Capt_Ck
112.3K posts
@Capt_Ck
Touching the skies with glory, a Husband, Father, Realist, Adrenaline junkie, Gadget freak, aircrash survivor, Business Aviation Pilot & Consultant
First 🛫 converted to seaplane in 🇮🇳 has successful test flight on Ganga Barrage in Haridwar today @samirsinha69 nudge played a key role, say officials for this 1st Avani Singh's 🛫 aptly regd VT-SHE Licence soon. Andaman ahoy for Her SkyHop seaplanes🤞 timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/india…
CJI Surya Kant addresses Army personnel at Leh "The law must travel to the soldier, because the soldier cannot always travel to the law" says CJI - Invoked Article 39A: "Legal aid is not charity. It is the Republic acting in fidelity to its own promises." - "A nation must never place its soldiers in the position of fighting two battles at once, one at the frontier, another at home for what is lawfully theirs" : CJI #supremecourt
CJI Surya Kant addresses Army personnel at Leh "The law must travel to the soldier, because the soldier cannot always travel to the law" says CJI - Invoked Article 39A: "Legal aid is not charity. It is the Republic acting in fidelity to its own promises." - "A nation must never place its soldiers in the position of fighting two battles at once, one at the frontier, another at home for what is lawfully theirs" : CJI #supremecourt
BREAKING: Iran just damaged one of America’s 16 remaining E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft on the ground at Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia. The Boeing 707 airframe that the E-3 is built on has not been manufactured since 1992. There is no production line. There are no new airframes. The replacement, the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail, will not arrive until 2028 at the earliest and has already slipped a year per Air and Space Forces Magazine. Each E-3 is worth $537 to $596 million in 2026 dollars. There are 16 left in the entire US Air Force inventory. Six were deployed to the Middle East for this war, nearly 40 percent of the global fleet per Army Recognition, leaving Alaska and the Indo-Pacific critically exposed. Iran hit one with a ballistic missile. On the ground. Parked on the flight line. Not in the air. Not in combat. On the apron at PSAB per satellite imagery confirmed by Defence Security Asia and Air and Space Forces Magazine. The strike also damaged several KC-135 Stratotanker refueling aircraft, five in some reports per WSJ and Reuters. Ten to twelve US troops were wounded, two seriously, with no fatalities per AP and NYT. The KC-135s are described as repairable. The E-3 sustained what officials call “notable” to “significant” damage. Some assessments say “possibly inoperable.” Here is why this matters more than any single missile strike in the war. The E-3 AWACS is the flying brain of American air operations. Its rotating radar dome tracks threats from surface to stratosphere across 250 miles. It coordinates every fighter, tanker, bomber, and intelligence aircraft in the theatre. In this war, the AWACS tracks Iranian Shahed drones, coordinates F-35 strike packages, and manages the interceptor network already burning through 18 months of Patriot production every four days. Lose one AWACS and you lose a command node that cannot be replaced at any price on any timeline. The E-7 replacement was cancelled by the Pentagon, reinstated by Congress, and will not fly until 2028. Sixteen former four-star Air Force generals wrote publicly that the gap cannot be filled by space-based sensors. And now one of the 16 is sitting damaged on a Saudi flight line because Iran parked a ballistic missile next to it. The arithmetic of irreplaceability connects to every thread in this war. The US fired 943 Patriot interceptors in four days and cannot produce them fast enough. It raided Swiss F-35 funds to cover the gap. Every F-35 flying over Iran carries 418 kilograms of Chinese-processed rare earth materials that cannot be sourced elsewhere for five to ten years. Ukraine is offering $2,100 interceptors because the $3.9 million ones are running out. And now an aircraft that literally cannot be rebuilt has been damaged by a weapon that costs a fraction of its value. This is not a war of attrition. This is a war against irreplaceability itself. Iran does not need to match American technology. It needs to damage things America cannot replace. A Patriot that is fired is gone. A Swiss account that is raided is empty. An AWACS that is hit on the ground is a hole in the sky that nothing can fill until 2028. The war is eating the things that cannot be eaten twice. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…
