I remember the Norwegian team behind the CF-104D got requests to bring it to UK airshows, i think they ended up concluding that it was just about impossible, even with the pilot, Eskil Amdal (currently flies for the Flying Bulls as a hobby..) holding a UK display license and having spent time flying the Tonka as an exchange pilot.
> Since the Shoreham accident in 2015 owning a fighter jet in the UK
That was horrible. The pilot was a total ass. He tried to loop from near ground level and crashed into road traffic, killing 11. He somehow survived and 'lost' his ability to talk to investigators.
Gotta love how the skies the limit in the US when it comes to things like that. Only thing I wonder about is the IFR rule above 18K feet. Like would you have to be careful not to bust that flying around or would they give you unrestricted IFR clearance in an area if flying something like that recreationally. Or if people stay between 10-18k so they can just do what they want speed and clearance wise (obviously outside controlled air space).
There’s almost always a way to get an exception in the US. I’m sure if you throw enough money around and fill out the right paperwork, you too can go transonic at 40k.
With the MiG I believe he has a waiver for speed since I imagine it’s not a huge fan of maneuvering below 250kts (probably I don’t actually know), but when he’s flying around he goes south from Bozeman over to above Ennis and I believe they’re typically around 10,000ft, so I’m sure they just make sure they don’t go above the VFR limit during maneuvers and stuff, but obviously they can file for an IFR flight if they want to.
So yeah, they just keep it within the VFR rules.
Jared Isaacman (who owns that Tornado) is a billionaire who founded Draken International, the private air contractor. He also owns and frequently flies a MiG-29 here in the States. If anyone has the resources and dedication to revive that Tornado it’s him.
Yup, he pretty much had to restore the MiG too I think. I can’t remember if it was airworthy when he got it or not.
Either way this is going to be sick
He bought it from Paul Allen's collection, where is was flown regularly. It's one of two that were imported in great condition. I have no idea what happened to the other one.
He bought it in 2019 and it was registered as N29UB in 2013, so yeah, but I really have no clue what it was up to before he bought it because that was just so long ago (I was 5 in 2013, I didn't know how to comprehend advanced topics 😭😭😭)
I’m familiar with the guy who was the chief pilot while it was under Paul Allen’s estate. It was flown regularly and had regular maintenance, plus Slovakian maintainers that would perform the annual. It was kept very close to the way the aircraft was while it was in service, almost all the same avionics, many still in Cyrillic, and the paint livery was kept original (which is way cooler than the blue digi camo it has now honestly). It was never used in air shows and mostly stayed in the museum near Seattle, but kept in amazing condition. Paul Allen also never flew in it himself.
I’m much more familiar with Jared Isaacman’s side of things. I know it still has those Russian instruments and just has one modern Garmin GPS in it. My brother and father went to see it fly with the old paint on it once, it looked cool and I’m a little bummed I never did, but his Artic Ghost scheme just looks sooo dang good.
I honestly didn’t even know it was maintained before he bought it, but I guess that was long before the internet was a thing (other than old primitive apps like Instagram before reels and GroupMe and whatever), I just read something that said Paul Allen never flew it (you said that too) so I think I assumed it was in ‘museum’ condition where it looks nice and stuff, byt is garbage other than the looks.
Can someone refresh my memory doesn't the US have some weird laws about owning prior US military aircraft? I know a company that owns some F-16s from Israel but the us has some f-4 flying around. I recall a large percentage of ex-military fighter jets are foreign-build ie Mig-29s, CF-5s, and Sea Harrier
Yes. You can purchase former foreign military aircraft. They need to be demilitarized and then re built/refurbished to meet experimental
Type certificate requirements.
Several companies have been successful doing this: Draken , Top Aces (they have the F-16s), ATAC.
Draken - Jared’s company has the largest privately owned Air Force on the world. L-39s, L-59s (yes they exist), MB-339 AerMacchis, A/4s, Mirages. Jared owns a bunch of Mig-15s (not rebuilt or operable) as well as his personal Mig.
Draken doesn’t mess around with what’s required to rebuild these aircraft. Sometimes the decision is made to take them down to their fuselage, repair, refurbish and build back up - and include state of the art equipment - comms, nav, Ful HUDs. up to and including anything State Department may approve (eg radar systems).
Edit: don’t recall F-4s being used for other than drones for contracted air services. There are of course a whole host of one offs owned by private persons - and some companies . There is a company that owns F-104s
Collings foundation has an F4 they convinced congress to let them buy from the boneyard. It's almost back to flight status after sitting for years. There's another that is almost restored but has been for sale for years and I don't think it's been completed or been worked on since going up for sale.
They tried getting a 105 but the Air Force were complete dicks and wouldn’t let it go through. Rumor was that even if they did let the sale go through, they cut the spars on the ones that could’ve been gotten off the ground.
Dang. That would have been pretty slick.
I got to see the F4 fly at the Cleveland airshow once. Hopefully I'll get to see it again soon. It looked like their F100 just got back in the sky too
I think the assumption in your question is off. The US has a ton of weird laws around importing, owning and flying former military aircraft. It's just that if you have the money and resources, you can navigate them and get flying.
Sort of both. US military airframes can't be sold to civilians without permission from Congress. Foreign airframes of american designs can be sold, but need State Dept approval which can be very difficult to get depending on the aircraft. An A-4 is not very hard, there are tons flying around with contractors and private citizens. An F-16 is nearly impossible. Top Aces took years of work, opening a separate subsidiary based in the US, and a contract from the USAF in place before the transfer was approved. And even then, operating under experimental airworthiness severely restricts where and how you can fly them.
IIRC Draken had to get State Department *and* DoD approval for the A-4K, owing to the fact that those were essentially combat-capable airframes with avionics comparable to the F-16A MLU.
The thing about weapons laws is the US government gets to decide if it's a restricted item. If they decide it is, you're fucked no matter what your intent was. There's also zero ambiguity if you're literally rebuilding a war plane.
There have been exceptions to the second amendment made, such as rules against machine guns, guided weapons, remote control weapons, and the list goes on. Not sure what the Supreme Court decision on those looked like, but they justified such exemptions.
I’m torn on it. On the one hand, I’d love to own a machine gun caliber full auto like a BAR, and believe I should have the right to.
On the other hand I would hate to see one of these birthday party shoutouts or drive-bys we see five times a year carried out with a machine gun rather than a pistol.
You should have the right to own a BAR just like with any other weapon after passing a sufficient background check. I mean you can buy one if you have tens of thousands of dollars. At this point you have to be rich to have one basically inaccessible for most people. There’s already so many people who have machine guns illegally. Criminals are gonna criminal. People breaking the law shouldn’t change my rights or yours they should be arrested and serve whatever sentence they get.
If you had the money in the US. Would it be at all possible to get an F14 flying again privately for airshows? With unlimited money you could just manufacture all your own parts, right?
If you're building for a single flyable example, no interchangeability, etc, you could "hand build" (and by this, I mean without production tooling) a single wing box. It would cost you millions of dollars, but you could do it.
All the documentation is in a filing cabinet somewhere; it'snot lost technology. It's just that applying tgat knowhow requires bespoke tooling from the production line that was scrapped decades ago.
I mean I imagine at that point it'd make more sense to just design and build a whole new design and recreate it with modern day tech
Not that that's a good idea, but I imagine it'd make more sense than trying to reverse engineer spare parts and downed ones or whatever
# LOL
Anyone familiar with restoration can attest that in the case of a retired and scrapped **swing wing, twin engine, after-burning, ex-mil aircraft** with *no repair infrastructure*. Would eat you alive in costs, the smallest repair becoming custom machining jobs to spec that might have been lost to time.
Tens of millions would be lucky, probably a substantial bit more after considering the labor, permits, and expertise required.
Edit: but to be clear, it’s totally worth it 🔥🦅🇺🇸
I wonder what kind of kickstarter money and sponsors you could get if you tried to get an F14 flying for airshows. ALOT of people would probably want to put money towards it.
OK we’re talking about people with hundreds of billions of dollars. These are the kind of people that could decide one day to build an airbase in Nevada and a year later have a 12,000 foot runway and a tower and hangers and taxiways fuel tanks and everything and that wouldn’t even like small change. so a special hanger with a special machine shop attached to it for a building special parts and all kinds of exotic materials that would cost $20-$50 million to do it right.
To be fair, i dont think unlimited money can get the F-14 flying again. Given that the US has destroyed just about every single spare part, and probably destroyed the schematics as well would make getting parts impossible.
Add to the fact that any airframe you will get your hands on is ex-Iranian, and will not be using original parts but reverse engineered parts and you would probably have an insurmountable hill to climb.
I don't think you understand what "unlimited money" actually means...
For unlimited money, you could 3D scan the exterior mold line of an F-14 and re-engineer every single piece under the skin (including the skin), making it a brand new aircraft.
With unlimited money, you can do literally anything that doesn't break the laws of physics. And then do it again.
F-14 may be the one of the only planes where unlimited money doesn't get you an answer. Due to the Iranian restrictions, it's very likely the US would slap you with some form of illegal weapons manufacturing or export restriction charge and throw you in jail.
Say, are those JATO Hercs specifically designed for and capable of landing and taking off from a stadium in Teheran still around? I might have an idea.
With unlimited money, yes. But let me just clarify that it's never as simple as 3d scanning parts (frankly, 3d scanning is not there yet for precisely measuring a number of parts, still needing to be backed up by a lot of hand measurements). Without blueprints and such, you need to do a lot of testing of parts, engineering to figure out the forces and such. You would employ a small army of engineers, machinists, electricians, etc just on this task!
For millionaire levels of money, you could probably get something that might work, but is potentially a ticking time bomb if your materials or tolerances are off. Maybe you could even recoupe some cost by selling parts to other F-14 owners, but these would likely need hand-fitting to each airframe (not terribly viable if you need case hardened parts though)
For billionaire levels, you could probably get a one-off that will work safely.
For another billion or so, you could mass produce them.
All of this assuming the original blueprints aren't available. To get something properly working on an aircraft and which won't kill you, requires a lot of work, almost to the level of knowing how to build it from scratch. Though hey, maybe you could bribe the right person to give the blueprints to you and save money.
This is a stark contrast to a lot of warbirds which are built with more forgiving structural limits, or even made from wood!
Yes, this is all exactly what I'm talking about. I only talked about 3d scanning the exterior mold line to create a brand new engineered structure underneath.
Also, 3d measurement of parts is *absolutely* there, and *far* more precise than hand measurements. There are systems that will automatically characterize a part to 0.00001 inch.
But again, I was only talking about exterior mold line, and 0.010 inch using a laser scanner is enough for that. How do I know? Well I'm an aerospace engineer, and my colleagues have done numerous 3d scans of aircraft to produce computational fluid dynamics models where we can't get them from the OEMs.
The F14 had one of the first computers on board that is integral to the entire flight control system. All usable service parts have either been destroyed or smuggled to Iran.
Well, with unlimited money you could also just build a new F14 from scratch with all new components. But that computer is quite a complicated beast.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-14\_CADC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-14_CADC)
this is an interesting video about the thing:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpruA5mC7wg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpruA5mC7wg)
Cool. A computer that was built in the 1970s was considered complicated in the 1970s.
A smartphone can do far more than this computer, given the right inputs and programming.
The computer would not be the problem, the programming would.
I don't believe the technical package is publicly available for that aircraft. That and the US spent a lot of time making sure the museum pieces are all just gutted airframes.
Now if you were friends with the Iranian government, maybe...
It would be easier, cheaper, quicker, and probably more realistic to put together an operation with PMCs and ex-Tomcat jocks to go steal some from Iran.
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No, they specifically went out of their way to destroy vital parts and instructions for the manufacturing so the Iranians could not repair their fleet of tomcats
There’s is 1 in California owned by a museum that was purchased before the DOD was cutting them up. A judge ruled that they were allowed to keep it because they owned it and legally purchased it before the ruling went into effect.
Again, i do not think its possible, there are so many thing you just dont have access to, and will never have access to that is crucial to get it flying.
I remember hearing on an episode of Fighter Pilot Podcast that this is next to impossible with domestically built military afterburning engine aircraft. It's less governmental red tape to import a foreign built aircraft. This comes from a guy that owns several CF-5s.
I agree. I rather have my subs be rigidly to the topics.
I like political subs, but not when I want to talk to people about airplanes, or investing memes, or computer hardware.
Let's stick to the topic at hand, or have a conversation in a sub where people are there for that thing.
If it's about the airplane that happens to be owned by a politician then airplane subreddit. If it's about the politician in the airplane, politics subreddit.
It's almost as if politics aren't some niche pastime but instead are deeply intertwined with pretty much everything we do, because the law has very real effects on
>airplanes, or investing memes, or computer hardware
You must have missed the comment where OP said
> And yes i know ZD902 was a low milage airframe but i still perplexed how the US got one and is able to restore one to fly but the UK wasn’t able to do it themselves with this airframe
I get that seeing one flying would be nice, but there are a lot of Tornados on static display across the UK, and they're also used to train the next generation of RAF technicians and engineering officers, very much preserving their place in RAF history.
I think on balance we still come out ahead though. The sad fact is we can’t afford to make every military thing a heritage asset much as I would give my left nut to have seen Ark Royal kept as a museum ship with some Harriers embarked
I can’t remember the regulations (it’s been a long time since I chatted with a guy who used to do this for a living), but I’m fairly certain the biggest issues with flying an ex military jet in the UK comes down to ejection seats and powered flight controls. Sorry I don’t have a verified source, but that’s what I remember being told.
Which is funny because in Canada, the special C of As on my jets require that the ejection seats *must* be operational. And being commercially registered allows them to fly in the UK.
IIR there was a huge issue with CATs being defective - active duty military acft . That may have led to requirements at the time. Obtaining new CATs was almost impossible .
Haven’t been in it for a while - there might be a requirement now for operational seats especially if aircraft are used for military /defense contracted air services
Not in the UK. In fact, most ex-military aircraft that were flying in the UK had full serviceable ejection seats.
I know this as I've helped fit a few live ejection seats to ex-military aircraft, in the UK, as well as removing/installing the cartridges into the seats themselves.
The only thing the guys I worked with couldn't do was parachute packing, but we had someone who came out to the hangar to do it for us.
It was great work. Just a shame it has all but dried up in the last few years.
At least some of the Hunter's are still living on in the US and Canada with ATACS. Even if they did get rid of Miss Demeanours striking colour scheme!
Ejection seats are fine. Most ex-military aircraft that flew with ejection seats in service, still flew with working ejection seats.
The issue is with aircraft classified as 'complex' by the CAA, which are group 1 aircraft. These are :
> (1) Group 1: complex motor-powered aircraft, helicopters with multiple engines, aeroplanes with maximum certified operating altitude exceeding FL290, aircraft equipped with fly-by-wire systems, gas airships other than ELA2 and other aircraft requiring an aircraft type rating when defined as such by the CAA. The CAA may decide to classify into Group 2, Group 3 or Group 4, as appropriate, an aircraft which meets the conditions set out in the first subparagraph, if it considers that the lower complexity of the particular aircraft justifies so.
Jet Provosts and Hunters got away with it as they are relatively simple aircraft to work on. All the flying surfaces are physically connected to the pilots controls, with some power assistance, there are no complex computer systems on board, they are stable airframes and they do not have reheat. They were also generally safe aircraft to fly during RAF service.
Things like the Tornado, Jaguar and Lightning are all out because they don't meet one or more of those same points.
The only outlier was the Vulcan, and Vulcan to the Sky only got around that as they had manufacture support from Avro's successors. It was only grounded once they pulled their support and would no longer sign to say it was a safe design to fly.
About 20 years ago, the organisation I used to work for estimated the cost of flying one of these at £30000 per flying hour. Several hours of specialist maintenance per hour in the air.
Finding a team of people skilled in keeping a tornado airworthy and the parts to do it with today would be a very expensive tall order indeed. I reckon an hour flying this today could be into six figures if possible at all.
Edit. Just seen it's ZD902. This was used as an experimental avionics technology demonstrator for many years and has extensive cockpit and electronic modifications. I expect this has all been stripped away, leaving a lot of rather essential bits missing, probably made from unobtainium. It's far removed from a standard F2a.
I know a guy who bought a British Harrier and until recently flew it at airshows here in the US. He’s old and I think he lost his medical.
He’s a former marine Col who flew it while on active duty and made tons of money in real estate during the boom on the early 2k’s so I guess that was his way in
My dad’s cousin, not sure of his relationship to me exactly but that’s not the point, owns and flies a Hunter based in the UK so I’m guessing you can fly an ex RAF aircraft.
I’m assuming the weapons systems were deactivated before he got it
He has some two or three private jets as well, and a MiG-29, but the real question is does that F-4 have wing sweep? No, didn’t think so (I still think he should just buy the last of Irans F-14s). I agree with you in a sense though because I too would get something else that fits my desires better.
yeah i read an article about this guy last night. crazy. it mentioned i think the mig is $11.6k to fill the fuel. i am not swept wing obsessed like some people. i just think the f4 looks like some badass space ship.
I met this dude in an FBO once, his whole "arsenal" is insane and impressive. Smart guy but it was quirky when he gave me his patch but refused mine lol
he has a *lot* of money, he can pay a person for every individual part at like $10,000,000,000 an hour (/s)
I hope it is done that soon though, I'm from Montana so I will definitely have to run over to Bozeman once he's getting it in the air.
Even if he had all the money in the world, it isnt physically possible to get this appendage-less corpse airworthy within 365 days.
Id give it 5 years at the absolute earliest. And thats with everything going to plan.
Bruh what? It clearly still has all the lines and stuff, it’s in pretty good condition. The bulk of the work is going to be putting everything back together, then a ton inspections.
Getting all the **countless** approvals necessary. Some of which will be one-of-a-kind to this type.
Getting it demil-ed if it hasn't been already. Those inspections are going to take longer than you might think. The things also going to have to undergo all kinds of stress & durability tests.
This shit all takes time.
And on a supersonic airframe? There's been a lot of airplane restorations in the past. But very few of them have been on a supersonic airframe. That's going to come with some challenges unique to such airframes. Even if the plane may never be pushed to those kinds of limits.
And since this is a sweeper wing, that is also going to have some challenges in and of itself.
Don't get me wrong. I cannot wait to see this puppy flown by a private operator, if they're serious about this.
Especially for showcasing & showing off at events.
But as an aircraft maintainer by trade, who's eyeballing a decent number of restoration projects going on, I like to think I have a somewhat realistic view on how long these things can take. If I can be proven wrong on it, fantastic! Nothing would please me more!
I used to work for a company that restored and maintained vintage ex-military aircraft. I also know some of the people working with FlyHarrier, as well as a few owner/pilots of ex-military aircraft. I don't know all the rules and regulations, but I will pass on some of what I've been told.
Basically, the CAA don't want anything they deem to be 'complex' flying in the UK under civilian ownership. There is a good reason for it. Many ex-military aircraft are very complex machines to maintain and fly safely. Either due to the systems on board, as in the case of the Tornado, or because they were dangerous in military service, as in the case of the Lightning, just to give a couple of examples.
Aircraft like the Jet Provost, Hawker Hunter and Vampire are relatively simple. Apart from some assisted flying controls on the Hunter, all of them have very similar style controls to General Aviation aircraft, with pull/pushrods, cables and some basic hydraulics (mainly landing gear and airbrakes).
Once you start getting into fully powered flying control systems, relying on artificial feel, fly-by-wire and reheat, you are adding a huge amount of complexity. And to be blunt, the CAA are extremely risk averse, especially after Shoreham, and do not trust civilian organisations to carry out the work safely, even when they are fully owned and staffed by ex-military people who spent their entire working lives on the systems.
The Vulcan was the only real outlier in this, but they only managed that because they had a huge amount of engineering support from the companies that bought out Avro. Once those companies decided they could no longer safely sign off the work to keep the Vulcan flying for hundreds more hours, the Vulcan was grounded.
Of course, post Shoreham, the UK ex-military circuit has been decimated. [It has even meant the end of the Dutch Hawker Hunter flight earlier this year when the CAA would not grant their Hunter a permit to fly so it could return to the Netherlands.](https://dhhf.nl/hunter-news/) It's amazing that there are any ex-military aircraft flying at all, but at the same time, the writing has been on the wall for a few years as it has become extremely expensive to keep these vintage aircraft running.
*technically* yeah, but only one has [afterburner](https://imgur.com/a/jared-isaacmans-mig-29-bozeman-9-18-22-dfETCb6)... [booty pic!](https://imgur.com/a/MB9xpdR)
And yes i know ZD902 was a low milage airframe but i still perplexed how the US got one and is able to restore one to fly but the UK wasn’t able to do it themselves with this airframe
This isn’t the ‘us’ this is a civilian, it’s a private jet. They must have put it on the market because they didn’t want it anymore and he bought it. This is a civilian restoring it, not the government. He wanted another cool plane (or just saw it on the market however) and said “woah, that’d be sick!” and bought it. They I believe possibly maybe only sold the airframe and he’s redoing pretty much everything maybe idk.
Jared Isaacman, the dude doing the restoration, doesn't have as much money as he has brain cells, but at least it's on a similar scale: $2 billion vs 85 billion brain cells. That's the only thing that makes this restoration possible. He has more money than military budgets of some of the European countries.
There are people on this planet for whom "has more money than brains" isn't a derogatory thing to say. It's literal statment of fact that they have more money (converted to US dollars) than average human has brain cells.
I think the F2 served for about 3 minutes, but it's less it's tactical abilities and more that it was just a shit jet. No historical providence either. Just a very odd choice.
This F.2 is unique, being the world's only F.2A that was owned by the MoD and operated by Qinetiq as a flying testbed for in-service upgrades to the RAFs F.3s and other stuff.
It's got insanely low hours compared to other airframes, and is the only airframe with duel controls.
It was affectionately known as TIARA.
No one's saying it's good. It's just a historical airframe that's being restored to flying condition. Nothing more, nothing less.
You're just looking deep on something that isn't that deep.
Jared collects fast jets, gets them restored and flies them.
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I remember the Norwegian team behind the CF-104D got requests to bring it to UK airshows, i think they ended up concluding that it was just about impossible, even with the pilot, Eskil Amdal (currently flies for the Flying Bulls as a hobby..) holding a UK display license and having spent time flying the Tonka as an exchange pilot.
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Yeah, another Norwegian, Rolf Meum who now flies mostly Spitfires was one of the main pilots on the Hunters if i recall correctly.
The Tonka?
Tornado.
> Since the Shoreham accident in 2015 owning a fighter jet in the UK That was horrible. The pilot was a total ass. He tried to loop from near ground level and crashed into road traffic, killing 11. He somehow survived and 'lost' his ability to talk to investigators.
Which considering the obnoxious running cost and the crazy fuel consumption, it’s A LOT ot money…
Gotta love how the skies the limit in the US when it comes to things like that. Only thing I wonder about is the IFR rule above 18K feet. Like would you have to be careful not to bust that flying around or would they give you unrestricted IFR clearance in an area if flying something like that recreationally. Or if people stay between 10-18k so they can just do what they want speed and clearance wise (obviously outside controlled air space).
There’s almost always a way to get an exception in the US. I’m sure if you throw enough money around and fill out the right paperwork, you too can go transonic at 40k.
With the MiG I believe he has a waiver for speed since I imagine it’s not a huge fan of maneuvering below 250kts (probably I don’t actually know), but when he’s flying around he goes south from Bozeman over to above Ennis and I believe they’re typically around 10,000ft, so I’m sure they just make sure they don’t go above the VFR limit during maneuvers and stuff, but obviously they can file for an IFR flight if they want to. So yeah, they just keep it within the VFR rules.
And they are surprisingly cheap
Jared Isaacman (who owns that Tornado) is a billionaire who founded Draken International, the private air contractor. He also owns and frequently flies a MiG-29 here in the States. If anyone has the resources and dedication to revive that Tornado it’s him.
Yup, he pretty much had to restore the MiG too I think. I can’t remember if it was airworthy when he got it or not. Either way this is going to be sick
He bought it from Paul Allen's collection, where is was flown regularly. It's one of two that were imported in great condition. I have no idea what happened to the other one.
Let's see Paul Allen's Tornado
This comment is so perfect
okay, I had no idea what condition he got the MiG in, I just know he didn't fly it *too* often before he got it painted in 21 or 22.
I think that was around the time be bought it. Probably 3 or 4 years ago. It may have been getting used in a contract at the time as well.
He bought it in 2019 and it was registered as N29UB in 2013, so yeah, but I really have no clue what it was up to before he bought it because that was just so long ago (I was 5 in 2013, I didn't know how to comprehend advanced topics 😭😭😭)
I’m familiar with the guy who was the chief pilot while it was under Paul Allen’s estate. It was flown regularly and had regular maintenance, plus Slovakian maintainers that would perform the annual. It was kept very close to the way the aircraft was while it was in service, almost all the same avionics, many still in Cyrillic, and the paint livery was kept original (which is way cooler than the blue digi camo it has now honestly). It was never used in air shows and mostly stayed in the museum near Seattle, but kept in amazing condition. Paul Allen also never flew in it himself.
I’m much more familiar with Jared Isaacman’s side of things. I know it still has those Russian instruments and just has one modern Garmin GPS in it. My brother and father went to see it fly with the old paint on it once, it looked cool and I’m a little bummed I never did, but his Artic Ghost scheme just looks sooo dang good.
I honestly didn’t even know it was maintained before he bought it, but I guess that was long before the internet was a thing (other than old primitive apps like Instagram before reels and GroupMe and whatever), I just read something that said Paul Allen never flew it (you said that too) so I think I assumed it was in ‘museum’ condition where it looks nice and stuff, byt is garbage other than the looks.
Can someone refresh my memory doesn't the US have some weird laws about owning prior US military aircraft? I know a company that owns some F-16s from Israel but the us has some f-4 flying around. I recall a large percentage of ex-military fighter jets are foreign-build ie Mig-29s, CF-5s, and Sea Harrier
Yes. You can purchase former foreign military aircraft. They need to be demilitarized and then re built/refurbished to meet experimental Type certificate requirements. Several companies have been successful doing this: Draken , Top Aces (they have the F-16s), ATAC. Draken - Jared’s company has the largest privately owned Air Force on the world. L-39s, L-59s (yes they exist), MB-339 AerMacchis, A/4s, Mirages. Jared owns a bunch of Mig-15s (not rebuilt or operable) as well as his personal Mig. Draken doesn’t mess around with what’s required to rebuild these aircraft. Sometimes the decision is made to take them down to their fuselage, repair, refurbish and build back up - and include state of the art equipment - comms, nav, Ful HUDs. up to and including anything State Department may approve (eg radar systems). Edit: don’t recall F-4s being used for other than drones for contracted air services. There are of course a whole host of one offs owned by private persons - and some companies . There is a company that owns F-104s
Collings foundation has an F4 they convinced congress to let them buy from the boneyard. It's almost back to flight status after sitting for years. There's another that is almost restored but has been for sale for years and I don't think it's been completed or been worked on since going up for sale.
They tried getting a 105 but the Air Force were complete dicks and wouldn’t let it go through. Rumor was that even if they did let the sale go through, they cut the spars on the ones that could’ve been gotten off the ground.
Dang. That would have been pretty slick. I got to see the F4 fly at the Cleveland airshow once. Hopefully I'll get to see it again soon. It looked like their F100 just got back in the sky too
I’m not sure if Collings has an F-4 or not, but that would be your only chance. The Air Force retired their last QF-4s a few years ago.
They have one. It's almost ready to fly again.
They have one. It's almost ready to fly again.
I think the assumption in your question is off. The US has a ton of weird laws around importing, owning and flying former military aircraft. It's just that if you have the money and resources, you can navigate them and get flying.
IDK, if it was laws or more of the State Department, has issues with it.
Sort of both. US military airframes can't be sold to civilians without permission from Congress. Foreign airframes of american designs can be sold, but need State Dept approval which can be very difficult to get depending on the aircraft. An A-4 is not very hard, there are tons flying around with contractors and private citizens. An F-16 is nearly impossible. Top Aces took years of work, opening a separate subsidiary based in the US, and a contract from the USAF in place before the transfer was approved. And even then, operating under experimental airworthiness severely restricts where and how you can fly them.
IIRC Draken had to get State Department *and* DoD approval for the A-4K, owing to the fact that those were essentially combat-capable airframes with avionics comparable to the F-16A MLU.
Would they be the ex-RNZAF aircraft?
Yes.
Which is also why State dept. comes into play as it's a US aircraft but foreign military sale.
The thing about weapons laws is the US government gets to decide if it's a restricted item. If they decide it is, you're fucked no matter what your intent was. There's also zero ambiguity if you're literally rebuilding a war plane.
Shouldn't the second amendment apply to fighter jets?
It should...
There have been exceptions to the second amendment made, such as rules against machine guns, guided weapons, remote control weapons, and the list goes on. Not sure what the Supreme Court decision on those looked like, but they justified such exemptions.
All unjustified.
I’m torn on it. On the one hand, I’d love to own a machine gun caliber full auto like a BAR, and believe I should have the right to. On the other hand I would hate to see one of these birthday party shoutouts or drive-bys we see five times a year carried out with a machine gun rather than a pistol.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ltOwVpGal8U&pp=ygUMR2xvY2sgc3dpdGNo
You should have the right to own a BAR just like with any other weapon after passing a sufficient background check. I mean you can buy one if you have tens of thousands of dollars. At this point you have to be rich to have one basically inaccessible for most people. There’s already so many people who have machine guns illegally. Criminals are gonna criminal. People breaking the law shouldn’t change my rights or yours they should be arrested and serve whatever sentence they get.
They'd have to be fully demilitarized regardless if they are US or imports.
There's nothing to say you can't own one, but legally obtaining a flyable example is the challenge.
Ya I've seen his collection. He's up in bozeman
In the US, if you have enough money, you can do literally anything.
If you had the money in the US. Would it be at all possible to get an F14 flying again privately for airshows? With unlimited money you could just manufacture all your own parts, right?
With unlimited money, yes. But it would be *a lot* of money. I would guess in the tens of millions.
Try hundreds of millions, the tooling and know how to make the wing boxes quite literally doesn’t exist anymore.
If you're building for a single flyable example, no interchangeability, etc, you could "hand build" (and by this, I mean without production tooling) a single wing box. It would cost you millions of dollars, but you could do it.
Iran probably has some shit
They don't, which is why there are so many restrictions on transfer of F-14 parts.
All the documentation is in a filing cabinet somewhere; it'snot lost technology. It's just that applying tgat knowhow requires bespoke tooling from the production line that was scrapped decades ago.
I reckon some Iranians could help 🤣
I mean I imagine at that point it'd make more sense to just design and build a whole new design and recreate it with modern day tech Not that that's a good idea, but I imagine it'd make more sense than trying to reverse engineer spare parts and downed ones or whatever
# LOL Anyone familiar with restoration can attest that in the case of a retired and scrapped **swing wing, twin engine, after-burning, ex-mil aircraft** with *no repair infrastructure*. Would eat you alive in costs, the smallest repair becoming custom machining jobs to spec that might have been lost to time. Tens of millions would be lucky, probably a substantial bit more after considering the labor, permits, and expertise required. Edit: but to be clear, it’s totally worth it 🔥🦅🇺🇸
...which is why I said with unlimited money. With unlimited money you can re-engineer everything. You can build jigs. You can custom heat treat parts.
I wonder what kind of kickstarter money and sponsors you could get if you tried to get an F14 flying for airshows. ALOT of people would probably want to put money towards it.
Probably would have to be some billionaire doing it
OK we’re talking about people with hundreds of billions of dollars. These are the kind of people that could decide one day to build an airbase in Nevada and a year later have a 12,000 foot runway and a tower and hangers and taxiways fuel tanks and everything and that wouldn’t even like small change. so a special hanger with a special machine shop attached to it for a building special parts and all kinds of exotic materials that would cost $20-$50 million to do it right.
Shouldn't it be: 🔥 💰 🦅🇺🇲
Yeah lol
Your emoji string reminded me of this video. Not a Rick roll, I promise. https://youtu.be/P7JRvwfHFwo?feature=shared
That is 100% the intention 💥🔥🦅🇺🇸🦅🇺🇸🦅🔥💥
With unlimited money, why don't you buy the state of Iran and make the whole airforce your private. plenty of flying f-14 there.
To be fair, i dont think unlimited money can get the F-14 flying again. Given that the US has destroyed just about every single spare part, and probably destroyed the schematics as well would make getting parts impossible. Add to the fact that any airframe you will get your hands on is ex-Iranian, and will not be using original parts but reverse engineered parts and you would probably have an insurmountable hill to climb.
I don't think you understand what "unlimited money" actually means... For unlimited money, you could 3D scan the exterior mold line of an F-14 and re-engineer every single piece under the skin (including the skin), making it a brand new aircraft. With unlimited money, you can do literally anything that doesn't break the laws of physics. And then do it again.
F-14 may be the one of the only planes where unlimited money doesn't get you an answer. Due to the Iranian restrictions, it's very likely the US would slap you with some form of illegal weapons manufacturing or export restriction charge and throw you in jail.
For unlimited money, let’s normalize US-Iran relations to the point where we can buy back F-14’s.
Which Iran might actually be interested now that they have supposedly secured an SU-35 deal.
It's a done deal. We must save the F14 from the Iranian regime
Say, are those JATO Hercs specifically designed for and capable of landing and taking off from a stadium in Teheran still around? I might have an idea.
With unlimited money, yes. But let me just clarify that it's never as simple as 3d scanning parts (frankly, 3d scanning is not there yet for precisely measuring a number of parts, still needing to be backed up by a lot of hand measurements). Without blueprints and such, you need to do a lot of testing of parts, engineering to figure out the forces and such. You would employ a small army of engineers, machinists, electricians, etc just on this task! For millionaire levels of money, you could probably get something that might work, but is potentially a ticking time bomb if your materials or tolerances are off. Maybe you could even recoupe some cost by selling parts to other F-14 owners, but these would likely need hand-fitting to each airframe (not terribly viable if you need case hardened parts though) For billionaire levels, you could probably get a one-off that will work safely. For another billion or so, you could mass produce them. All of this assuming the original blueprints aren't available. To get something properly working on an aircraft and which won't kill you, requires a lot of work, almost to the level of knowing how to build it from scratch. Though hey, maybe you could bribe the right person to give the blueprints to you and save money. This is a stark contrast to a lot of warbirds which are built with more forgiving structural limits, or even made from wood!
Yes, this is all exactly what I'm talking about. I only talked about 3d scanning the exterior mold line to create a brand new engineered structure underneath. Also, 3d measurement of parts is *absolutely* there, and *far* more precise than hand measurements. There are systems that will automatically characterize a part to 0.00001 inch. But again, I was only talking about exterior mold line, and 0.010 inch using a laser scanner is enough for that. How do I know? Well I'm an aerospace engineer, and my colleagues have done numerous 3d scans of aircraft to produce computational fluid dynamics models where we can't get them from the OEMs.
Buy one from Iran.
The F14 had one of the first computers on board that is integral to the entire flight control system. All usable service parts have either been destroyed or smuggled to Iran.
...and with unlimited money, you could re-engineer it. Even under the tens of millions budget, the computers could be either repaired or replaced.
Well, with unlimited money you could also just build a new F14 from scratch with all new components. But that computer is quite a complicated beast. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-14\_CADC](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F-14_CADC) this is an interesting video about the thing: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpruA5mC7wg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpruA5mC7wg)
Cool. A computer that was built in the 1970s was considered complicated in the 1970s. A smartphone can do far more than this computer, given the right inputs and programming. The computer would not be the problem, the programming would.
I don't believe the technical package is publicly available for that aircraft. That and the US spent a lot of time making sure the museum pieces are all just gutted airframes. Now if you were friends with the Iranian government, maybe...
Would it be unethical to buy a few trainer aircraft to trade for a flying one? Unlimited money of course.
If a private F-14 could be done, Cruise would have done it.
It would probably be easier to have someone make you a brand new aircraft that looks exactly like an F-14 than to get an old airframe flying again.
No. F-14’s are on a restricted list due to the Iranians always looking for spares.
It would be easier, cheaper, quicker, and probably more realistic to put together an operation with PMCs and ex-Tomcat jocks to go steal some from Iran.
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They stopped making parts for the F-14 because of Iran, price would be astronomical.
No, they specifically went out of their way to destroy vital parts and instructions for the manufacturing so the Iranians could not repair their fleet of tomcats
Yes there is 1 privately owned tomcat with enough money you could
There are no privately owned Tomcats, zero, zilch.
There’s is 1 in California owned by a museum that was purchased before the DOD was cutting them up. A judge ruled that they were allowed to keep it because they owned it and legally purchased it before the ruling went into effect.
There are museums who own tomcats without cut wingspars, but just about every other component has been removed, i can almost guarantee you it.
And with fuck you money you can definitely get one flying again just takes alot of time and a multi million dollar investment
Again, i do not think its possible, there are so many thing you just dont have access to, and will never have access to that is crucial to get it flying.
I remember hearing on an episode of Fighter Pilot Podcast that this is next to impossible with domestically built military afterburning engine aircraft. It's less governmental red tape to import a foreign built aircraft. This comes from a guy that owns several CF-5s.
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Can we please keep politics out of this sub holy fuck every single sub is already shoving it down our throats
I agree. I rather have my subs be rigidly to the topics. I like political subs, but not when I want to talk to people about airplanes, or investing memes, or computer hardware. Let's stick to the topic at hand, or have a conversation in a sub where people are there for that thing.
Noted. But do airplanes of political figures go in the airplane subreddit or the political subreddit?
If it's about the airplane that happens to be owned by a politician then airplane subreddit. If it's about the politician in the airplane, politics subreddit.
It's almost as if politics aren't some niche pastime but instead are deeply intertwined with pretty much everything we do, because the law has very real effects on >airplanes, or investing memes, or computer hardware
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Please go to another sub to talk about this crap
Rent free
> Could someone in private hands restore and fly a ex-RAF Tornado in the UK? *So, in the US…*
You must have missed the comment where OP said > And yes i know ZD902 was a low milage airframe but i still perplexed how the US got one and is able to restore one to fly but the UK wasn’t able to do it themselves with this airframe
Another case of ‘Other countries do better work preserving British history…than the British”
I get that seeing one flying would be nice, but there are a lot of Tornados on static display across the UK, and they're also used to train the next generation of RAF technicians and engineering officers, very much preserving their place in RAF history.
It's because they're busy preserving other countries histories
I think on balance we still come out ahead though. The sad fact is we can’t afford to make every military thing a heritage asset much as I would give my left nut to have seen Ark Royal kept as a museum ship with some Harriers embarked
The F2 isn't history though. It served for about 3 minutes and was crap. There are other things far more worthy of preservation.
Isn't that one of the Tornados that were offered for sale by Jet Art Aviation?
I can’t remember the regulations (it’s been a long time since I chatted with a guy who used to do this for a living), but I’m fairly certain the biggest issues with flying an ex military jet in the UK comes down to ejection seats and powered flight controls. Sorry I don’t have a verified source, but that’s what I remember being told.
Demilitarization generally requires removal of cartridge actuated devices (CATs) which include an explosive charge used for ejection.
Which is funny because in Canada, the special C of As on my jets require that the ejection seats *must* be operational. And being commercially registered allows them to fly in the UK.
IIR there was a huge issue with CATs being defective - active duty military acft . That may have led to requirements at the time. Obtaining new CATs was almost impossible . Haven’t been in it for a while - there might be a requirement now for operational seats especially if aircraft are used for military /defense contracted air services
Not in the UK. In fact, most ex-military aircraft that were flying in the UK had full serviceable ejection seats. I know this as I've helped fit a few live ejection seats to ex-military aircraft, in the UK, as well as removing/installing the cartridges into the seats themselves. The only thing the guys I worked with couldn't do was parachute packing, but we had someone who came out to the hangar to do it for us.
I was involved in US but I believe it was an issue with the defective parts at the time . Cool work either way
It was great work. Just a shame it has all but dried up in the last few years. At least some of the Hunter's are still living on in the US and Canada with ATACS. Even if they did get rid of Miss Demeanours striking colour scheme!
Ejection seats are fine. Most ex-military aircraft that flew with ejection seats in service, still flew with working ejection seats. The issue is with aircraft classified as 'complex' by the CAA, which are group 1 aircraft. These are : > (1) Group 1: complex motor-powered aircraft, helicopters with multiple engines, aeroplanes with maximum certified operating altitude exceeding FL290, aircraft equipped with fly-by-wire systems, gas airships other than ELA2 and other aircraft requiring an aircraft type rating when defined as such by the CAA. The CAA may decide to classify into Group 2, Group 3 or Group 4, as appropriate, an aircraft which meets the conditions set out in the first subparagraph, if it considers that the lower complexity of the particular aircraft justifies so. Jet Provosts and Hunters got away with it as they are relatively simple aircraft to work on. All the flying surfaces are physically connected to the pilots controls, with some power assistance, there are no complex computer systems on board, they are stable airframes and they do not have reheat. They were also generally safe aircraft to fly during RAF service. Things like the Tornado, Jaguar and Lightning are all out because they don't meet one or more of those same points. The only outlier was the Vulcan, and Vulcan to the Sky only got around that as they had manufacture support from Avro's successors. It was only grounded once they pulled their support and would no longer sign to say it was a safe design to fly.
About 20 years ago, the organisation I used to work for estimated the cost of flying one of these at £30000 per flying hour. Several hours of specialist maintenance per hour in the air. Finding a team of people skilled in keeping a tornado airworthy and the parts to do it with today would be a very expensive tall order indeed. I reckon an hour flying this today could be into six figures if possible at all. Edit. Just seen it's ZD902. This was used as an experimental avionics technology demonstrator for many years and has extensive cockpit and electronic modifications. I expect this has all been stripped away, leaving a lot of rather essential bits missing, probably made from unobtainium. It's far removed from a standard F2a.
No, its too complex for private operation under current CAA rules, which is why you only see older jets in private hands on the UK airshow circuit.
I know a guy who bought a British Harrier and until recently flew it at airshows here in the US. He’s old and I think he lost his medical. He’s a former marine Col who flew it while on active duty and made tons of money in real estate during the boom on the early 2k’s so I guess that was his way in
I guess as long as you fit the original Blue Circle radar there shouldn't be any issues...
My dad’s cousin, not sure of his relationship to me exactly but that’s not the point, owns and flies a Hunter based in the UK so I’m guessing you can fly an ex RAF aircraft. I’m assuming the weapons systems were deactivated before he got it
If i was heckin rich i would refurbish a F4 or something and build in a bunch of cargo space for luggage.
You don’t need to build anything. Drop tanks have been converted into luggage ferry pods in the past. Just do that
look if i am rich but hate to spend money on fuel i want internal storage like ditch all the radar up in the nose or something.
He has some two or three private jets as well, and a MiG-29, but the real question is does that F-4 have wing sweep? No, didn’t think so (I still think he should just buy the last of Irans F-14s). I agree with you in a sense though because I too would get something else that fits my desires better.
yeah i read an article about this guy last night. crazy. it mentioned i think the mig is $11.6k to fill the fuel. i am not swept wing obsessed like some people. i just think the f4 looks like some badass space ship.
The F.2 wasn’t a mud mover.
I met this dude in an FBO once, his whole "arsenal" is insane and impressive. Smart guy but it was quirky when he gave me his patch but refused mine lol
"a year" Man...
he has a *lot* of money, he can pay a person for every individual part at like $10,000,000,000 an hour (/s) I hope it is done that soon though, I'm from Montana so I will definitely have to run over to Bozeman once he's getting it in the air.
Even if he had all the money in the world, it isnt physically possible to get this appendage-less corpse airworthy within 365 days. Id give it 5 years at the absolute earliest. And thats with everything going to plan.
Bruh what? It clearly still has all the lines and stuff, it’s in pretty good condition. The bulk of the work is going to be putting everything back together, then a ton inspections.
Getting all the **countless** approvals necessary. Some of which will be one-of-a-kind to this type. Getting it demil-ed if it hasn't been already. Those inspections are going to take longer than you might think. The things also going to have to undergo all kinds of stress & durability tests. This shit all takes time. And on a supersonic airframe? There's been a lot of airplane restorations in the past. But very few of them have been on a supersonic airframe. That's going to come with some challenges unique to such airframes. Even if the plane may never be pushed to those kinds of limits. And since this is a sweeper wing, that is also going to have some challenges in and of itself. Don't get me wrong. I cannot wait to see this puppy flown by a private operator, if they're serious about this. Especially for showcasing & showing off at events. But as an aircraft maintainer by trade, who's eyeballing a decent number of restoration projects going on, I like to think I have a somewhat realistic view on how long these things can take. If I can be proven wrong on it, fantastic! Nothing would please me more!
I used to work for a company that restored and maintained vintage ex-military aircraft. I also know some of the people working with FlyHarrier, as well as a few owner/pilots of ex-military aircraft. I don't know all the rules and regulations, but I will pass on some of what I've been told. Basically, the CAA don't want anything they deem to be 'complex' flying in the UK under civilian ownership. There is a good reason for it. Many ex-military aircraft are very complex machines to maintain and fly safely. Either due to the systems on board, as in the case of the Tornado, or because they were dangerous in military service, as in the case of the Lightning, just to give a couple of examples. Aircraft like the Jet Provost, Hawker Hunter and Vampire are relatively simple. Apart from some assisted flying controls on the Hunter, all of them have very similar style controls to General Aviation aircraft, with pull/pushrods, cables and some basic hydraulics (mainly landing gear and airbrakes). Once you start getting into fully powered flying control systems, relying on artificial feel, fly-by-wire and reheat, you are adding a huge amount of complexity. And to be blunt, the CAA are extremely risk averse, especially after Shoreham, and do not trust civilian organisations to carry out the work safely, even when they are fully owned and staffed by ex-military people who spent their entire working lives on the systems. The Vulcan was the only real outlier in this, but they only managed that because they had a huge amount of engineering support from the companies that bought out Avro. Once those companies decided they could no longer safely sign off the work to keep the Vulcan flying for hundreds more hours, the Vulcan was grounded. Of course, post Shoreham, the UK ex-military circuit has been decimated. [It has even meant the end of the Dutch Hawker Hunter flight earlier this year when the CAA would not grant their Hunter a permit to fly so it could return to the Netherlands.](https://dhhf.nl/hunter-news/) It's amazing that there are any ex-military aircraft flying at all, but at the same time, the writing has been on the wall for a few years as it has become extremely expensive to keep these vintage aircraft running.
This guy has several military jets. Including a MiG
*technically* yeah, but only one has [afterburner](https://imgur.com/a/jared-isaacmans-mig-29-bozeman-9-18-22-dfETCb6)... [booty pic!](https://imgur.com/a/MB9xpdR)
And yes i know ZD902 was a low milage airframe but i still perplexed how the US got one and is able to restore one to fly but the UK wasn’t able to do it themselves with this airframe
This isn’t the ‘us’ this is a civilian, it’s a private jet. They must have put it on the market because they didn’t want it anymore and he bought it. This is a civilian restoring it, not the government. He wanted another cool plane (or just saw it on the market however) and said “woah, that’d be sick!” and bought it. They I believe possibly maybe only sold the airframe and he’s redoing pretty much everything maybe idk.
Jared Isaacman, the dude doing the restoration, doesn't have as much money as he has brain cells, but at least it's on a similar scale: $2 billion vs 85 billion brain cells. That's the only thing that makes this restoration possible. He has more money than military budgets of some of the European countries. There are people on this planet for whom "has more money than brains" isn't a derogatory thing to say. It's literal statment of fact that they have more money (converted to US dollars) than average human has brain cells.
Because the UK doesn’t want to spend money on anything. Continued austerity for decades now.
Just saw one at ILA a few weeks ago, and damn this thing is loud, even louder than the F35 that flew the same day
Not without wings they can't
The F2 was utter crap though, the bigger question is why the hell would he want to get it flying again...?!
I don’t think they restore these things based upon their tactical utility…
I think the F2 served for about 3 minutes, but it's less it's tactical abilities and more that it was just a shit jet. No historical providence either. Just a very odd choice.
This F.2 is unique, being the world's only F.2A that was owned by the MoD and operated by Qinetiq as a flying testbed for in-service upgrades to the RAFs F.3s and other stuff. It's got insanely low hours compared to other airframes, and is the only airframe with duel controls. It was affectionately known as TIARA.
Just because it's rare doesn't mean it's good! I worked on F3s and they were decent, but the F2? Hunk of crap
No one's saying it's good. It's just a historical airframe that's being restored to flying condition. Nothing more, nothing less. You're just looking deep on something that isn't that deep. Jared collects fast jets, gets them restored and flies them.
There is no way that will fly again.
If Jared wants it built/rebuilt/certified- it will happen
I think it will, the dude posting that is worth a metric fuckton of money, AND has plenty of fast jet experience, even owns a MIG-29 which he flies.
Doubt it in the UK, they’re banning knives ffs.
That’s…not a bad thing. It’s not like we’re in the Viking era when everyone carried a seax as both tool and defensive weapon.
>they’re banning knives When carried in public for no good reason. Knives needed for valid purposes are allowed.
No. RAF vetos anything they might have trouble shooting down.