Leaderboard

My takeaway on F-16 SLEP was not "it won't be properly done," coming from guys I worked with who are far more knowledgable in that area than I am (and it's high on the priority list). Do you have first hand knowledge that says otherwise? I won't speak for Eagle/Strike SLEP, but it's not an entirely different animal. Of course any number of things (including SLEP) can be fucked up in the future by politicians, wayward GOs, some dickhead SES, etc., but its not really noteworthy in these types of discussions due to the universal application of fuckery to any program. If you want to argue operation and sustainment costs (I probably understand them better than you think), then maybe you should be arguing why we're even using 4th gen fighters at all in the current wars. We've been destroying our jets for years doing shit a 4th gen fighter is way "over kill" for. Yet here we are, slogging away killing dudes on donkeys and dropping thousands of PGMs to move dirt a few feet. Do we need 4.5 gen fighters to take on those rolls? The reality is if something more peer-level kicks off, all that flying hour cost, etc. discussion would be fairly inconsequential when 75% of the Package AA/AB F-16s/F-15s didn't come home. How's generation for AC+ looking? Oh, and the CFACC objectives weren't accomplished either, so we'll have to re-roll a bunch of shit to future ATOs and DTs. Or there's the alternative of increasing capital in newer technology that outperforms anything that could come of a 4.5 gen fighter. It may not be cheap, but it's a lot cheaper than what the realized losses would be in the aforementioned example.

I got non-vol’d to a 6 month exec gig for a GO ~45 days after a PCS. Turns out that’s as soon as they can make you deploy post PCS. I had 2.5 weeks’ notice. So no, not an aide job but close. I separate this summer.

¿puɐʇsɹǝpun oʇ noʎ ɹoɟ ɹǝᴉsɐǝ ʇᴉ ǝʞɐɯ sᴉɥʇ sǝop

I remember it as well. I also remember laughing after I finished watching it. But probably not as much as Hacker laughed on the way to his FedEx interview. Turns out the rule of law is still a thing. Swift preemptive judgement aside.

Fighting a war in 10 years is going to work/fail based far more off the fact of what we have/haven’t put into the other stuff Raptor, M1A2, F-35, etc.... we’ve never found a tip of the spear project we didn’t want to invest in. What we haven’t invested in is all the stuff that makes that stuff so lethal. I wonder if you went back to the guys planning the first night for desert storm “ok do this same idea but without Raven/Jstars/RC-135/etc oh and this new GPS thing... yeah it’s not gonna work” what they would tell you besides “that’s insane why would we ever do that.”

In RPAs we just invited our Es and even named some of them. I promise you there is nothing in a fighter pilot song book a loadmaster hasn't asked permission for from his wife at least once. I mean that as a compliment.

Pussy. But seriously...thanks for your service and good luck in your future endeavors!

I believe this is the "barrel dive" video @hindsight2020 is referring to: Which, IMHO, should have been graded "U".

Well, nobody I know laughs on the way *to* an airline interview. I was scared shitless up to then. On the way home afterward after receiving a job offer? Yeah, that's a different thing entirely.

Oh I know. It’s just the inevitably that’s where we end up dropping 70% of our stuff. It’d be nice if we had some sort of betterstrategy of procurement that involved buying weapons well suited for both types of conflict. It’s what avoids dumb stuff like having to half ass modify all the anti-tank Hellfires (K -> K2A) in the inventory because the war stock was prepared to shoot 20k tanks, but not the targets we were actually servicing.

Amazing insight. What were my priorities? How are they different now and what would you recommend I change?

Half a dozen!? Drop 20,000 with each one able to target, analyze, and independently attack targets all while communicating with their other swarm members. It’s not that far fetched.

We should look into that.

The more i learn about the X band, it’s capes and limitations, the more i realize that the thought that stealth is required to operate in the contested battle space more than 10 years in the future is an outdated and very limited viewpoint.

Lol right. One of the few places where an overwhelming majority of your experience is on the "JV team." Also, I've consulted with the OFPs and they think the F-4 was a better fighter than the F-35 could ever hope to be. Brb, gonna go hit up Pierre Sprey...

@ClearedHot

To be fair, its not the guys with stars that actually approve us to go to war, or to keep us in said warfare. That said, it is up to those same dudes to accurately advise the folks that do make the decisions to send us to war. That part is what appears to have been forgotten.

You guys attribute too much virtue to our senior leadership. Occam's razor: when you view the world from the prism of economic self interest, you realize that perpetual war and its rent seeking is not the bug, it's the feature. As such, there is no failure, only profit. Sure, we the pawns eat the opportunity cost. People are getting paid off our idealism, check that, RAIDING the cash registers on the backs of that naivete, and you guys are quoting Sun Tzu? Lol.

Dude...I'm right here...you don't have to talk that way behind my back like that. 🙂

Hold on, let me go consult with the Old Fighter Pilots FB group, they all seem to be experts on how shitty of a jet the F-35 is...and how great of an idea this will be.

If you play into that game it’s your fault.

Enlisted aircrew is why this will never happen. Ever.

It's not solely about that, nor is it solely about "night 1." The Vipers and Eagles in the ARC will do just fine executing the ADA mission, the Vipers and Strikes in the ARC/AD will do just fine employing A/G weapons in low-med ALR conflicts where fighters are required (or not required, the way our politicians like to manage wars), etc. This isn't about what we'd like in 2019, it has to be about 2030+. Procuring a fighter that will not fully stand up to threats 10 years down the road is a waste of money and effort. By the way, there are current/about to be current threats I have serious doubt about the X being effective around, not even talking about 2025+.

Trump should use Hilary’s emails to build the wall, since no one can get over them.

If that was the choice before you, I'd completely agree. The reality is that we were 100% able to say "The United States does not recognize any unilaterally-declared Kurdish state and will not support the Kurds if they try to do so. At the same time, the United States believes governance of NE Syria is a matter to be resolved through negotiations between the inhabitants of NE Syria and the government in Damascus. Any attempt by Damascus, non-state actors, or external parties [i.e. Turkey, but left unsaid] to change the status quo east of the Euphrates will be strenuously opposed and met by whatever response the president deems necessary." In other words de facto autonomy for the Syrian Kurds similar to what the Iraqi Kurds enjoyed under the umbrella of Op NORTHERN WATCH backed up by calculated ambiguity regarding the means by which we would respond (presumably defensive but not offensive support for the SDF against the Assad regime, continued military support against ISIS or any ISIS 2.0 that rises up), and unspoken diplomatic/trade consequences for Turkey who need not even be named in the statement... While our crack State Department diplomat nerds negotiate a better long term framework. Of course, Trump doesn't do nuance or anything that doesn't benefit him personally, so I'm not surprised we are where we are.

He was just doing some military research.