resort where one of his clever little clocks might have gone astray?

Never gonna fly to Egypt again

AND THEY WORRY ABOUT DRONES

THE HAPPY SOUR QUIZ

1. Selling or giving high tech weapons to muslims is:

a. Stupid on the face of it
b. Justified by the pumping of tax dollars back into the deep corporate pockets of Lockheed and    General Dynamics
c. Worth it for the endless follow-on training required to keep anything more advanced than a  blowgun operational in muslim hands
d. Worth it for the follow-on training involved in hunting those weapons down and dropping a 1000  pound bomb on them.
e. Equally worth it for the same reason if we track them down and snuff them with a HELLFIRE

2. A sensible peace plan for the middle east involves:

a. Arming the shit out of all of our friends there and their friends who don't actively hate us  (remember, only idiots arm muslims)
b. Inking a deal with palestinian terrorist leaders
c. Inking a deal with the Taliban and withdrawing from territories under their control
d. pulling back to orbit and nuking it just to be sure
e. Widespread employment of tailored biologic weapons
f. Let NATO and the EU do it

3. What 'tell' do democrats, global warmists, Carlists, Russians, arabs, muslims, progressives and CNN have when they are lying to you?

a. Their lips are moving
b. They look really sincere and convincing.....to a 3 year old
c. The cloud of spittle spewing from their lips is so thick they are lost in the haze
d. They do everything including run away to avoid answering any direct yes or no questions
e. Claim that Obama supports them and therefor arguing against it is racist

4. What is pictured in the photo below?

a. Iraqi army TOW missile launch vehicle
b. Afghani air force on roadside interdiction mission
c. A man who profoundly doesn't care if that blimp tears apart the entire New England power grid
d. SURFLANT messenger carrying vital documents to SURPAC for urgent consideration in PPBS
e. USS Shenandoah heading for its rendezvous with destiny in Noble County, Ohio

NO GUESSING!       NO CHEATING!         SHOW YOUR WORK OR NO CREDIT!

WHEN ALL ANSWERS ARE CORRECT, PICK THE MOST CORRECT ONE I always hated that one.

MODERN WHALING

Found at Bayou Renaissance Man. As the man says, watch in full screem.

Frankly, I'm not tempted even a little bit.

DISCOUNT FLYERS

A rare form of passenger travel not seen since the days when barnstormers flew around the country. Most of the passengers* agreed that it was better than taking a cruise.

*Look at the passengers at the tip of the wing. Aren't they supposed to, in the event of an evacuation, leave their damned luggage behind?