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Clark Griswold

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Posts posted by Clark Griswold

    Russian Ukraine shenanigans

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    which should make us wonder why we are choosing to fight limited wars. i personally don't believe in limited warfare. human history supports total war. if we aren't willing to commit to total warfare we shouldn't fight at all.

    IDK, do we choose or do we have to as the for now global leader trying to sustain an aspirational fairly decent global system or are we told we have to by apathetic leaders, neocons, globalists and naïve utopians?

    My two cents it’s both in varying degrees per case, the other systems and their players will keep trying to shape the world even if we lose interest in it so we have to keep playing, how is the question(s)?

    Draft, war bonds, congressional oversight, legal requirements for military mission strategic objectives stated publicly with ways, means specified, etc….

    Not holding my breath


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    Good Riddance, Mark Milley.

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    I wonder how Miley would have responded to one of his staff describing the former president as a “wannabe dictator” on the record. Instead of taking the high road to attempt to keep the institution above politics, he once again wades in unnecessarily. 

    He was interviewing for his next job with that comment, pledging fealty to the swamp.
    CNN, MSNBC contributor


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    Aviation Continuation Pay (ACP - The Bonus)

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    [mention=4348]tac airlifter[/mention] hey man, I'm in a similar boat with a couple CJOs and separating this fall.  I've been planning for this and amassed a big leave total since we were allowed with the COVID overages.  I'm planning over a hundred days of terminal, but right now it's biting me in the ass because I can't get orders in a timely manner.  If I'm lucky I'll have them less than 30 days before starting terminal.  I was wondering if something like indoc on personal leave was possible, but figured I'd have to do that form allowing me to have a second job.  How'd you get that all to work out? DM me if you'd rather message off the public forum.  Thanks in advance.  

    AA didn’t care what type of leave I was on so long as I had a valid leave period covering whatever paid duty I was performing

    Same boat I was in, f ton of leave, I was on leave 1 extra day either side of my indoc, tng, trip, whatever

    FWIW

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    What's wrong with the Air Force?

    in General Discussion

    Posted


    Motion/g’s wouldn’t be where I’d spend any effort.

    We have the sim tech already, we’d just rather spend it on flying hours than invest because that’s how we’ve always done it.

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    Gotcha, just my hunch that the Bobs might go for something like this as it could be a one or two off facilities vs a new fleet type
    Methinks you could sell them on that easier than buying new jets, I’d prefer a new purposefully purchased plane for better CT and small complex, integrated exercises but a high end sim facility seems more in tune with the current environment

    That thing looks like an inner ear / spatial D nightmare. 
     
    fly it just like you would the real plane. But whatever you do, don’t turn your cranium left or right.


    No doubt it not perfect, to get the g’s to feel more uniform the rotational arm could be longer, small rotational arms lead to the head and feet experiencing different g’s but the longer the arm the less its effect is, as to the inner ear problems copy, not perfect but could give a physical stress to induce the psychological response desired to make the training more effective


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    What's wrong with the Air Force?

    in General Discussion

    Posted · Edited by Clark Griswold

    If you could build a fighter sim using this platform, with some other technology to enhance the physical strain of the modest g generation capability of this full motion sim system you might be able to get a bit of the visceral feel real flight

    https://desdemona.eu
     

    3.3 Gs is modest but something; if you had dynamic resistance systems to add weight / breathing resistance on to the aircrew during simulation of high g maneuvers you probably could get a better effect

    Not cheap I’m sure but if you wanna have the best air to air simulator, an amp’d up version of this networked to other stations with good real and AI opponents might be worth the coin

    What's wrong with the Air Force?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    1 hour ago, Danger41 said:

    I'm a huge fan of the old ACE (Accelerated Copilot Enrichment) concept and really believe we should put some companion trainers at every base to let folks fly and get air sense in a cheaper trainer. If the argument is "more is better" (I disagree with this but I'm in the minority) in terms of flight hours, get some airplanes that you can fly a bunch and get experience on the cheap. @Pooter nailed it with his T-6 example. 

    Concur

    Left field idea but I thought about this and why not shorter courses and bring the different communities together (pointy nose, heavy, rotary, unmanned, trainer) for professional skills development, networking, rated development… ?

    Different programs in relatively simple platforms for courses like upset/spin/acro refresher, STOL/off runway and back country flying, tail dragger, sea plane, etc… flying is most of it and it brings the rated crew dogs together for mil aviation and operational discussions 

    Basically PME but way better

    • Like 1

    Russian Ukraine shenanigans

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    We’re talking about a country’s right to defend its sovereignty against a foreign aggressor, which is exactly what my example describes. Call me naive but I couldn’t accept being told to give up by another government were it my country. Which is why I find it hypocritical to suggest the US do that in this situation. If you want to vote to stop sending them arms, fine. That’s not the same as demanding they relinquish their territory.

    Fair enough
    They can continue to fight but if it were my job I’d tell them past point X it will not be with our support
    They may want to fight but continuing the war may not actually be in our interest vs theirs, as we are their main patron it is our call as to whether they get our support, if the Europeans wish to fill our position, go ahead
    Food instability is rising, Russian hydrocarbons are not being produced or sold in the regular oil markets and the other geopolitical issues arising from the continued Ukrainian War IMHO are outweighing the short term benefit of weakening the Russian Federation
    Ending the war soon will not fix all of those issues I listed or others but would likely considerably ameliorate them


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    • Downvote 1

    Russian Ukraine shenanigans

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    If you mean did I swear to support and defend the constitution against all enemies foreign and domestic, then yes, I did swear to that. If China at some point attempts to take control of say Guam or Hawaii then I would not be on the side of let’s “just let it go.”

    But we’re not talking about that, this Ukraine vs Russia, even with our help they are looking at a Pyrrhic victory if they goaded and supplied by us make it unacceptable to stop fighting unless every square inch of territory the Russians recently took they get back which is highly unlikely, they will run out of men at the rate of attrition and the Russians will still have enough men to come back at them

    The Finns faced this same thing in the Winter War, we chalk that up as a win for them even though to end it they ended up ceding more territory to Soviets than they initially demanded of them. It was a victory against the Soviets because the Finns didn’t win but because they didn’t lose

    They didn’t lose the majority of their country, the kept their sovereignty and they bloodied the bullies nose

    Sometimes a shit sandwich is just what destiny has served you for lunch


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    • Downvote 1

    Russian Ukraine shenanigans

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    41 minutes ago, Boomer6 said:

    God forbid the US will never face the kind of existential threat that Ukraine is facing. If we do face that, I hope those of you suggesting to “let it go” when it comes to national survival/sovereignty are no longer in the military.

    So you should cut off your nose to spite your face.

    • Upvote 1

    Russian Ukraine shenanigans

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Yeah copy not a nice option but neither is losing your entire military aged male demographic to a war of attrition. I feel like people are looking for a good option when all that exists are bad or less bad options. 

    This

    There is a point where you’ve done everything you can and for your future you need to let it go or tell someone who you are funding to let it go but then you would have not consider that person just a weapon to hurt your bigger enemy in a giant geopolitical chess game


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    • Like 1

    Culture thread

    in Squadron Bar

    Posted

    So we need a new thread for the general discussion of the state of the culture or why things are the way they are or whatever…

     

    Good articulation of why things get more y as we get more money, technology and an easier lifestyle

     

     

     

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    • Upvote 1

    What's wrong with the Air Force?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    7 hours ago, Danger41 said:

    This came out a few years ago and then there were 3 subsequent article written by a black ENJJPT grad that claims he was targeted for wanting to fly heavies and being black (https://www.airforcetimes.com/opinion/commentary/2020/07/12/the-consequences-of-implicit-bias-at-euro-nato-pilot-training/).

    https://www.drnathandial.com/
    ^Author’s personal page. Looks like he’s done very well.

    I don’t think there will be any more “white people bad” meetings in the near term as a result of this video.

    Hmmm...

    From the article:

    Specifically, whenever students fail a ride, they should have the opportunity to pick their next instructor. This policy will help the Air Force ensure every student pilot who struggles does so because of a flying issue, not bias-based factors outside of flying.

    I don't know about this... who's in charge at SUPT then?  IPs or Studs?  

    WTF? (**NSFW**)

    in Squadron Bar

    Posted

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GFDEBTN
    Sadly, the true best-case scenario would be for rates to stay just high enough to exert such extreme pressure on the global financial system that the world is forced into a very painful, but survivable, bad-debt detox. Laughably, that rate would probably only be about 3%. 
     
    Looking at the chart above, it took from the founding until 1981 to get to $1T of debt. $1T in 2023 dollars is $3.4T. But remember, a debt gets cheaper due to inflation. This fact will matter in the years ahead. 
    It took from 1981 to 2008 to get from $1T to $10T. 27 years for $9T increase
    From 2008 - 2018 it went from ~$10T to ~$20T. 10 years for a 10T increase
    From 2018 to now it went from #20T to $33T, with an additional $1.9T of additional debt planned for the second half of 2023, so lets say ~$15T of additional debt in 6 years
    The trajectory is parabolic. And keep in mind, we have never had such a high deficit-to-GDP ratio outside of wartime. If the government is taking on this type with record-low unemployment and record-high tax receipts (from 2021 and 2022), what do you think it will look like when the economy just slows down a little?
    So, the debt is spread out over a range of Treasury bills, notes, and bonds (just called "bonds" for now) ranging from a few weeks to maturity to 30 years. Because we only exist in a deficit now, when a bond matures, the government must issue another to cover the payout of the maturing bond. In the corporate world this is called rolling over the debt. When you do this, the new bond must be issued at whatever the prevailing interest rate is. 
    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/DGS30
    Click "max" on the chart to see the full series. You'll see that the yield on bonds has been steadily dropping for just under 40 years. That means every time the government had to pay out a bond, they were able to cover it with a cheaper bond. Imagine if every month your car payment went down through no effort of your own. You'd probably use the extra money each month to buy something else. So too did the government. 
    The problem with a normal yield curve (the chart that shows the various interest rates of the increasing bond durations, click here) is that its usually cheaper to give out shorter-term bonds than longer term bonds. So in 2019-2020 when the government could have been issuing 30 year bonds at less than 2% to fund the government, they instead chose a whole lot of < 2year bonds yielding less than .25% (a quarter of a percent!), because lower is better, right?
     
    Well now the best rate they can get is 4%, which is devastating when you have to roll over trillions in debt from .25% to 4%. This article explains it well, but I'll include a couple highlights:
    "Net interest payments on the national debt rose from $352 billion in 2021 to $475 billion in 2022 — the highest nominal dollar amount in recorded history."
    "Much of that increase was due to higher interest rates on U.S. Treasury securities. Although borrowing rose sharply over the past few years to address the COVID-19 pandemic, interest costs were muted as a result of low interest rates."
    "Interest costs represented about 8 percent of total federal outlays in 2022. By 2033, that share will rise to 14 percent and will exceed programs such as defense and Medicaid."
    Keep in mind, the article uses CBO estimates which are grossly optimistic, and always wrong. Always.
     
    So basically, with interests rates anywhere above 1%, we have an unsustainable debt spiral. It's not just us. The EU was using negative interest rates to support their insane deficit spending. China plowed trillions into worthless ghost cities. 
    Now you might ask, why doesn't the Fed (and other central banks) just lower interest rates if they are so devastating?
    Inflation. The great destroyer. Inflation is great for governments. It turns big debts into small debts. Ever wonder why the Fed targets 2% inflation instead of 0%? It's because they long ago realized that governments operating under fiat currency will never pay down their debts. But if you let inflation slowly erode the value of a dollar, you can keep the debts manageable, if you manage to keep the growth of the debt under the growth of the economy. We haven't.
    Unchecked inflation is the quickest way to social upheaval. Not just because people see their purchasing power decline, but because government money-printing always disproportionately goes to the already-rich and connected. Take a look here. 
    US-wealth-effect-monitor-2022-12-19-category_per_household-1.png
    Pay close attention to the differing slopes. Also notice that the runaway increase at the top coincides with the Fed interventions in 2002 (tech bubble popping), 2008 (quantitative easing from the Global Financial Crisis) and 2020 (Covid crash). 
    So when inflation really comes to eat our lunch, and it hasn't yet, a 50% decrease in purchasing power is going to hit the bottom lines a lot harder than the top lines. You want a civil war? This is how you get a civil war. 
     
    And overwhelmingly, all of this madness was brought to you by a federal reserve that decided that artificially-low interest rates would help government spending spur economic growth, and a congress that was all too happy to increase their spending ability through the roof, while telling the American people that it was actually good for the economy for the government to spend this way. Keynesian economics reaching it's only logical conclusion: collapse. 
     
    Buckle up, kids. It's going to be an interesting decade or two. 

    They’ve hedged their bet they can ride this out with an unending media driven narrative, tech monopolies, surveillance state, two tier legal system, cancel culture, promotion / legalization of vices, a Brownshirt army (Antifa, BLM) & distracting social perversions

    I doubt that will work, it’s not an American Civil War 2 I worry about but an American Insurgency when things fall apart


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    AF Light Air Support Aircraft

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    Im not sure if I could be less impressed with the weight of fire for its guns….

    M3P was a bandaid fix because the M2s were literally falling apart and the GAU wasn’t really giving the range necessary to justify its ammo consumption. Yeah it’s a .50 just like the M2, but it barely out ranges a 7.62 and it was putting some level of throw weight on an aircraft that was never intended to be armed in the first place, so something better than nothing. It’s a defensive suppression system masquerading as an offensive piece of firepower and it would have been a bigger gun if the overgrown news helicopter it was designed to support could have held it.

    Don’t limit yourselves. You are going into a fight with less throw weight than a WWII/Korea era aircraft, in a profile that forces you to live in a wez you lack the redundant Survivability to successfully negotiate when compared to those older aircraft. Sexy < Stand-off/survivable. I’m curious how many majors were gonna lose flying these profiles before we relearn something we knew with the A-1 Skyraider.

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    Concur
    Shoot them with a sniper rifle when they have a pistol and win with less risk to you.  
    The economics of direct fire weapon utilization are outweighed ultimately in the risk of loss of platforms, not saying take the guns off jets but in the long run it's better TTPs to just use the 100k Hellfire and shoot from 5 NM out.
     
    Gratuitous vapor plane porn for your morning and what fills a hole (sts) in the air to mud requirements.
    9910c2b09aba58a025c51f19f76a8815.jpg
    Scorpion like render with additional features that might make it more palatable to the Bobs as it could be incorporated into O-plans as a supporting platform (arsenal platform, jammer, comm node, anti-uav, etc..). 
    Give it range to be a low or no draw on AR resources, ACE capabilities and some reasonable self-defensive capabilities.
    Now you have the manned platform for SOF support and the gap filler for the big fight, profit.
     

    Guard fighter squadrons being reduced!?

    in General Discussion

    Posted

    The rumor that I have heard for years in the Guard and while at the Puzzle Palace was that Big Blue wanted / was scheming to shrink the Guard to one maybe two wings per state and grow the Reserves.

    This is like the big conspiracy in the X files, slow moving and decades in the making but I wonder if this bill was a preemptive act to acquired RUMINT of coming proposed Guard divestments.  

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