Lawman

This was dangerously shortsighted thinking in 1930, and its even more so now. “AirPower to hold the line” is a bad leftover tenant of a military that enjoyed absolute superiority in the ability to locate, fix, target, and prosecute the enemies limited ability for long range fires (IE Desert Storm). What few get through, well that’s what PAC3 and Thaad are for.... The Russians have the ability to reach beyond anything and saturate in greater amount compared to our 1990s mindset of hold the line and build forces. Today when the balloon goes up the fight will entirely be determined by what cards you have in your hand to play at the moment of play, and what you can keep alive after the first day of fires and massed cyber/space massed effects. Simply put you are no longer safe at distance with the security and you are to immobile to protect. What is far enough back is simply too inadequate in square footage of ramp space to generate what will be needed to take it back once lost. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

So my question, what the hell were those contractors and FBI investigators we are paying doing? And why does it take them years to do it. What the F seriously, we have forms and methods to find out about people’s dirty past. If you’ve been to SERE school or ever signed a consent to be monitored you have a pretty good idea at just how simply accessed so called “secure social media” information is. So what the F are these people doing if not finding the links to the dude hanging out with the skinheads in high school or talking to ISIS on Reddit. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Boosting/launch charges under the similar principle to launching from VLS or compartments on ships. I have no doubt if you dictate the flight profile with reasonable freedom of maneuver vs limits to weight/space of such a device you could find a way to lob a Paveway or similar away and clear of the aircraft vertically. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

It baffles me in the day of literally carrying a device in your pocket capable of connecting you with people across the globe people still find a way to violate the first rule. Don’t crap where you eat! Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Whether it’s the treat environment or the tyranny of distance or some combination of the two (look at early Syria for example), the idea that getting home after riding the silk is just a quick helicopter ride is insane. The limiting factor isn’t going to be whether we send a helicopter/tilt rotor and how current it’s SIRFC is, or whether it’s got 4th or 5th Gen support to get it in. The limiting factor is gonna be based whether or not you can keep the isolated evader alive and hidden while you crack the egg on where and how to get them. The best way you keep Joe Oklahoma fighter pilot alive 8 minutes (or 8 days) after his feet touch the ground in a country where he doesn’t look or sound like the locals is getting him somewhere to hide and sending some friendly locals to stash him somewhere to buy time. Threat/distance/both will result in more time that evader needs to remain an evader to facilitate a successful recovery. At the same time with high threat, we are going to see a lot more possibility for evaders become active in theatre. Now you’ve got your JPRC playing triage of what is worth sending limited assets after in an environment where some are just flat out of reach. Everybody likes talking about successful recoveries like Vega because the stories are sexy, but look at for example Desert Storm where a lot of guys were for lack of a better word “abandoned to their training” because fact of the matter was the air recovery option was neither actionable nor would it be smart/effective. So I put to the room, would you rather the military spending bazillions of dollars on stuff that might stand a more survivable chance of coming for you, or do you think it’s more useful to cultivate those clandestine options and give you equipment to make you a better evader. There is a reason during evasion scenarios and SERE training you don’t get “rescued” out of the hide site by some Pavehawk or Chinook doing a training flight to support the school houses. Read the theatre spins, know your EPA, get good socks and a quality boots and train in them. That’s gonna mean a hell of a lot more than whether or not the supporting CSAR elements are running with 60Gs or the new Whisky hotness. And it would be nice since this is technically stuff I need to do my job, if the shoe clerks and bean counters that figure out what uniform items to provide actually thought about that requirement instead of crap like whether your boots are the right color of green/tan, 1 piece vs 2 piece, fire resistance at 780 vs 450 degrees. Taking me back to my original point, let’s invest in some quality skivvies, uniforms, and boots you could hike around in the hills with whatever guys needing you to not be a burden on them trying to keep you alive. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Take a look at a few decades of UN backed humanitarian aid in places and how good a hold they have from “Truck to table” on that food. If anything it may just introduce a new form of currency. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Honestly what you guys need to be investing in is quality boots, socks, and underwear. I’ve played in the PR concept planning cell for some of these near peer/peer fights. I think reality is gonna wash out to there being too many customers and losing too many assets trying to recover the first few putting the brakes on that method of recovery. Reality is gonna be either ground/self recovery when the conflict dies down. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Or getting anything like that at altitudes above Sea Level ~ 4K. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

There are a few different communities that have a demonstrated capability in low level clandestine penetration without the gee wiz denied area equipment. This wouldn’t be an unheard of idea either historically or currently. Basically a question of break into the house like a Ninja relying completely on being unseen/unheard instead of kicking down the door. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

They did the same thing with the whole shipping temperature deal. Like without context it sounds terrifying, and that’s what most of the talking heads will feed the mass tuned into it. Every so often though you get to watch that fall apart like CNN was dumb enough to have the head of a shipping company on that they tried leading to their doom and gloom and he is sitting there like “yes we can and do routinely ship stuff like this.” Dude was polite enough about it, but basically you could tell he was lured on the segment with the idea he would get to explain this is an achievable challenge to moving the vaccine and the host was on a different tack and wouldn’t let it go from the doom gloom scary narrative. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

The other major wildcard in the equation is taxable portion of your income. I’m in an office full of mid-senior grade officers where most of the guys on paper made somewhere in the 30k mark because it was all down range. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Oh yeah Bro. I mean China, you know that other major power pumping dollars and influence into the long game in Africa... They’re just clamoring at the “opportunity for investment” that is North Korea. Hence while being something like 85% of North Koreas export market (so pretty much everything but MANPADS and broken nuclear tech) they seem to be building the worlds strongest anti-refugee system along their borders. If you honestly think any economy within the G7 or otherwise wants to be the people to un-screw the 70 year old disaster of ideology and economic shortsightedness in North Korea, you’re probably naive enough to think just another 6 months in Afghanistan and we will turn it all around. The world is sitting around like a bunch of broke in laws at the table on a meal none of them could afford hoping for one of the other couples to pick up the check. Nobody is so altruistic to want to give what that will cost in treasury and influence just to then watch power B/C swoop in and get the actual long term benefits. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Had a translator denied a visa for his family off a deployment. Dude genuinely didn’t want to leave what was to him his country, but he knew after the work he did to make it better his family was in danger. I’m sure we cut him a nice “go F yourself” check in 13 as we ran out of effort on the surge and proceeded to let the bad guys retake all the ground we had worked to hard to stabilize. God only knows what happened to him, because we stopped caring after we told him he wasn’t worthy of an escape from the danger we put him in. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Really bro, you’re gonna compare investment in Africa or our trillion dollar mission creep as benchmarks of how enthusiastically people would invest in North Korea? I’ll remind you, Africa is a continent full of natural resources whose extraction and for lack of a better term exploitation has been delayed by colonial transition and easier access elsewhere making it a second option for most. Afghanistan is at least sitting in a couple trillion in rare earth elements and minerals to make the venture “worthwhile” in the long run. Our long run has been 2 decades of ery. North Korea has none of that. They aren’t sitting on a resource access, or a strategic point of importance that can’t be more easily found elsewhere. You think North Korea just flips a switch and everything becomes Korea United with 100% return in investment after a few years of schools and some money for food and housing? East Germany still has slums that are from the Soviet Era. You seriously think after every nation in the G7 has to spend the last 9 months looking inward and leveraging debt on top of debt to make COVID a livable economic experience that somebody wants to be the first guy through the door on fixing the North Korea problem? You’re out of your mind. You wanna see what coming out of a severely ideological communist doctrine with the “full investment” of outside capitalist powers looks like? We’ve got a couple dozen examples. Cambodia comes to mind. What a massive success after now 40 years of free market thinking. The very best North Korea gets out of this situation is a cheaper, broker, less educated version of the way major powers exploit places like the Philippines or Vietnam for ultra cheap bulk barely worth it to the host country industries like pharmaceutical or textile manufacturing. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I think a trillion is overly optimistic. And that said there’ll are we shouldering the burden alone in this. (Looking at you regional neighbors like China and Japan). Adjusted for inflation the reintegration of East and West Germany cost about 1.2 trillion between economic impact and aid packages from western economies. North Korea is far and above way behind where East Germany was to try and match to its neighbors. It would effectively be the 90s famine Somalia of Asia. And it’s next door to 3 of the worlds most important and impactful economies, 2 of which whom can’t just shut off the media and machine gun refugees crossing over. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Nobody is in a rush to UN-F’ck the North Korea situation. That country “waking up” and deciding integrate with the rest of the region will be an albatross around the neck of the whole of the Asian pacific rim economically. It’s a multi trillion dollar hole that will make the reintegration of Eastern Germany and the former Warsaw Pact following the fall of the wall look like picking up the check at Denny’s for your broke uncle. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

C’lassi! F’ing spell it right if you gonna call me that. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Dude you’ll be fine. I got it with a recommendation from a retired Army Major (from the 80s) and an enlisted Navy Chief. We are so short of manpower across Army aviation they literally don’t care. The recommendations merely show you aren’t some crazy with no friends. It could be from a pastor or a high school track coach, it’s just a matter or proving you have social skills and a decent work ethic. You’re recruiter is an E5/6 who like so many is freaked out about the process of WOFT because it’s not what they normally do. If need be hit me up in PM and give me Sgt whoever’s info. Worst case he’s gonna hear fro Chief to knock it off and drive forward. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

If Al Assad and Erbil didn’t fully demonstrate the stupidity of basing key nodes within range of SR/IRBMs without associated PAC-3 coverage you really aren’t gonna get the severe risk of exposure all of Afghanistan is. Herat can’t be protected, neither can BAF or KAF or any other place in Afghanistan. There aren’t enough Patriot units to cover everybody, in fact even if there were that’s banking a lot on the countermeasure working 100% of the time. That doesn’t even begin to go into the discussion of just how convoluted and self licking an ice cream cone the movement of combat power necessary to sustain offensive ops in for example an Iran scenario would be. Just for sake of example... you can drive supplies and sustainment from ports in the Med to key nodes in the typical Middle East footprint far easier than you can move them either via ground route or air route into Afghanistan. That places is a logistical black hole when people aren’t trying to kill your supply lines. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Like I tell my wife in my birthday/anniversary.... It’ll totally fit Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

There is no strategic advantage to invading a country from Afghanistan. It does not create anything of a “two front war” in a fight with Iran. There is literally nothing in eastern Iran worth worrying about. All it does is plant a strategically difficult place to resupply and sustain using high density low force protection nodes like BAF within the easy range of Iranian Ballistic Missiles. If anything getting our exposed troops and assets out of Afghanistan sets us up better for a conflict than we currently are. As it stands any hostile that wanted to be actively belligerent and make the craps roll of “inflict enough immediate pain and there won’t be a long response and they won’t go nuclear” has a big free chicken target to eliminate a lot of strategic asset in a single series of attacks without much we can do to stop it. We are banking our whole game on “F around and Find Out!” And after 2 solid decades of war fatigue I could see the logic and outside threat would have in thinking we won’t back up that threat. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Io

General Milley approves... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Edit (now that I’m not four whiskeys into an angry night) Congrats to the Navy/Corps found at most 15K of fuel if the RV is taking place right over top of a location for that osprey to get ground fuel... 10K is probably a realistic/optimistic number. But operationally that’s where they plan to put this tanker, right over the boat acting as a way to pass gas to the guy that can’t get aboard the ship for whatever reason. The Osprey tanker is justified out of giving the CSG another Hornet tanker they can press forward and even bigger about creating a new and useful capability aboard the gator carriers to add a desperately needed flexibility/option for safety that doesn’t currently exist. For those unfamiliar with the landing weight requirements in Harrier, it basically drives the air ops plan on the boat because it has no flexibility in fuel planning. When it is within its weight for landing its barely above bingo. The 35 will have a bit more leeway but it’s still a friction point in operations. Having a tanker that is organic to the air wing instead of needing to be within range of land based 130s or a Carrier Strike Group opens options for a MEU. Given the number of AFSOC tiltrotors even available and the given locations for them to stage from, you gotta ask what does that actually buy you in combat power. It takes gas to move gas the further/longer the less useful it is... the Osprey is still a slow fat kid compared to a 130 much less a jet carrying buddy tank ability. Trying to push it forward to provide gas becomes a self licking ice cream cone really fast, and unlike the 130 it can’t go up and catch a drink of the 135 to stay useful. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

That new president was actively part of the previous admin which had no problem taking all the Armor off the continent, shuttering the only forward deployed Heavy CAB in the Army, and cutting troop levels by a full 2/3 of what they were when from a few years before. All that while ignoring Russian aggression and pretending those T-72/T-90s rolling from East to West across Ukraine were “possible rebel forces.” Yeah I think democratic leadership and the party will happily go back to gutting NATO and the active component with a new president, and not a damn word will be uttered by the same press critical of Trump for his statements about our “allies.” Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk