Google Founders Buy Fighter Jet 356
Ponca City, We love you writes "The NY Times reports that H211 LLC, a company controlled by Google's top executives, including billionaire founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin, appears to have added to its fleet a Dornier Alpha Jet, a light jet attack and advanced trainer aircraft manufactured by Dornier of Germany and Dassault-Breguet of France. The 1982 Alpha-Jet seats two and was originally used by European air forces, but is now being sold relatively cheaply to civilians. The jet has landing rights at Moffett Field, the NASA-operated airfield that is a stone's throw from the Google campus. It is not clear who exactly flies the fighter jet, although Google chief executive Eric Schmidt is an avid pilot. If the top Googlers indeed own the fighter jet, they would be following in the footsteps of Oracle chief executive Larry Ellison, who has owned several aircraft, including fighter jets."
So? (Score:2, Interesting)
Red Bull has one too. Does that make them evil?
I'd have one if I had that kind of money too.
Not that unusual. (Score:4, Interesting)
This isn't a big deal, Bob Lutz (Vice Chairman of GM, Retired Marine Aviator) owned a MiG i think, and now flies around in a Czech fighter.
Jack Roush (NASCAR owner, head of Roush Industries) owns a bunch of WWII fighters.
The odd part is that the Google guys seem to have bought it through some company.
Re:Not that unusual. (Score:5, Interesting)
Showdown! (Score:3, Interesting)
Awesome! Maybe they can challenge Dexter Holland of The Offspring to a dogfight:
- Alan Cross, Ongoing History of New Music, "100 weird things about new rock - part 9" [ongoinghistory.com]
Far out thought (Score:5, Interesting)
Corporations (or their top execs) are starting to buy military hardware. Do you think we will ever see a corporation declare war on another corporation?
Gives a whole new meaning to hostile takeover...
Mig-21 on Ebay a couple weeks ago (Score:5, Interesting)
There was a former Czech air force MIG-21 for sale on Ebay a couple weeks ago with a "buy it now" price of only $45K. The aircraft was located in Ohio and was in ready-to-fly restored condition, and is actively flown in air shows. While the purchase price was cheap, it is hideously expensive to operate a MIG-21. A half-hour flight consumes almost $2000 worth of Jet-A fuel. Also a MIG-21 can only carry about two hour's worth of fuel onboard anyway. The engine in it has to be overhauled at a cost of over $100K about every 250 hours of flight time too, since Russian jet engines are built with such loose mechanical tolerances in the moving parts.
Re:FYI (Score:3, Interesting)
Depends. If you're a terrorist or fledgling militia or something, then yeah, the "fun stuff" is taken out. Being a pilot though, a functional fighter jet in itself definitely qualifies as "fun stuff".
Hell I'll admit that if I had the money that they did I'd probably buy one too (along with a P-51 Mustang because I've always wanted one). It wouldn't be for stroking an ego as much as it would be just being able to afford cool "toys" that are FUN.
Re:Just think (Score:2, Interesting)
How does this translate into...
"OMG, the evil ones are spending money on fancy toys instead of giving all their money to disadvantaged kittens!!! EVIL... EEEVIIIIIILLLL"
Knee-jerk.
Controversy (Score:2, Interesting)
This was the subject of some controvery in the aviation community.
Moffett Field is a Naval installation and as such civilians cannot use it unless it's a emergency and even then you can expect to spend some time answering questions posed by the Military Police.
I understand the nearest civilian airport that can accept jets is quite a ways away.
So how did the google guys obtain rights to use Moffet field when no other civilians can?
Re:Far out thought (Score:5, Interesting)
Corporations (or their top execs) are starting to buy military hardware. Do you think we will ever see a corporation declare war on another corporation?
Corporations have, relatively recently, declared war on other countries, not just other companies.
The British & Dutch East India Trading Company is the first one that comes to mind which had an army, navy, minted money, warred with countries & companies and setup & administered governments.
We talk about corporate influence in government, but what exists now pales in comparison to the overt control and militarism of years gone past.
Re:That's right, mods (Score:4, Interesting)
It's very easy to pounce on her for having the RNC spend $150,000 on a freaking wardrobe. This isn't Barbie we're dressing here, it's an Alaskan governor that ought to have already had a wardrobe for that office. Even the top women execs I know don't have a budget like that. It takes her from where she was to some sort of 'star' status, rather than a prudent user of political funds. I wonder aloud if they'd have paid for a boob job should she have needed one.
It's imprudent, and grandiose.
Re:In other news (Score:3, Interesting)
This is not the dumbest idea I've heard today.
Maybe a decent BF or Half-Life mod is in order here. I, for one, welcome our new chair-hurling Half-Life overlords...
These are newbies compared to the Kirlin Air Force (Score:5, Interesting)
The Kirlin family runs one of the world's the largest chains of Hallmark cards and gifts franchises (Kirlin's Hallmark stores, based out of Quincy, Illinois). Two sons of founder Dale Kirlin Sr. (Dale Jr. and Gary) went into the family business.
The other son, Don Kirlin, pursued an aviation career with the US Navy and Us Airways before he started Red Air [redair.net] which is a company also based out of Quincy, IL. Don has lived in Quincy, in Boulder, Colorado [rockymountainnews.com], and also in Kyrgyzstan while working on acquiring a former Soviet fighter.
Red Air operates a fleet of Mig, Alpha, and Vodochody fighter aircraft [wired.com] in training maneuvers with US and Canadian fighter groups. Their former USAF and US Navy flight instructors flying foreign-built fighters make for a much more realistic training scenario than simulators or flying US aircraft against other US aircraft.
If you have the cash, the licenses, and the desire then check out his foreign fighter and trainer sales business [air-usa.com], Air USA. Weapons systems are not included, of course.
Don's also the man behind the World Free Fall Convention, which brought visitors from every state and 70 foreign countries to Quincy, IL and Rantoul, IL for 17 years and featured during that time over 600,000 jumps. Jump platforms included everything from a B-17 bomber to the Family Channel blimp [dropzone.com]. Even a Super Constellation and a Boeing 727 have been featured.
So if you really want to talk about privately held air power, Oracle and Google take a back seat to the black sheep son of a greeting card and gift store magnate.
Re:That's right, mods (Score:2, Interesting)
Care to inform us how much Omambie and Clinton have spent on wardrobe?
hmmmm????
No?
Of course not. You people always slam those you oppose and conveniently leave out the fact that those you support are just as bad if not worse.
$150,000 is *nothing* in a political campaign. It costs several times that to even air a single commercial.
But, perspective is your enemy...which is why you folks never provide any.
Re:So? (Score:3, Interesting)
So does Dillon Precision.
And to one up everybody else, it has functional 20mm canons. And they have a Hummer with a GE minigun sticking out of the roof. And a turret with 2 GE 50s (it might be 4, I don't remember exactly).
They shoot remote control planes with both the turret and the jet, and they shoot remote vehicles with the Hummer. It is ridiculously fun and ridiculously expensive.
Re:Pot, meet Kettle (Score:5, Interesting)
That just means you need to bomb them again. Many military theologians interpret the smitings in the Old Testament as an airpower-centric and profoundly interventionist foreign policy on the part of the Almighty.
Seriously I read an article in a left of centre British paper interviewing people from an Afghan village that was peaceful until the Taliban arrived and set up shop. The Taliban terrorised people, mostly women, but they also beat a few of the men to death until the villagers stopped doing anything they objected to. Which was pretty munch anything. At the start of the US invasion the house the Taliban had commandeered was suddenly blown to bits by a 2000lb laser guided bomb from a US fighter. The Taliban were all either killed or left, no one knew for sure, but in any case the village was free of their alien influence one morning and minus one house.
The coolest part was at the end when one of the Afghans pointed to the contrails from a B52 flying overhead and said that so long as they were on the prowl, the Taliban would not come back and life would be good.
If it carried on for long enough, maybe people would regard the aircraft overhead a bit like an awesomly powerful deity with an inexplicable fondness for womens rights. Come to think of it, the Old Testament God had inexplicable preferences too. Perhaps Gods need to be both ultra powerful and hard to understand to make people worship them and not their competitors.
Re:FYI (Score:4, Interesting)
Just because you can fit two rockets and a machine gun on an Alpha Jet doesn't make it really a fighter jet. You can also mount a machine gun and a rocket launcher on a truck, but that doesn't mean that every truck is a combat engine.
Alpha jets were used mainly for pilot training, for observation flights and sometimes (they are two-seated!) as some kind of very fast air-cab. They are not armoured, so their combat value is nearly nil.
Re:That's right, mods (Score:2, Interesting)
Agreed. While I verhemently don't want to see Palin elected, I'd be interested in comparing numbers with how much is spent on McCain's wardrobe (Or Obama's) before passing judgement. All those fancy suits and ties probably add up fast.