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Your Fantasy: Reality:

Point to ponder: why would vaccine-created immunity force viral mutations any more than natural immunity gained by having a variant of the virus. Immunity pushes mutations, period. Does the virus know or care where you got that immunity from? Here's another possible explanation: “Early in the pandemic, only a limited number of labs were sequencing virus from infections, but since late 2020, surveillance programs have been ramping up,” Professor Jennifer Grier, Clinical Assistant Professor in Immunology at the University of South Carolina, told Reuters via email. “Effectively, we are hearing so much more about viral variants in 2021 because, globally, we now have the systems in place to consistently detect and track mutations,” Grier added.

2020 has given me a PhD in tyrannyspeak, I will translate: “the CV19 vaccine is like a seatbelt, but for your immune system. There ARE NO SAFTEY CONCERNS! Every case in VAERS is a lie. isn’t that great news? Do YoU uNeRstanD my nuanced analogy? plus, Our lord and savior, Boe Jiden, even said ”this is not about liberty”. The job of our government is to protect the citizens, not protect its citizens rights. In order for my shot to work— everyone needs to get one. Just give up your rights to bodily autonomy- I promise we won’t take any more of your rights away. Praise be to Fauci, praise be to Pfizer, help us clean the unvaxxed with our immune system seatbelts!” …or at least that’s what I’d imagine it would sound like…

I think your high/med/lo is a good concept. Kill the A-10, move the “CAS culture” to specific F-16 squadrons, as well as A-29/AT-6 squadrons. The A-10 is awesome, but it’s not sound to continue it (or the 15C for that matter) more than a few more years, given the current and future threats in the world. Read the book Kill Chain - discusses how fucked our acquisitions process is and how our thought process is backwards from what it should be. One of the main premises is how we focus too much on platforms/making new versions of platforms instead of developing revolutionary new ideas and mindsets in how to face emerging problems. It’s very interesting.

https://airtim.es/0SS7oBo?fbclid=IwAR0V5EZBcqEbE1NHgL37Ub0DCv2Yu-hUJxjmAKaos3MI9H-SQn9Bjx7W8aM “Kendall signaled the service could return to a more aggressive approach, where it will push lawmakers to approve the retirements of “aircraft that we no longer need and that do not intimidate China.” “In an August interview with Defense News, Kendall said the Air Force was considering bundling aircraft divestments in a single package, which would allow the service to make cuts without having to debate every proposed retirement individually.” “These older fleets are “consuming precious resources we do need for modernization,” Kendall said at the conference. While it’s understandable that lawmakers try to protect their districts’ economies, local political interests are coming at the expense of national security priorities, he added.” ”It was a frequent occurrence during my confirmation process to have a senator agree with me about the significance of the Chinese threat, and in the same breath to tell me that under no circumstances could the — take your pick — C-130s, A-10s, KC-10s, [or] MQ-9s in that senator’s state be retired, nor could any base in his or her state ever be closed or lose manpower that would cause impact to the local economy,” he said.” “Kendall asked the audience to imagine a headline in a Chinese newspaper where the Chinese legislature’s representative in Hunan opposed the retirement of J-10 fighters until the J-20 had been fielded.” “Can any of you imagine that headline in the South China Morning Post?” he asked. “I cannot.”

Wilco Yeah, the platforms are the bacon to be brought home by Congressman Porkulus and as our short cycle political system works on the premise of "What have you done for me lately?' vs. "Is this the right / best thing to do?" it will need to be considered when trying to keep the force relevant for the next fight(s). Just to get it done, do we need to request new / modified iron to get Congress interested as that will generate more spending that they can take credit for? If so, will that drive us to cheap(er) solutions but ones that we can change out relatively quickly if we find them wanting? Divestiture of the Hog just brings out the emotions in the churn of what to buy, get rid of, change. I think it is (mistakenly) interpreted as the AF not caring about the 19 year old in a TIC, aviation/military reporters wanna feed that belief the AF is only concerned about fast jets, air to air and techno solutions to give certain segments of their readership the confirmation of what they believe and don't like about the AF. Anyway, if money grew on trees I'd wanna see the A-10 units converted F-16s while in the background, the yet to be seen but discussed new 4+ gen fighter would also get an attack variant developed simultaneously. Noting too ambitious but one that widened the low speed envelope, expanded range/loiter, probably better EW suite, etc...

Sounds like the title of a dos gringos song

Until the top takes responsibility and takes it off the crews hands, this is probable... and even then. How some of these CCs/Gens are still in charge is beyond me. I've seen Sq/CCs fired for waaaaayyyy less. Navy COs that hit another ship, fired. But these guys??!!!?!!

It was a nice theory but it worked the wrong way. Our balance of trade with China was negative. Trade is at its core, the exchange of culture. The theory was if we traded enough with China would we subtly introduce free democratic values to their culture through movies, art, music, video games, etc... But China got the upper arm on trade and simultaneously became the worlds largest market and nearly the worlds largest producer. Because of this they are largely allowed to determine the quality of goods that are distributed across the globe. 30 years ago when the US held this position the quality was simply determined by supply and demand. Better goods for lower price would sell. However, as China has a controlled market, the government is allowed to alter the quality. What's extremely dangerous about this is that they have begun altering the quality to favor their own culture and are now using our own strategy against us. How many American children will grow up believing that China always had a historically documented claim to the 9 Dash line because they have an unconscious memory of it in the background of Disney's Mulan, displayed as a historic map? China seeks to slowly change the social memory of the world into one that favors Chinese superiority and hegemony. They are bitter and jaded of Chinese humiliation by westerners over the last 250 years. Its not going to be a good outcome for us.

Doesn't appear to have worked, but I have always had this backward thought that maybe by trading heavily with China, they would "see the light" slowly over time, thus preventing a large scale conflict and aggression by intertwining their economy with the west. When they abolished term limits, it was game over. Only reason someone abolishes term limits is because they love power. What do people who love power do eventually? They conquer shit. Playing nice with the bully didn't work. If Aussies can see the writing on the wall...time to arm up.

The question is: “where can we accept mission risk?” Can we accept a capability gap in supporting the Army in a contested tank-on-tank land battle? How likely is that scenario? What other capabilities do we sacrifice to sustain the A-10? What unique capability does the A-10 bring to the most likely scenarios that other platforms don’t? Is the A-10 so unique that only it can fight the COIN fight, considering AGR-20/GBU-49/GBU-54/Hellfire and the flying hour cost compared to, say, an A-29, which I presume can employ most “COIN weapons?” Will the defense industry support a logistics train for such a small (and becoming niche) fleet? At what cost? Does the A-10 have a role in the homeland defense mission? How does the A-10 fit into networked warfare such as JADC2? These questions are being asked about all fighters, Fourth and Fifth Gen. The exquisitely upgraded A-10 has been the world champ at fighting wars in accessible battle spaces for the past 30 years.

A couple months into my first tour my family asked what it was like..."it must be so exciting." I started to think about it and could not find the words to describe what a life drain it was. Walking into the building every morning, with every step closer you find yourself looking down, no one makes eye contact, no one says hello...you enter with the sole purpose of trying to survive and mark another calendar day off your sentence. In the beginning I was idealistic, maybe I can make a difference, then I saw how the sausage was made and the absolute selfishness, the dysfunction and the parochial decision making that defies logic and the good of the nation. It didn't take long to become jaded and salty. I watched the Navy lie and runs deal behind everyone's back to absolutely screw the Air Force AND the nation. During my second tour I watched a now sitting three star outright lie and manipulate the system to screw warfighters...AFSOC could have had all J models to replace the most deployed AC-130's and MC-130's YEARS ago AND they were already paid for, but this absolute scum bag argued AMC needed to homogenize the slick fleet at Yokota...which was doing one AEF rotation every 18 months at that point. I remember sitting across the table from him after a meeting with DEPSECDEF trying to appeal to his common sense..."these are by FAR the most deployed and used aircraft in the Air Force...63-64 year model MC-130Ps and 69 year model AC-130Hs that are flying three times the programmed hours every year and need to be replaced now...think of the young men and women we are sending out to fight in these machines. He just looked back at me with a blank stare...sickening. I have no idea how these people look themselves in the mirror. Speaking of mirrors, this was one of the best days in my career.

Best post in this entire thread. For everyone who hasn’t done a tour in DC/Pentagon, who’s forgotten what it’s like, or who’s old and angry and wants somebodys butt, keep in mind: 1. DC is a cesspool. It is a terrible terrible unwholesome crazy 68 square miles surrounded by reality. What happens there is as much theater as truth. 2. Everything is deliberate. 3. Politics is about power. Power is about money. (In the end, everything is about money. Follow the dollars.) 4. You don’t know the full story, nor will you. 5. DC is a paradox. Not everything is newsworthy, or as bad/impactful as the news makes it. Unfortunately, when things unravel they unravel quickly, and you never know whats going to tip the scale, so pay attention to everything. My advice for anyone going there is to enjoy it as best you can, learn to swim with the sharks without chumming the water via your mistakes, then get the hell out of there as quick as you can. Because its fucking terrible. Chuck

There is no guarantee we can ever call something a “low threat environment.” That’s the problem with the mindset of some sort of nostalgia/sexy in regards to providing some kind of persistent ISR and Fires capes in the unimproved theatre fight, especially when that nostalgia is single engine. It’s like we completely ignore the repeated lessons of history and the inevitable march of ever cheapening and miniaturizing technology. 50 years ago when the first truly portable Gen I MANPADS SA-7 showed up on a battlefield it effectively ended the reign of the held over WWII/Korea designs like Skyraider. Even with as technologically limited as that system was it would eat the envelope they lived in. We didn’t start making weapons like Hellfire and Maverick because we weren’t effectively killing the bad guys with iron bombs and gun pods, we did it because they started knocking us down at alarming rates with things like Gen I IR SAMs and radar directed AAA. So much has been written about the telephone pole vs strike jet/bomber fight and yet we forget a whole lot of the last 2 years of Vietnam in the low slow ugly aircraft fight we ignore a lot of painfully learned lessons. We live in a world where systems with Verba capes or AHEAD capable systems are very real briefed in country threats. Anybody that remembers early ops a few years ago in Syria remembers how a half dozen systems had everybody in theatre going through all sorts of hoops. That problem only gets worse every day going forward as they proliferate. So to all these companies with 80s era fighter pilot retirees selling us something, yeah show me the crazy/sexy P-51 concept… just do it with 6-9000 lbs of bolt on federated/integrated threat protections like some form of IRCM and a buttload of expendables/jammers because that’s the world it lives in today. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

She needs to improve her technique…those need to be closer to the belt line. While the result may be satisfactory, even above average…the method must not be forgotten in cases such as these. Now, if all she literally had was a cape…that may mitigate the poor form. ~Bendy Sent from my iPad using Baseops Network mobile app

Amen... Sent from my iPad using Baseops Network mobile app

Reminds me of when states started making seat belt use mandatory..I can still hear it..."I got my rights" "seat belts can kill you" "blah de blah" ..This from guyz who were forced to wear a seat belt and shoulder harness from release to set...in a vehicle with essentially a zero chance of crashing....but drove on out the gate in a vehicle where safe travel is questionable at best...often with a brewski or three on board.. This bug is turning into the research project from hell..which will be helpful down the line..I guess..pray for the medics...