Bill Sweetman – Valkyrie Strategic Solutions LLC

17 Apr

Counting The Legs

April 17, 2024
By Bill Sweetman
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The last few days of F-35 news took me back in time. To a point two years after a well-remunerated pundit had declared that "if you don't follow the defense business closely, then you can be excused for believing that the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is in trouble", followed a matter...

11 Feb

Blog

Just Don’t Call It A Flying Killer Robot

February 11, 2024
By Bill Sweetman
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Uncrewed, reusable, weapon-carrying fast-jet aircraft have had many names since the WW2 and Vietnam-era idea was revived in the mid-1990s. Maybe 37, which is 37 more than the number of such aircraft that have been delivered to operational units. Collaborative Combat Aircraft (CCA) is the latest. It's survived...

05 Feb

Blog

For Whom The Whistle Blows

February 5, 2024
By Bill Sweetman
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A mid-cabin door plug blew out of an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737-9 on January 5 because it was removed at Boeing, to rectify faulty work by fuselage supplier Spirit, and improperly reinstalled. The bolts that hold the plug in position against its stops - as the latch mechanism...

28 Jan

Blog

The Cartman Gambit

January 29, 2024
By Bill Sweetman
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"Screw you guys, I'm going home". I have been working on a root-cause analysis of the F-35 project. As I got deeper into the subject, I realized that the impact of decisions taken in the early 1990s was not only colossal but largely unintentional.

22 Jan

Blog

Dreamland Life

January 22, 2024
By Bill Sweetman
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The last big book on Area 51 was written in 2011 by Annie Jacobsen, previously best known for throwing a case of the screaming abdabs over some Syrian musicians on a 2004 Northwest Airlines flight. It would never have gotten past an agent but for the sensational ending,...

18 Jan

Blog

Honestly, You Don’t Look A Day Over Block 30

January 18, 2024
By Bill Sweetman
1 comment

50 years ago on Saturday, January 20, 1974, the first General Dynamics YF-16 made its famously unscheduled first flight from Edwards AFB. On a high-speed taxi test, the YF-16 started oscillating in roll, scraping the stabilizer and left-hand dummy missile on the runway, and pilot Phil Oestricher decided...

13 Jan

Blog

The Myth Of Old Boeing

January 13, 2024
By Bill Sweetman
2 comments

A door blew out of a brand-new Boeing 737 MAX 9, and fingers are being pointed at the company's apparent lapse in quality inspection, and at Boeing's cost-cutting and focus on shareholder value as a root cause. Not without good reason: suppliers like Spirit, spun off in 2005...

01 Oct

Blog

F-35 And Cognitive Dissonance

October 1, 2023
By Bill Sweetman
2 comments

Doubt that anyone wants to hear my opinions on the F-35 yet, but I'd like to point out some facts that induce cognitive dissonance. There's no doubt that the F-35 has enjoyed a run of market success, particularly across NATO, leading some to call it...

23 Sep

Blog

Hit The Road, Jack

September 25, 2023
By Bill Sweetman
1 comment

It's been road-base week. In an extensive joint exercise in Finland, an RAF Typhoon landed and took off from Highway 551 near the unusually vowel-deprived town of Tervo, some 200 miles north of Helsinki. A couple of days later, the Royal Norwegian Air Force did the same with...

04 Sep

Blog

Blue Bears, WIGs and rocket fighters

September 4, 2023
By Bill Sweetman
0 comments

As I write this on Labor Day, in the residential hinterland of the Pentagon, local citizens including, no doubt, a greater-then-average number of those responsible for planning national defense, are rolling up to shop at the neighboring Costco. We're in luck! Look at all the parking spaces!

Posts by Bill Sweetman