busdriver

I had the chance to "meet" Neil Armstrong. It seemed he was taken by his own celebrity, meeting him consisted of shaking his hand and saying hi. Not saying he was a bad guy, just that he seemed to be over taken by his own legend. On the other hand Gene Kranz, is one of the coolest and down to earth famous people on the face of the earth. The former was a guy you got to shake his hand, the second I got to hang out with and drink a beer.

It was the IPOE vul, who cares.

All it really comes down to is being a local whatever that means in your AO. Where I lived that meant riding a bicycle from pub to pub and hanging with the locals. Some of the best fun I had in Okinawa was just hanging in the local Izakaya.

If you want to avoid this shit storm, learn how to interact with the locals and avoid the traditional American hangouts. I've sang Karaoke and drank well past curfew in a Japanese dive bar only a couple blocks from my house (granted I lived in a mostly Japanese area, far from Sunabe) and had a blast doing it, and there wasn't any mention of town patrol anywhere in sight. Get away from Gate 2 street, and even further get away from Sunabe. Learn a tiny bit of Japanese and party it up across the red bridge.

And almost all of those limitations also apply to the other aircraft that whatever platform will be supporting. I'm not saying an F-35B wouldn't be useful, what I am saying is that the idea that the Marines need to have a purely organic answer for everything is BS. Could the AF/USN provide sufficient CAS support to make the F-35B not required? The obvious answer is yes. The real question is, are we as a nation better off paying more for a Marine Corps that doesn't require external support? Other than self licking ice cream cone doctrinal logic, so far I can't see how a fully self sustained MAGTF is anything more than a nice to have. \

Why is fixed wing CAS required for the MAGTF concept to work? What is the key capability that the F-35B would provide that the Zulu Cobra can not provide?

From what I've gathered, the Marines don't really need an LO fighter, what they really need is a new STOVL fighter to operate off their mini carriers. It just so happens the only option for the foreseeable future is the F-35B. Although I'd have to agree with Danny Noonin, do we need to take another look at what we expect the MAGTF to be capable of on their own?

I'm curious how this guy thinks an ISR aircraft is going to save lives, let's toss out Katrina as an example. How exactly would a couple generic ISR aircraft with generic capes (wouldn't want to piss off the OPSEC nazis) have really made anything better? What were the Army, Navy, Air Force and Coast Guard crews lacking in capability?

How often do you think the average cop trains at the range?

Wait, ISR is more than Pred porn?

Shot at and missed a predator, impressive.

Story has the ring of truth, regardless though it made me smile.

Risk Rescorla was an absolute badass, but also a true leader. A man that put his people before himself until the end, so that others may live. A rescue professional if there ever was....

No sarcasm from me, I was serious. You're right, F-15C strafe and targeting pods are two separate topics.

To the point, thanks for the re-direct

Does anyone really think that light grey guys would be present and so under employed they'd be able to enter a stack? If they're there, it's for a reason and strafe is a contingency. NOT saying they shouldn't train to it at least a little and have a passing familiarity but primary attack players isn't even remotely on the list of reasons they should practice strafe.

Kinda like I figured, violent agreement.

I was working with my boss at OSK when I was at Kadena to push strafe packaged with limited initial on-scene commander training. The Eagle push was to make the gun actually work to force maintenance to make it work, my push was to introduce the fighter guys to CSAR.

Just bring back Eagle Eye

I know, I was trying to get everyone on the same page.

I was obviously not clear, a defined threat level (low, medium, high) has a lot of assumptions built in that do not directly correlate to a threat hierarchy to specific aircraft that would in turn lead to a risk level. Obviously, ground troops in close proximity to an objective might drive a high risk to helos but a low threat environment if all they have is AK-47s. A highly integrated ADS might drive an overall high threat level, but if the objective is completely terrain masked from any possible threat, well that might be only medium or low risk for the helos but high risk for supporting fighters. If there are Flankers out and about, what do I need to make sure they're more concerned with keeping themselves alive and not looking for low slow targets?

Meant more as a joke brother.

Long range VID? Ain't no way in hell the B-word is making its way to the Eagle community....

Seems like we're mixing up risk, threat level and threat to specific aircraft.

I blew over that intentionally, maybe at the detriment of my point. In recent history the helos have been cleared to execute while the escort fighters have been told to stand down. I'm not sure of the timeline, but it was around the same time that you lead the effort to pickup the F-14 crew in OIF.