What Can You Buy, Fly Boy?

What Can You Buy, Fly Boy?

I'm a big Hal Jordan fan. I love me some Green Lantern. In saying that I should be some pilot nut, right? I guess. I drove by Edwards Air Base not to long ago on a night drive. It's been a while since I had one of those. Either way, It was a vast desert and I don't mean something with a lot of ice cream and some chocolate cream on top, that's a dessert.

A couple of weeks back an F-22 crashes near Edwards Base

WASHINGTON (CNN) — An Air Force F-22A fighter jet crashed Wednesday near Edwards Air Force Base in California, Air Force officials said.

The single-seater crashed about 10:30 a.m. (1:30 p.m. ET) for unknown reasons, the officials said.

The status of the pilot was unknown.

The fighter was on a test mission when it crashed about 35 miles northeast of Edwards AFB, where it was stationed, the Air Force said in a news release.

At $150 million apiece, the F-22A is the most expensive Air Force jet.

So they crashed a $150 million plane turning it into a $150 bon fire. That's a lot of money to burn up. Makes you wonder how much money from these planes ended up as salaries or bonuses for the executives of the makers



And what do you get for that $150 price tag? Well, you gt a lemon. That's what. This is the new plane, first one of its kind to crash like this. But perhaps it was doomed to fail from the get go considering they can't even fly in a war zone.

This F22 is the one that can't work in a war zone because of the interference from other units. Basically cell phones and microwaves as well as TV broadcast fuck its stealth and avionics packages up. Those radars on those warships? Yeah, those fuck it up as well. Basically, there's so much electronic shit going on in a modern theatre of war, on every usable frequency of the EM spectrum, that the F-22's sensitive gear can't really operate properly

In the attempt to go all stealth like they single out the jammers, but all that those are really doing are blocking nearby signals from cellphones or whatever by flooding particular frequencies. so, all you really need to do to foil a F-22 is create a ton of EM noise, which is pretty much a given in any warzone.


How much money is it going to cost to make
this a government dream come true.

So why even keep producing these things? Because they're bad ass, of course. Anything Michael Bay likes must always get military funding. The F-22 made its major Hollywood debut in the 2007 film Transformers as the form taken by the Decepticon character Starscream in addition to numerous USAF fighters that engaged during the initial and climactic battles. The movie crew was allowed to film actual Raptors in flight, unlike previous computer-generated appearances, because of the military's support of director Michael Bay. The Raptors were filmed at Edwards Air Force Base.

So it comes full circle. Thank you Michael Bay for keeping this stupid thing floating around. I wonder how long till the Republicans blame this on Obama's F-22 funding cut? Maybe the pilot is only a few crashes and one POW stint away from a run for presidency. That huge price tag has to include a lot of cash that goes to military equipment that gets accidentally destroyed, breaks or simply doesn't work to the standards of the air force.



I love military spending. Fuck schools and hospitals, research and social development. Fuck all sorts of projects that would actually help people and the country as a whole, gimme my goddamn planes with awesome bombs and guns and shit on them, fuck yeah! Pew pew pew! Let's go start a war or two with some brown people so we can see this shit in action, don't worry only the poor farm kids will die. Yeah, I know. Defense contractors support local industry and the unions. I've seen the second season of the wire. I get that, I just don't get the whole point of spending so much on shit that'll go BOOM!

The pilot in this crash died because of this. So I'm guessing it's shaping up to be a really bad year to be in a plane. Though I do plan on getting one soon. This bird has to fly or he's going to go insane. But clearly not insane to spend $150 million on a plane. In reality the last several actually cost $500 million each. For the sake of argument let's just go with the $150 price tag. It brings up a good point on what we could actually buy for $150 million.



What exactly could we get for that price tag?

We could have paid all those AIG bonuses!

Get myself a Dishwasher. Yes. They could fix my dishwaster. They should really just fix my god damn dishwasher.

Fuck it, I know no one likes washing dishes, we could fix millions of dishwashers with this.

A nice supply of noodles for when the collapse comes.

College education for everyone in the country for a year



Healthcare for everyone in an entire low population state like Wyoming or ND.

20 or 30 properly budgeted schools

Paying down the fucking deficit.

One really awesome birthday gift for me because it's coming up. Hint hint!

One really bad ass plane... no wait, this isn't what was on my shopping list. FOCUS FOCUS!!



A ton of PS3's and Xbox 360's to the starving children of Africa

We could make 150 slum dogs millionaires.

150 million slum dogs dollaires. Which would actually make some difference.

Make some more kickin' rad comic book movies.

Well at least that money wasn't spent on arts education or public transit. Fuck those infrastructure additions