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Comment by blakesterz | Hacker News Reader

His company buys these things and then has a contract with the Navy for when they do training. So IF I'm reading this correctly, it's not just some random dude buying all this stuff for fun, it's his company and they have a very clear business purpose for doing this.

"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. "

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Yeah I had to follow a bunch of the links to figure this out, but in short, he runs an air combat training company, and the Air Force and Navy pay him to field a training “adversary” for the military pilots to fight in mock combat.

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.

> Yeah I had to follow a bunch of the links to figure this out, but in short, he runs an air combat training company, and the Air Force and Navy pay him to field a training “adversary” for the military pilots to fight in mock combat.

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?

"Aggressor squadrons" train very differently, to mimic potential adversaries combat doctrine. The aircraft may also be modified to perform more like the aircraft they're simulating. They're even painted differently, like this F-15 in Russian-style camo:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6a/F-15E-80...

> "Aggressor squadrons" train very differently, to mimic potential adversaries combat doctrine.

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.

It sounds like it's just a way for the Navy to blow taxpayer money.

Look at how our government managed a virus. Now imagine WW3.

That is the purpose of the Navy, just like all the rest of USA armed forces. They haven't won a war in my parents' lifetimes, but just think of all the trillions of dollars that have gone to armaments manufacturers!

We lost to Grenada?

And Iraq 1991, or Serbia/Kosovo(ish)

We never stopped fighting in Iraq, so in what sense did we "win"? More to the point, we never left Saudi, which was the direct cause of 9/11, which also was not a win. Except, of course, for the armaments manufacturers. For them, 9/11 was most definitely a win.

"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.

The strategic objectives of the two main phases of those conflicts was achieved. Remove Saddam from Kuwait and remove Serbia enough to stabilise Kosovo.

I don't disagree about the Saudis and US military industrial complex but that wasn't the point I was making

How did we lose to Grenada?

The story is that tax payers gave his company money to buy our F18s from us so that he can accumulate a force of enemy aircraft. His company will also train pilots specifically as the enemy would.

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.

> That US destroyers have a catastrophically bad helm UI

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...

Top Gun used a lot of planes, including -18 and F-16. There was a F-16N for awhile. Navy aggressor squadrons also fly F-5s and just bought some from the Swiss.

TOPGUN is pretty much gone now.

By that you mean it's merged into NSAWC? Because there's still a TOPGUN course.

I meant culturally in the USN. TOPGUN used to be all air to air, all day. Now it's strike fighter training, E2 training, as well as the classical A2A.

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.

It seems Israel has a strong dogfighting capability, but who else right now?

Israel is good in air combat, but I don't know how much of that is dogfighting anymore. Maybe the Brits, but the Eurofighter is more of an interceptor than a dogfighter. The French don't get much publicity, but arguably have the best military on the Continent.

Kind of. For various budgetary reasons and capex vs opex and stuff like that, the US only has two aggressor squadrons now, the 18th and 64th. The 65th shut down recently. We're kinda getting out of that business.

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.

> 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

> 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_...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_F6D_Missileer

> 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.

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.

Most UAVs are highly susceptible to ECM. The smaller your UAV the less likely it is going to be well equipped against ECM. Inertial navigation systems can be exceedingly expensive so a cheap drone will be reliant upon GPS. Something that should be obvious but is always skipped is that the operational range of quadrocopters is incredibly low and they cannot carry any significant payloads.

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.

I guess he uses a bunch of training, simulations and electronics to degrade the performance of the F-18s so they match the characteristics of various "enemy" aircraft types. Its hard to come by spare parts for Russian aircraft so emulating them by degrading the performance of American aircraft seems like its maybe more cost effective.

I question the tacit assumption that all "enemy" aircraft types they might wish to simulate will have worse performance than an F-18.

It's often more expensive to create specialized training capabilities in house. Contractors have an advantage with both equipment and personnel costs.

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.

It might also be beneficial to have a training combatant, who is not in the same chain of command as the trainees. Gives external perspective, and reduces the chance of collusion to show "good results" if done right.

I think this is key.

This isn't an advantage of contractors since the military aggressor units already do a great job. They are a separate unit and do all their tactical planning separately. They attend the mass safety briefings before a mission and they provide training feedback during debriefs, but they are serious about maintaining the integrity of their training. There is no incentive to cheat- you don't win a prize for a victory and cheating might result in one of your friends dying if they had to go to war with inadequate training. There are several reasons a pilot can lose $5 during a mission but they can't win it back by cheating.

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.

That's what I was thinking initially.

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.

As a field grade officer having just recently finished an NTC rotation, the OPFOR has zero qualms about embarrassing BLUFOR.

I think this is "cheaper" like - its cheaper to to have supply chains for critical medical gear in China.

Makes for a great target for espionage on military tactics and capabilities for one risk.

I won't say that they offer perfect security, but these are military contractors, not part-timers from a temp agency. They are mostly ex-military (you can't get trained Hornet drivers anywhere else except for a few civilian test pilots), still have to maintain their security clearances, and are subject to security audits.

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.

" 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"

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.

> ‘... spies?' I thought we were chums with the Low King!’

> '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)

>still have to maintain their security clearances

>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.

From what I've read I'm pretty sure not everyone who has to maintain a clearance deals with actually sensitive information.

Technically, it's not what the US thinks they're capable of, but rather what the contractors the US hires think China/Russia are capable of. The US may know that that China/Russia's actual combat abilities are greater than the contractors do.

It's a pro and con type of thing. For example you can go out and hire a former Soviet MIG driver and get him to drive the the Hornet just like he say taught the Iranians to drive their MIGs (limiting the performance of the Hornet to match that of the older aircraft, etc).

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.

Most intelligence about US military capabilities is managed by private companies. Most of the people who provide security to protect US military intelligence work for private companies.

Sounds to me like the military is simply shooting itself in the food with its "up or out" policies. Why force highly-trained and experienced people to leave just because they've gotten to a plateau in their career where they're both competent and comfortable?

Do foreign militaries also have these policies?

Because those pilots theoretically move "up" to being staff officers, and then a few of them reach the highest levels of command, with the benefit of a diverse background.

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.

Because they clog up slots that could be used by someone ambitious. If you've got 500 Major slots, but 400 of them are occupied by people who don't want to get promoted, then you only have 100 Majors who can get promoted. So they either have to spend less time in the job than you really want, because you need a certain number of Majors to get promoted to Lt Col each year... or you don't get enough Lt Col promotions, so you don't promote to Colonel as fast as you should. Repeat for every other rank.

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.

In WW2 Germany specificallydidn't take skilled pilots out of combat. This is why lists of WW2 aces are dominated by the Germans, but it also had the side effect that those experienced pilots weren't around to train new pilots, contributing to the degradation of Germany's air capabilities towards the end of the war

Seems like part of it would be to ensure that you will always be training new pilots.

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

I've always thought the most fascinating part of such sales is if and where backdoors would be put into aircraft and other military exports and how they would be utilised in a scenario. It think I read somewhere about France doing this at one point with fighters.

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.

Most likely a big percentage of these contract pilots are retired ex-military. Enjoying decent military healthcare benefits retirees get while raking in contractor pay.

good for them!

No complaints here, my dad double dipped for years.

No profit on just calling the Navy.

Corruption

Effectively privatised wargames. Many forces cross train in wargames scenarios on various scales, this is just a business that operates by providing services in one of those fields. Kinda neat in many ways and equally wonder how outsourcing would have financial gains for both parties. Certainly the combat/training dn flying styles will be different and with that offer some good training that flying against more formalised up for the ranks pilots would of been taught. So certainly adds a nice dynamic and that alone may be the value payoff for both parties.

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.

> 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

That certainly would of played a part and in bidding for the contract the military may of needed 3 quotes. So h usual suspects quote, large amount as case of if they accept, then we can afford to just do it and still cheese happy, if not, no investment beyond a fat large quote. So only takes one serious player to do a quote more realistic and yet profitable and they are up and running.

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.

"Would have." "May have."

his spelling error was "would've" and "may've"

I see that more and more recently, English spelled phonetically. Like "their" instead of "they're" and the example above. Very curious whether it's an American thing or foreigners writing a non-native language.

I'm a brit and do it out of lazyness.

How does that work? Surely deliberately typing the wrong word takes more effort?

No. It takes more effort to clearly remember and apply all such distinctions.

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.

WHat may be seen as a mistake, is in many ways akin to local accents and in the UK, we have many local accents that can and do make verbal communication just as much throught with interpretation more than wording. Yet verbal accent and localisms are more accepted than the written forms.

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.

Not necessarily due to muscle memory and easy of access upon keyboard or mostly soft keyboard layout for punctuation access. But mostly muscle memory. Heck could even view having to add the extra layer of shortening a two words into one is a process born out to save ink in a time when ink and print space was more costly and perhaps a form of lazyness that is more accepted than just having the full words.

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.

With the most common North American accent "would've" and "would of" sound very similar. My suspicion is that the error tends to arise in people that have learned language more from speaking than reading.

Huh. Could "would of" be a regionalism? I sometimes say "woulda", but don't write it.

No, it's an error. "Woulda" is the correct way of spelling a regionalism. "Would of" is an incorrect spelling of "would've", which is a contraction of "would have".

Hey, just thought I'd ask. You never know when you're gonna need a new voice ;)

In my instance, that would have a strong correlation and never read fictional material, autistic spectrum imagination thing for me, but love burning thru an RFC.

So in my instance, I would tend to agree with that observation and support that as a large factor from personal experience.

In my case it is aspergers and kinda how it logically ingrained upon my brain, with spelling and grammar rules being fraught with exceptions. It is and always will be, my kryptonite area. So curiosity in this instance falls outside your suspicions, but then every rule has an exception. Native British language autistic spectrum in this instance.

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.

> "inhouse" is probably still a no-bid buddy contract with a large defense corporation

So... way to move the goalposts, there.

I doubt it's that involved of a decision process when it's much more simply explained in terms of liability. I'd think it's a no-brainer to end the possibility of telling someone that their kid died being used as practice bait, and that this almost certainly ;) has value to the military.

he runs an air combat training company, and the Air Force and Navy pay him to field a training “adversary” for the military pilots to fight in mock combat.

Ask the RAF how outsourcing flight training is working for them.

(Hint: not well at all)

Sounds like a great way to tinker with ai and drone pilots. I wonder what kind of ability you gain when g force is removed as a pilot weakness?

Another way to write this might be,

"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.

My favorite milblogger retired, hated having a "regular" job, joined ATAC and then died not too long later flying an old Israeli fighter. I'm glad if these companies are getting newer aircraft.

Lex LeFon was a fantastic writer. He really didn't like the Kfir, and I don't blame him.

Sounds fairly straightforward, but what happens if that business plan changes? If private paramilitary aviation is anything like other private security services, then there’s definitely a market with some pretty deep pockets with questionable motives.

1) It's enormously expensive and difficult to arm disarmed 4th gen planes. You'd need another extremely expensive military contractor to equip them with (expensive) missiles, rockets, or whatever. Plus, in all likelihood, the defense contractors would refuse, if it did anything to risk federal contracts.

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

1) like the article states, infact these things are not disarmed at all. and yeah federal contracts... Who else was he contracting again currently and what's the purpose of the whole endeavour then (there's definitely more money there except for fleecing the air force...). I would understand allowing such a business when it was a direct front for CIA-CAS (which it very well might be), but just to extend the private contracting business to freaking jets seems borderline crazy

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.

I think “disarm” here was used in the sense of reloading ammo vs. making the weapon itself usable or not.

as I outlined in the other answer, you don't need a lot of weapons to counter non-NATO/China/Russia-air forces. And I'm sure, a person buying state of the art fighter jets can buy some surplus Sidewinder or Maverick missiles as well...

Unless your cobalt mine in the Congo is generating billions in revenue, fending them off with modern combat aircraft is probably going to be a net loss. It's not uncommon to have maintenance costs of $10,000 or more per flight hour (the F-35 is apparently $20,000). A fleet of 46 aircraft flying, say, 8 hours per day is going to cost $110,400,000 per month at a $10,000 flight hour cost.

you won't need the full fleet to fend off any neighboring country – and as I said they offer the whole range now: from small prop-based CAS to state of the art (at least for everyone non-NATO, China or Russia) air superiority.

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!

Right, but now you're talking about using mercenaries to fight a civil war and vie for power over a sovereign nation. That's much higher stakes than a cobalt mine. Mercenaries in air forces have existed, but usually in the form of hiring pilots and maintenance crews to operate aircraft owned by one of the belligerent nations. This is what occurred in the Eritrean-Ethiopian war. These countries brought up former Soviet aircraft and munitions following the end of the cold war, and also hired ex-soviet pilots and ground crews to operate them. But this is a significant war with hundreds of thousands of combatants on both sides.

ahem, the DR Congo is basically in a state of civil war. And yeah, basically the air superiority is currently held by the nation state and its allies. A private force can turn this easily. Also, the soviet caches have dried up (while I doubt the demand did) and today in most conflict areas, it should be a lot easier to put a box of cash on the table to get a service than import/export a lot of stuff on your own (you need people and control for that).

those aren't super hornets by the way (no civilian would get an authorization to fly a super hornet). They're the A/B, original hornet version, and any superhornet would fly circles around one.

These seem to be F/A-18A/B models so just regular hornets. Which also tracks with their acquisition since the RAAF is selling off and replacing their aging A/B hornet fleet (the US has already retired theirs, except for the Blue Angels). That said I agree with everything else you said, just wanted to point that detail out.

You would still require a lot of approvals from DoD/ATF etc. to get an A-29 Super Tucano, armed or not. See my earlier comment. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22837486

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.

so then, it's not "a man owns a private airforce" but "a man who owns a company and this company owns a private airforce"

But what if that man who owns that company, decides he wants to change his business model?

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.

They’re not armed jets, that’s an important distinction. Short of flying into something, how would these actually pose a threat?

You didn't read the article? They are armed jets.

You’re right, technically. He has rounds of ammunition for the guns. What I meant was that they’re lacking the missiles. Not that you couldn’t do some damage with the guns, but those are weapons of last resort on these jets. They can’t carry many rounds.

And clearly a man capable of buying fighting jets couldn't source some missiles?

Where by "a man" you mean "a defense contractor that signs billion dollar contracts with the DoD".

If he had bought these on the black market, I’d say yes. But he didn’t, he bought them legally.

Presumably, the same thing that would happen if General Dynamics suddenly decided to change its business model, the major difference being that General Dynamics actually manufactures the weapons you're worried about private companies wielding, and Air USA acquires them.

This just doesn't make much sense as a concern.

Do these jets even have radar and other equipment necessary to actually employ weapons? IIRC most aggressor jets have some hardpoints and avionics removed.

did you read the article? it specifically puts an emphasis on how these jets hadn't anything removed and even got state-of-the-art ECM pods with them.

The article makes it clear that these jets do retain their electronic warfare pods and radar systems.

There would be little point in training against them otherwise.

It's not that simple. Owning a fighter jet (or even trainer like an Aero L-39) requires both the nod from the ATF, and a bunch of FAA waivers. For a high end jet like an F/A-18 or F-16, It practically requires the Secretary of Defense himself to approve it. Without that approval, Boeing or Lockheed Martin can't provide parts and support for the aircraft.

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.

Fighters are export controlled items. Illegal to remove form the US, illegal to show to a foreign national etc. The US has every legal right to enforce how he uses them outside the country.

If they went rogue or something like that and the US government shut down their supply chain they'd be unable to fly in almost no time. Fighter aircraft take an enormous amount of maintenance to keep in an up status.

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.

Well even if it was private the rough estimates of cost per flight hour of an FA18 is something in the range of +$10k to +$20...

That would seem pretty unfeasible / unlikely for a private owner, even a wealthy one to fly it much at all.

It would probably be accessible to ultra-high net worth folks. Something like a super yacht can cost 2 mil/yr. Back of the napkin math indicates that's about equivalent to taking an FA18 out for a few hours per week.

Yeah, but I can even use a yat.

Not many people can use an FA18... the accessibility of anysort of utility drops pretty fast when it is "can fly an f-18"

Most people can't pilot a super yacht either; they hire a full crew. The FA18 can seat two. Also, anyone who has the money to buy and operate one of these vehicles has more than enough money to get someone to teach them how to fly it.

But yes, this is not an hobby for the masses.

Yeah but the joy of a yacht probably has less to do with piloting it than the joy of piloting an F18.

If you gave me the option to ride on a yacht or ride in an F18, I would 1000% choose the latter.

me too!

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).

So if a wealthy person flew it one day a week for 8hrs, we are around $8m annual. For high net worth that's realistic. Cheap than a lot of super yachts on the 10% running cost rule. And likely would fly less.

As far as I know, the last operational Cheetahs were sold by the SANDF to similar contractors. If you look in the article, you'll see:

> 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.

Yes, that's exactly the "Catch" here, even though article presents it as if some random dude buying up expensive things for leisure.

The article explains all of this really clearly from the start.

This is such weird phrasing. I imagine the corporate prison industry uses the same words: "She was also one of the pioneers of the fledgling private incarceration market. By creating this dynamic new industry, unlimited synergies can by unleashed within public-private partnerships".

Oh yeah?

New headline: A man owns the most advanced private air force and uses it to antagonize the US Navy for profit

In that case it's pretty brilliant. I was going to say that the maintenance cost of all those jets is probably pretty impressive

Alternative less interesting title:

> Private security company takes over as leader in air capability after recent asset purchase

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