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This seems appropriate

This is the part nobody wants to admit. The rest of the world **was** fucking us. If the last five presidents had been willing to use even the smallest amount of pressure to keep shit like this from happening for 35 years, we wouldn't have needed Donald Trump to come in with the sledgehammer. This is also why I laugh when people try to use pure tariff rates as a counter-argument to Trump's "reciprocal tariffs." Sure, our allies had relatively low tariff rates against us, but the protectionist measures they employed to favor their industries over ours were rampant and audacious, and until recently, largely unanswered by the United States.

Squids are VERY excited today...one of their attack subs torpedoed an Iranian Frigate. The Skipper had the stones to come to periscope depth and film it....epic! iGGQpwCNXNAdL1R1.mp4

And, not so incredibly, Pancho Villa knew Huggy.

Honestly after my time in the Middle East, how could it not?

Happy birthday to the 1st Reconnaissance Squadron at Beale AFB 113 years old today. In 1916, the 1st invaded Mexico to try to capture or kill Pancho Villa. Probably didn't get much per diem.

Hopefully Bondi. Unfortunately Trump seems to hire women based solely on the "Biff test."

Report now saying the IDF just hit a meeting with 88 senior clerics who were electing the next Ayatollah...all 88 KIA.

US Navy trained them

Fairly certain @M2 gave Eddie Rickenbacker his first intel brief.

Disagree on Patel. I haven't found a better measure of a politician's value than their ability to handle a long-form podcast. Patel is not perfect, and he engages too much in the Twitter chest thumping nonsense that has become the status quo, but he's able to speak intelligently on anything he's asked, and he has guiding principals. That doesn't mean you have to agree with those principles, but it's refreshing that a politician at this point can even spell out what guides them in their decision making. And I don't find any of the frat bro stuff off-putting. I'm tired of politicians pretending like they're formal and keeping all of their immature/illegal/immoral nonsense behind closed doors. Just be honest about it at this point. I trust an FBI director who can smash a beer with an Olympic team a hell of a lot more than the colonels and generals we dealt with while we were in the military who pretended like they had never had a drop of alcohol once they were in power.

He's the hero we deserve, but not the one we need right now.

Biff is my hero, sir

just got my date! Check vMPF boys/girls

Heard back from AFPC this morning that my dates are flowing through the system. Going to Laughlin mid-May with IPT projected for the end of June at Prescott.

Over here is AR, a man that chased down his daughter's abductor (under restraining order too), confronted, then killed the molester in a scuffle, and now charged with murder, just won the Republican primary for Sheriff of said county. He decided to run because that office mishandled and ultimately lost dash cam footage of the encounter. The judge was pulled off the case too, which is still pending. When he wins (he beat the incumbent at the primary), I'm betting on a clean sweep of that office. Didn't they make a movie like this with The Rock? https://katv.com/news/local/aaron-spencer-wins-primary-for-lonoke-county-sheriff-in-high-profile-contest

So far, this wins the award for coolest thing to happen in this war. What a fucking day to be a submariner!

Not odd if the Hornet driver has some questionable loyalties... There is an effort to contain some of the details in order to limit the obvious bad press and political consequences. Complete $hit, rip the Fing band-aid off and call it what it is.

Love him or hate him this is good news for America. Canada purposely and with malice drug their feet on certifying anything Gulfstream for Canada in an effort to protect Bombardier. Canada Certifies Gulfstream G500, G600

Dibs

Huge screw up by the armed forces of Kuwait but if you have spent anytime there they still remember we came to help in 1991. Crazy footage of a local helping one of the downed aircrew. AQPptBFZfFsqf2ZHbYpb9V7qHpW1-JsI53iyUMhoQSXUDo5xmSeP6u2yxdp4efHy-SQSIOmF-O6ICHrQSIkbkUbtEtWaKNapNJQnuF7TutDcyA.mp4

AFE never buying a beer again.

Water is wet

Bondi and Patel.

Tell me more ChatGPT

We had a plan for optionally manned... Obviously this program was and is personal to me. In the simplest terms, the Tactical Tanker debate comes down to one core issue: vision. For years, we’ve all acknowledged the “tyranny of distance” in the United States Air Force fight—especially across the vast operating areas of United States Indo-Pacific Command. Distance is the pacing threat’s greatest ally. It stretches logistics, constrains sortie generation, limits persistence, and ultimately caps combat power at the worst possible time. The Tactical Tanker concept directly attacked that problem. If I could distill the entire discussion down to the basics: it was about putting more gas forward. Not incrementally more. Not marginally more. Transformationally more. The modeling—while I can’t share specifics here—showed roughly three times the fuel offload at the IPs compared to the current construct. Three times. That’s not a tweak. That’s a different fight. More fuel forward means: Fighters push deeper without sacrificing weapons. Bombers retain flexibility instead of flying razor-thin margins. Tankers operate with more options instead of predictable orbits. The entire air campaign gains elasticity instead of brittleness. In a Pacific scenario, fuel is range, range is presence, and presence is deterrence. The Tactical Tanker fundamentally changed the calculus of how airpower could be projected and sustained. And yet, the conversation kept getting stuck. Specifically—on the boom. The boom became the intellectual gravity well. Instead of stepping back and asking, “What does tripling fuel forward do to the operational problem?” the debate narrowed into technical objections and legacy expectations. The inability to zoom out and process second- and third-order effects stalled momentum. That’s not a knock on anyone’s professionalism. It’s a reflection of institutional inertia. Large organizations optimize around what they know. They protect existing paradigms. They scrutinize deviation more harshly than stagnation. But transformational capability rarely fits neatly inside legacy mental models. The Tactical Tanker wasn’t about replacing the fleet. It wasn’t about novelty for novelty’s sake. It was about solving the INDOPACOM logistics geometry in a way that current constructs simply don’t. At some point, we have to ask: Are we optimizing for yesterday’s constraints—or tomorrow’s fight? Because in the Pacific, fuel isn’t a support function. It’s the strategy.

Is this the first sinking of an enemy surface ship by a US Navy sub since WWII? Definitely a first for a US Nuke Sub!

104-3 ain't bad....

I would only ever want to fly with the Aussies and Brits in my lane.

Probably naps, mowing the lawn, and Class Six runs not necessarily in that order!

I'm hearing it was a Kuwaiti F-18 that committed the frats.

Kuwait will be buying 6 of these, And 3 of these

Fucking miracle. Nice to see our "allies" are prepared and trained to use all that fancy equipment they buy from us.

More than 40 years in the making. About damn time.

A group of MIG-29's met their end against F-35s.

oooffff I remember showing up here as a UPT select and you were still AD. My back hurts...

Fat Amy got her first kill. A yak130.

ADMIN NOTE: This thread is being absorbed into 'The Iran Thread"...

70K offload at Xnm. Going to purposely be vague on the distance... We broke the INDOPACOM model using shuttles back and forth to the IP...nearly three times the available offload at the IP. Big-Wings carry a lot more gas but it takes them a LONG time to get there. Also, being able to refuel all with on plane changed the requirements math as well. In one scenario a KC-390 was able to support a F-35B strike package, top off F-22 DCA and service an impromptu CV-22 SOF mission. Getting outside of our established TTPs really opened the aperture.

Recent Vance T-38 class patch.

So he was a Loadmaster? Now I'm confused.

I think he was a F-4 WSO, then UPT, then F-111, then A-10, passed over for Major, hired by the Reserve A-10 unit in New Orleans, hired on at United but invited to leave during training (lying on his application?), invited to leave at New Orleans for flying violations and personnel conflicts, tried to get hired at Columbus Reserves but blocked by the NOLA A-10 folks, hired at UPS and fired after a conflict on a Asia flight with the other two pilots that resulted in them locking Runner out of the cockpit. After that, it is a mystery that I'm sure we will learn more about. Quite the resume, if you ask me. Maybe he was a plant to screw up the Chinese PLAAF.