Eric W. 200% agree no announcement out of the white house would have been a reasonable course of action, and possibly a way to ratchet down the conflict just a little bit. I think it might have been worth trying. Suppose the current administration didn’t say anything about the change. At some point, the public is going to get a look at these new aircraft. Someone is going to notice the paint scheme changed. That’s going to be picked up on and (shudder) could even go viral. Now how is that going to play with the folks who have already shown themselves to be predisposed to, shall we say, develop vapor lock (gotta keep this connected back to aviation somehow) whenever anybody changes anything their own political hero did? Maybe some of those folks who’ve self identified here can tell us how they would react… but I don’t think anyone would accuse me of wild speculation (just mere speculation) in saying that their response would probably not be better than what we have seen. Since airing things in sunlight early is better than letting them fester in a dark damp place, even if the present administration didn’t say anything about it, somebody probably would need to. Congress - pick a relevant oversight committee - could. Boeing also could. But again, with the rampant, unencumbered by facts or logical inference opinioneering demonstrated here, that airing by a party not the one calling the shots would (and again I am speculating, so please folks who have self identified as the aggrieved paint schemers please tell us if I am wrong) result in some more vapor lock, probably not any better than what we have observed. Perhaps the current administration in this matter, in order to look after the best strategic and monetary interests of a relationship with a suppler crucial to national defense, felt the best way to deal with fallout from their decision was to take responsibility for it and go on record early about it. And if - according to the reasoning I have previously described - they picked up a few political points, well, why be surprised or expect anything less from a political animal. Such behavior is so common place amongst this class as far as I am concerned it is beneath notice, and actually as previously described, giving it notice only serves to perpetuate it. And just to give equal time, plenty of people also exhibited signs of vapor lock when Trump made changes to things his predecessor did… there’s plenty of opportunity for vapor lock no matter who the political hero is. The secret to eliminating vapor lock in this case isn’t turning on the fuel pump (or switching to an all electric aircraft lest you think I was going to go there). The secret to eliminating vapor lock is not making a politician a hero and not treating politics as a sport in which you take joy in the “wins” of your team and the “losses” of the other team. Because if you’re an American, we’re all on one team, and either we all win or we all lose. This kind of vapor lock only contributes to our losing.
Well Jim H. the devil in the details here is that different aircraft are built differently. Military aircraft are purpose built to carry the equipment, defenses and armaments specific to their role. The same is true for commercial transport aircraft, but their role is very different. Head of state transport is an interesting overlap between these two categories. Setting aside comparisons of very different airframes equipped across very different time periods, I’ll confine myself to a comparison of the current VC-25s and the new replacements, as on the surface these appear to be very similar. The key difference though is how the two development programs for these aircraft differ. The original VC-25s were designed and purpose built for their hybrid role, at a time when, perhaps, there was less budgetary sensitivity around total program cost. The replacement VC-25s are stock 747s ordered and built for commercial transport operations that, due to a program change to control costs, are being retrofitted for the head of state transport role instead of the use of purpose designed and built aircraft. So if you start with the cooling capacity of an aircraft designed to transport X numbers of pax or cargo, remove a bunch of that and replace it with high power draw equipment, you might end up with more heat than the cooling capacity can deal with. Now you’d expect Boeing would carefully study this to make sure that whatever the final configuration is that cooling budgets for each subsystem program are appropriately managed to make sure there’s enough capacity, which some buffer. However, with any large project, requirements drift (often in the direction that decreases difficulty in my experience), and perhaps some of those early estimates turned out not to be correct, such that today Boeing finds itself looking for ways to reduce cooling demand. Maybe not a ton (see what I did there?), but maybe enough that changing the paint scheme would mean the difference between needing to re-engineer the cooling systems to increase capacity or shift around capacity (at great cost), or keep those systems unchanged. Speculation on my part? Absolutely, but at least it is grounded in basic facts. But I would posit it shows the heat load argument is not in fact a canard, per the prior appeals to facts and logical inferences. Much more so “an unfounded rumor or story” - which is a definition of the term “Canard” - is this repeated but unjustified by facts / logic rumor that heat is not in fact the motivation for the change.
Boogie I can’t argue with your assertion of ideological inconsistency at play here. But given the incoherent platform one expects nothing less. Much more disappointing is the other major party and its adherents, which from how they talk you think would be the pinnacle of ideological consistency. Yet in practice they do no better than their opponents, which if you think about it, is a much bigger disappointment and more worthy of calling out.
Jim H. right you are within bounds of my prior arguments. I also think the idea that heads of state are separated and protected in this way, beyond the protections afforded to the citizens they represent perpetuates some problems. While some opposed the elimination of mid air refueling from the VC-25 replacement program by the prior administration, I think that was a great outcome. The idea that a president might have a chance of surviving a nuclear war is not in my mind the right kind of incentive to give the person making decisions that could lead to nuclear war. Another way to look at this (and I am interested to see how this group receives this): if all members of congress had the same level of protection as the kids in American schools, might the current response to school shootings be a bit different?
Jeff M one of the great things about being a pilot in the air is that all of these problems are of the ground. When you leave the ground, you leave these problems behind on the ground. Sadly, your time away from these problems is limited, but every time you successfully return to them you then create the opportunity to (temporarily) escape them once again.
There is no “other” party. R’s and D’s are two sides of the same coin. The, “Your party is worse than my party,” mentality is playing into the divide and conquer strategy of the Regime.
Kinda like health care. If I can get on Bernie’s plan, I’m all for socialized medicine.
Boogie I agree. There are some shades of difference - largely around rhetoric - which make one of them to me more of a disappointment than the other. But I like your higher level characterization better.
Great example Boogie!
What a lame excuse! How small can these pinheads get?
So it won’t cost the taxpayer a nickel, but we have to save costs?
Wynn J. Boeing backed itself into a corner by agreeing to do more than they could do for the price they agreed to. Were you to find yourself in that position with a supplier, you might say “Hey, tough luck, that’s your problem, you should be more careful next time, now where’s my stuff?” Some folks sure do behave that way, and maybe if the transaction is for a commodity where there plenty of suppliers to choose from, that attitude won’t have long term negative impacts to the entities that adopted it. However with a key strategic supplier, like Boeing, in the big picture this is probably not the right approach. So if Boeing requests a program change that saves Boeing money, but doesn’t materially impact the mission capability of the product, why refuse it? If you take care of your partners in business, they will take care of you. If you try to extract all the value for yourself, you’ll find yourself with no one to partner.
Although Boogie I must confess I don’t know what you mean by “Regime”. If by that you’re referring to government, well, I think anarchy is like communism - they both may sound good in theory and be great foils for fiction, but in practical matters I wouldn’t go there. The parts of the word which de facto have no government are not my cup of tea, and all the attempts at communism in history haven’t delivered. So until somebody else demonstrates a convincing alternative, I’ll stick to good old representative government, warts and all. “Democracy is the worst form of government – except for all the others that have been tried.”
Hmm, recently flew on Royal Jordanian. Dark gray upper surfaces, on an airline based in the Middle East. It works for them.
Terry C. see the discussion above re: heat load, purpose built aircraft, equipment not found on typical transport aircraft, the article about the unusual refrigerators on the current VC-25s, etc.
I’m very late to the party here, and I don’t see your name, but I couldn’t agree more. Simplistic and absolutist political ideologues are a cancer in todays discourse.
I actually liked the color scheme, just saying. But this (Robert M.’s) is a good, if anecdotal data point. I also don’t mind the old light blue color scheme either. Unfortunate that all of this is tainted by fragile political egos.