Originally Posted by
The B Word
Moglington - nope, they are wanque words and you even said it “aircraft in English”!
now I’ll grant you Aircraft could substitute for air vehicle. However it could not substitute for Air System which is not a ‘wanque word’ but a specific bit of terminology describing something that is more than just an aircraft but is in fact and aircraft and all its assorted support equipment.
Sometimes the air vehicle is useless on its own, particularly when it doesn’t have a cockpit. Reaper would be useless if we didn’t buy the ground control stations to actually operate it. You don’t buy a child a toy remote control aircraft without the remote control.
Even for those with a cockpit the ground systems are just as essential. We don’t just buy x number of F35 aircraft, we actually buy the F35 air system. So we have the bespoke mission planning software for pilots to plan missions for loading into the jet. We buy the bespoke maintenance software so engineers can record and schedule maintenance. We buy the diagnostic software so they can plug into the jet to run tests and read error codes. We buy the specialist tooling so the engineers can maintain the stealthy skin of the jet. And that’s just the front end squadron stuff. We are also buying into the manufacturer monitoring the trending of parts across the entire fleet and developing mods and improvements to faults discovered as the aircraft rack up the flying hours.
That is the difference between buying an air vehicle (or aircraft if you prefer) and an air system.