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Uhh.. I do. I’m no fan of this admin or this war but this isn’t black ops in places we aren’t supposed to be, this is a named operation and lying about casualties in public military ops is not a bridge that we’ve crossed as far as I’m aware. Our military social media ecosystem is also so interconnected it would be pretty tough to keep that stuff secret in this conflict. Dudes are snap chatting their aircraft carrier chow hall dinner rations and filming FPV video of TBMs hitting nearby.. pretty sure if the government was keeping large numbers of casualties secret that would stay secret for a grand total of 5 minutes. There are enough valid reasons this war is dumb let’s not get into actual nonsense conspiracy land

Raw is law.

Wait till Pooter finds out that retirees and civilians can have security clearances... XedkA8l.mp4

Aside from the obvious OPSEC issues, I'd be more concerned if he bet on a loss...that he was that confident, I'm impressed.

Hey now, easy with the stray rounds!

I'm sure most of the parts are the same. Most of the body panels are gray, so I'm sure they're interchangeable. Say, how do you think the A-10 will do with afterburning motors?

Sorry but I’m not going to re-litigate every foreign policy intervention in modern history in your requested format.. I doubt anyone here wants that anyway. But in general I think just wars are defensive ones. Politicians know this is how most people feel which is probably why every nonsense offensive intervention is sold to the public by invoking “WMDs” or “preventing the spread of communism” or some other “Imminent threat.” Also it’s funny you say I’d make a better politician than soldier because I’m generally anti-war. AFAIK it was our military senior leaders advising Trump against moves on Kharg island while Lindsey Graham was pleasuring himself to the thought of another Iwo Jima. If you think our politicians are against wars, I genuinely don’t know who you’re talking about. But this is the Iran thread and I’m talking about this war, the lies that got us into it, and the chaotic mess our president continues to exacerbate with his nonsense statements and nonexistent strategy. I noticed the strait is closed again.. so when oil spikes and the Dow takes a dump tomorrow will we be admitting the victory declaration was slightly premature? I wonder how many more strait of Hormuz Open-Closed-Open-Closed cycles will need to happen before we realize that Iran isn’t quite as decimated as we’d like to believe and the president is just wishcasting foreign policy by tweet

Kind of like the “Maryland father”

interesting change of tune here 🍿

This is why I will no longer engage with you guys... It is conservatively estimated that 17% of all US. deaths in Iraq were directly tied to Iran. Since this regime took power THOUSANDS of Americans have died thanks to their sponsorship of terror around the world. JCPOA did NOTHING to stop that, in fact, Obama made $1.7B in cash payments to Iran..I am sure they used it to build schools and education systems for women and homosexuals.

@Biff_T, you want to chime in on this one?

I think putting a CRAM at every base, not just FOBs, is a no brainer now.

So you're complaining that the administration didn't share classified intelligence?!? Speaking of which, do you have access to any real reporting outside of open source? Because if so, there's a lot you don't actually know. Go ahead and criticize all you want, but rralize you may not be the smartest guy in the room...

Man, they didn’t even have the decency to blur out the face of the goat! We need a goat rape victim advocacy group to protect the rights of goats!

Iranian leadership has said they consider the blockade a violation of the ceasefire and won't negotiate unless it's lifted. I say fine keep it in place. Sounds like it's got them squealin from the feelin and relatively low risk to our personnel.

We should be - continue to destroy the IRGC. They are basically a terrorist organization with a lot more money, materiel, and organization than others. They only speak death and destruction; diplomacy is a non-starter. Continue diplomatic discussions with the more moderate civilian govt while specifically targeting IRGC.

Just to clarify for the heavy guys: Fighter RTMs all have 96 sorties. So two sorties per week, over a 48 week training year. So they calendar determines the size of the pie. It was a big "ah-ha" moment for me when I figured that out. That's about what we were talking about at ACC back then.

KEND 26-09AU T-38C x9 (5 AD, 1 Guard, 3 international) KC-135 Altus KC-135 General Mitchell T-6 FAIP T-6C Vietnam C-130H Minneapolis x2 EA-37B Davis-Monthan E-3 Tinker C-17 Altus x2 C-17 McChord AFRC C-5 Dover AFRC RC-135 Offutt

Extended until 2030 boys!

If you’re gonna use AI, at least remove the Em-Dashes 😂 Have the robots taken over the old guy accounts?

Hegseth shows why he was the correct choice. He’s bringing religion back to the Pentagon by delivering a sermon himself! Pray with me: Amen!

The US has not been good at the money/cost side of warfare since Vietnam. We outproduced Germany in WWII in part by making something that is 80% as good as the German equivalent for half the price and then making 4x as many. When we had Cold War defense budgets, we could get away with making a bunch of the most advanced (expensive) weapon we could find, but hopefully this is a bit of a wake up call for our acquisition side (probably should have occurred in the 2005 time frame).

@Pooter M2 summed my answer up quite well. It’s very evident your opinions and arguments are predicated on open source trash, or at best, some vaguely informed intel bro who read this one thing on SIPR (e.g. basically NIPR these days). You are far from accurately informed on this subject, but you talk like you’ve got it all figured out. There’s a lesson in this, if you can find it.

Saw this article with morning coffee, which tries to address drone defense vs ground troops, I think. Yahoo TechThe Iranian Drone Problem Forced a Radical Fix — The Mari...US marines just gave the M4 a driver-assist system for shooting drones. The modern infantry battlefield is quietly undergoing a transformation that feels as much like a shift in automotive control sysAnd then there's this company, which takes standard guns and turns em into automated, anti-drone point defense systems. Looks like they got rigs for Ma Deuce, 30mm Bushmaster, and the 7.62 minigun as well as the pic below, M240. Bullfrog M240An autonomous M240 weapon station to handle the full kill chain up to group 3 UASSeems like companies are seeing the current battlefield and are making stuff.

RTM adjustment isn’t that onerous. Starts with DOC statement - primary vs. secondary missions. You make CSAR, CAS, SCAR (e.g. Counterland) primary missions and OCA/DCA secondary. Secondary missions do not need to get much love on the RTM. Good example is F-35 can knock out all CAS reqs in a 2 week training phase per year. Similarly, ANG vipers in this hypothetical could do about 4 weeks of A-A focused training and call it good for the year.

Thanks for going back to the non-tile version. This look is so much better!

No one told the C-130 community that. That RTM pie gets bigger and bigger every time someone invents a new strap-on tech for crews to play with until they find a use for it.

Transitioning the remaining A-10 units to F-16 would be the way. But given how dumb we can be, it wouldn't surprise me if they push those squadrons to F-35, and then convert a handfull of C-130 units to F-16s. But realistically this will slow roll until the current Bob's are out of the seats; and then instutional mono-mania will set back in and all focus will be on NGAD.

Imgflipbuford t justicehttps://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2026/04/20/us-air-force-extends-a-10-warthog-through-2030/

And the people are only half the problem. Even if we had all the guard folks in the world we don’t have the jets for them to fly. Just using open source numbers we went from 4,000+ fighters in 1990 to 1,500-2000 today. Bombers down from 300-400 to just barely over 100. Obviously systems are more capable and precise now but that doesn’t make up for sheer volume if you’re talking about force cuts of 60-75%. A lot of people don’t realize how deep these cuts have been and still think we can throw desert storm 1 volume at problems and absolutely steamroll adversaries. The reality is we can’t come close to that anymore and I think it has created some unrealistic expectations in this conflict

That's valid. I was AD and then ANG and I'll tell you that the guard being used like AD is crushing the guard. Guard fighter guys can make RAP flying less than their AD counterpart and historically it's been because the average guard guy is WAY more experienced than the average AD fighter pilot. No white jet tours, no ALO assignments, etc. A guard baby could spend 30+ years flying combat coded jets non-stop and possibly the same tail numbers. That type of experience is impossible in AD. But you start deploying guard units like they're AD units and suddenly there isn't anyone in the guard with 30+ years of experience because they decided the time away and the loss of income wasn't worth it anymore. No idea if my experience was typical, but I'd bet the average experience level in my guard unit dropped by 690 hours in my 8 years. That's close to two tours in CAF units worth of experience (assuming no circles in the sky deployments). That's brand new wingman to IP loss of experience. That's a big deal. The part timers flying for 30 years straight may not be the tip of the spear in current 3-1 knowledge, but throw them into a crazy situation no one has thought to train to and their experience will bring them through way better than the 700 hour CAF IP that can rattle off all the threat data.

Maybe it’s all a big ploy to win a bunch of money on polymarket and pay down the national debt. Might be the only strategy that makes any of this make any sense

I made a comment about giving Iran money last time in relation to our letting them sell their sanctiined oil this time. I'm still against both of those actions At face value, I'm completely against allowing them access to $20 billion in frozen assets. However, if they agree to allow the IAEA come in and remove all of their nuclear material, and oversee the dismantling of their nuclear program, I think there's a case to be made for allowing them access to some or all of these funds. The release of funds wouldn't start until those actions occurred, and would be spread out over a period of say 10 years upon continued IAEA inspection access and "good behavior". I unfortunately doubt this will happen.

The irony of you ignoring the signals all around you to pin this on...me? Is not lost. I can only imagine the tune you'd be singing if the stock market was crashing, if shipping was still halted, and if oil were approaching $200. But you can't point to any of those things, so you make up some thing in your head that "I" speak for the world? LOL, no. I'm just looking at the signals the world is sending. Every one this morning is positive (for us). Merely pointing out that you're (still) ignoring them. Leaving that aside, you claim to know things that are unknowable. Iran has had an internet blackout for the entire conflict, yet you state that they're more aligned with the regime than ever? M'kay. But whatever. You're impermeable to facts and unable to even observe, it seems. Your mind is made up, and that's fine. I just don't understand the point of coming on here and attempting to argue a position without bringing any facts, novel interpretations, or even re-interpretations of things that other posters may say, but which you disagree with because <reasons>. You've got none of that. You're not arguing, you're just trolling.

Too bad the US doesn't have an option for "six months hard labor". There are still a lot of ditches that need to be dug and potholes that need filling.

TR approves!!

That’s a very naive and objectively wrong statement. Additionally, I’m not tracking anyone here that said there aren’t any cons to a blockade. Thus, everything you said following said statements is invalid. Feel free to make your case starting from a true and accurate premise. You certainly don’t need to come to the same conclusion as others, but if you can’t start from truth, then the rest doesn’t matter.

Are you equally critical of the Biden and Obama administrations that put us in this shitty situation?!? Ya'll keep forgetting how we got there, and while Trump ain't no General George C. Marshall he really didn't have a lot of other options, did he? I typically oversimplify things, but the truth is the US put its head in the sand when it came to Iran for four decades; and it was only going to get worse if nothing was done about it. Sure, it would make more sense to have a well-thought out plan; and I sure the big brains at CENTCOM had a concept of operations gathering dust on the shelf for years; but in the immortal words of Sheriff Bud Boomer, "There's a time to think, and there's a time to act; and this gentlemen is no time to think!" RIP, John Candy!

Some of us do, but we can't talk about it here...

Thanks! much better.

Not to say that they thought of everything... but they kinda thought of everything. Helps to have a Hog Driver running the design and implementation. There was "NO" way they were going to block the gunsight.

I've seen a couple of the prior C-146 guys make their way through the various FTUs at Altus. They're saying that AFSOC is downsizing, and in that process it's killing the U-28s and C-146. Granted, this is all second hand water cooler talk, so I'm sure some AFSOC dude can chime in and tell me how wrong I am.

F-32 concept https://ollysaviation.artstation.com/projects/x3QRPO

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