12 March 2005 19:21
stoled from this source: http://www.trekearth.com/gallery/photo151583.htm[The F-16] is to date one of the least costly modern fighters. Its price is about $24 million. With an average operating cost of $2,200 per hour of flight, the F-16 is always more cheaper than for instance the $4,500 of the F/A-18, $4,300 for the Gripen, or over $20,000 for the Tornado.
The F-16 fleet in the world totalizes over 6,000,000 hours of flight time. A good 15% of that total were missions flown under risk, with around 50,000 combat missions, including more than 30,000 air-to-air and air-to-ground combat sorties. The F-16 Fighting Falcon has accumulated 74 air-to-air kills with no air-to-air losses except for one fratricide loss by the Pakistani Air Force when an missile switched-lock onto a wingman.
The F-16 has been in continuous combat operations around the globe since 1981. Of 74 kills achieved by the F-16 in the world, 47 are accredited to the Israeli forces. In 1982, F-16s played a key role in Operation "Drugstore", an attack on Syrian missiles sites in the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon. Numerous missiles sites were attacked and destroyed, and fierce air battles with Syrian fighters took place. A total of 92 Syrian aircrafts (more than 30% of total Syrian inventory) were shot down, and Israeli F-16s achieved a victories ratio of 44-0.
let's do some dirty math here. six million hours of flight time at 2.2k/hr comes to $13.2 billion. now divide by 74 kills and you find the price of one kill to be well over $175 million. (divide that by the average joe's 25k a year salary, and it would take the average joe oh, roughly seven millenia to pay off the usaf to act as a hitman).
this should be news to the mafia. the cost of one man's life is now $175 million. i don't know whether to be happy that it's worth more than twenty bucks or a kilo of the good stuff, or upset that taxpayers pay that much to kill the bad guy.
three or four years ago, i got ahold of a copy of "aviation week"'s annual military inventory report. it was staggering how many planes the US had. specifically F16's, i remember the us number being well over 500. i think israel had the next highest with seventy or a hundred. but all the other planes. apaches, c130's, fa18s, &c, the us would have five to fifteen times the number of planes in any particular category than most other nations. perhaps it explains why we're a super power.
i don't know where i was going with all this in particular. i just found myself aghast reading it, so i thought i'd spread the love.
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random glimpses of life:
driving along a dirt road in the bush and meeting a rasta on horseback. that was a real drawdropper.
a rasta of east indian descent on a kawasaki in the 800cc range with a small boy (eight?) of even stronger indian lineage snuggled behind him with a backpack... looking very small on this bike. which was showing steel braid the entire circumfrance of the rear wheel. he was taking the boy to school. neither wearing helmets of course.
flying away from the rising sun this morning over a cloud deck with "i beg your pardon i never promised you a rose garden" crackling over the AM radio, occasionally drowned by the voiceover of the jamaican dj talking about what a nice day it was.
standing in a circle of prayer in a friend's house listening to their mother pray for me. she was speaking in spanish, but even without my understanding the words, but she was completely comprehensible. who am i to doubt that God will respond when a woman of God prays with such confidence?
having an inverter fail on takeoff, but not until i was over the water, so i can watch all my engine gages plumet to zero while i have nothing solid to land on. within half a second, the inverter came back online, and i realized it was an electrical problem and not a mechanical. i do not get paid enough to make the shock of the intervening half second worth while :). God's creation is absolutely amazing. the mere concept of an adrenaline rush awes me. (while the actual rush itself just about put me into cardiac arrest).
meeting one of my former highschool teachers, and finding out that her son (my classmate) is getting married in august. another one bites the dust...
finding out that the top gun anthem was played by van Halen. if i'd even known who van Halen was at that point, i would have said all his music was from the devil, but that anthem is one very cool piece.
going out to eat on jesse's bday last week at a new resturant near halfway tree. a very new resturant. at one point early in the evening, the waiters wandering around looking bored easily outnumbered our party of five. throughout the evening we had two waiters hovering around. it was so bad that they actually refilled our waters without our asking (absolutely unheard of here). i had a grilled cheese sandwich. well. it had cheese in it anyway.
today for variety i took my fifteen minute nap waiting for the fuelers to show up under the right wing, instead of the left. that is, once the concrete cooled off enough to lay on. sorry to all you snow people.
buzzing the residents of Chapleton Valley at 1500 feet in the dawn haze while admiring the sunrise over the blue mountains fifty miles to the east. hope they appreciate the noise and the flies.
the other day i went to pick up jesse and saw more stray dogs in ten minutes than i had in three weeks. i was playing a delightful game of "one-way street trial-and-error" as i worked my way through the prestigious north street neighborhood.
ah, but this led us all the way across town to hope gardens for a game of ultimate frisbee with a bunch of brits. it brought back, um, "fond" memories of letu intramurals, waiting around for people to quit arguing so we could keep playing :).
hearing red sovine's "phantom 309" still sends chills down my spine. i remember hearing it late one night on our way back from shopping in dover (this was when "late" was anytime after eight thirty). i was in the back of our malibou, mostly asleep, when it came on the radio. i was probably five, but that memory has stuck with me. it was dark night on the highway, mom and dad were talking quiet, and the twins were asleep. chills.
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