If past practice is any guide, the application of such a "fly-before-buy" acquisition approach would leave the Marines without an operational aircraft until the year 2005, and delay complete replacement of the CH-46 until 2015.
The Iraqi air force, devastated by the Gulf War, had only 80 to 100 operational combat aircraft, according to Periscope.
It and the seven other operational Nimitz-class nuclear-powered aircraft carriers are the core of the US's world conventional military reach.
And in the operational phase, we continue with every aircraft we bring in to our inventory to experiment, and we learn more as we go along.
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Fortunately, sophisticated adversaries are not what we face today, and so the current operational environment affords maximum latitude for employing unmanned aircraft.
While on any given day these numbers may be somewhat different, the fact remains that the aircraft carrier fleet is kept busy with operational requirements, training, and maintenance.
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Out of around 64 aircraft, most of them Airbusses, only 22 were known to be operational by late February and less than that are airborne today.
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By sizing this vehicle for internal carriage, the full tactical and operational benefits of the Osprey's speed -- approximately 270 knots in its conventional aircraft mode -- can be exploited, instead of having to externally sling-load the larger and heavier HMMWV at a much reduced range and speed.
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While wartime capacity and routine operational presence are very important, they are not the only factors defining the need for eleven aircraft carriers.
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This time they're focusing on the chopping and changing over the precise aircraft which will fly from the new carriers on the distant day when they become operational.
All of this data is collated and matched against client-employee information, GPS coordinates, detailed flight information for every aircraft that is part of an itinerary for each employee and a matrix of client operational rules and requirements.
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