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if anyone trusts what the federal government tells you after 20 years of failed wars in iraq/afghanistan, the COVID mess, and the "inflation reduction act" you're extremely naive. i don't put anything past our government. to include blowing up a russian pipeline.

Quick sidebar: I wanted to point out that PA or the esteemed editors over at Airforcetimes.com have once again absolutely nailed their reporting.

Dude, really? It's ALWAYS hookers & blow.

Additionally, within the last couple of weeks Putin updated Russian nuclear doctrine to now include territorial defense. Interesting timing on that little update.

Songtan has that effect.

To piggyback on ViperMan, nuance is great and all, but some things are self evident, no nuance required: - The American political system is better than Russia’s. Despite all our flaws, I’ll take a representative democracy over Putin’s kleptocracy every time. - The liberal world order (again, I’ll remind the less educated amongst us that “liberal” does not refer to US domestic politics here) established after WWII is better than an alternative where strong countries simply take what they want. The “establishment” that Putin and his apologists like to rail against has kept the peace for seven decades. Some of us have become so accustomed to that peace that it’s become hard to believe that it’s not just the de facto state of the world. It’s not. It takes a lot of work. - Invading a sovereign nation, no matter what cultural and ethnic ties you think you have, is wrong. That’s it. No need for discussion (or nuance). Respect for sovereignty is a key to peace in the modern world. It should be defended vigorously by anyone who doesn’t want to see the planet flattened by war. I could go on. Point being, there’s no gray area to hang out in here. No we aren’t perfect. Yes, we have our problems, some of them major. Despite all of that, we are objectively better than the alternative, regardless of which party is in power, regardless of our internal differences. Objectively. Better. Full stop. I choose to support OUR institutions, flawed though they may be, because it’s a far better option than operating in the wilderness of thought where the Russian and Chinese fact twisters want us. There are forces in this world that are true existential threats to our way of life. They are NOT your neighbor with the coexist bumper sticker (naive as he may be) or the Trump flag on his truck. They are not even Nancy Pelosi (who I guarantee you is FAR more of a free market advocate than Putin or Xi), or Mitch McConnell. It continuously blows my mind that some of us continue to point fingers at each other when there is no shit, painfully obvious evil rearing it’s head in the world with despots outright stating their desire to destroy western cultural values. It’s time to recognize what’s right in front of our faces, put our differences aside for a bit, and start pulling in the same direction.

This is silly. Why blow up a pipeline that you can simply sanction into irrelevance? NS2 was dead the moment the Russians crossed the border into Ukraine. No explosives needed. It seems to me that everyone is looking at everything from an international perspective, but I think this is a domestic matter, just like the annexation. Putin doesn't expect anyone to honor the annexation vote, nor did he expect NS2 to ever function. But the NS2 allows him to blame the West for something, and blowing up a doomed pipeline doesn't cost much. The annexation allows Russia to frame their draft as a defense of the Homeland instead of a "special operation" against Ukraine. That's a very big difference in public perception. Externally the propaganda of tyrannical governments seems absurd, but internally it often works. Just look at North Korea and Iran.

Now in just imagining her stumbling up out of shooters at 6 in the morning with those shades on.

When does the statute of limitations for my "ancestors were slaves" run out? I hope our country does not have to listen to this crap for the next 1000 years.

Brother, I get it. I'm not rooting for Russia and Putin. They're absolutely shitty. But I never was in danger of living under a Russian totalitarian state. What I am concerned about is truth, deception, righteousness, and minimizing the loss of life. I love my country and I truly appreciate the service of everyone who wants to defend it. But what enemies are we sworn to defend it against? It is uncomfortable to consider that my side, the good guys, could possibly be involved in making poor decisions that result in a worse end state. But I also can't turn a blind eye to the fact our current leadership has fucked up nearly every issue it's faced with. This current leadership engages in relentless propaganda and deceit surrounding the pandemic, the economy, our justice system, democracy, AFGHANISTAN?. I don't want to believe that we or our allies would risk escalating conflict and plunging millions of european citizens into insecurity and a dramatically reduced standard of living for an unpopular agenda, but the trends indicate otherwise. I simply don't know... but the probability certainly isn't zero.

To make a long story short, my childhood dream was to be a fighter pilot like the rest of the wannabees here. I'm currently a mechanical engineering student hoping to transfer to a school offering aerospace engineering, and earlier this year I was discharged from Navy boot camp (reserve air crew contract) for requesting a religious accommodation for the Covid shot. I have nothing against the people who got the shot, but this post is mainly for those who didn't get it or regret having done so. What do you recommend young conservative Christian men do now that military aviation is basically off the table for them? I've looked into civilian test piloting and other "non-standard" areas of civilian aviation, but they all seem like extremely cost-prohibitive and low-paying career paths, at least for those with no prior military experience. I just don't want to grow up to be that guy who could never scratch that itch with his career, and so foregoes spending time with his family for his hobbies instead of being a good father or husband. I like physics a lot, but a desk job doesn't really warrant the amount of torture that engineering coursework puts one through, at least for me personally. If I was in it for the money, I would switch my major to computer engineering or computer science. I'm just looking for some general advice or guidance. If you have some political attack or snarky remark, I would suggest moving on, as it'll be a waste of time for the both of us. If this isn't the right forum to post this, mods please let me know and I will delete. To all the pilots out there grieving the decline of the West, I salute you. Thank you for your service, even if we're not 100% sure what that entails anymore.

I just saw Huggy on YouTube. All I can say is don’t misidentify a Dragonfly as a Tweet.

That’s because you are a web bot that only copies and pastes spam about “economics” and can’t think critically about geopolitics and the narrative gain Russia potentially gets and the US potentially loses from this.

When I saw the post about the AF Times Thursday, I dropped the reporter a quick note. She replied back, obviously embarrassed, and said she corrected it as soon as she saw my email.

They'll put up a wall (beef up border security) when they realize that 99.9 percent of those "crop pickers" are Roman Catholic and have no concept of being "woke". I say let the madness continue.

Too bad DoD can't have an adult conversation about how the money is spent/split up. People lose their minds if you ask why we have Service Academies, two land armies (or why the Army is so big when its mission is to defend other people's border and not our own), 4 air forces, why the Army and Marines buy different tactical trucks, why we have so many camo uniforms, whether or not PME is money well spent, etc. I think DoD has plenty of money; what it lacks is the ability to prioritize (Congressional meddling throws a monkey wrench in there too). If it could, maybe the AF wouldn't be flying such old iron....

There is no emergency situation subtest. And your numbers look good - I would keep up with what you’re doing and just try to beat yourself. Based on your performance you should do very well. I had a 97 pilot as well. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Haven't followed every post, but is anyone actually arguing against these points?

Let me clarify for you @BashiChuni. That post was getting long and fairly unwieldy and I didn't want the main point to be lost. I guess it was. One of my other points was to say that there is a log jam of BS making its way through our collective system right now under the cover of "nuance" - in quotes. "Nuanced" positions on who is at fault in the Russia/Ukraine war fall squarely into that category. It's become highly fashionable to stake out a "nuanced" position on some topic in the world. "Look at how smart my opinion is!" "Look ma, both sides of the issue!" All I can say is no shit, there are two sides to an issue - people are fighting, duh. Take the Russian war in Ukraine as an example. "Nuance" has gotten some of us thinking that we are in the wrong on this one. "Nuance" gets us talking about the Gulf of Tonkin, COVID response, the Iran contra affair, Iraq '03, the moon landing, that the Earth is flat (which it is), etc, etc. Not all those topics, of course, but the point is that someone will always point to some instance in history where we probably fucked something up (or there's at least the perception that we did) and use it to score points presently. In short, the purpose of "nuance" is to place hand-cuffs on a given entity - in this case us. "As if" is my only response. Always thinking of the world in terms of "nuance" and "shades of gray" are their own memes. The world is more black and white than most of us now-a-days probably think. Putin has absolutely no moral authority or legitimate reason for his adventure in Ukraine - how incompetent America is at home or abroad doesn't change that one iota. Putin started this war. He drew first blood. It's his war to end. Us backing down or being "fearful" of escalating is going to get us more of the same. He needs to be made to fear for his life. IMO, we don't need "nuanced" opinions coming from soldiers who might be called upon to fight a war that sprouts out of this current conflict. Just ask Putin's troops how their moral is doing. Or how their shit feels when it's moving in the wrong direction. Probably a lot worse than "pretty darn good." "NATO expansion became an excuse post facto..." for Russian militarism and autocracy. "The ability of countries to determine their own foreign policy and their alliances, is written into the UN Charter...written into the 1975 Helsinki act...written into the 1990 charter of Paris for a new Europe...written into the 1997 NATO-Russia founding act...Russia's signature is on every one of those documents. Moscow signed the UN Charter, it signed the Helsinki final act...signed the NATO-Russia founding act that places no limits on NATO expansion..." etc, etc. I've posted this before, but it contains a density of fact that really should be grasped by anyone wearing a uniform who might have a "nuanced" opinion on who is to blame for this current war. I don't want to come across as saying that people shouldn't have nuanced opinions or that all stones shouldn't be overturned, so don't walk away with that message, either. I'm just saying that when you have very strong opinions, which are not based in fact (because in fact you don't know and will never know), there is another - unspoken - reason why you have that opinion, whether or not you admit it to yourself. I MFing guarantee you that no one getting shelled in Ukraine thinks of this as "nuanced".

He’s likely not thinking in the same manner you would be. Things Putin would look for: justification for intensifying hostilities, painting NATO as an existential threat, and rallying his country against a common enemy to gain support. Look through that lens, and the russian line being attacked make way more sense as something beneficial to him.

With any luck that new RAND corporation look alike whose reports you found so interesting in the Russia-Ukraine thread will publish a paper confirming that the US is indeed responsible. One can further hope that they tie it to whatever the global Monkeypox conspiracy currently is and we can revive that thread over in the Squadron Bar. FWIW, I've read several convincing reports on the dark web claiming that Jurgen Procknow has re-joined the Kriegsmarine and is gunning for one last shot at glory. Lotta people are speculating he hit the pipeline since he's old and doesn't drive so great anymore. It'd be pretty tough to get him down the ladder of the conning tower at his age but let's be real, you just can't replicate that experience level.

How is it some of you still cannot distinguish between a criticism of an entire country and a tiny portion of it's leadership? That's a bad question, because I know you can, and you are intentionally being disingenuous by conflating the two. It's similar to how real propaganda actually works. If someone were to be "amplifying" Russian propaganda, then Russia would have been the originator of said propaganda. After reading your post, I honestly went looking for Russia's claims the the US had sabotaged the pipeline. I found two things: - A Russian official said that any claim they had sabotaged their own pipeline was "stupid". - Russia asked Biden to clarify who actually destroyed the Nordstream 2. Maybe you can find something more propagandaish. Aside from my initial sarcasm, my other posts regarding this topic were just factual reports by Western media. Put them side by side, and it doesn't take any logical gymnastics to form a reasonable hypothesis that maybe it wasn't Russia. Do you honestly think what we're experiencing is "great international tension" and not a war? What did we just spend another $12 Billion United States Dollars on yet again today? Diplomacy? Consider that I, and others, are giving you a mere hypothesis substantiated with factual information from Western sources, but yet you're not able to provide anything other than effectively crossing your arms, shaking your head, and saying "Nuh-uhh, you just hate your country."

Agreed. Great job by the police.

Wow, those police have the patience of Job, my hat is off to them for their composure.

I don’t understand your point, perhaps you could elaborate on what subjects are and are not off-limits to discuss? Critical thinking and questioning the official narrative and listening to enemy propaganda would have helped our nation slow down the rush to war in Iraq circa 2003, and potentially have prevented that entire useless catastrophe. Of note, the “enemy propaganda” that they had no WMD turned out to be true. And our CIA expert analysis was false. Putin is a dictator, war criminal, and prolific propagandist. But when something strange happens in the world, there’s nothing wrong with asking a few questions. I guess I am a free-speech extremist.

What an embarrassment for the human race. Glad that POS didn’t get on the city council.

Moose, I did not. You’re conflating “my country” with those making decisions for it. I’m also said I simply don’t know. To be clear, I don’t think our current leadership would directly commit such an act. They just to fund such things. Again, I love my country, enough to acknowledge when the probability of our leadership leading it astray is high.

Dude it’s because you’re blaming your own country based on theory and conjecture. You’ve come up with a hypothesis based on news articles. Were it an airplane accident, the cultural mantra of “wait until the investigation is complete” would’ve stopped you from publicly drawing conclusions. Yet in this case, you’re willing to do so and throw your own country under the bus. For nothing. That’s why people hate conspiracy theorists.

Fantastic video from Grass Valley Tanker Base this season, features two (maybe 3) AF vets..

Very strange story. All of the German & French military officers I still correspond with think the US did this. Seems extremely unlikely to me, but it also seems dumb for Russia to do this as it degrades their leverage over Western Europe. I have no idea what’s happening.

Not this specifically... but I've never walked away from a conversation about the Academy thinking, "man, I sure wish I'd gone there".

Seriously? It starts with a reading room in the library, it evolves into a CBT and culminates with a new policy requiring the same in every squadron. Slow erosion of common sense often goes unnoticed or unchallenged until you wake up in a dystopian world where the laws of physics no longer make sense.

I hope he launches a nuke. Let's just get the next big war over with already. We've got pronouns to police and this guy's shenanigans are stealing the spotlight.

Russia blew up it's own $11 Billion dollar Nordstream 2 pipeline investment so that it could blame the US for sabotaging it while permanently (forever) severing Europe's ability to purchase energy from Russia through it. They used stealth submarines just off the coast of NATO member countries during a war, covertly planted explosives, then detonated them. By blaming the US and NATO, Russia believes they will garner enough domestic and international support to turn the tide in Ukraine. It's actually a brilliant strategic plan. https://seapowermagazine.org/baltops-22-a-perfect-opportunity-for-research-and-resting-new-technology/

I don’t think too many people outside Russia will believe the US is behind this. If by “brilliant strategic plan” you mean Putin committing yet another unforced error and shooting him self in the foot for the umpteenth time, well, ok I guess.

Ya know…I keep waiting for foot to mean face and by figuratively I mean literally…9mm Makarov would solve a lot of problems right now

Then maybe consider not re-posting the adversary’s propaganda. You don’t like the current politicians running the country. Fine. You don’t like them so much you’re willing to amplify Russian propaganda (Don’t fool yourself. That’s EXACTLY what you’re doing.)? Not fine. You’re falling into the Russian trap. You know, the one where they amplify our political and cultural differences & try to convince us that the real enemy is the hipster in the pussy hat or the neighbor with the gun collection and not the belligerent dictator seizing land & committing atrocities overseas? Putin’s an ocean away after all. What threat could he possibly be to us when we have so many existential threats right in our own neighborhoods? Standing by for downvotes from the usual suspects…

Free speech is great. You can say whatever you like. It’s a two way street though so don’t get all butthurt when someone calls you out on your bullshit. I stand by my assertion that amplifying enemy propaganda is not something that someone who loves their country generally does. I personally do not consider baseless accusations of one’s own country committing an act of war during a time of great international tension to be just “asking a few questions”.