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Calm down Adam.

Yup! It was like the very first ils clearance in pilot training. You knew exactly what was coming, prepared for it, rehearsed it, then: ATC: Iron 73 fly heading 150, maintain 3000 feet until established, cleared the ILS runway 13 right. Me: Iron board 737, cleared to land 3000 feet, heading 13, good OBOGS. The other mind fuck is your first experience with ramp. Imagine trying to drive a 737 through a six-lane roundabout in Kabul during rush hour. That's pretty close to CLT ramp.

Opinions may differ, but imo, the hardest part of flying as a brand new FO are taxi instructions at a big airport. Something we obviously don't get much practice at in the AF. My very first leg of IOE was into LAX at night. After taxing clear, something like this went down: ATC: "SWA69, turn right on H-6, cross 25R at J, then the North route to checkpoint 1." Me, still 20 miles back wondering how we got here:

Ukraine.mp4

so i guess covid's over huh? midterms coming up and a coordinated dropping of mask mandates, vax cards, vax mandates, etc so scientific!

Now you know the rest of the story…I’m Danger41. Good day!

Praise unto thee… Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm a Paul Harvey fan.

At this point (soon to be out of office) “No Fly Zone” Kinzinger only represents pilots who know something about everything and actually nothing. Kind of embarrassed by all the jock holding from past comments in this thread.

MSNBC is hiring and they have no plans of changing their communist manifesto pronunciations.

Just be sure to fill out that high-risk activity form before submitting your leave request.

rep kinzinger is a total JOKE looking forward to him being defeated

it was slightly amusing at first, but this troll is getting old

Apparently Putin has never seen Red Dawn. What I'm seeing is an interesting mix of asymmetric warfare. My suggestions for Ukraine, hit harder and faster every day the during the peace talks... give no time or space to regroup. Every break Putin takes he gets an update on losing more units. Every 10 minutes he has some peon whispering in his ear on another strike. Oh, and as an interesting middle finger to Russian interests, we seize all real estate, boats, cars, businesses, and accounts tied to the russian mob, even if it means pending court cases might get hosed. Arrest as many as possible. Send a few to rot in Gitmo for a year. Then seize everything tied to russian power players. Squeeze them very hard. Create internal Putin enemies. Post hundreds more interviews of Russian POWs, showing humane care, and with them begging for forgiveness of listening to Putin.

Incorrect. Many, many people have and do. You simply disagree with the argument. While absurdism is very useful in determining the realistic bounds of an argument, it's still absurdism. So the line is between your absurd hypothetical and the reality of conscription. You are conveniently leaving out a core component of individual freedom, which is the ability to opt out. Leave, go somewhere that doesn't have conscription and respects individual freedom to the maximalist level you are suggesting. You may find it difficult to locate such a society, because such a society most likely exists only in hypothetical conversations. Just as my personal freedom to live on the moon is limited by the physiological realities of a lunar atmosphere, your desire to live in a society that both honors individuality and personal choice while shunning conscription in times of existential threat is limited by the sociological realities of human nature. What you want is simply impossible with the tools you have. Therefore it is absurd. Perhaps one day it will not be. Retroactive takes on history always seem to compare what was done many years ago with what would be done today, or even worse, and a hypothetical society of peak enlightenment. This is the same nonsense mindset that is used against the founding Fathers for participating in slavery, Churchill for his views of colonialism, or comedians for their sexist jokes in the 80s. What was the alternative in the 1930s and 40s, and what would have happened in conflicts before then? How many multicultural societies existed or had existed to the extent the United States had already diversified by then? What was the playbook for having a large population of citizens from a ethnically homogeneous country that had just declared absolute war and attacked your homeland? It's incredibly conceited to use modern norms to judge the past, just as it's incredibly small-minded to use hypothetical best-case outcomes to compare to actual outcomes of previous campaigns. Slavery and genocide are wrong, but it takes a long time to overcome the brutality of nature and reach very unnatural philosophical conclusions. We are gradually working our way towards a set of ideals that are even today are still hypothetical. Just as Olympic runners get closer and closer to the 2-hour marathon, there is no reason to believe 2 hours is just a step on the way to 90 minutes. Your Rand-ian belief in absolute freedom is a yet-unproven theory. We've done quite well getting closer to that goal, but many libertarians miss the irony in castigating socialists for seeking Communist Utopia while promoting an impossible utopia of their own. In your case, a land of absolute individual freedom that somehow survives the predations of the surrounding illiberal societies.

AFPC got back to me yesterday heading to Columbus with an RNTLD of Aug 1 & a CSD of Sept 13th!

Fuel and food.

While setting the parking brake at the gate on my first IOE leg into ORD, CKA turns to me (still wearing my WTF just happened face) and says “Welcome to O’Hare, world’s largest uncontrolled field.”

Apparently Poland and some other East block states donated Ukraine some Mig-29s they still had inventory. This is going to get very interesting. https://www.politico.com/news/2022/02/28/ukrainian-pilots-arrive-in-poland-to-pick-up-donated-fighter-jets-00012560

Finally got the word…headed to Columbus w/ CSD of 22 Dec!! On a separate note if anyone is going to MFS this week let me know. Managed to commandeer a rental car for the trip.

Yep, that was one of the biggest learning to operate areas, ground ops at the big airports. Ramps, metering, call or monitor, what's a Porter (the plane that says Porter on the side), and finally, "copy, follow the RJ" and they say that's not an RJ, its an Embraer. Commercial WEFT identification wasn't in indoc. Funny, but when SWA started ops in O'Hare, one would hear a funny comment like, "you ain't from around here, are ya" when trying to taxi.

Also noticed that the Ukrainian authorities are encouraging people to come wearing their home nations uniform which is not a very good idea.

The conscripts might be but professional soldiers are a different beast. Something I realized working in Korea is we tend to forget the pros and cons of conscription in the US. Not all conscripts will soldier. It's a numbers game. You pull thousands of them expecting only half to be useful. The other half are bullet sponges.

I will say this about Adam. I have personal knowledge that he was extraordinarily instrumental to the evacuation of Americans and Afghan allies back in August and September. He has my respect for that.

Are their troops surrendering without fighting, texting their mom’s saying they initially thought it was an exercise, and running out of fuel in their equipment part of that strategy?

I wouldn't fault Kinzinger for all his antics - if they were truly based upon his political convictions and/or the convictions of his constituents. But it seems clear that at least a portion of his actions are driven by pure political gamesmanship. A game which he appears to be terrible at. There was talk of him running for Governor of IL, or a Senator once his district got carved-up from underneath him. Both those possibilities were floated for awhile, and then disappeared. Ostensibly so Kinzinger could focus on his "Country First" PAC, but I have to assume the reality is the IL Republican party shut the door on Kinzinger for any statewide offices. Maybe he'll get some traction as a talking head for CNN or elsewhere. I assume a position as a lobbyist is a possibility, as seems the norm for other ex-congress persons. Ultimately though, I get the impression Kinzinger thought he had an opportunity to play his hand and rocket to the top of the political heap. Instead, he proved to be awful card player, and got spit out the other side with nothing to show for it. In retrospect, not surprising for a dude who comes on a message board and immediately doxxes himself as a congressman (hard to be more self-centered than making your username "congressman.")

I wonder if any of the supporters of the storming of COVID Beach regret the needless casualties DoD suffered now that the world is going back to somewhat normal? I'm betting not.

The difference is that Iraq and Afghanistan were relatively low risk conflicts that were a nice place to go test our new toys and not take a lot of losses. It’s a different thing altogether when two nuclear armed superpowers (at least that’s how Russia looks at itself) go head to head. The risk profile and the potential for a catastrophic miscalculation go WAAAYYY up.

It’s also a suitable Ad Hoc anti air system. You won’t hit anything fast or high with it, but against Low slow flyers like helicopters or drones it’s been remarkably effective as a tool. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Active duty service commitment

Well, how many times has he been right about anything?

Broadway Bro Down!

Putin won't use nukes if his brain is still on. If it's not, you can bet your ass the west will engage in WW3 the second a tactical nuke goes off. There is a lot of peaceful people....who won't be so peaceful once that bomb goes off. My parents and GF have been interesting to watch: non violent people who thought that war was something crazy people go chose, and now understand that sometimes it chooses you. I have zero ties to Ukraine. I've never rooted so hard for something in my life. And I watched the Rangers lose the 2014 Stanley cup (so I'll happily trade LA =p ). ...joking.

It’s not. Russians redesigned a whole lot of their ground doctrine following Chechnya. https://www.armyupress.army.mil/portals/7/hot%20spots/documents/russia/2017-07-the-russian-way-of-war-grau-bartles.pdf https://info.publicintelligence.net/AWG-RussianNewWarfareHandbook.pdf https://info.publicintelligence.net/AWG-RussianNewWarfareHandbook.pdf That’s Low side. There is other stuff out there…. There is a lot of wide area discussion but essentially it focuses on the move to Battalion Task Group models (BTG). Actual Table of Equipment though is all over the place dependent on type of units. Main tank rule is Battalion structure. They don’t intermix tanks below Brigade level so a battalion is going to be structured around a particular model (72, 80, 90). Brigades may have Battalions with different types (like a single 80 and 2x 72s). Within that individual Battalion you have 3 or 4 company models (10 MBTs per company with 1 for the Battalion Commander) based off what kind of parent brigade/division it’s intended to fall under. Tank Brigade/Division will usually prioritize 4 Troop tank Battalions (41 total tanks) to Infantry brigades so they can provide a Troop to each infantry Battalion with a single Troop in force reserve. Which brings me to my main point….. Send More Javelins! Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Got it. My inclination initially was that the Ukrainians would maybe have somewhat of an interesting advantage if Russia did control the skies ENTIRELY, because than they could basically shoot at anything and everything with ground based systems, and know that if it was in the air, it is most definitely hostile. Would be interesting to know how many aircraft being shot down are from land based systems/success rates of the Stinger. Helo squadron shows up to protect advancing armour, Ukrainian's pop off a couple stingers, helicopters scatter/leave/some get hit, than the Javelins/NLAWs come out and the 3 million dollar tanks get crippled by a Ukranian school teacher with a 100k missile on their shoulder. Awesome. IMO, Putin has dug himself into a very deep hole. He wants Ukraine, but he's grossly miscalculated how much they don't want him. He was banking on the intimidation factor, which has back fired now that he is losing valuable assets bogged down by cheap & easy to use missiles. He can't leave without looking like a failure, even tho he already looks like one, and if he stays he'll keep bleeding money/troops/valuable tanks/helos so long as Javelins and NLAWS are flowing, and thank god I don't see us stopping that supply. He could take the territory by leveling it, but if he levels it, than getting it doesn't mean much, does it? I don't see this ending well for him, this ego boosting operation is a total backfire. Also, he really sucks at hockey. I thought I was bad....... P.S. - If any Russian pilots read these forums, it ain't worth it...

Yep. Hard to imagine this incredible level of incompetence on display hasn't found its way into Russia's nuclear Enterprise.

Those are fair points. Some of the stuff you mentioned above are outside my ability to notice (MC pilot who thinks tanks are cool), but the lack of a herringbone formation on a stalled Russian armored column did catch my eye. Also, several videos of Ukrainian infantry openly blasting Russian tanks operating without infantry support seemed real wrong, even to an AF guy. Either way, I’ve been very satisfied at the number of burning Russian tracks I’ve woken up to every morning.

Sir, this is a Wendy's.

The problem wasn’t becoming an anti-Trump Republican. The problem was that in becoming an anti-Trump Republican he hilariously took on lots of the traits of Trump himself, including tweeting epically dumb shit. His “you’re only a patriot if you fought in the revolutionary war” tweet probably taking the cake. He had an opportunity to take a level headed approach and provide a straight forward, no nonsense, conservative opinion, and instead decided he liked the instant gratification of likes on his tweets from people with TDS and appearances on left leaning talk shows. Go look at his Twitter now. It’s almost entirely shit talking Tucker Carlson and focusing on Jan 6th and Michael Flynn. Meanwhile there are serious policy issues facing this country, including an out of control border, massive inflation, supply chain crisis, that could really use some no nonsense leadership to solve and he refuses to talk about it. That is why this guy is a clown.

Using capital letters really lends credibility to your arguments. You're a huge Paul Harvey fan too, aren't you? Is your Facebook page filled with a bunch of stupid shít that ends with "I bet I can't get 5 followers to share this!" while containing exactly zero percent correct information? How many people out there claim you as their senile uncle who sends them email forwards about Q-Anon? 😂 By whom? Seriously, I'm curious who you think he's running against.

Like I said…the US is not some bastion of liberty that our songs have made us believe.

It's time to put on SPF5oooo0

Russian forces look like clowns. Give me a jet!!!

Dudes, petty sure sure I didnt say the last post. Whats the max limit on the main gear? Of the F -16