A Kate Winslet Moment

I'm busy doing research and reading tonight, so if you are looking for a link to something interesting, this pic is a former Top Gun XO going all Hollywood with his Titanic impersonation off the bow of the USS Nimitz (CVN 68) last week.

Said another way, that is Lex having a Kate Winslet moment. This and other pictures from the embark on Nimitz by the social software folks can be seen on this mega-blog-post by Guy Kawasaki.

Speaking of Lex, he is discussing the Fighter Gap.

Now, I’m as much a fan of the FA-18C as any man breathing, but $22 million to sustain a 1990’s design into the 2017 time frame seems like false economy, especially when the Super Hornet brings so much more - there, I said it - to the table. And especially when the FA-18C stable is already breathing hard to maintain readiness rates. We’ve seen what happens when an air force flies their machines to failure - it ain’t pretty.

The thing about the Joint Strike Fighter focus is that the increase in the FY2010 budget is for the Marine F-35B version, not the Navy F-35C version. The QDR will settle the fighter gap question, but it may not be settled in a way people like. Between retiring Enterprise early and slowing down the construction of the Ford, the Navy may claim they do not have a fighter gap with only 9 aircraft carriers available for deployment until 2017, and fielding a bunch of F-35Bs quicker. Ultimately, you never know what will be decided, there are a lot of hard choices that have been punted to the QDR.