Let’s have a shout-out for Igor Sikorsky, the pioneer in mass-production of helicopters, in honor of the recent successful rescue of an F-15 crew (pilot + WSO/”Wizzo” (also a competent pilot)) in Iran. Sikorsky’s perspective:
If a man is in need of rescue, an airplane can come in and throw flowers on him, and that’s just about all. But a direct lift aircraft could come in and save his life.
[later] For me, the greatest source of comfort and satisfaction is the fact that our helicopters have saved up to the present time (1969) over fifty thousand lives and still continue with their rescue missions. I consider this to be the most glorious page in the history of aviation.
I guess we should also thank the Soviet revolutionaries who drove Sikorsky, already a successful aircraft designer and industrialist, out of Russia and into Connecticut in 1919.
Finally, of course, let’s celebrate the tough-to-imagine bravery of U.S. military helicopter crews. Just in time for Easter, they enabled a man to rise from being presumed dead.
Who wants to place bets on the forthcoming Netflix movie? The helicopter door gunners will be female, Black, trans, gay, or all four?
Separately, foreign haters seem to concentrating on the cost of the mission. Here’s a white flag waver (Frenchman) showing photos of aircraft costing less than one day of tax revenue from NVIDIA employees and investors and implying that the cost of the rescue was too high:
From the Islamic Republic of Great Britain: “The MC-130J aircraft used to rescue the second US airmen cost more than $100 million (£77 million) each”
No mention of the fact that a Minnesota day care could burn through $100 million of tax money without ever having even a single child come through the front door.
Our brothers, sisters, and binary-resisters across the Atlantic seem to have some difficulty understanding the productivity of the U.S. economy. Separately, since hardly any of NATO members will let us use their airspace or bases (Germany and the UK are exceptions?) what is the value of continuing to spend U.S. tax money on NATO? We don’t have a dog in the Europe-Russia tension. If when we’re actually at war our European bases become useless due to airspace closures by purported allies, e.g., France, Spain, and Italy, what value does the U.S. get out of NATO?
Related:
Nato should have been disbanded at the end of the Cold War.
> We don’t have a dog in the Europe-Russia tension.
We have a werewolf or two. I guess we’ve forgotten WWII and the Cold War. I do agree we spend more than our fair share for European stability.
> The helicopter door gunners will be female, Black, trans, gay, or all four
Maud Borup also claims to be “mom owned”. So maybe there would be a pilot nursing a baby, too? My wife and I are quite enlightened and were watching Woke Richard III on PBS. I found 11 counts of diversity, lets see: black, trans, gay, height challenged, hearing impaired, fashion challenged, female, weight challenged, various POC, ham actors/actresses/actrex, kings, wheel-chair bound, moms (traditional and unconventional).
OAG: Why should we spend even $1 for European stability? Why is our “fair share” more than $0? If we remove the Mag 7 from the picture, Europe is roughly comparable to the US in terms of GDP and the EU has a larger population. Most of the imported items that are critical to the U.S. economy come from Asia, not Europe. Our neighbors here in Jupiter might have trouble getting by without their G-Wagens…
Philip, I am sure that Putin will sell your neighbors G-Wagens. He styles himself as a savior from post-Soviet communists and other radicals.
Anon: That’s a great point. Putin might do a better job governing Europe than the Europeans. He’d no doubt be much stronger on border control. He wouldn’t imprison as many people for their social media posts as the British do. Putin has experience governing a multi-ethnic cluster of affiliated territories and allowing each part of the cluster to retain a distinct identity.
philg > Why should we spend even $1 for European stability?
If Trump is successful in his efforts we shall find out. 🙂 I guess in the worst case Hitler Jr. meets Stalin, Jr. and watch for the 12 horsemen. In the best case, they fight their own battles, political homeostasis occurs, our national debt goes down, then pigs fly.
Those of us over here have to ask ourselves, would corrupt Russian bureaucracy be worse than corrupt EU bureaucracy?
@Tom
Of course, it is great to live in the U.S. of A., where there is no corruption and no bureaucracy, so we are on high moral ground. And, yeah a “union” that doesn’t have an out clause for member states isn’t being hypocritical at all about democracy. Texas : Ukraine :: U.S.A. : U.S.S.R. (Texas v. White)
Sikorsky used to be owned by United Technologies (which became RTX), and now they are owned by Lockheed Martin. This shout-out will serve to be good PR for them.
See https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2015/07/20/lockheed-martin-buys-sikorsky-for-1-1x-revenue/ for how Sikorsky was worth less (only $9 billion) than a handful of AI employees today.
The IRGC got a change of underwear out of the hostage search. Count the small victories!
https://x.com/sarahadams/status/2040804048731849161
The economy didn’t pay for anything. It’s all debt & the interest is being amortized on top of the debt. Kind of surprised they spent that much to get 1 guy. Based on today’s diatribe, we’re on the back foot as far as the straight of Hormuz.
lion: How can we be “on the back foot” regarding the Strait of Hormuz (or, to mirror your language, the Gay of Hormuz) when we don’t get any oil from the Persian Gulf? I guess it would be bad if the Islamic Republic regime picks up a fat revenue stream from collecting tolls in the strait, but if we disable their oil production and electric power industries they still won’t be an economic power and, therefore, can’t stay a military power for long.
How many (processed) barrels of oil does the military consume per day? What are the reserves?
Tsar Vlad the Acquisitive just wants to Make Russia Great Again, which requires reining in breakaway provinces/annexing neighboring states. And, as with ancient Rome, there’s always one more bumptious ethny that needs the bootheel, then eternal peace will reign.
How did that Jewish Oblast work out anyway? An oasis of peace and prosperity in the vast taiga…
That’s Hebrew Autonomous Oblast for you. It was for true hard core commies, and maybe to resettle stubborn Jews there of Stalin did not die when he did. If it had any Pacific shoreline access it would be priceless and subject to revolution/liberation. Without any sea access it just known for Abramovich’s aluminum mining and smelting enterprises.
When it was reported that what remains from the Ayatollahs posted $50,000 bounty for US airmen, I understood that dangers of ground operation in Iran are being over-hyped. Basically IRGC does not control Iranian territory and US rescue team beat them to the downed airmen. If I were younger I would volunteer to lead. What the heck, if I had 8 weeks boot-camp worth of re-training I’d probably were qualified to participate at my advanced age. Bibi Netanyahu should commit a marine battalion and a paratrooper brigade to lead the ground effort.
European nations have lost their senses, and Trump is right to criticized them for it.
A commonly cited concern is immigration policy and its impact on national identity, this I won’t touch on here because Philip pointed this out many times. However, European countries persuading diplomatic and economic relationships with nations like Russia, Iran and even China, and not contributing to NATO, is even worse in my opinion.
After the annexation of Crimea by Putin, European countries continued economic ties with Russia. Similarly, the nuclear agreement with Iran aimed to stop its nuclear program, but had flaws and did not fully address concerns such as regional influence and support for groups like Hezbollah and the Houthis, as well as its designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.
Furthermore, when Russia invaded Ukraine, Europe had limited capacity to support Ukraine and relied heavily on the U.S. to take the lead (at least until Trump became involved). And now that the United States and Israel are taking action against Iran, Europe is objecting and is unwilling to allow the U.S. to use its bases because the U.S. is the bad guy, not Iran.
The way I see it, if current trends continue under European leadership, in a few decades, Europe will be ruled by Islam, Iran will have nuclear weapons, and China will run the global economy.
Phil, you’re doing a perfect job swallowing the propaganda, treating this war as a made-for-TV movie, which is how Trump etc. are packaging it just for the likes of you. You’re all gaga over the lead character (oh no, that poor pilot, will he get saved, or will this be a tragedy where his wife can look wistfully into a sunset, will I have time to make another popcorn?), it would be even better if there was a little dog to worry about. Oh, a thousand or a million other people died, but they don’t get billing so who cares, they’re just extras. And those little brats in the elementary school deserved it, as Trump said, they deserve to be bombed back into the stone age. So yeah, watch the Netflix when it comes out and give us your review.
A thousand other people died? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_United_States_pilot_rescue_operation_in_Iran says that only 3 IRGC members and no other Iranians died during this operation (that’s according to Iranian sources and we are informed by the Queers for Palestine that the Islamic Republic of Iran, like Hamas-ruled Gaza, is a model society (i.e., the Iranians wouldn’t lie)).
I’m not all that excited about this operation in terms of military significance. When Iran no longer has an oil industry or the capability of generating sufficient electric power to run weapons factories I will consider that real progress.
On the other hand, maybe there was some military significance to the rescue: https://x.com/neontaster/status/2040773574252757014?s=20 (“You can tell Iran is winning the war by the fact that they couldn’t get to our downed pilot inside their own country for two days.”)
@philg You’re quoting the wrong page, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_war. Estimates are all over the place, but they’re in the thousands of casualties. But those don’t interest you, you find it worthy to post about this one pilot. Hey I liked Saving Private Ryan as much as anybody, but it was a movie.
Sorry. I thought you were talking about the 2 rescued pilots vs. the 3 IRGC fighters who were killed over the weekend. As far as total enemy casualties, you’re correct that it isn’t a subject that interests me because there is no military significance to the number. “Winning” for the U.S. is defined by the admiral running the war as preventing Iran from projecting military power outside of its borders. That’s accomplished by eliminating the country’s weapons and industrial capacity for building replacement weapons, not by killing Iranians, whether military or civilian (except for some leaders). We don’t have a goal of preventing Iranians from moving around within their own country with rifles, for example. In an ideal world, we would be able to accomplish our goal without killing even a single Iranian, but the technology to do that doesn’t exist.
@Phlegmatic, I also like Saving Private Ryan, sadly they don’t really make movies like that anymore. Regardless, are you aware of another “movie” that doesn’t get much attention, the “2026 Iran massacres”? [1]
“On 23 February, HRANA published a detailed report, The Crimson Winter, based on the first 50 days of the protests, including a list of the names and other details of the 7007 confirmed deaths (6488 adult protesters, 236 minors, 207 security force members, and 76 non-participants), and 11,744 cases that remained under review”
That figure comes from HRANA, but other sources, according to the Wiki link that I provided, report over 30,000 casualties.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Iran_massacres#Human_rights_organisations_and_independent_media
@Phlegmatic, are you disappointed that American armed forces saving American soldiers is not just a fairy tale, at least for the moment?