Lawman

If we can make it more expensive we can justify getting 4 more F-whatever’s when we cancel the whole program 11 years in.

VSTOL huh.... great guys. Let’s bring the requirement that made the F-35 such a god damned nightmare in acquisitions. Oh and Hellfire. Because if we’re gonna commit to a capability let’s go with a missile that is on its way out just as soon as JAGM shows up. Don’t get me wrong the R model is an amazing little toy (damn thing will turn around street corners) but it’s getting serious shortcomings with its age and size limits.

The OV-10 maintained a capability to be launched and operated off of a Tarawa class amphib carrier, but it was more a gimmick than a maintained capability. They demo’d Operations on both CV and Amphib as part of the testing but like the C-130 landing on a carrier as a COD theory it never was put into practice.

So long as North Korea and Syria are the 5 meter targets (as they should be), we need Russia and China to cooperate more than we need to correct long standing issues. We still get to and do Piss them off (sailing Burke’s through the SC Sea, or knocking heads around in Syria of a bunch of Mercs). But we can’t just go throw our weight on somebody with permanent security council veto power and expect the headway we’ve made in places like NK to last.

China and the US have a 375 Billion dollar trade imbalance and it’s going entirely their way. So fuck what they think about our sudden brand of “protectionism” as its being labeled by Trump critics. All while they simultaneously manipulate their currency to hide the massive inflation and debt they keep to the local level instead of acknowledging it as national debt. Trump critics are so busy hating/#resist’ing anything and everything he says and does theynare ignoring the reality that some times he actually is right, and this is one of those times. End of the day Canada (or Mexico) isn’t suddenly going to divest of our economic partnership, and like I said they have already poured plenty of oil into the waters with some of the decisions they’ve made pre-Trump which can be labeled the same kind of “protectionism.”

Mexico is an Ally now? Funny I don’t remember allies actively running government programs of moving migratory people across their country in a “not in my back yard” fashion so they can then stand at the US border (or sneak in via smuggling routes) and demand that country absorb the cost of them as refugees/migrants. And Canada did how much fuckery in its whole canceling the F-35 program (long before any trade tariffs). But hey screw it, we need to be extra nice to them and take a loss in trade because they send some dudes to help us staff NORTHCOM while their actual military couldn’t protect a parking lot. NAFTA was a shitty deal. All these tariffs are is a demand to get parties back to the table to renegotiate. Do that and they go away. It’s not some conspiracy to collapse the economy or random decision. But as long as the media talking heads pretend this is just Trump firing on random cyclinders, that’s not helping matters in getting those negotiations to actually happen.

I think it’s just the first time it’s been run as a headline story on one of the Big3 cable news networks stateside. I know a lot of smaller news groups out there have been doing reports on “what the Russians are up to” for the last couple years and their EW activities have definitely come up often. Stuff like them harassing NATO members along the border. https://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/15194/russia-jammed-phones-and-gps-in-northern-europe-during-massive-military-drills Just one example. But yeah, definitely some purpose built needling going on between them and us. Not unlike the sudden jump in tech and weapons we are seeing show up in certain theaters like the Stan. Cold War never really ended, it just got ignored for a while.

That’s unfortunate not suddenly news. Been going on for a while now. Between this and Ukraine though it’s nice of Russia to give us lots of stuff to study/compile intel on for a change. Only fair since we’ve given them nearly 2 decades to do the same.

If you’ve got access to SIPR you know your first point is complete bullshit. If you don’t want to go do the research on it I can’t help you. You’ll just swallow more anti-Trump hysteria talking points like BQZip’s mom swallows.... well that’s self explanatory, Germany signed a 2014 agreement and still hasn’t met it, though they will now that Trump has publically taken them to task about it. Obama had an empty piece of paper from the “No Action Talk Only” group that ran out of bombs while asking us to shoulder the load from behind in Libya. Trump also put in those Congressionally mandated sanctions, just late... along with more of them. And you completely walked away from the Ukraine situation because while Obama was sitting around denying who those little green dudes were, now we are actively selling Javelins to Ukraine... which might actually make a difference with all those “rebel controlled” T-72MBs and BMP-3s running around. Again for all the bitching and bullshit that’s been built around this idea that Trump is literally being puppet mastered by Putin we sure do spend a lot of time doing shit to actively piss them off. That part (like how close we came repeatedly to a shooting war in a certain AOR) always seemed to gets ignored by people making a big damn deal about Trump saying “congratulations” to Putin in a phone call that Obama also made in 2014 saying congrats.

One guy is into (literally) fat girls... Another likes watersports... Kinda makes you wish for the 60s and normal debauchery like two actual prothers also being Eskimo brothers with the worlds number 1 hot chick at the time...

Remind me which administration bombed their surrogate in Syria twice plus killed a bunch of their merc’s, actually got NATO to agree to not be an empty shell of an organization with a pretty blue flag and pay up, approved arms sales of munitions to include anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, shuttered the Russian consulate in Seattle, and has their diplomat to the U.N. pretty much daily taking them to task for stuff. I could have sworn that all happened in the last 18 months. But you’re right, that picture couldn’t reflect Obama. He was after all willing to be much more flexible in how he got f’d By Russia.

Is the FBI division charged with investigating their own and the Obama appointed IG who came to the same conclusion not capable of conducting an impartial a-political investigation? Because that’s been the charge by Democrats this whole time, that even though Strzok’s texts, Comey and Muellers friendship, all the other politics of it show a whole lot of non impartial bias towards Trump, nothing touched by those matters taints the investigation. And the whole thing has been intentionally stretched to try and make this Trump’s Saturday Night Massecre with deliberate distortion like “he won’t get his pension” when he does, but not as peak high as it could be.

No, it’s already being done daily. Using the military in a law enforcement capacity to arrest and detain would be an issue, but using them to provide assets and manpower in an assisting fashion under understood memorandums of cooperation is permitted. We’ve got guard units down their routinely providing support mostly in the form of things like UAS.

Fixed.... also weird.

Great way to burn an hour on Netflix.... Such a magnificent design. Especially when you hold it next to all the other planes the British are known for.

Go home Air Force... you’re drunk. We shouldn’t really be surprised in the same military that thought the H-60 series of helicopter could replace and perform jobs done by significantly larger helicopters (SH-3, MH53, etc) and not lose anything in capability.

So... 5th gen F-111F then?

Its not just about us though. this platform is/should be a bridge to leaving whatever F’d up s-hold country we have decided to aid to the point of competency. It’s paying money to walk away from the breakup and not feel guilty. Like it or not there are a hell of a lot of allied air forces that cannot/should not be in the Jet game. They can’t maintain it from a pilot training stand point and we will spend far less training country X pilots for them through a T-6 sylubbus vs taking them to UTP, teaching/failing them at all the other crap and then sending them home to learn the Scorpion on their own. And seriously if the only real requirement is be ISR 98% of the time with the ability to drop a Hellfire or a GBU49... well they all meet that requirement.

There always was a requirement. The problem was we just burned up Chinooks by inefficiently moving pallet X which were needed to do other stuff. Same with the C-12. We don’t have enough... ok just use 5 hours on 2x Black Hawks to move the 2 contractors from Taji to Erbil It’s the same kind of issue really as the light attack argument. We’ve spent no investment on far lower cost “daily use” kind of stuff. That’s not just an aviation problem, that’s across the military. Like why are we transporting soldiers in an LMTV in garrison when the White/Blue bus fleet can do it far more efficiently and with a lot less cost per dollar in wear and tear.

The AF deserves every bit of hate they get for f@cking that program into oblivion just to keep it from the Army. I don’t give a crap how much money the 130 community needed to go J model across the board, they outright promised and then stole it from the intra theatre replacement for the Sherpa and other Army non MWS platforms that was desperately needed so in the end they get to fight to support those missions out of 130 apportionment instead The AF should carry some serious shame for that disaster since the only person that truly won in that who debacle was the Coast Guard.

The hell are you doing on landing? It’s flush with the floor of the aircraft... Getting to hang out with your guys in Al Assad this last time over was eye opening how neither services PM has the complete picture. It’s like can we get them to talk to each other. I’ll trade you guys all the development we’ve made with DONlAIRCM/CIRCM in hostile fire queuing and IR protection if we can get the newest digital versions of APR-39 and any kind of progress on EW/RF stuff (which the Army has ignore since 1992).

I think you guys would be better leaning on them to get you the 5th CMWS sensor but that’s just me.

It’s the basic principle of fire superiority. In the fire-team/squad level fight it’s falling heavily on an automatic weapon guy with a belt fed weapon. That guy is going to empty that first belt almost as the first seconds of the fight. Unfortunate to the nature of aircrew w don’t have that option. Though in the lift world it’s one of the reasons while the 240 lacks the suppression of the GAU or the .50, you can carry the stock group for it and switch from a mounted machine gun into a hand held machine gun which is what our 60/47 guys do as a contingency for the worst. As you said, “set the tone,” and the tone needs to be something along the lines of “I have and will use the means to make you bleed.”

I think you guys are really misunderstanding the realities of a gun fight. Maneuver (IE dudes coming to roll you up) is countered by a volume of fire, not really accuracy or range. We exchange literal thousands of rounds in a simple meeting encounter with small 2-3 man shooter groups on the ground. And we kill little/nothing most of the time because the reality is you rarely if ever hit what you’re aiming at whether it’s aimed well or aimed poorly. That’s why a handgun and a couple mags is a joke. About all the resistance you can be expected to put up with that is suitable for some farmer stumbling on your RAZ and trying to take you to the local authorities because he found out you killed one of his chickens. Look back at Vietnam and Desert Storm, name me any incident where a crew member successfully fought it out on the ground alone and unafraid with a handgun. You need noise, you need ammo, and you need persistence of creating a feeling of “I’d better be F’ing worth it to you Hadj!” Because they will overwhelm you. That is going to happen whether you’re down there with a 9mm, a M4, or a 240B. The only difference is the motivation for them to wait a few more minutes that is provided by a persistent defense. Durant had an MP5K, 4 mags, 2 Delta Snipers with full combat load, and all the left over mags and ammo scattered around the wreckage of that Blackhawk.... all that did was buy them minutes. Even if the DC powered GAU had been working, eventually the horde is gonna come get you.

That last sentence is really the key. Nobody should just have a case of grenades show up in Qatar and be like “well.... pass these out too.”