Talk:Boeing RC-135/Archive 1

Naming Origin
Why does this plane have such an odd name? It's like naming a car the Ford Lug Nut....Seriously, though, I'd like to know. -- Paul Drye


 * Rivet Joint is a military program name. For a Top Secret program like this a name with no relation to the program is preffered. Busterdog 14:14, 15 March 2002 (UTC)


 * This might help: http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/rivet_joint.htm  --Thatnewguy 20:47, 26 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Believe it or not, the name "Rivet Joint" has a meaning. Actually it has no meaning in and of itself, but it is part of a system of designations designed to make it clearly understood what a user is referring to.  The USAF has referred to various types of RC-135s as "Rivet" followed by another name specific to the platform variant in question.  For example, Rivet Brass was the name applied to the early RC-135D reconnaissance platforms in the 1960s and early 70s.  Rivet Card was the RC-135M, and others have been known as Rivet Stand, etc.  Other C-135 reconnaissance variants have different names depending on the type of mission equipment they carry.  Examples include Combat Sent, Cobra Ball, Rivet Ball, Cobra Eye, Combat Lion, etc. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)

American "bias"
Also, whoever is adding these planes, they seem to be mostly U.S.-designed and built planes, used by the U.S. military (although some of them by other countries military's as well.) For each plane, could you please make clear which country the plane comes from? I'm getting sick of Americans writing things like "Department of Defense" without the "U.S." -- SJK


 * Hey, we forget that there are other Departments of Defense. -- [[Image:Flag_of_the_United_States.svg|17px]]  Mac Davis ] ⌇☢ ญƛ. 09:31, 8 May 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, most other English-speaking countries have a Ministry of Defence or Department of Defence. Canada has a Department of National Defence. So if you see Department of Defense, it probably is the US being referred to, if the fact that Boeing made it for the USAF wasn't enough for you to tell already. - BillCJ 06:55, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Rename & Merge?
The Rivet Joint is not the only currently-fielded version of the RC-135, only the most common - there also have been several discontinued past variants. I'd like to rename the article "Boeing RC-135" in accordance with Naming conventions (aircraft) and merge current articles on Rivet Amber, Combat Sent, and Cobra Ball with the current material in this article. Thoughts? RJASE1 20:58, 11 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Actually, I just went ahead and did the rename, it seemed like a no-brainer. RJASE1 21:07, 11 December 2006 (UTC)

Support: I support the merge. One larger article covering similar variants is better than 4 small articles or stubs. - BillCJ 04:07, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

Support, and as I'm working on the 135-family of articles, I'll volunteer to do the work. Akradecki 00:37, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Rivet Amber merge?
I've merged 2 of the three, but I now propose leaving Rivet Amber as it is, since it is not an article about a program, but rather about a particular aircraft crash. Just like we have individual articles in the civilian side of the wikipedia aviation house, I propose leaving this one stand, but maybe coming up with a better name for it. Akradecki 01:39, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Support Sounds reasonable to me, on all points. - BillCJ 01:55, 22 December 2006 (UTC)

Support Makes sense to me, too. Thanks for doing the merge! RJASE1 16:15, 22 December 2006 (UTC)


 * Done. Akradecki 04:53, 25 December 2006 (UTC)

Cobra Eye information
I've added a little additional information regarding the Cobra Eye. Taking into account inflation, the Cobra Eye was the most expensive plane ever built. The lens on the camera alone was over half of a billion dollars in 1987. The entire camera assembly was over a billion. I realize that Wikipedia is a scholarly work and I do not have a linkable citation for this other than my father. To lend credence to this, my father worked with many projects in the Air Force (please do not press me one this, I am being intentionally vague) and he actually flew on this plane. I personally saw it land for the first time at Eielson AFB (If anyone remembers a 10 year old kid on the flightline when it landed, that was me). In short, the Cobra Eye deserves to be mentioned as the most expensive individual plane ever built (at least publicly acknowledged). —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 131.17.129.22 (talk) 18:36, 29 January 2007 (UTC).
 * More expensive than Boeing YAL-1? What about the Rivet Amber from this article, it says $35 million in 1960, that's $2.3 billion 2006 dollars or $1.3 billion in 1987 dollars. You should probably provide a source for any "most ever" statement. Are you including the entire world in this statement? --Dual Freq 00:24, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
 * In response, yes, but I think any "expense" based statement should also take into account how the number is calculated. Are we taking into account R&D costs? R&D costs for components/materials? value of all materials? etc. In this case, it is the R&D costs with the equipment. In addition, I am somewhat new to wikipedia and do not know how to sign things. Any tips would be appreciated. On top of all of that, please do not revert changes without at least discussing them. The only thing I can say regarding this is that I have spoken to several of the original crewmembers. There is no way to post that interview here. I am not sure how to post that. Request revert. More information to follow. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 131.17.129.22 (talk) 16:16, 7 February 2007 (UTC).
 * One of my sources is The Optical Aircraft Measurements Program and Cobra Eye by Bartley L. Cardon, Donald E. Lencioni, and William W. Camp. How do I put in this information since the actual text is in a book? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 131.17.129.22 (talk) 16:30, 7 February 2007 (UTC).

Any more info; have these planes done anything exciting that is public knowledge, or anything about incidents; have these planes ever crashed, been forced to land, shot down, etc? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.215.209.140 (talk) 18:34, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Jargon
Noticed that there was a jargon blip on the page. What jargon is there that needs to be cleaned up? Almost all program names are duly linked and defined elsewhere. Would love to help clean up if the person who placed the blip can tell me what jargon they don't understand.Tiktok4321 (talk) 14:58, 25 November 2008 (UTC)

Intro para disjointed
From the article:

The aircraft is an extensively modified C-135 with onboard sensors which enable the crew to detect, identify and geolocate signals throughout the electromagnetic spectrum. The RC-135 is known within the Boeing company as the Model 739 as opposed to the C-135 and KC-135 which are given the model number 717.[2] The crew can then forward information in a variety of formats to a wide range of consumers via the onboard secure communications suite.

We go from overview of the aircraft, talking about it's origins and nomenclature ( good ), to talking about the crew forwarding information. I suspect that information is fine, but in the wrong section of the article. DJD. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.151.93.2 (talk) 19:05, 31 December 2012 (UTC)


 * I have had a go at re-writing the first section, see if it is an improvement. MilborneOne (talk) 20:22, 31 December 2012 (UTC)

Name for UK deployment
This article describes the aircraft being deployed in the UK as being named as the "Airseeker", however I understand this is the name of the project rather than the aircraft. The current ref (No 22) seems to be a broken link. According to this RAF page the aircraft will be called Rivet Joint rather than Airseeker. Does anyone else have any info?&mdash; Rod talk 14:39, 2 November 2013 (UTC)
 * Originally there was Project Helix, which started off planning to rewing the R1 in the same way as the MR2. When a)the MRA4 hit the rocks and b)people started thinking hard about the economics of unique SIGINT internals for three airframes, they started looking at a Rivet Joint option in the dying days of Tony Blair. This became known as the Airseeker option, but when they realised that noone was going to call them such a daft name, they pretended that Airseeker had replaced Helix as the project name rather than the aircraft name. So yes, you're correct, and I've amended the UK section accordingly. I'm also a bit suspicious that Dominic Perry had lifted an unsourced quote of £180m/plane from this article for his recent Flight piece, so I've given the MPR2012 price and generally given that section some love. 82.31.10.51 (talk) 20:28, 18 December 2013 (UTC)