Pentagon: No Airbus USAF Tankers

US Debating Aerial Tanker Types, Mix


I ran across this today and had to read the whole thing twice to drill it into my brain. The Pentagon in it's infinite wisdom is seriously considering accepting a $20 Billion bid from EADS (Airbus of France) to supply the USAF with some 500 replacements for the KC-135 Strato-tanker.

This would be laughable except it's a threat to national security. To procure a strategic weapons system from an unrelaible non-ally is stupid. Why give France the power to withhold deliveries, spares, or some other component of these aircraft if they don't like our policy at a given time. Yes Boeing is the sole manufacturer of wide body aircraft in the US, but the Pentagon ought not consider this option.

UKR Tu-154 downed on Aug 22 - Real Trial Run

The problem with the below hypothesis is that Aircraft are basically immune from lightening strikes.

Fire on board. Hmmm. Cell Phone Batteries. No coincidence.

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Crash Link

"Nobody survived," Mykhaylo Korsakov, spokesman for the Donetsk department of the Emergency Situations Ministry, told The Associated Press.

Ukrainian officials said a storm with high winds, driving rain and lightning was raging through the region at the time. Russia's Emergency Situations Ministry spokeswoman Irina Andrianova, citing information from her Ukrainian counterparts, said the plane was likely hit by lightning.

Samuel Adams on August 1, 1776

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From the day on which an accommodation takes place between England and America, on any other terms than as independent States, I shall date the ruin of this country. a politic minister will study to lull us into security by granting us the full extent of our petitions. The warm sunshine of influence would melt down the virtue which the violence of the storm rendered more firm and unyielding. In a state of tranquillity, wealth, and luxury, our descendants would forget the arts of war and the noble activity and zeal which made their ancestors invincible. Every art of corruption would be employed to loosen the bond of union which renders our resistance formidable. When the spirit of liberty, which now animates our hearts and gives success to our arms, is extinct, our numbers will accelerate our ruin and render us easier victims to tyranny. Ye abandoned minions of an infatuated ministry, if peradventure any should yet remain among us, remember that a Warren and Montgomery are numbered among the dead. Contemplate the mangled bodies of your countrymen, and then say, What should be the reward of such sacrifices? Bid us and our posterity bow the knee, supplicate the friendship, and plow, and sow, and reap, to glut the avarice of the men who have let loose on us the dogs of war to riot in our blood and hunt us from the face of the earth? If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquillity of servitude than the animating contest of freedom--go from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains sit lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen!

Samuel Adams on August 1, 1776