busdriver

I've heard through the bro grape line that this wasn't surprising. Don't know what that means but take it for what it's worth

That's disappointing, the interim dude actually seemed to show some candor when he spoke at Nellis a year or so back. Granted it was one "town hall meeting" and he was always just an under-secretary, but still....

Sorry a crappy way to put it I guess. The most successful German interrogator of WW2 was famous for not using any physical coercion. One of his prisoners later commented that he was positive he gave up info but to that day didn't know what. That's what i meant, if they don't realize they're giving up the ghost, the intel is more reliable. The Scalia argument is interesting; is there a point where our morality as a nation is less important than some critical info? It also reminds me of the joke: You: hypothetically would you have sex with a stranger for 10million dollars? Her: Yes You: What about 10? Her: What do you think I am? You: We've established that, now we're negotiating.

By the logic you present: We are A OK to tie up our prisoners by their wrists behind their backs and lift them off the ground by that point of contact until their shoulders dis-locate. Because that's better than cutting off their head. What you're saying is that as long as we don't kill them, we can do whatever. We shouldn't be engaging our suspects in a battle of wills (aka torture) but but fucking them up with a battle of wit.

My point is that mock executions are pretty widely accepted as unacceptable. I have no problem with actual shit heads getting what they deserve, but until they get something that approaches due process who's to say they are actual shit heads? Should we be able to grab a dude off a compound and water-board his ass to gain intel about who his boss talks to at dinner..... when said dude is a cook and is just doing a job to get paid. It's an extreme example I get it, but at the end of the day either the means are acceptable or they aren't. We claim we're better than them, if we want to hold that claim we need to actually be better.

I agree with Mark1, there's a huge difference between getting a limited exposure to these things in SERE and actually having to face them with no end in site. However, I think there's a misunderstanding with what water-boarding really does. From what I've read and watched (there's all sorts of idiots on youtube trying it) it basically makes it feel like you're drowning. That said, having been a lifeguard in high school (great job) no matter how good a swimmer a person is, eventually that feeling trips a natural drowning response similar to a fight or flight type thing. The result is the "classic" drowning person flailing arms, ineffective kicking and head tilted back, eyes rolled back sheer panic look. They'll crawl on top of their rescuer trying to get out of the water. Water-boarding is more than a mock execution, it's a simulated execution that despite knowing going into it that you won't die the procedure will access a primal level of your brain you can't control to make you experience the level of fear that you are in fact dying.

QUE?

I think the outrage is the strangest thing about the whole report. Didn't we already know that this shit was happening? Discussions about whether or not "torture" produces accurate intel is a red herring. I think our society is built on ends not justifying means, so the question is are these means acceptable? I really want to know where is this generation's Hanns Scharff?

https://breakingdefense.com/2014/12/the-tale-of-the-f-35-and-hot-jet-fuel/ Turns out the blogosphere may have been wrong. I know I've seen F-35s flying in Vegas in the middle of summer, and haven't seen any white fuel trucks that I remember. May be less of an aircraft shutting down issue and more of avionics overheating and slowing down to protect themselves issue but now I'm really pulling shit out of my ass. That or the pilots are so bored they figured out to play pocket tanks on the MFD and it was too much for the computers to handle.

You people are insane. If OC is an ingredient....

You haven't seen an F-35 in person have you? Not what I would call pretty, more like chunky monkey.

Short sighted.... When a tasker comes down who do you think does the back ground research (including reaching out to bros) to present things to the decision makers? If an action officer doesn't remotely understand the problem, he won't even know where to begin asking questions. I'm a staff bitch major (finally understand what Rainman meant: brown rank is brown rank), but I know for a fact that if what I'm currently working on was tasked to a mobility dude someone at the WIC/A-10 FAM/A3J would end up doing a lion's share of the work. It's not a knock on AMC, those guys just don't have the perspective to understand the problem let alone know how to structure the possible solutions for the actual decision makers. There are certainly plenty of action officer jobs that just need a motivated body, but many need someone with a back ground and/or connections to get up to date info and provide perspective. I understand that A1 has almost no options and hands are being tied at multiple levels, we're at rob Peter to pay Paul but don't down play the damage being done to Peter. Eventually robbing from Peter will fuck Paul.

1 & 2: You may think the school itself is a BS waste of time (and the in-res v coor is also BS) but if an organization thinks it's important for their leaders to have that education then why is it BS to only pick your leaders from the pool of grads. The problem is the school not the process. 3. I'm pretty sure the program of sending school guys to teach there and follow on to ACSC is an effort to correct the shitty SOS instructor problem. But I'm occasionally an optimist 4. Why shouldn't it be a competition? Once again, the problem is the method of evaluating. The whole point of the up or out system is to prevent old fucks hanging around at low levels long past their best used by dates, like in the inter-war years. While you might argue the pendulum has swung too far, it's a matter of degrees and I don't think we've gotten to "burn this bitch down" just yet. There are plenty of good dudes that just want to be pilots and fly the line. Good on you, but at the end of the day that doesn't equate to a 20 year military career in most cases without a big lump of luck. Look on the bright side, the airlines are hiring again!

A toast... The emotional price paid to be one of the men in the arena can be steep, but there is no closer bond.

Ironically if this situation gets those strange bedfellows back on talking terms; ISIS may actually do itself a lot of long term harm by just existing. Too funny.

1.) Not saying that, just that if you use the same callsign everyday for years on unsecure nets, bitching about OPSEC concerning that callsign is silly. There are however units that do all that on every training sortie, overkill in my opinion but to each his own. 2.) No argument

If you're using the same call-sign over and over on a non-secure net, well who's fault is that? It's funny, this exact discussion happened in Vietnam concerning Sandy and Jollygreen, the squadron commanders at the time felt that the enemy probably already knew they shot down an airplane and it was more important for the friendlies to know that the professionals had arrived and to clear the way. If you're that concerned with OPSEC, use rotating call-signs on un-secure nets, only use "your" call-sign when encrypted, or just just change everyone's call-sign every couple days. This argument reminds me about people getting butt hurt over burning TAD freqs, yet they'll label the radio with what they're using it for, either way you're giving the enemy info.

Tree, I look at the F-35 as an F-16 replacement.There is no current "replacement" for the A-10. We're replacing the A-10 with the F-16, it just took a couple extra decades. Better in some ways, terrible in others, at the end of the day it's going to happen. Others will have to change to accommodate, but this is happening I don't see the value in fighting it.

That's basically where we're going, self escort RVs

I have no doubt that the joint concept doesn't really save any money. Complexity is complexity, I just get bothered when people go on about how this thing is way too expensive, well compared to what? The first actual F-35 flight was in 2006, everything before that was prototype DARPA type shit. So we're less than 10 years of the real aircraft, so really about on par with the F-22. It's a shit load longer than I'd like to see, but it seems to be standard for the industry. If my google foo is ok the last super hornet buy has a fly away cost about 60mil per bird, I picked that aircraft because it's the newest fighter the DOD has bought in awhile. The flyaway cost for the F-35 is about 80mil if you buy the forecasts for 2018. So the new hotness is about a 30% cost increase. All the LRIP costs are floating all over the place, in my opinion part of the rush to kill other platforms and ramp up F-35 production is to prevent a cost spiral. So there is no doubt that the new jet costs a lot more than the old stuff, but is that worth it? What would the cost be to upgrade the super hornet class of jets to F-35 class avionics? Since the F-35 avionics are a large part of what's holding things back, I don't see how a block XX F-16 with F-35 type avionics doesn't close that gap pretty significantly as well as eat up time. So we might end up with a badass F-16, it'll still have a worse RCS, inferior performance when loaded for attack, and it will be just as shitty for low slow escort, the single advantage of the F-16 is last ditch survivability, it can jettison all the extra weight and turn itself into a BFM monster. When has that been a key player in the last 20 years? As far as the F-35 replacing the A-10, fast movers have been doing CAS for a long time. The marines have been doing it without the advantage of the A-10 for awhile. The biggest problem is the AF will try to multirole the shit out of everything without realizing the biggest reason A-10 squadrons are really fucking good at CAS is because that's what they do. This is more a pink body issue than platform issue. When the F-35 really comes online, the AF needs to not have a blanket DOC statement for all F-35 squadrons, they need to specialize. As far as the A-10 specialty of low slow escort, well we're fucked, we (the slow fat kids)need to take that upon ourselves.

So much internet fact there.

The wrinkly ass skin on the B-52 always kills me.

Good god. PYB posts replies to threads on this website on facebook! Why does he even care? I know more than one person who holds his hard core libertarian and borderline anarchist viewpoint. It doesn't mean they have to be raging assholes. I actually agree with PYB on some topics, doesnt change the fact I think he's an annoying jerk.

I'll echo what has been said, being in the AF you will miss family milestones. That said, if you follow your heart and accept what lot in life you get you'll be happier overall. If you're a bitter asshole, it will migrate into your family life. Your family will be much happier if when you are home, you're happy. Follow your dreams, bloom where you are planted, always remember that 20 years down the line when you retire, the AF gets kicked to the curb but your family remains, but you and your family should have had fun along the way.

While I agree not to panic, the issue is touching said surface then rubbing your eyes or eating, etc. I doubt Africans are rubbing their mucous membranes on dead relatives. The issue in West Africa from what I can tell based on some Vice reporting and whatnot is overload of medical facilities. Sick people sent away rely on their friends and family, who are at risk based on no barrier protection. Seems to me that we could boost the medical capability as well as pass out free barrier protection capability. Let's be honest some tyvec suits, gloves and face masks aren't expensive.