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Showing content with the highest reputation on 01/08/2014 in Posts
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This article is a classic case of this: Michael Crichton once mentioned something called the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows; you open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murrays case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backwardreversing cause and effect. I call these the 'wet streets cause rain' stories. Papers full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."3 points
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Hell, we need to go to one armed forces. Why have 2 Armies, 3 Navies and 5 Air Forces. The Air Force should have total control of all air operations even the painful deployments on carriers and sleeping by helicopters in the field. It's the perfect time to do it since we have no major threat on the horizon for now anyway. By the way, close down the academies as well and give the future cadets full scholarships to IVY league schools. Use the former academies as your air universities, OTS/OCS and anything else in filling the dorms. Thinking outside the box before they bury me in one.2 points
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"Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." Godspeed.1 point
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Also went to school with Sean. He was a f****** awesome guy. Instantly likeable by everyone. There's an unofficial fund set up for his wife and son at this link: https://fundrazr.com/campaigns/0fsd9/ab/12amx11 point
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This and he also signed a 'DREAM Act' yesterday to benefit illegals in NJ. If I want to vote for a liberal, I'll just vote for Hillary instead...which means in 2016 if he's the nominee then I'll vote Libertarian like I did in 2012. We have the best politicians money can buy!1 point
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Didn't some General say, "If you can quickly pick out the BS when the media is reporting on very familiar subject matter, why would you believe them when they report on anything else in which you have no knowledge?"1 point
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BQZips Mom used it when her vagina went TU last year. I think that's it, except maybe the time CH broke his favorite whiskey glass and couldn't drink his favorite bourbon for 3 days.1 point
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Your ROEs say its ok to bomb mecial facility and your are order to bomb one. Your IG doesn't do anything when you report it and so you refuse becuase of LOAC. Congrats you just disobeyed a "lawful" order, and should be charged with deriliction of duty. Applied to peacetime the law (ROEs) says its ok to do something but you know its unconstitutional (LOAC) and therefore illegal, your whistleblower system is a failure. What do you do? It is our duty as citizens to expose illegal activity; you say "well then anyone can do it", and yes you are right but that's why we are supposed to have an politically independent judicial system, not a AG that bids the will of the President that appointed them. The system is to judge the persons actions and determine if the activity they exposed was truely illegal. By your reasoning you carve out a special exemption that forces people to become accomplices to illegal activity because it is "classified". Congrats you are now damned if you do and damned if you don't, becuase "we are a nation of laws" and you failed to report activity becuase you weren't allowed to so; you are a criminal either way.1 point
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A Baptist Preacher was seated next to a retired WWII Fighter Pilot on a flight to Texas. After takeoff, the retired fighter pilot asked for a whiskey and soda, which was brought and placed before him. The flight attendant then asked the preacher if he would like a drionk. Appalled, the preacher replied, "I'd rather be tied up and taken advantage of by a woman of ill-repute, than let liquor touch my lips!" The fighter pilot then immediately handed his drink back to the flight attendant and said, "Me too, I didn't know we had a damn choice!"1 point
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Here's my input to the "great debate"... I admit that if I had a choice, an A-10 (or A-10-like) capability for a CAS mission would usually be my first choice in a survivable environment. However, that doesn't mean that it's an absolute requirement. I know I'm a bit dated, but out of my 250+ FAC missions in the OV-10 (Vietnam), 125 or more of them did CAS support at some point during the 3-4 hour sortie. I don't recall a single one of them resulting in the good guys being overrun due to poor CAS capability. Only one resulted in a friendly fire casualty and that was because the idiot stood up to get a picture of a Mk82 hitting the bad guys about 75 meters away (the ground CC's immediate comment was something like "Never mind, it'll save me the time it would take to beat his stupid ass to death"). The point of this is that we did great CAS work nearly every day with no A-10s. I worked F-100s, F-4s, A-4s, A-7s, A-1s, A-6s , VNAF A-37s, and F-5s, AC-119s, AC-130s, and even some AH-1Gs and UH-1Cs (gunship variants), plus my own pitiful ordnance, of course. Most of the work was in the 100-300 meter range, but some as close as 30 meters. In some cases, the sheer power of the 30mm may have been a detriment...the 7.62 was actually safer to use and plenty good enough in terms of killing power with less collateral damage potential. Each platform had its good and bad points, and had to be used carefully to maximize impact on the bad guys and minimize threats to the friendlies. For instance, a light platform with small ordnance (like an A-37 with 7.62 and 250lb slicks) I generally started working close with guns and backed up about 10m a pass until it was safe to use the 250s. When I had a couple of A-6s (usually VMA 225 out of Danang...really good at CAS!) I'd put one or two mk82s as close as possible to slow the action, then start dropping sticks of five or six (remember, they has 28 bombs each) behind the bad guys about 300m then march the sticks forward about 25m a stick. It didn't take long for the bad guys to figure out they were soon to be caught between a wall of bombs and fire from the friendlies, and they backed out fast. It might have helped that the first sticks tended to take out upper management, watching from the rear, early in the game! In general, F-100s were not too bad, since CAS and other close support was a large part of their mission, and the Marine A-4s and F-4s were very good at CAS since that was almost all they did (especially the A-4s from Chu Lai). They averaged between 20-40 CAS sorties a month and were very good because of their sortie rate. On the other hand, the AF F-4s from Danang (Gunfighters) were usually terrible, but that's because most of them only flew a real CAS sortie once or twice a month. I hated to use them closer than 200m. The VNAF guys were pretty good, too, but most of them had been flying for a decade, with the leads frequently having 1000-2000 combat sorties (mostly CAS) over a decade or more. Navy (mostly A-7s) was my last choice, mostly because they rarely did actual CAS, and I saw them infrequently which lowered my confidence in their abilities. As a matter of fact, my feeling is that good CAS may be less about the airframe than the pilot experience in the cockpit (and maybe about the guy directing the situation (air or ground FAC, or whatever the current nomenclature is). The Marine F-4/AF F-4 comparison is a good example. Just a thought...1 point
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I flew around with the canopy open on my first solo in the T-34. All I needed was a scarf flapping in the breeze.1 point
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What do you use for an alarm clock? I've always just used my phone, but I understand that will be locked up.-1 points