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Post by madmac on Aug 19, 2023 9:40:07 GMT 12
We need to ensure that we grow the back end industrial support as well the pointy end. There is probably as case for the likely new government funded dry dock to be made a defense asset (unless there is a government organisation for owning strategic assets).
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Post by madmac on Aug 11, 2023 9:22:43 GMT 12
Whether climate change is there or not, I do not see how it needs to be a major part in the current recovery programme to get our Defence Force back up to speed. It will suck up valuable time, money and personnel resources from the recovery that we cannot afford, and that is better spent on proper thorough training and re-equipment. My point is we should only worry about the long term weather stuff AFTER you have rescued the military from the dreadful place where the current idiots in charge have allowed it to get to. I would note that the US forces used greening / reducing carbon emissions as a sales pitch to reduce the logistical tail for operations in Afghanistan (in practice more solar / energey efficently = less fuel convoys required).
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Post by madmac on Aug 3, 2023 20:13:10 GMT 12
When I said washing down...crap, I am sure everyone would have understood that I meant they wash the exteriors but don't wash the interiors that are also subject to salt atmosphere. If the aircraft is not "navalised" then that means inside and out....and I have not known corrosion to be selective as to where it starts As the NH90/MRH90 has a composite airframe, rotor blades, etc I wonder how much additional "marinization" there is for the NFH90, particularly given the experience of the Dutch navy. Carbon fiber is a pain in the butt for driving corrosion in metal particularly aluminum, normally one uses titanium or a few layers of fiber glass ensure it doesn't come into direct contact, however a high salt environment is likely to provide other conductive paths to get around these protections. Improved corrosion resistance is ikely going to make it heavier, more expensive and likely harder to service.
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Post by madmac on Jul 30, 2023 13:58:05 GMT 12
Why do you believe the infrastructure cost is not a valid part of the cost of the P8? capability It is paid for with real capital Defence $ that are then not available for other defence projects. Intergrated Logisitics Support which includes infrastructure is key to successful through life management of these aircraft. Or do you what them sitting outside under a Warehouse blue tarp? Because if the Defence force wasn't run with an infra-structure deficient, much of that cost would have already have been paid for. Longer runways, hangars that aren't a health and safety hazard etc, all contribute to operational capacity beyond just the RNZAF's P-8's. The second point being the associated cost is largely fixed regardless of the numbers of airframes operated and significant when compared to the cost of the actual airframes.
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Post by madmac on Jul 29, 2023 10:27:26 GMT 12
It would be nice if instead of using the NZ$2.436 billion figure, they would split it between infrastructure replacement program and the actual cost of the aircraft.
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Post by madmac on Jul 8, 2023 20:20:09 GMT 12
[/quote]One of the issues is the single low-rate production facility for the 737NG (ie not MAX) airframes, used for P-8s and E-7s. I'm sure Boeing would like someone to pay for the certification of MAX-based versions of these so they can convert that plant to something else. But soon-ish if anyone wants extra P-8s they have to work around whatever P-8s the USN gets AND the USAF replacing the E-3s. [/quote] Pitty they don't jam the p-8 package in the B767, that would give an airframe with the range we want rather than something that really needs a tankers to do what we want it to do.
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Post by madmac on Jul 5, 2023 22:31:42 GMT 12
The problem with 4 aircraft is that we plan to use them for the next 30 years. Having 6 P-8’s would mean that the hours to be flown would be spread over more aircraft and we could get 30 years out of them. The problem with 4 airframes is, ten years in, whats the dispatch rate doing to be, if its 80%, 1 in 25 missions is going to be on the 3rd airframe they power up that morning, if one is in maintenance and another waiting to relieved from station (or what ever), 1 in 25 missions won't be launching. Critical fleet mass is a very real very multi faceted problem. They have already been here before with the P-3 fleet its Ok we are smarter this time!
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Post by madmac on May 23, 2023 20:01:41 GMT 12
I will note the ironically that Lynx where the prime candidate to replace the Wasp, except the Ozzies want more vertical lift capacity than the Lynx for a ship class they never brought, so we brought SH2s. Now having brought 3 lots of SH's (F,G, G(I)), it looks like we are buying the current built development of the lynx.
Can we actually crew a frigate at the moment?
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Post by madmac on May 16, 2023 7:51:28 GMT 12
Why is an arbitrary % of GDP considered acceptable, especially one that was set in the post cold war environment.
There seems to a complete failure that recognize that the world has changed particularly in Washington. Had Russia invade Ukraine during the thrum presidency there would have been very little to no American aid for Ukraine, we see far right elements holding up approvals of arms shipments and the republican presidential candidates pushing reducing support for Ukraine. Regardless of the USA military capacity they are becoming an unreliable politically and given the amount of US kit the Ozzies by extension this makes Ozzie far less reliable.
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Post by madmac on May 12, 2023 19:31:45 GMT 12
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Post by madmac on May 12, 2023 18:59:52 GMT 12
For a Massive Defence spend it seems to be missing a nought off the end.
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Post by madmac on Mar 18, 2023 13:14:42 GMT 12
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Post by madmac on Feb 13, 2023 12:16:30 GMT 12
I think the first one got shot down because it was visible to the general population, after that, they possibly looked at the payload and had an Oh Shit moment, plus they have appeared to have updated the filters on the NORAD radar to pickup the balloons.
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Post by madmac on Jan 14, 2023 19:35:16 GMT 12
Paul you know full well the NZ government isn’t going to buy an MRTT. still 3 B777-200's in desert that would be pretty cheap Off the top of my head, isn't AirNZ's 777-200ER's odd balls. If you think mil reg 757's are bad for parts issues, try a mil reg odd ball sub variant. That is if we operate the parts side much like we have, if we brought a half dozen spare airframes broke 2 in NZ and parked the other 4 in Alice well maybe, but we would still have simulator issues.
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Post by madmac on Dec 31, 2022 15:50:23 GMT 12
I would note that any discussion of Germany's buy of the F35 it has a lot to do with the fact that free fall nuclear weapons have been cleared for the F35 where as Germany would have had to fund that development for pretty much any other airframe.
People involved in the F35 development have described it as 1 operating system running in 3 different airframes.
I would also ponder the effect of sustained operations, the original concept was I seem to recall was about day 5 of a full on war that the airdefences would have been sufficiently degraded to allow use of external stores, this would also apply to the state of the RAM (& with it allow deferral of maintenance). Weather this still applies in a naval focused war, is anyones guess.
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Post by madmac on Dec 23, 2022 22:36:08 GMT 12
The TCDS for the PA-18 is here drs.faa.gov/browse/excelExternalWindow/AB203AB0E89895AF862572090071F7CD.0001From this you will find the certification basic is CAR 3, as amended November 1, 1949. From there you can pull the CAR regs of the FAA website to get the limit load (should be something like 4.4+ and 1.8- for utility cat), however note the most light aircraft end up being gust load critical rather than limited by "G force".
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Post by madmac on Dec 20, 2022 21:24:29 GMT 12
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Post by madmac on Dec 13, 2022 18:38:23 GMT 12
Given what i have seen recently stated by doctors about diabetes, how about adding persons with new type 2 diabetes diagnosis to the candidate list, will probably offer an equal or better return than youth offenders. This does have the smell about it of "things that should happen to persons who are not me" about.
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Post by madmac on Dec 9, 2022 8:21:27 GMT 12
The interview below regarding national fuel reserves would indicate that the cockup is part of a much large failure of governance over a much longer period, allowing fuel storage capacity to be purely determined by fuel company's commercial concerns. Apparently this applied to the case for the continuation of Marsden point as well. How many days storage does the RNZAF keep I wonder & is it counted as part of the national reserves? www.rnz.co.nz/national/programmes/ninetonoon/audio/2018870370/does-the-country-have-adequate-fuel-reserves
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Post by madmac on Nov 13, 2022 15:15:18 GMT 12
That is actually very interesting. The lettering ZK-AAQ is evident in the first photo. The Blubird came to NZ from the UK where it flew as G-AABB, and flew for some time here under that UK registration. I have yet to see a photo of it as ZK-AAQ, and there was quite a belief that it never carried that registration. However, apparently it was painted as ZK-AAQ after its rebuild following a collision with a fence at Te Aroha (date unknown). The photo of Bluebird on floats looks like the fuse is a dark colour with a white tail which appears not to be the scheme in the 2nd photo which one can just see Z on, so it would appear it had two paint schemes with the ZK reg on.
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