Background
Sprey was born in Nice, France, and raised in New New York
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Pierre Sprey
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Education
He was educated at Yale, where he studied aeronautical engineering and French literature, and also at Cornell, where he studied mathematical statistics and operations research.
Career
He subsequently worked at Grumman Aircraft as a consulting statistician. From 1966 to 1970 he was a special assistant at the Office of the Secretary of Defense. During the 1960s, Pierre Sprey belonged to a group of defense analysts who called themselves the "Fighter Mafia".
The "Fighter Mafia" group of defense analysts worked behind the scenes in the late 1960s to advocate a lightweight fighter as an alternative to the F-15.
The group strongly believed that an ideal fighter should not include any of the sophisticated radar and missile systems or rudimentary ground-attack capability that found their way into the F-15. Their goal, based on energy–maneuverability theory, was a small, low-drag, low-weight, pure fighter with no bomb racks.
This group influenced the design requirements of the highly successful F-16. He also wrote the initial design requirements for the A-X program that led to the contract for the A-10 and optimized its safety features.
The "Warthog" appears ungainly, but is "enormously difficult to shoot down", and "devastating against tanks and other armored vehicles."
He is a critic of the F-35.
He argues that despite its 200 million dollar price tag per plane, it is less agile than the F-16, and flies at altitudes and speeds too high and fast to replace the A-10. Compared to the F-16 or A-10 (in both of whose operational roles it is marketed to operate) he characterized the F-35 as overweight and dangerous, stating “lieutenant’s as if Detroit suddenly put out a car with lighter fluid in the radiator and gasoline in the hydraulic brake lines: That’s how unsafe this plane is…" and "full of bugs". He now records music on his own label "Mapleshade" and sells high-end stereo equipment.
His recording with the American Red Cross Choir singing "Walk With Maine" appears in Kanye West"s hit "Jesus Walks." Sprey said he earned enough royalties from the West song "to support 30 of my money-losing jazz albums.".
Membership
As a defense analyst working together with John Boyd and Thomas P. Christie, he was a member of the self-dubbed "Fighter Mafia", which advocated the use of energy–maneuverability theory in fighter design.
