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E-6 going away
- Thread starter jmcquate
- Start date
Uhhhh….that’s Bumfuck City, OK.
My understanding is that they are going back to doing boomers only, but I could be very misinformed.
Guess the boys at Tinker got tired of tell Navy crews to put on their covers, and not walk on the ramp.
... says the Service that wears flight helmets on the airport ramp while doing a walk around... and at the same time wearing the worst ejection seat harness ever invented... carrying every piece of water survival equipment known to man around their horse collar... while getting ready to fly a sortie over the Mojave Desert in the middle of the summer.
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I can defend this even though I was among many who found a reason not to wear a helmet walking around a plane. Maybe it is more common now. But it has to be true that you are not exempt from hearing damage because you are pre-flighting a plane. Bet you have been on a CV deck during flight ops. Noisy?
The rest of your comment...I got nothing. Touche.
I don’t know, the dorkiness of reflective belts and other uniform silliness is a different type of stupid, which is in the same vein as chastising Navy guys for being more lax with uniform rules.
Sure, the harness can be stupidly uncomfortable, but to your other point, the vast majority of the flying in Naval Aviation is around….water. Even our land based/training aircraft do a ton of their flying over/ in the vicinity of water so it makes sense to have those components. The “over the desert” comment seems oddly specific for a Naval Service, whereas glow belts are a USAF-wide policy, no?
According to Combat Aircraft, it looks like the EC-130J is more of a test at this point, but may become the replacement towards the end of the decade. They just upgraded the E-6s, so I’d be surprised if they’ll retire them in the short term. Curious to see if any of our resident E-6 bubbas have any amplifying information.
The transformation of the US Navy Boeing E-6 Mercury
Its name may have changed early in its career, but the Boeing E-6 has since undergone further, more significant transformations. Combat Aircraft Journal reports
All of the 707 airframes are going away. I think we all saw the hieroglyphics forecasting this on the wall of the API building in 2009.
I'm surprised it took this long.
My brother, an E-3 guy, is headed to Australia for 3 years to get all of the E-7 quals he can so he and a few others can be the initial cadre of IPs at the FTU at Tinker.
The failure here is that Navy leadership didn't have a plan to replace the TACAMO. 1960s airplanes with 1980s tech don't really belong in a 2025 world- just like horse drawn carriages didn't belong in WW2.
I'm surprised it took this long.
My brother, an E-3 guy, is headed to Australia for 3 years to get all of the E-7 quals he can so he and a few others can be the initial cadre of IPs at the FTU at Tinker.
The failure here is that Navy leadership didn't have a plan to replace the TACAMO. 1960s airplanes with 1980s tech don't really belong in a 2025 world- just like horse drawn carriages didn't belong in WW2.
I'd have a response, but some enlisted dude just faceplanted me on the pavement with an M4 in my back for stepping over a paint line while walking on my own jet . . .
Hard duty, but someone has to do it.
Hey, some orders are hell...