Can the DIRCM head be salvaged???
Gents, and Ladys.
A lot of talk of foam and kevlar and other 'mods' that would make us totally impervious to whatever the bad blokeys would care to throw at us...(apart from RPG's)
Foam. ok, if the MOD fit it, they will only fit it to a select group of frames(which has just decreased by one) and as they are looking to buy only one half of the kit, wing maintenance will become a nightmare. For those of you who do not know the make up of the foam, I suggest you look into it very carefully. Any impact on maintenance time has an impact on A/C availibility.P.S, a certain nation already has this Mod fitted to its C130's, but are removing it because of fuel flow problems to the engines.
Kevlar for the cargo bay. Lets be realistic here. the armour on the J's and subsequently fitted to the K's weighs about 550 Kg's, and that is just a small proportion of the A/C. If you were to fit it for everyones protection, no way in hell would you get off the ground.
LOX. The BAF has fitted Molecular Oxygen systems to its H fleet, but has some reliability issues wtih it. I think its pretty safe to say that the UK herc fleet's LOX pots are more than adequately protected.
Morales of the story.....
1.any A/C manufacture can build an A/C that is 'everything' proof, the only drawback is you wont be able to fly it, and it will cost you an arm and a leg.
2. The powers that be fought very hard (probably) to get all the 'guici' mods to the K's, but at what cost????.(i.e. if it really doesn't cost that much to fit, why wasn't it done a long time ago?)
3. Operational Risk. We all sign up to do a job, sometimes its good, sometimes bad. But with both sides of the coin we accept the risk inherent with the job at hand.
I do not by any means wish to stir up a hornets nest of abuse with these things, but I do believe we live in a far from perfect world, where monitary issues come before lives.(unfortunately)
SC