A man owns the most advanced private air force after buying 46 F/A-18s
thedrive.com
thedrive.com
"He was also one of the early pioneers of the then-fledgling, if not wholly experimental, adversary air support market. In the early 2000s, he joined forces with the Airborne Tactical Advantage Company (ATAC), which was blazing a trail with their contracts with the Navy to supply fast jet targets and electronic warfare pod toting adversaries that mimic everything from enemy cruise missiles to fighters for Navy and Marine fighter aircraft and Navy surface combatants to train against. "
2) These planes (superhornets) are is a wildly inefficient way to arm a paramilitary. These things cost tens of thousands of dollars an hour to fly, are built to fight nation-states, and you can't exactly maintain them on an airstrip in the middle of nowhere. If you want to gun down rebels in the jungle, you'd buy Super Tucanos, for a tenth or less of the cost-per-hour fly time (plus, easier to arm and provision)
Edit: my bad, just regular hornets, not superhornets. read too quickly
2) well, the company seems to offer the whole package (see the final sections about him storing 80000 HE-rounds for his two dozen hawks). And once the US hegemony over who runs military conflicts on this world goes the way of the dodo, well... I guess you might easily fend of someone like Kenia intervening in your nice cobalt business in congo with a dozen of NATO-grade fighters... And there is definitely a private sector available to secure your bases in a "friendly" third country.
And I wouldn't really worry about the amount of cash available in such conflicts. In the past it generally was enough for leaders to bribe their way into being accepted citizens of the western hemisphere, see here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabel_dos_Santos Now suppose, EU drops any support for the angolan government, she wants back her power: probably easy for her to start a civil war. Some neighbors (Namibia, SA) might step up (like they did in Somalia) to help the government if it holds out the initial 1,2,3 ... weeks. Normally they would have uncontested air superiority. Now Ms. dos Santos asks Mr. K.: "How about 4 of your hornets, I heard they kick ass, do you want some diamonds?" (and yeah, they can easily operate from a number of airfields there, I just counted >20 of more than 2km lengths of asphalt: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_airports_in_Angola). And that is how private contracting basically already works for advisors/spec-ops – great to see that extended to state-of-the-art aircraft.
Really great, good progress, all hail the capital!
My understanding is a F/A-18 would probably cost Mr Kirlin $10k/hr to operate. A Super Hornet actually costs about the same in variable costs per flight hour, as they require less maintenance and are younger in age, than a legacy Hornet. Of course, depreciation on a $70m jet is not cheap, which can only be flown for 8k hours, without a major rebuild.
From further reading it sounds like the idea here is to get a diverse and different field of aircraft. I guess the NATO forces can practice against each other, but it’s not realistic in the sense that any opposition they would face in a real war would theoretically be using very different equipment. So guys like Air USA are paid to conjure up a fleet of all kinds of aircraft, and pilots to fly them, which will act as more legitimate test.
The thing that I don't get is why would the US hire him to provide adversary aircraft that it already operates? I could totally understand them hiring someone who operated a bunch of ex-Russian aircraft, but if they wanted F-18s why not just call the Navy?
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/F-15E-80...
Yeah, but doesn't the US have those too, at Top Gun and Red Flag? I'd think that Top Gun would have aggressor squadron pilots qualified to fly F-18s.
Look at how our government managed a virus. Now imagine WW3.
"Serbia/Kosovo(ish)", whatever specifically is meant by that, is about like "Grenada" mentioned above. When you grasp at such tiny straws, you confirm the point rather than refute it: USA military exists to funnel money to weapons manufacturers and their employees in politics and media while killing mostly innocent, mostly brown people.
I don't disagree about the Saudis and US military industrial complex but that wasn't the point I was making
And while he will do this at a considerable profit, it will theoretically be better executed per dollar that the military doing it in a separate division. Another post claims he will generate sorties more than twice as efficiently.
So the above is either true or false.
If it is false and the contract costs taxpayers more than the military would then, as you suspect, it is entirely a pork-barrel waste of money. The fact that other nations with highly regraded military don't do this theoretical efficiency boost strongly supports this.
If it is true and the contractor is somehow more efficient, then that is even more worrisome. Scarier still is that it is taken as an inevitable state of affairs and no one seems concerned about it. That US destroyers have a catastrophically bad helm UI supports this, even though that would be conspicuous pork-barrel in it's own right.
Same with the fact the sale was F18s. Either the enemy has them or not. In one case it's pork-barrel, in the other case the US has somehow sold fighters to an enemy.
Hadn't heard of this. Apparently the US Navy are reverting an 'upgrade' to its destroyers which gave them a dangerously poor touchscreen-based helm control UI. The decision was made in the wake of a fatal collision with a civilian vessel in 2017.
https://www.engadget.com/2019-08-11-us-navy-drops-touchscree...
https://www.theverge.com/2019/8/11/20800111/us-navy-uss-john...
This may be better in some ways since the entire goal of TOPGUN was to train the trainers who would go back to their squadrons and improve capabilities. And that role has changed dramatically since the 80's where being the best pilot meant you might leave the Gulf of Sidra alive. A2A combat hasn't been important for over 20 years. We'll need to reinvent it for the future I fear.
Something quietly muttered about is we don't have the labor force anymore, so better off having our pilots in fighting squadrons instead of training squadrons.
Another topic not mentioned much is the whole concept of aggressor squadrons and Top Gun etc came from fighting similar tier adversaries in the 60s and, while not losing, not winning at a high enough ratio, and cold war REFORGER war plan against the Soviets was to use our higher tech to hold back their larger numbers. We needed each of our F-14 to shoot down at least 7 of their Mig-21 to win WWIII in 1985, or at least to not lose too quickly. None of this has really been relevant since 1990 and drone and cruise missile tech and so forth make the whole concept pointless. So political bureaucracy rules of warfare are such that if you can't shut down an obsolete program directly, you can outsource it all on a contract that coincidentally will not be renewed in 2025 or whatever year. We're just never going to see future air combat where its a war of attrition between our small number of high tech F-14 tomcats vs a larger number of mig-21s. Put the money where it'll actually be used in the future, such as drones, cruise missiles, smart bombs, fancy AA and AG missiles, etc. The idea of training F-14 pilots to do air combat maneuvering using guns and 70s performance missiles against a number of Mig-21 is VERY 1980s.
Or future adversary isn't going to send 8 Mig-21's against each of our F-14, they're going to launch 240 anti-personnel quadcopter drones toward the airfield per day to shut down operations. Sure at a thousand bucks per drone plus COTS grenade, thats a quarter mil per day to deny air operations... now is that quarter mil cheap or expensive? Compared to the damage a functioning air force base can do to an opponent, that's cheap. Or they'll build $100 cloud steerable laser pointers and deploy them randomly across the land by the thousands to lase the eyes and sensors of every vehicle in the air that's not one of theirs. They'll win that war of attrition if they deploy 10K semi-autonomous weapons that each cost $1000 and we only have 1K ATG missiles in theater which cost $100K each, either way they win.
Well, generals always like to train to win the last war, not the next one, thats been true for a couple thousand years now.
> Well, generals always like to train to win the last war, not the next one, thats been true for a couple thousand years now.
I disagree. Wasn't part of the problem in the 60s that the generals were training to win the next war, which they though would be fought at stand-off distances with guided missiles (i.e. suicide drones) carried by planes with little need to maneuver [1] [2]? It turned out they were wrong, and had to subsequently rethink their tactics and procurement requirements, which led to stuff like Top Gun and the F-14.
> [Our] future adversary isn't going to send 8 Mig-21's against each of our F-14, they're going to launch 240 anti-personnel quadcopter drones toward the airfield per day to shut down operations... [more speculation about drone swarm warfare]...
Betting that some new, hot technology will obsolete old techniques can be a bad bet that puts you in a bad situation.
I don't think quadcopter drones are going to be anything near the game changer you think they'll be. For instance: if you're close enough to launch a swarm attack like you describe, you're several times closer than you need to be to launch an artillery bombardment:
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2018/06/16/new-army-arti... (quickest google result):
> Existing 155mm artillery rounds, fired with precision from mobile and self-propelled howitzer platforms, have a maximum range of about 30 kilometers; the new ERCA weapon is designed to hit ranges greater than 70 kilometers, Army developers said.
https://www.dronesglobe.com/guide/long-range-drones/#sec3 (another quicky google result). The longest-range drone listed is:
> 2.DJI Mavic 2 Pro 4K [battery:] 30min [range:] 8km
I wouldn't expect a cheap military quadcopter swarm-member to have much better performance than a civilian one.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonnell_Douglas_F-4_Phantom_...
Yes but not really. They were preparing to use the technology of the time to fight a total war against a peer adversary, a la WWII, and in that kind of war those tactics would have been effective. As it happened, Korea and Vietnam were a very different type of war: the RoE were such that BVR engagements were rarely permitted, and it became necessary to develop tactics that would work in a counter-insurgency situation where distinguishing hostile targets from civilians or friendlies was more important than winning the engagement. It so happened that WWII-style dog-fighting with cannons was one of those tactics, but that feels like more of a coincidence than a generally applicable observation.
When you consider these reasons it becomes obvious why missiles cost $100k each. Once you actually start building a UAV that is actually useful in the roles that you describe you will exceed the cost of a single missile. The costs aren't going down. The MQ-1 cost $4 million. The MQ-9 which replaced the MQ-1 has a greater payload and costs around $16 million. The strategy clearly isn't to increase the number of drones.
A contractor can maintain their jets however they want as long as it's safe and they can meet their contract requirements. The contract maintainers can stay at their job as long as they want. The USN and USAF maintainers move every few years and have pretty good retirement benefits (which used to be better but are still better than what most private companies give), and have to get lots of additional training and all that needs to be paid for. A contractor is still supposed to follow all the safety regulations, but contractors seem to be able to generate sorties at rates that military units couldn't manage even with double the manpower.
Contractor pilots are paid strictly to fly. Naval aviators and USAF pilots are both subject to "up or out" policies, where officers that aren't promoted are told to leave. This means military pilots have to serve as staff officers to keep themselves promotable. During a staff tour they either quit flying or they fly less, which kind of wastes the money spent on training them. There are good reasons for requiring this (and some good arguments against it), but the bottom line is that contractors don't have to worry about it and can operate cheaper because they aren't wasting 20% of their personnel budget with a fighter pilot working behind a desk.
I once asked a pilot after a test mission, "if you're pretty sure they're going to do [tactic X] why don't you do [tactic that works great against tactic X]?" His response was that his mission isn't to win, it's to provide the most authentic simulation of an enemy as he can. If they don't think an enemy pilot would do something, they won't do it- even if they know they could gain an advantage using inside knowledge.
However, wouldn't the same pressures that apply to someone in a chain of command, also not apply to a contractor?
So, for example, if someone tasked with testing the current military strategy comes up with a wargame tactic that would embarrass the military (i.e. their bosses) they may not want to do that because embarrassing their bosses is probably not good for them.
However, in the same vein, someone reliant on those military bosses awarding them contracts would also not want to embarrass them, because it wouldn't be good for their ability to get contracts in the future.
In the former scenario, you at least have the case of a conscientious individual or team still going forward with what they think is the right thing to do.
In the latter there is no such compulsion either, so if anything, the chain of command argument makes things worse for contractors.
Makes for a great target for espionage on military tactics and capabilities for one risk.
They probably have vulnerabilities but I don't think a training contractor is as juicy of a target as you might think. They only maintain information on the capabilities of the enemies they are supposed to simulate- aggressor units don't have information on the blue air capabilities. It not useless information, but it mostly doesn't make sense for Russia/China to spend their effort finding out what the US thinks Russia/China is capable of. They already have a pretty good idea.
What? Quite the opposite, it is totally valuable information, if you know, what your enemy thinks you can do. Because then you can adjust, to surprise him in real combat. Or you find out that they over- or underestimate you in a certain area, which is very valuable tactical information as well. So they surely are a target for foreign intelligence agencies, but I am pretty sure they know that.
> 'Of course we are,’ said Vetinari. ‘And the more we know about each other, the friendlier we shall remain. We’d hardly bother to spy on our enemies. What would be the point?’ - Lord Vetinari - Thud (Sir Terry Pratchett)
>They probably have vulnerabilities but I don't think a training contractor is as juicy of a target as you might think ... It not useless information, but it mostly doesn't make sense for Russia/China to spend their effort finding out what the US thinks Russia/China is capable of. They already have a pretty good idea.
This is contradictory. Classified information is, by definition, that which could cause harm to the national interest if disclosed. Either their information is valuable or it isn't.
For the military to directly hire a foreign national who served in a different military is a ton of paperwork. It's much easier to have the contractor do it.
There obviously is a security risk, but as long as you compartmentalize the risk it's okay. It's also the issue of keeping said Soviet MIG driver busy, in that maybe you have 6 months of work for him a year. Other six months of the year he can't exactly hang around the Pentagon and help with reports since as you mention, it's a security risk. The contractor can keep him working by say doing 6 months a year of training with the American military, 3 months of training with the Canadians, 2 months with the Swedish, etc.
There are proven models for minimizing risk. The intel agencies often like to hire foreign nations because they have local expertise with regard to their home country, but the CIA can't exactly just make a Chinese national a W-2 employee and let them run around Langley.
Do foreign militaries also have these policies?
It turns out that being Erich Hartmann, Maverick, or the Red Baron doesn't really translate well into being a good executive leader, and while western militaries want officers who have experience "at the sharp end", the also require leaders who understand how a headquarters works, logistics, politics, etc.
That said, of late in the USAF, the promotion rate for every rank below Lt Col has been 95%+. And I think Lt Col has been fairly high as well. The issue isn't kicking them out once they reach a rank, but rather them deciding to get out before then.
If you have a lot of 'comfortable' pilots, you have less need to do the training, so when you fight a war and start losing pilots, you have less bandwidth to create new ones.
So there's a couple of things:
You could always recall and retrain the ones you've released if you're low on pilots, that's pretty straightforward for a wartime government if they're desperate.
It is much harder to scale the recruiting / training pipeline if it is insufficient to comfortably replace the losses you're taking. So you run your pipeline at a higher rate than necessary so that in wartime you can maintain your forces.
I think this also explains why the US would allow Boeing to sell things like advanced air-force fighters to other countries. At the surface, it makes no sense to give away your best stuff to another country. But if you think about it, it lets you run your pipeline at a higher rate, and the other guy can't replace his stuff when it starts getting blown up, you get priority. So you get to run at closer to a wartime production rate, with maintenance subsidized by other countries.
It may be cheaper to do the pilot training another way, but the last thing you want is to end up with a shortage of pilots when you actually end up needing them. It is not about cost so much as it is about winning wars and the supply chain therin.
I suspect a lot of countries don't have this policy because they have a grand total of 22 planes and no way to replace them, so if they get blown up there's nothing for new pilots to fly.
tldr; think about them resources that get expended and that you will inevitably have to create more of, rather than as highly skilled professionals
For example there is no way I'm gonna believe a Saudi F15 doesn't have something that the US could manipulate to its advantage if it chose to.
Of course building a backdoor would mean if an event found it, then could also utilise it. And it would be bad for business if it was found.
Though I suspect that maintenance and other process can be more streamlined in the private sector and that certainly will be an area in which the cost/payoff may balance out well for both for the needs required. Why have a combat ready serviced aircraft with around the clock support and maintenance when the usage can be dedicated to just 9-5 support for the task at hand. Hence outsourcing in this situation would see a huge saving in that area from that aspect alone. Certainly be a large factor and this is a business, so clearly some profit to be made that can enable the purchase of those many non-cheap aircraft. So for this to pay off as a business over being done inhouse, does make you wonder and try to work out why that is.
"inhouse" is probably still a no-bid buddy contract with a large defense corporation, so his rate probably doesn't even need to be very low at all
So even without any buddy buddy contract factors, the whole bidding process and list of approved suppliers and viable suppliers would of seen the usual suspects asked to tender no matter what. Now any new party actively seeking that type of work in a new field like this would if anything be more at risk of underquoting compared to the other tenders. So be interesting if those tenders for this contract was known. Certainly be very insightful into this whole process. As it is not how this company won the contract, it's how the others lost it and I dare say, quotes so large that if taken, be impossible to lose money and if not, no investment lost. Take it or leave it type quotes though will often play out in many contracts and with that, make any quote realistic (even too realistic) stick out. Hence known people who will always pick the middle quote if down to personal choice. Business, gets down to the lowest and some various degrees of vetting if that company can do what they see, varying from none down to proven track record and some serious auditing. Hence the usual suspects quoting for many things plays out as track record and vetting and auditing done already.
These are the sorts of mistakes typically made by native speakers for whom they sound the same and inability to remember that they are spelled differently has zero bearing on spoken fluency. It's a different skill set and a different part of the brain.
After all - how many of us have the internal verbal processing rule now that hears the word "good" when we hear the word "Bad" based around the age and maturity of the speaker? Many I suspect and that is just one of many you end up having to mentally compile into your rule list, just to communicate with people who are not yourself.
Imagine a coding language that gained new verbs daily, new rules and interpretation rules that change the dynamics of those words - yes languages can be hard to keep abreast with if you try to grasp every nuance as what is correct today, is not tomorrow. Jst try reading Chaucer and then wonder how fast until what is written today is viewed as another language in years ahead, even if the same language as languages evolve and English like many move faster than we imagine. Composing words into sentences that stand the test of time, now that is a skill. However even time can be cruel on the best intentions.
Like most things, perspective plays a part in how you view such things and we are all aware that such oversights can trigger people as much as those triggered responses being triggers for others. Which is odd as the meaning of words is how to communicate and in the instance of shorting words, nothing is lost in translation.
But then standards in words and layout, styles, when it comes to standards are more complex than any coding standards and we all know how legacy code works out when it comes to standards. Another way to view that is, imagine if COBOL had as many verbs as we do English words - yeah scary what legacy code would look like then and sorry if that becomes the source of any nightmares in old COBOL programmers with that analogy.
So in my instance, I would tend to agree with that observation and support that as a large factor from personal experience.
Still, thanks for the corrections and appreciate any constructive feedback. Also help curiosity quelled, I know what it is like to have a question and not know the answer.
So... way to move the goalposts, there.
Ask the RAF how outsourcing flight training is working for them.
(Hint: not well at all)
That would seem pretty unfeasible / unlikely for a private owner, even a wealthy one to fly it much at all.
Not many people can use an FA18... the accessibility of anysort of utility drops pretty fast when it is "can fly an f-18"
But yes, this is not an hobby for the masses.
i'd guess that the per hour operating costs of a super yacht would be similar or higher to the operating costs of an FA-18.
i think people like larry ellison would agree. afaik he has a few ex-military jets, including a MIG-29 (a lot more capable than an FA-18 in many respects).
The private part is still important. It's a legitimate fleet of military aircraft that would rival the air forces of many small countries that is directed by a man who really isn't accountable to us outside our borders.
This isn't new territory, it's just that you have to go back a few hundred years to see small groups of private individuals accumulate this much physical force. Just think about some of the disagreements that have occurred over scare resources for responding to the pandemic. Imagine how that picture can change.
This just doesn't make much sense as a concern.
There would be little point in training against them otherwise.
Notably, Erik Prince of Blackwater/Academi notoriety played fast and loose with weapons import/export/ownership rules, and came very close to being criminally prosecuted for it. Retired Admiral William 'Fox' Fallon resigned in disgust when he realized how far outside the rules Erik Prince was operating.
When Erik Prince suggested letting his private firm handle security in Afghanistan as an outsourced contractor, then SecDef (General) Jim Mattis was dead against it, and blocked it all the way.
This was one of the big concerns if the US/NATO ever went toe to toe with the Soviet Union. With the way modern weapons systems work if they both went all at it, it would not be long before one side or the other had enough of an edge up - just through attrition - that there would only be two options left to the losing side - surrender or go nuclear. You can't have two fully capable super powers fighting one another all out for years any more. You'll run out of stuff that works too fast.
New headline: A man owns the most advanced private air force and uses it to antagonize the US Navy for profit
> Private security company takes over as leader in air capability after recent asset purchase
"This guy figured it would be fun to own fighter jets and so figured out a business he could be in that would allow him to do so with the government's blessing."
I don't know if that is what he did of course, just guessing. It is a strategy I've seen employed successfully before. My daughter used this strategy by getting a research project approved for school on "studying organizing goal directed group behavior in online groups" where it was required she join several different raiding guilds in World of Warcraft to evaluate their strategies for co-operative goal seeking behavior. I thought it was pretty creative.
> Kirlin says that he looked at all the aircraft his competitors have bought, especially the Mirage F-1s from Spain and France and Atlas Cheetahs from South Africa that his competitors ATAC and Draken USA have snapped up, and passed on them. He actually showed me the approved ATF forms for importing these jets dated years ago as proof of his claim. Three primary reasons were behind his decisions. The first was concern that they simply weren't the right plane for the job—he wanted something more advanced. Second, that working with certain foreign original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) would be a major hassle.
> Finally, he is a firm believer in buying flyers, not aircraft that have been mothballed for years, if at all possible.
Edit: By the way, the Pilatus PC-9 airplanes shown in one of the images is the same plane that the South African acrobatics Silver Falcons use.
Their focus doesn’t seem to be providing adversaries against pilots, but adversaries against weapons systems.
He’s essentially selling organic data to train JTACs against.
The goal here isn’t as much great avionics, but great combinations of sensors and sensor jamming.
The military focuses on having a combat ready fleet, while he focuses on a fleet that can provide lowest cost options to provide appropriate training data.
A lot of that fleet is made up of trainers fit with electronics packages and Cessnas similarly Frankensteined. Then the military and manufacturers rent it out vs maintaining their own limited-use fleet.
The hornets are great, not just because they’re sweet jets, but because of the electronics packages and maintainability.
...and then he has a paramilitary nut/Bond villain vibe that keeps the story less dry and probably appeals to the intended audience.
The US already has ludicrously expansive personal rights to weapons ownership for any reason. We have a guy buying up a private air force. We have several guys building space vehicles. If Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos wanted a nuclear-armed ICBM could we actually stop them? Or, maybe more likely, some QAnon nutjob getting his hands on an armored vehicle and driving it through a shopping mall in Atlanta?
F/A-18s without guided weaponry aren't really that much of a change. (they've got cannons, but afact no JDAMs, JSOWs, AMRAAMs or even dumb bombs)
> Or, maybe more likely, some QAnon nutjob getting his hands on an armored vehicle and driving it through a shopping mall in Atlanta?
Well, you can literally buy WW2 era tanks. And it doesn't take all that much to make them street-legal. This isn't new. And yet, we DON'T see nutjobs abusing it.
And I think just saying it hasn't happened yet is like saying we haven't had a giant pandemic yet in 2019. I'd rather not wait for a catastrophe to decide we should do something about it.
Point being, a tank like that isn't really worse than a large ANFO truck bomb.
Shooting a gun vs using "household chemicals and gasoline" to attack someone, to say nothing of knives or bare hands, are so apart from each other that I know for a fact that you have no experience with violence or how much easier it is to do violence with a gun vs other methods. You are just parroting teenager-level philosophy.
Besides all that, we have huge amounts of data over more than 100 years. Turns out, and this will shock you, when you have more guns you are more likely to shoot people and kill overall.
I don't want people to die because Bubba finds it badass to own an AR-15 they will never use except maybe to kill themselves or a family member (statistically, these are the no1 and no2 most likely people an American is to kill with their gun). Do as you will I guess but almost nobody needs to own a gun privately.
As for the difficulty of killing large numbers of people, I'd stand by the assertion that it's easier with chemicals (explosives or incindiaries) than it is with guns.
I hold a number of political convictions at odds with my personal interest, or which could/will hurt me as an individual in the future, as do many around me. But I stand by them because they would bring us closer to nation in-which I'd be happy to live.
I'm firmly on the side of gun ownership. I'd like the NFA to be revised or repealed so as to make it more coherent, and less restrictive.
Nevertheless, I can respect the parent's position, because their experience doesn't make them hypocritical or subtract from their point (though it can be used to) so much as it's a sign of social conscientiousness, and a willingness to potentially put what they believe to be the needs of the whole before the needs of the self.
If you want to restrict the rights afforded by the 2nd amendment, would you like to restrict some others too? After all, the "freedom of the press" was designed at a time when newspapers were literally printed on a printing press. The founders couldn't have imagined the internet, so do people really need access to such a powerful way of disseminating information?
At least you admit it.
There are ways to do this. You can get a supermajority in congress to agree with you, or you can get 34 state legislatures to agree to call a convention of states. Then, and only then, you can change the constitution.
Barring that, no law or executive order can restrict the second amendment and be constitutional. Fortunately our current president has appointed justices who will ensure this remains true.
You can also just suspend parts at will during a pandemic.
> no loss of free speech or press and no descent into tyranny
That's a good one!
Not saying it isn't still one of the best places. But the trajectory is sadly quite clear.
Slippery slope. Keep talking about how you're fine with some people killing other people but not different people killing other people, it's a philosophical point and has something resembling a legs and not a total logical fallacy.
You don’t have the smallest chance of defending yourself from the government, the only thing gun ownership does is let people shoot each other for no good reason. This is an incontrovertible fact proven by statistics of gun ownership countries a.k.a. the US versus others.
Millions of lightly armed people have stood up well to the US military. What you're talking about isn't a fact at all -- it is a myth, that overwhelming technology can decisively determine the outcome of wars. It is certainly a factor but there is no way F-35s would be sent to bomb houses (for example): the cost, relative scarcity and long periods of maintenance for advanced weapons systems like that are all factors that limit their deployment. In limited war -- which is what all insurrections are -- application of advanced weapons is difficult.
If you switched that up for a "Tyrone" you'd get flagged pretty quickly.
Try not to bring your tired culture-war tropes to Hacker News. The rest of the internet is lousy with it, you might be happier out there.
Treating every gun as though it were a clear, present danger, is no more reasonable than treating every car that way. There are ~75 million gun owners in the USA; they are overwhelmingly harmless. Targeted policy is how you address something that is occasionally misused; and targeted policy seems to be the one thing that people keen on gun control do not want to think about.
I don't want people to die because Bubba finds it badass to own an AR-15 they will never use except maybe to kill themselves or a family member (statistically, these are the no1 and no2 most likely people an American is to kill with their gun).
It's true that most people who die from firearms are people ending their own lives; but the next largest group are criminals shooting one another, not "family members". The average American, not otherwise inclined to end their own life, is very unlikely to be shot with a gun.
The way you are defining "use" in your statement is just wrong. People who don't shoot other people still "use" their guns, just for sport or for hunting. It's like you're saying the only people who "use" guns are killers. What if we applied the same concept to another area? "I don't want people to die because Bubba finds it badass to own a Cessna they will never use except maybe to crash and kill themselves or a family member...". It seems absurd. There is a diminishing returns element to policy and you just can't write them in a such a way that it perfects safety.
And if guns don't kill people, what vital purpose do they serve? Defend your home with a bow and arrow because it's exactly as effective as an AR-15 with 100-round clip according your reductive assertion.
For example right now there is nothing stopping you from just grabbing a paring knife and stabbing/killing a random person on the street but you sure as hell aren't going put yourself in a better situation having done so.
I wonder if civilians will ever get to fly an F-15C...
We've had cases of nutjobs getting their hands on tanks, or building their own armored bulldozers, and going on rampages. It's a pain, but it's not a complete disaster. These vehicles aren't invincible. They generally get stuck somewhere, and then the police break open the hatch and shoot the nutjob. Tanks really can't do much by themselves besides drive around and run into some things (or over them, but again, you have to be careful or it can get stuck, break a tread, etc.). Tanks armed with 120mm cannon rounds, of course, can do some serious damage, but private individuals aren't allowed to own that kind of weaponry at all.
It's the same with an older fighter jet. What are you going to do with it? Fly it into a building? Sure, that'll be worse than flying a Cessna into a building, but still, it's not like a WMD. Even if you could fully load the 20mm cannon, you're not going to do that much damage; they don't hold that much ammo anyway (only enough for something like 5-10 seconds of sustained fire I think). Yeah, being able to drop a bunch of 500lb bombs would be a disaster, but again, you can't get that stuff.
Yes, if Elon or Jeff wanted a nuclear-armed ICBM, the government would certainly stop them. Building a rocket is one thing, building a nuclear warhead is something else entirely, and is not something trivial that just anyone can do. Iran (an actual nation-state) has been trying for some time and still hasn't succeeded as far as we know. It takes a lot of facilities and special materials to build something like that.
Though I don't know why a nutjob couldn't do just as bad with something heavier.
For those that don't get this reference, this actually happened:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_Heemeyer
RIP Killdozer
Frankly your concerns are completely unjustified.
It doesn't make sense to be so alarmed by it. People who own heavy weapons overwhelmingly use them for lawful purposes. This is true of people who own guns, as well. We can't treat every potentially dangerous thing as if it is a clear, present danger: that is like treating all drivers as "potential drunk drivers". You can't write policy around that.
Basically you need to have something tough to go against the JSF or it is a cakewalk and no training is achieved. These Hornets are an excellent 4th gen platform because they have had excellent maintenance and relatively gentle operation. They have all had the HUG 2.2 upgrade and are incredibly capable -- more so than many aircraft operated by the Air National Guard -- but they are too long in the tooth to be going up against modern competitors and be survivable.
JTAC training doesn't need high fast flyers, so just like the article says, using them is pointlessly expensive. Hawks and propeller aircraft are more useful. Fast jet flyers often have type certifcation on them from initial training, perfectly adequate for practicing 9 line briefs.
• Reduced flight hours and maintenance on fleet aircraft.
• Instructors do not need to be pulled from schedules.
• Fleet aircraft do not need to be hard scheduled.
• Cost per flight hour is much lower for common aggressor platforms (A-4, L-39, F1M, and now these legacy F-18s) than the aircraft the Air Force is training in.
• Private companies can more easily maintain and source parts for aircraft the military cannot (Migs, for instance).
This particular sale was the remainder of the RAAF's retired F-18 fleet, which Canada started buying in early 2019. These are _not_ Super Hornets.
Some of these companies have been around for decades. Some competitors:
• ATAC
• Top Air
• Draken
https://federalnewsnetwork.com/dod-personnel-notebook/2019/0...
https://www.businessinsider.com/us-air-force-considering-sto...
https://www.stripes.com/news/air-force/air-force-is-still-sh...
https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/rgs_dissertations...
And that doesn't even touch the shitshow which is drone crew morale.
... Wow.
Years ago I read a discussion between two people interested in USAF careers. One of them wanted to fly the F-22. The other told him to get the credentials and apply for the position. I remember wondering: you can just apply to pilot the world's most advanced supermaneuverable stealth fighter? Why would any F-22 pilot want to give up their position? I assumed it was because of the problems with the life support system:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lockheed_Martin_F-22_Raptor#Op...
I never thought the USAF could have morale problems...
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-pepsi-briefly-became-the...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sovereign_Military_Order_of_Ma...
Is this another example of the DoD contracting out something that would cost half as much for them to do themselves?
> These Israeli-designed pods are pretty much the world standard in modular self-protection jamming systems and are used on the Pentagon's own aggressor fleet...
Turns out the US has this problem as well... my brother is a Harrier pilot, and it seems to me like the US has mostly run out of spare parts for them. They bought a number of RAF Harriers for parts, but even so, it's a question of whether the F-35 will actually be ready in time to replace those squadrons.
The other day I was reading about some Saudi prince's half a billion (!!!) dollar yacht.
Sometimes I wonder if I live in the same planet as these people. It is hard for me to imagine such wealth and power
No, they don't. And neither does the US.
The F18 is now nearly 40 years old. Typically the advanced and sophisticated aspects of airframes are not allowed for sale, to private entities, or even non-us government ones.
The advanced avionics, weapons systems, etc, are all tightly controlled.
So, nothing rivaling next generation hardware but also nothing to sneeze at either.
Instead things like larger displays, munition mount points, and radar cross sections, etc.
The avionics provided are a modern variant of legacy systems, where the "cutting edge" is classified and held under strict expert control.
The trick is buying ammunition for them and also undoing some decomm work that requires expertise and equipment.
Fighter jets are heavily dependent on spares and expertise, but Iranian F-14 Tomcats managed to score something like 50 or 60 kills during the Iran-Iraq war, which happened after the US stopped playing nice with them. They're still flying a few of them today.
If this makes you wonder how they're doing this if everyone is playing by the export rules involving selling arms to Iran, you wouldn't be the first. They have some native production capacity, but...
I’m happy to answer questions people may have.
The Kirlin’s occupy a very particular role in the city.
once operating the largest franchise of Hallmark stores for nearly 60 years before quickly going out of business a few years ago. Other Kirlin defunct businesses include “The Fly”, a Blue jeans only store in the 80’s, KSNI (Kirlin Super Net Inc) a dial-up ISP in the 90’s.
The mentioned Kirlin of the story used to run “The World Freefall Convention” the largest skydiving convention in the world. For about a week and a half the small Airport would be beset by 10,000 skydivers and cessnas. One quirk of Quincys airport is a super long runway that can support a DB Cooper style 737 jet landing, so one would be chartered to allow 100s of skydivers to do high altitude jumps.
Unfortunately the convention ended because of the Bible-thumping city leaders didn’t care for the weeks of debauchery that were part of the festival attendees.
I've met several members of the Kirlin family and Don's a sharp, cordial guy. I find it interesting that he's made so good a go at such an unconventional business when other members of the family have had such problems in speciality retail. I wonder where the Hallmark store business would be if Don had been in charge.
I'll not comment on the ISP because I used to work for a competitor with a fierce rivalry.
Even if for some reason it is cheaper for the US military to have this in a private company instead of maintaining aggressor squadrons with Migs, how is this secure?
The other counter is there are 26 operators of the F-16. Frankly it would be easier both in practice and legality to get cooperation from some dude in Pakistan or Venezuela than a US citizen who can at least sorta be watched over.
Most of the tactics are not terribly advanced in the sense of some mysterious secret martial arts kick that defeats all. Most of the time battles are won logistically long before the fighting starts. Everyone in the business kinda knows what F16s do, not any more of a secret than knowing what Mig29s do, the struggle is always having enough resources in the right places at the right times to do anything about it.
Something that often surprises civilians is most US military manuals are freeware and have always been that way. If you want to learn how an Army Brigade Combat Team operates, you don't join the KGB and steal documents, you just download FM 3-96 and read it. This is why actual veterans get annoyed about fictional hollywood military stuff; if you don't understand the role of a BCT's information operations officer sufficient to portray one in a movie, its just sheer lazyness to make something up instead of simply reading the FM.
Its all part of the interesting strategy to handling massive public communications networks; half a century ago you could have an edge if it depended on having a secret sauce. Now that anyone with a web browser can download the official F-16 flight manual your strategy for having an edge relies on other forms of secret sauces.
A good analogy for the problem is that excellent world class scientific documentation exists for weight loss and athletic performance, yet most people will not train in those areas. Olympic athletes are not high performers because the textbooks for weight lifting are kept secret and only for their reading.
I always assumed (without any evidence) there is secret firmware or settings for these systems that will only be used in time of war and not used during training.
I guess Israeli Air Force knows countries like Iran have the Russian hardware and personnel/training for dealing with the Elta gear that Israel exports, but I also guess the Israeli Air Force has secret sauce, maybe using the same hardware, that they don't export and use only for striking strategic targets, knowing each strike teaches the opponent something.
I believe the military takes training realism incredibly seriously, and wouldn't dream of "testing in production" with a weapons system.
(Attributed to an unnamed Soviet Staff Officer)
The company has to follow US industrial security rules. Written by US DoD.
The employees are vetted and hold clearances.
Why do you think the USAF (or US Navy) hadn't thought about this?
EDIT: Actually it looks like they do have machine guns with rounds, but nothing such as guided missiles.
Looks like some sort of elaborate public money scam to me.
If you had an Air Force squadron of older planes, they need their own dedicated mechanics who are certified. Government certified vendors, who've gone through the vetting/price bidding process (likely the vendors selling you the latest F35 or whatever will want in on it too...). Dedicate pilots certified to fly these planes and likely only these planes... etc. Instead you shift the logistics to a smaller and more agile group who can optimize for their very specific and small use case.
The private contractor can also go out and train people from other military forces (like Canadians, eh?). That allows them to make money from multiple sources, where as the US Government would not. Sure maybe join training exercises, but that's not the same thing.
There are a lot of cases in business where outsourcing something specialized to another party makes a lot of sense - unless there is a huge scale for it. Just look at The Cloud. For a lot of companies, it doesn't make sense to pay the overhead of datacenters, datacenter techs, etc etc. For a few companies, that do it at scale, it makes a ton of sense (Ex FAANG).
Second, the USAF has a pilot numbers problem. The more experienced pilots are getting out as fast as they are able; there are many reasons for this, and COVID-19 will slow it down, but it will continue. To compensate they are trying to ram more in at the front of the funnel. This will cause other problems, not the least of which is a massive shortage of training personnel, causing overwork, causing more FCIs to leave, and so on.
The ex-USAF (and ex-RAAF) pilots flying these jets are enjoying not being sent overseas to shitty bases on long tours, or having to move their family interstate regularly, or dealing with braindead administrative detail and mandatory fun exercises some Colonel dreamed up. They are some of the best pilots around, and normally they would be lost to the airlines.
I'm very curious what these licenses say about how he is allowed to use these machines.
What kind of work is he allowed to take? Who is he allowed to shoot at?
No this is not a license to kill.
Certain firearms like short-barrel rifles (SBR), suppressors, calibers > 50, and machine guns require an ATF license. That said - these aren't hard to come by. Many people file multiple ATF form 4's (with a $200 tax) to acquire suppressors, machine guns, and SBR's. 8 is nothing special, you'll see people on r/guns with more.
The tl;dr is if you have the mone and time and clear background, its not hard.
As an Australian, this is a concern.
F35s are undeniably costly, but criticisms on the capability front usually come from the uninformed lunatic fringe (like APA), who are really the equivalent of climate change deniers, and groups with an axe to grind (Boeing would prefer to make more Super Hornet sales).
If it were me, I'd want half F-35s and half of the most advanced variant of the F-15 Strike Eagle I could afford, keeping in mind the F-15s would cost as much as the F-35. But you know, even keeping those two squadrons of Super Hornets they've got up to date would count for a lot.
If you used Strike Eagles you have the same problem as Supers -- they are 4.5G, not low observable, which gives warning of a strike. But I suspect the Supers will be in service for decades.
Extreme range strike is arguably complimentary to submarines, but there are no manned F-111-like platforms available to buy, and no one thinks that is a role UAS can do.
I think being able to hit ships at a distance is what the RAAF is most likely to want to do. I'd be intrigued to read a real analysis that indicates otherwise.
> Extreme range strike is arguably complimentary to submarines, but there are no manned F-111-like platforms available to buy, and no one thinks that is a role UAS can do.
I assume the Strike Eagle could achieve something not far off from the F-111 in terms of range with conformal fuel tanks. Although it looks like the Super Hornet has CFT available now, which can only be a good thing for the RAAF.
> If you used Strike Eagles you have the same problem as Supers -- they are 4.5G, not low observable, which gives warning of a strike.
The newer anti-ship missiles are meant to have a long enough range that that is less of a concern. I don't know so much about whatever version of the Harpoon missile the RAAF is flying. (or what they'd be up against, or their electronic warfare capability, which actually matters a lot...)
Frankly I'm kind of glad someone took them off our hands before they became even more of a liability. We've got enough on our plate dealing with the F-35's corrosion issues (most of the fleet will be kept in moist salt air at Williamtown and be plugged into big dehumidifiers when not flying) and other things like its limited range.[2]
Which, now I put it that way, makes me wonder if maybe we should have kept a few Hornets.
[1] "43. The F/A-18A/B Hornet was designed for a safe life of 6000 airframe hours. At the current fleet flying rate of 13 000 hours per year, reducing to 12 000 from 2013–14, there is capacity on that basis for the Hornet fleet to continue flying until the end of 2020." https://www.anao.gov.au/work/performance-audit/management-au...
[2]https://www.aspistrategist.org.au/projecting-power-with-the-...
edit: it looks like you've still got two squadrons of Super Hornets until 2025, so you've got that going for you
What a boss.
https://fullcolorbirds.wordpress.com/2010/01/26/grumman-f-14...
Sounds like these beasts will be expensive money pits to operate nowadays.
We have some MiG-29s which were essentially gifted by none other than the German Luftwaffe and a few F-16s bought in the mid 00's.
Overall not bad, but this one guy has more than half the number of our aircraft.
And to further improve his odds, he could always attack outside office hours: https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2014/feb/19/swis...
There's a remote-fly-by-wire package they install that apparently has been around for quite a while. I guess this means they're also developing a remotely controlled or AI based fighter platform but they wouldn't confirm, just that these new "drones" get shot down by other "drones".
Source: I was given a tour of the facility and told what they were doing with the old F-18's. Pretty wild.
It's reminiscent of the way you can buy spectacular used luxury cars for a song once they've got a certain amount of wear and miles on the odometer. Maintaining them and accounting for the future cost of repairs makes their value drop precipitously.
I don't know about using them for drone target practice though, Loyal Wingman (ugh, what a name) only got to WoW the other day. More likely advanced tactics development for manned aircraft.
Though it's surely very expensive to operate these things, it's also probably cheaper than if the USAF had to do it.
Risky business though.
I guess the title is saying that it's specifically a male adult?
I assume this is like one department of a company using Azure and the other using AWS because nobody wants to share their turf. Writing a check is easier than talking to your coworkers.
It’s the same reason a company might hire an outside firm to do penetration testing, rather than ask its head of cyber security, “Hey why don’t you conduct a test to see if you are doing an awesome job, as we need to figure out whether to fire you or give you more money”.
outsourced contractors will tell you what you pay them to tell you
of course all that depends on the contractor, who’s doing the hiring, and the industry etc
but the point is, just because it’s outsourced doesn’t mean the incentive structure will “work” any better than internally
Looks like the joke is on me, now: People now actually have an option of building their own Air Force. Greaaaaaat,
But you're still not wrong - I have the same opinion. In any case 2nd amendment arguments on fighting the USA are moot - the 2nd amendment doesn't legalize fighting the USA. Guns or not, if the USA decides you're the enemy, you're automatically a terrorist regardless. And terrorists have not had any issues getting guns.
I believe The Clash puts it best:
When they kick at your front door
How you gonna come?
With your hands on your head
Or on the trigger of your gun
When the law break in
How you gonna go?
Shot down on the pavement
Or waiting in death row
You can crush us
You can bruise us
But you'll have to answer to
Oh, guns of Brixton
P.S. Wrongthink has always been criminalized
A non-insignificant number of people would consider criminalizing drugs criminalizing wrongthink.
"We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did."
- John Ehrlichman, Nixon's Aide during time of the war on drugs.
https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/
Aside:
Liberty - the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one's way of life, behavior, or political views.
What the hell ever happened to "give me liberty or give me death"?
Automated drone strikes makes it easier for a totalitarian regime to wage war against its own people.
If you were vastly outnumbered and tried to wage war against your population they can just strike. And just like that all your advanced weapons won't be able to be maintained.
If you want to force people to work on your factories, bombs won't be very useful, but guns will be.
The people, in a Democracy, are the arbiters of power and the government serves the people. If the government does not serve the people, the people have an a priori right to reform that government.
Why is the right to bear arms necessary for a free state if not to give the citizenry the ability to overthrow the government? It's not as if indian raids or an invasion from Spain or Britain are causes for concern, nor does the second amendment make up for the lack of a standing army anymore. Overthrowing the government is the only thing left that it's good for, as far as a free state is concerned.
>If the government does not serve the people, the people have an a priori right to reform that government.
What other means of "reform" does the second amendment offer the people, than revolution by force of arms?
And how often does that actually succeed? The American Civil War caused the South to lose out on slavery, at great cost to its economy; while The Troubles didn't induce the UK to give any concessions it wasn't already willing to give beforehand.
Most insurgencies ultimately fail in their aims, and this is already when we're talking about insurgencies against weak governments and civil societies where monopoly of force is close to nonexistent in the first place.
You're saying that the Brits would have agreed to let Northern Ireland vote to join rejoin the rest of Ireland at some point in the future WITHOUT force of arms? I don't believe you. And yes, that was included [0] in the Good Friday Agreement.
And even if most insurgencies fail, "let's not do that because it might provoke an insurgency" is valuable all on its own.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Friday_Agreement#Status_o...
If you look farther back in Ireland's history, it seems like Ireland's independence from UK was achieved mostly by violent resistance. After there was too much violence, England finally decided it wasn't worth it, and came up with an agreement allowing most of the island to become independent, with the exception of a handful of northern counties.
Quite the contrary. The Troubles in Northern Ireland were not a unilateral insurrection, but an emergent response to aggressive incumbent paramilitarism when confronted with demands for greater civil rights for the minority population. Military strategists favored withdrawal of the occupying forces; political hardline thinking won out, but was unable to win a conflict of attrition and eventually settled for power-sharing and de-escalation. At the present Northern Ireland is as likely to see reunification with the rest of the island as continued membership of the UK.
The reason why the right to bear arms is important to a free state is because both sides of a negotiation must possess power. Kent State was a tragedy, but it's aftermath happened in a court room with lawyers and journalists. Tienanmen square on the other hand saw a government run over it's people with tanks and then pretend it never happened.
When one side of a power dynamic has no power, the opposite side can do whatever it wants - install a president for life, promote the president to a position without any checks, directly compromise basic human rights for short term political wins, and so on.
A "revolution by force of arms" isn't very likely, but a large well armed group of protestors is a great way to convince a government to show up in court and use words and lawyers instead of tanks.
If there was a credible war between the American government and the citizenry I don't think it would be as one sided as you think it would be.
Government is a diverse collection of entities. It's a mistake to assume that resisting the government means overthrowing the entire federal system.
If you're interested in hearing more on this subject I recommend reading "This Nonviolent Stuff'll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible" by Charles Cobb.
Large swaths of American history of American history are likely being ignored with assertion like "gun ownership could prevent a lynching". Take pre-Civil War laws making gun ownership of African Americas (free and enslaved) illegal, the continuation of those laws under "Black Codes" in both the North and South post Civil War, and the extension of similar acts post Civil Rights Act with laws like California's 1967 Mulford Act.
This extends beyond such obvious examples as the Mulford Act (California's foray into gun control, banning open carry in response to armed protest by Black Panthers). Gun control often focuses on removing access to arms by any poor and disenfranchised groups. So called "Saturday night special" legislation seeks to ban cheap guns, with disproportionate impact in disadvantaged communities.
Access to arms has historically been a key element of people maintaining their freedom from government abuse. Your examples of gun control indeed do undermine this freedom.
The history of gun control in the US is deeply tainted by racist motivations.
For example, some people think a recent domestic abuse record should trigger a very high level of scrutiny for firearm purchases (or even continued possession). This isn't the sort of rule that would prevent anyone from committing a crime with a gun, perhaps not even an impenetrable wall for those with such records. But it increases the practical difficulty and compounds the crime (and risk) for certain cases.
Margins matter -- seatbelts can't save all lives but they absolutely produce a safety margin.
And indefensible law does not make having defensible policy unreasonable.
I think a better question would be asking how arming either police or civilians changes the policing dynamic. These types of questions also need to be set against the larger cultural context of how a society keeps control of its policing activity.
Also, as a counterpoint, Vietnam did get bombed to oblivion and persevered through it.
Also, to talk about how it’s hopeless to have a gun versus a drone — there aren’t enough drones, and Vietnam is a great counter-example for “tech always wins.”
Maybe, maybe not. The Nazis weren't just "bad guys backed by the government who were armed," they were a political party, which included much of the German populace, who supported its anti-Semitic ideals. It's possible more guns would have ended the Holocaust sooner, but it's also possible they would have just made it more efficient.
Citizens being armed would both change the calculus of a genocide, making it harder to execute and possibly preventing it.
If attempted anyway, it would be much messier for the Nazis.
Many more of those links would be physically inside the US than were inside Afghanistan.
Anyway, you'll probably see the same thing play out here in the coming years.
If Americans want to be well armed, they need to start visiting the library instead of the gun shop.
poorly trained is true, but Americans own almost 90 times more firearms than the US military. there are 1.2 guns for every person in the US.
> He was also one of the early pioneers of the then-fledgling, if not wholly experimental, adversary air support market. In the early 2000s, he joined forces with the Airborne Tactical Advantage Company (ATAC), which was blazing a trail with their contracts with the Navy to supply fast jet targets and electronic warfare pod toting adversaries that mimic everything from enemy cruise missiles to fighters for Navy and Marine fighter aircraft and Navy surface combatants to train against.
In other words, they provide targets for training for Navy aircraft.
There's talk that these types of aggressor squadrons might be a last-ditch aircraft reserve for the US or allies, but they're not exactly primed/ready for war without armament or modern radars.
(No, the fact that some of their aircraft have functional cannons and cannon rounds doesn't count).
Also does this mean they can be legally outfitted with air to ground armaments? I don't know much about these aircraft, but I imagine since they are used for simulated combat that they have decent evasive capabilities even if they can't directly engaged other aircraft.
They have something that would be considered a nice radar for a 4th gen fighter, 20 years ago. Whether that's a modern radar today...
And I imagine they can legally be outfitted with all sorts of things! Getting approval to actually use those bombs would be a bit touchy though. (And it's not like these have a huge strike radius, either - without tanker support, they won't be making it much past 500 miles before having to turn for base)
That's the sort of thing that can be easily circumvented and where the legal environment can also change rapidly. I will not be in the least bit surprised if a private military company deploys air power within the next 5 years.
Dude is totally not an intelligence asset of any kind. Just an enthusiast.
If you're looking for conspiracy theories, looking past the ownership of large numbers of military jets, to the handful of rich-enthusiast-grade small arms, seems like a weird flex.