F 35 pierre sprey biography
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Pierre Sprey
American martial commentator (1937–2021)
Pierre Michel Sprey (November 22, 1937 – August 5, 2021) was an Indweller defense counsellor. Working be John Boyd and Clockmaker P. Writer at description Pentagon, agreed was related with picture self-dubbed 'Fighter Mafia', which advocated say publicly use motionless energy–maneuverability assumption in paladin jet start. Sprey claimed to fix involved secure the originate of not too military jets, including say publicly F-16 presentday A-10.
Early life settle down education
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Defense analyst
[edit]Main article: Fighter Mafia
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First Breakfast
In a military-industrial complex that overwhelmingly advocates for the most exquisite, most expensive technology, Pierre Sprey was, if nothing else, an important counterbalance to an Air Force and Department of Defense that have often chosen technology at the expense of mass. Given our industrial base’s manufacturing challenges and dependency on China to produce every critical weapon, reorienting towards simpler, affordable designs we can produce at home sounds like a logical hedge. The Air Force’s recent decision to pause and re-evaluate the 6th generation fighter certainly seems like a nod in Sprey’s direction.
Sprey is most closely associated with the A-10, an aircraft he helped design and test as a young Pentagon bureaucrat who had affection for neither the Pentagon nor bureaucracy.
But in the early 1960s, when Sprey was just a Yale undergraduate working at Roy Grumman’s company during the summers, his dream of designing an airplane seemed far out of reach. While he enjoyed the work, he didn’t enjoy staring down the decades of experience he’d need to accrue before he’d be granted the autonomy to — hopefully, maybe — design an airplane. Before he had a chance to quit, the Pentagon’s Whiz Kids poached Sprey in 1965 after meeting him at a Hudson Inst
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Pierre Sprey was the 'Fighter Mafia' wingman
I guess it's a rite of passage for anyone seeking to get to the real truths of the military industrial complex in Washington to meet at least one member of the Fighter Mafia. For me, Winslow Wheeler eventually introduced me to the gang. I recall one early time about 15 years ago in Washington, with great reverence (and a bit of cloak and dagger flourish) Wheeler invited me to coffee at Union Station with Pierre Sprey to talk about the Pentagon budget. I don’t remember now what I was writing specifically about or for whom, but I do remember Pierre. He was brilliant, sophisticated, gentlemanly, and despite a dash of impishness, was deadly serious.
Pierry Sprey, 84, passed away this week, leaving a gaping hole in the defense reform community. He, along with other members of the Fighter Mafia, are aging out and leaving us behind. Their first hand memories of Vietnam, the battles over the aircraft design, funding, and the culture of corruption and hubris in the Air Force and the military institution more broadly, are invaluable. I know there are many shaking their heads today with that reality.
Sprey was born in Nice, France. A Yale and Cornell-educated aeronautical engineer, he went to work as one of Defense Secretary