{"id":624,"date":"2008-02-27T08:58:14","date_gmt":"2008-02-27T15:58:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/balafon.net\/?p=624"},"modified":"2009-08-28T17:02:51","modified_gmt":"2009-08-29T00:02:51","slug":"f-18s-on-the-brain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/?p=624","title":{"rendered":"F-18s on the Brain"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I watched the last episode of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.discoverychannel.ca\/jetstream\/\">Jetstream<\/a> last night.  It&#8217;s a TV show following a class of Canadian CF-18 pilot trainees through their training course.  It was a great trauma for me when I had to get eyeglasses in grade 3, meaning I could never be a fighter pilot.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking of F-18s: India <a href=\"http:\/\/www.defenseindustrydaily.com\/ins-vikramaditya-may-hit-delay-cost-increases-03283\/\">had a deal with Russia<\/a> to buy a refurbished <i>Admiral Gorshkov<\/i>, a 40,000-ton &#8220;cruiser carrier&#8221;.  Seems the Russian shipyard has been stalling and asking for more money, and threatening to hold back delivery of the ship for several years longer than agreed.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, the USS <i>Kitty Hawk<\/i>, an 80,000-ton conventional carrier, is slated to be decomissioned this year.  So the US has offered to give it for free to India.  I can only see this as a good thing.  I&#8217;d far rather see democratic India holding the balance of power in the Indian Ocean, rather than, say, totalitarian China.<\/p>\n<p>Anyway, if India accepts the offer, it makes it more likely that India will choose American F-18s in its next round of fighter purchases, since the US carrier is already set up to, er, carry them, which brings this post back around to a neat literary close.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I watched the last episode of Jetstream last night. It&#8217;s a TV show following a class of Canadian CF-18 pilot trainees through their training course. It was a great trauma for me when I had to get eyeglasses in grade 3, meaning I could never be a fighter pilot. Speaking of F-18s: India had a &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/balafon.net\/?p=624\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;F-18s on the Brain&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[127],"class_list":["post-624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-world","tag-aviation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=624"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":984,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions\/984"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/balafon.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}