There is a news bit by Sharon Theimer (AP) that dovetails quite nicely with the recent repossession of 4 mostly demilitarized F-14 aircraft in the south west.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-AZ) is introducing legislation aimed at preventing the Pentagon from selling surplus parts for the F-14 parts that could end up in the hands of the only other country on the earth to fly the Tomcat Iran.
This is a necessary thing. With the retirement of the F-14 from US inventories late last year, there is a veritable cornucopia of Tomcat parts that could be available from nefarious and profit-over-patriotism middlemen. We don’t need many things, but one thing we REALLY don’t need is helping an adversary such as Iran replenish its air order of battle.
More over at the Instapinch.
An effort to bar the Pentagon from selling surplus parts for the F-14 fighter jet a plane now flown only by Iran will be introduced in the House.
An Arizona Democrat said Thursday she will make it her first proposal as a congresswoman.
Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (news, bio, voting record), a member of the House Armed Services Committee, called her bill “a commonsense piece of legislation.“
“I don’t believe most Americans are aware of the fact that the Iranians do have a fleet of F-14s and that we sold them to them,” Giffords said. “I hope that this legislation is just one step in what will be many to be able to keep better control over our equipment and to make sure that we are not helping to militarize the Iranians.”
Read the whole article here.
–Pinch Paisley
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Good job the burocratic proccess for this starts now, maybe the required law’s and such will be ready just in time to keep the last part from shipping (sarcasm). Why so late?
Hum.….…who would be stupid enough to sell those spare parts?
I hope it’s just PR.If not,it’s time to fire some people in the Pentagon.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but laws, rules and procedures already exist to prevent this from happening. The 4 planes seized this week were not properly demilitarized before being sold (thus violating Navy and DoD requirements). All spares should have also been demil’ed when the F-14 left service, provided those spares had no use on other, active aircraft. I think this bill is more to drive home the importance of following these procedures for this specific platform and it’s parts.
If another congressman called it “a commonsense piece of legislation”, doesn’t that mean it’s doomed to fail?
One has to wonder how many F-14 spares have gone to Iran in the last 25 years.
I recall that the Carter administration allowed tires and some other spares to be sold to the Iranians as part of the embassy hostage deal, the bargain that they would be released before Reagan was sworn in.
They semi-reneged on it, releasing them just after he was President.
This was the first ‘arms for hostages’ deal and not the bogus “October Suprise’ Gary Sick invented.It wasn’t a Reagan deal, it was a Carter deal (although Reagan may have done it too..he dealt with them after the US embassy bombing and the bombing of the Marine barracks)
BTW, those spares directly or indirectly allowed Iran to conduct offensive air operations against Iraq’s oil and military infrastructure during the Iran-Iraq war.
I’m not sure if Iran spent the Hawks and TOWs that the USG/Reagan sold to Iran in that war, by way of Israel..it would be ironic and sad if those missiles were fired at US forces one day.
We should never be in the business of arming our adversary, much less our enemy.