I’ve spent the last decade+ studying conflict and managing long term injuries, and I’ve concluded that war is a lot like surgery (I’ve had 9 to date).

It should always be the last option, and even the ones that go well aren’t actually good. They’re the best of bad options. People think of war and surgery the same ways — like it’s an event with a start and finish… but the reality is that there is no end date. There’s trauma, and then at some point you transition to recovery, but the event itself is only the beginning of a more complex and less apparent story.

A great example of people’s preference for simple narratives (even when they don’t make sense) is the pervasive belief that America’s air combat struggles over Vietnam all came down to the F-4 Phantom’s lack of guns. Bad training, bad tactics, bad ROEs, and poorly performing missiles aren’t just footnotes in that story… they are the story.

Red Flag, Top Gun, dissimilar air combat training, new rules of engagement, moving away from World War II formations, and more all emerged from
Vietnam.

For some added clarity, Lockheed physically fit-checked a surrogate weapon for internal carriage in the F-35C (same wpns bay as the A) and F-22.

They also tested external carriage on the F-35, Super Hornet, EA-18G, F-15E, F-16C, and P-8A.

They've done virtual fit checks for external carriage on the F-22, F-15C, and F-15EX, and internal carriage in the B-1B, B-52H, and B-21. There's no current disclosed commitment from the DoD to further fund development or production of Mako, though the Navy has placed it in the OTA Basket for when funds free up.

LM is working to make it as inexpensive as they can:

Watching “Born to Fly” — China’s response to Top Gun.

The movie opens with F-35s blowing windows out and turning over fishing boats with their rampant sonic booms, as one pilot chuckles, “I can go wherever I want!”

He’s soon intercepted by our hero in a J-10. We’re now in a conference room full of high ranking PLA officials, as the senior general lectures the group about how their enemy has deployed “hundreds of stealth fighters all around us… to make us… give in.

“We need to deploy our secret weapon ASAP.”

I hope it’s the J-20..

There’s lots of hypersonic confusion out there, so here’s a basic breakdown of why the US’ secret successful test of the HAWC hypersonic cruise missile last month represents real technological progress, while Russia’s use of Kinzhal in Ukraine represents little more than hype: Hypersonic weapons are fast — the word itself is used to describe platforms that can travel at speed in excess of Mach 5, or right about 3,838 mph. This speed is crazy, but nothing new. All ballistic missiles (like nuclear ICBMs) achieve these speeds during reentry.

I need to take a break from editing so here’s a random aviation thread: We very likely found Amelia Earhart’s body just three years after she disappeared over the Pacific, but because one doctor thought the bones looked “manly,” we’ll probably never know for sure. Amelia Earhart and Fred Noonan vanished during a highly publicized effort to fly her Lockheed Electra around the world in 1937. Radio contact made it clear that they were lost and running low on fuel somewhere in the vicinity of Howland Island in the central Pacific.