Leaderboard

That was one of the best deals going with the slicks. In one weekend I based out of Scottsdale with some bros and went up to Leadville (highest airport in North America) and the next day went to Furnace Creek (L06/lowest airport in the US) with Grand Canyon tours and stops at some amazing airports like Bar Ten, Glenwood Springs, and Telluride. Having those made taking the mission birds to the dirt, blacked out, on NVGs for Amp-4 work much easier. I hope that template makes its way to AOW.

Ugh…I’d much rather just take a relatively easy fitness test once a year (worst case twice a year) than be required to wear an electronic device every day(?) for an entire year tracking what I am/am not doing according to the Air Force’s liking. But that’s just me.

I had no idea the fixed vs rotary wing divide between pilots was this bad.

Probably the most accurate one yet for that meme.

Related to my current situation:

Billionaires, Hollywood Celebrities Join Call to End Public Plane Tracking After ‘Climate Criminal’ Backlash https://www.breitbart.com/entertainment/2022/08/07/how-dare-you-billionaires-hollywood-stars-join-call-for-end-to-public-plane-tracking/ Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If you don’t speak Guard: ”We’re tryna get the whole gang some Garmin watches with innovation funds.” Let us know how it works out. Sounds like a legit plan!

Maybe she'll play for the Russian basketball team in the next Olympics.

This may become less of a relevant point in the not too distant future. The CCP keeps locking down due to COVID scares, and manufacturers are starting to move out of China as a result. Once the plants are gone, there isn't any reason to go back.

Big Peter Zeihan fan, as well. For those interested in some of the geopolitics around big nations, give him a listen/read. Fascinating stuff.

Decent article discussing Chinese food security: https://chinapower.csis.org/china-food-security/ TLDR: Chinese consumption has outstripped supply. They have plans to mitigate but if you’ve read Zeihan’s latest book, he brings up the very good point that mechanized agriculture in China will go away without energy. They would have to literally de-industrialize and resort to subsistence farming in order to feed themselves. No matter what, any potential conflict would be massively de-stabilizing for the CCP and I just can’t see an upside to starting a fight for them. That said, I would’ve thought the same thing about Russia/Ukraine six months ago, so never say never I guess.

What really blows my mind is someone is such a slug they can’t pass an embarrassingly low-bar PT test, and are so weak-minded (because its just mental at this low of a bar) they would rather bribe than workout a little bit. Fuck ‘em, send them packing as an example to the rest, and leave everyone else alone.

It isn't just COVID though. Momentum has been turning from Chinese manufacturing for years. Especially in the tech sector where companies like Apple began realizing that their IP was being handed to Chinese competitors by the CCP. The problem is the sunk cost fallacy. Many of these companies already built significant infrastructure in China. They need a business case to abandon it. COVID was a good motivator for that but it's not enough. The biggest hope we have though was the corporate response to the invasion of Ukraine. Noone expected the oil industry of all people, or several other large corporations like McDonalds, to take a moral stand and willfully leave Russia without sanctions requiring them to do so. Hence, we need to keep putting pressure out there. Because businesses do want out of China. But they need enough reason to do so.

I can't believe they got Snickers as well. I never thought I'd see the day when I'd have to boycott Snickers along with the NBA. Thet have lost their minds. I say we send LeBron and John Cena in to negotiate with Xi. A huge chunk of our population deserves to live in communist China. I hope Snickers doesn't end up in a concentration camp.

Genius move by Abbott.

China only has 50x J-20s and a bunch of experimental missiles, let’s get this over with now before they build more!

Interesting—thanks for sharing. My thoughts are that the CCP isn’t going anywhere anytime soon (meaning the next 5-10 years at least). As for the tensions with Taiwan, the country has always been China’s for the taking…just depends on what resources they’re willing to expend and what backlash from the international community they’re willing to receive. But let’s not pretend that we’re willing to go to war with China over Taiwan, nor should we. As for the economic part, do we really want to stop trading with our largest trade partner (3rd for our exports going there, 1st for their imports coming here)? Yeah, let’s further destroy our economy. I do think it’s hilarious that the left tells us that climate change is our greatest national threat and yet we’re not tough at all on China to reduce their emissions.

Same. On the bright side, if the CCP wants to mount an actual invasion, the massing of forces will take months and be very, very obvious. Cutting off Chinese oil imports will be as simple as parking a few warships in the Straight of Malacca (there are a few pipelines, but they won’t come close to supplying Chinese needs). I’ve read that their domestic reserves would allow for roughly 90 days of wartime ops. That’s how long Taiwan has to hold out. Even if the invasion were successful, the Chinese will be effectively blockaded indefinitely. Energy and, more importantly, food imports will be a thing of the past and millions of Chinese citizens will starve or freeze (or both). Even if they could get access to some imports, their export industry will be toast and they won’t have money to pay for food. The carrier killer missiles might make life difficult within a couple hundred miles of Formosa but they won’t have much effect down by Singapore or out in the Indian Ocean or the Persian Gulf. The Chinese lack the reach to protect their supply lines. If we wanted to, we could turn China into North Korea in a matter of months and there’s fuck all they could do about it. Xi and the gang know this. There won’t be an intentional conflict any time soon. Unintentional? Maybe a bigger threat. Hope the air defense guys on their boats don’t have itchy trigger fingers like the Russians.

I remember my first TW lesson with a 20,000 hour ag pilot in a Super Cub. I remember thinking “it’s just another airplane” just before pushing the throttle in. I managed to use the full width of the runway multiple times before the completely nonchalant instructor said “Well, are we going to go flying or just f*ck around down here on the ground.” I fully endorse the idea that you should have some TW time before the first time you fly something like an Air Tractor.

Look for the cock

Reminder that "he" is from CA. So reward will be a medal for his degenerate behavior and a long line of parents to "groom" their kids.

I’ve posted this before but I’ll tell the story again. I’ll never forget sitting in the base theatre in the Middle East around Xmas 2020. We had the opportunity to listen to the CSAF, CMSAF and the Sec of the AF. I was genuinely interested in what they had to say. There was a lot going on at the time. Most notably, Covid. We had been through a lot just to get in theatre with quarantines and such. I sat there and listened to two women and a black four star general talk for an hour about social issues, discrimination and how we all needed to do better. That’s all they talked about It was one of many turning points in my long AF career. And it was one of the most disappointing. I can’t even say that they thanked us for being there during the holidays.

Well, he picked that battle… Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Posting boomer political memes (left or right) is highly correlated with your friends unfollowing you on Facebook. Nobody wants to see that shit, go back to rooting for a sports team or get a retirement hobby. People tying their egos to the actions of a politician will destroy America. Hate China instead.

8 Hercs embargoed at the LM Marietta plant. Built for Libya back in 80s and never delivered. 0 hours, but may need new tires. Not sure of the story on the P-3 and or the L-1011...

When the video claims that constraints in supply always lead to inflation (non-monetary inflation), we can provide examples of industries with very visible shortages but no price changes, typically because there is no relative power of producers or customer themselves hold power. Example, toilet paper and other sanitary paper products during the lockdowns. Despite frequently empty shelves prices were constant:

Re: fixed currency systems (such as a gold standard). The US current account is -$291B and it has ~8000 metric tons of gold, or $459B in terms of USD, given current prices per metric ton of $57M. How long do we think the US would be able to maintain gold outflows if import settlement is demanded in gold, especially when we consider domestic demand for USD conversion to gold? It's possible the US wouldn't be able to maintain a gold peg for even one year, maybe even a single quarter. I'm curious how you imagine the US fixing its currency to gold would turn out. Is the US gov depleted of gold a net win? Would something cause the US to be less reliant on imports? How would the US conduct domestic investment to reduce dependency on imports with gold settlement in place?