F-15EX, F-35, China and WSOs - "Stinger" (Part 3) 

Another great interview: Intelligent questions. Intelligent answers. This is the Advanced Staff College of Aircrew Interviews.

Stinger has a great attitude, from the start he put himself in the way of opportunities that come along. Timing and luck are there, but being prepared for it is key. Great interview 👍

Great interview, I found Stinger's candid opinions refreshing from the standard chest-beating attitudes of a lot of Western aviators, many of which (not all) can be quite blasé in regards to their assessments of the PLAAF. Stinger probably isn't exciting anyone in the PR departments for Boeing or the DoD however, lol.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the ‘Stinger’ episodes, what a fantastic and brutally honest guest. My understanding (purely as an enthusiast) is that the EX came about because updating the C/D’s was going to be too costly and obviously the newest C/D’s are approximately 35 years old . The EX models are intended as replacements for the F15C in some Guard units which as I understand it take care of homeland security? I’d imagine a ‘flying missile truck’ would be rather useful in that role 😂

This was a nice change to the "I did not know anything about aircraft but the recruiter said I could apply and somehow I did not wash out."

bottom line is, all airframes are fucking awesome and its good to have all of them cause in the physical realm no opposing force can come up with one thing that will defeat any combination of what we have, especially when it will be random. we need to gut all the old heavy obsolete bs out of the gen 4s and get some modern sensors on them and get them communicating with the gen 5. the enemy will never truly be able to identify what is going on. when we get into a real fight all the technology will fail and it will be a gunfight. i dont think theres a solution for any EMP shit.

What a great interview, and what a dedicated wonderful guy this man is !

I think one person is both one too many and one too little. Either go without a human or put in two to deal with the complexity and enemies adaptions.

Great interview. I really Stingers brutal honesty with regards to the likes of the F-15EX and F-35.

What Stinger talked about is actually what happened to the F-16, it was much critised when it came out, but turned into a real multi-role over the lifespan off its service-life!!!!!!

There’s always a danger of refighting the last war. The Serbians absorbed the lessons from the first Gulf war and deployed a lot of dummy radar transmitters to confuse allied mission planning and gave the false impression that they had a lot more SAM sites than they really had. So in some ways they offered a tougher opponent than the Iraqis did. Hopefully an armed conflict against China will never take place but it is conceivable that the biggest surprise in such a conflict will be non kinetic in he form of cyber warfare and other non physically destructive tactics. From an operational point of view I think China lacks the experience that America has fighting a complex, long term, operationally intensive campaign but they have good experience practicing cyber warfare tactics which is highly automated and requires less human and operational inputs that large fleets of aircraft require.

Are the "Hacker" F-15E combat episodes still planning on being released?

The F-15EX is a MiG-31, but good

He's in the witness protection program

The young Turks are complaining that the old farts, at the top, are lacking vision and guts. That story has not changed since the beginning of time. I do however agree with him that the F-15EX is not the way to go, the airframe is not stealthy at all.

JSF made it more traitor-proof, whereas the F-22 fell victim to the traitors and was killed before it could go FRP. JSF also made interoperability and strategic leveraging of FMS customers a force multiplying reality. JSF is more affordable to maintain and operate than F-15E, F-15C, and full up F-16CM with pods. F-35A has far lower break rate than any existing fighter, so they are more available.

damn the AF def agreed about the F15EX