Lawman

The G3 pattern rifles they built were terrifying. I saw one while working at a range that was so misaligned in its build you would have though it had been run over by a car. It wouldn't fully cycle so it was almost a bolt action rifle. Absolute garbage, I only hope the guy they owned it stopped shooting it before it grenades on him.

In fairness to the Marines, between the Navy cherry picking Hornets to get non trapped out airframes, and the lack of money at the depot roughly a third of the Marine Hornets are broke or FMC on paper only. I agree getting them E/F models like the Aussies would have been a smart long term move, even if they were only leased for a few years and then handed over to the Navy afterward.

No offense taken. Like I said it's not hat I see things from the Army's side and it's more right it's that I'm often times not insulated from some of the Army's stupidity toward aviation because of the service name on my uniform not being able to hide behind the blue. We can detach some elements, and you see that but the Army's structure is to have the modular BCT and its assigned CAB be their own entity to themselves. No it's not nearly as efficient as the JFACC divvying up his assets to meet the JFCs intent and the JGFCC's needs. However what it does do is leave any BCT fully capable of supporting its self in all contingencies. The other problem as mentioned before is our deployment model. No offense but nobody in the Air Force (yes I checked with friends) is doing 12 in, 12 home, 15 in, 9 home, 12 in, 15 home, 11 in, 11 home, 10 in.... That is no kidding what an aviation battalion did between Iraq and Afghanistan since 05. So we are sending them, but when your units that are rotating in or out only have a handful of them to begin with it looks like a lot more home than are. And keep in mind in order to certify for deployment a BCT and CAB have to demo their METL at NTC which means they would need their full components for that. Surging everybody forward right now would help meet the requests but your never going meet that request if we are being honest here. And we simply cannot maintain that stance permanently even with 48 BCTs and 13 CABs (a fifth of which we are cutting). GFCs don't understand anything about aviation other than its expensive and it is never giving them all of what they want. No different than you hear the stupid argument of "AF doesn't want to do CAS!" When outside the light grey Eagle community there isn't a Wing in the AF that wouldn't be thrilled to strap green iron onto planes and come drop it on steel and bone for us. Best you can do is just try to ignore the louder screams and point to all the successes you've given them.

Don't get me too off target on this. We have some very tactically knowledgable dudes within the communities. What we don't have is a formal school or structure of authority within the unit like your model. The fighter guy I worked with while TDY was surprised but we also have more of a company identity (flight equivalent) vs a battalion (SQD). If you can imagine a squadron giving general guidance and then individual flights acting very independently that's more what you'd see in an Army aviation battalion. My boss is a senior O-3, I barely talk to the O-5 and I'm a mid level senior guy. The big issue is getting it paid for to start a program. When the ground makes all the air decisions the big question on new aviation ideas is always "well why do you need this now?" And saying "because that's the way the Air Force does it" would go over like shitting on the table. Even amongst aviation a lot of guys look down their nose at the Air Force because they don't know any better than rumors and jokes etc. I'm one of the few guys around in the Army in general and Aviation specifically that's worked in a joint billet for the AF.

Shadows/Hunters are different and way the hell cheaper than a Grey Eagle. There are a crap load of those deployed because they are owned down to individual battalions in some cases. The CAB portion of Shadow could happen tomorrow but since we haven't ditched all the 58s it's not needed yet. But as was stated by others this stuff is owned as organic unit property. No different than Unit A isn't going to give Unit B it's trucks and not train/equip while in the rear they aren't going to just move all the UAS platforms into theatre at the loss to garrison units. You can't just strip a BCT and CAB of all their stuff. But yeah until we get all the CABs fully converted to Full Spectrum CAB the couple of Grey Eagles owned by an individual CORPs isn't going to provide anywhere near the number of eyes in the sky that the current environment enjoys/demands. Same as we don't have anywhere near the number of MC-12/U-28 type platforms and even if we did put max forces forward and forget the Garrison guys who are on the patch chart to go back your still going to be on the hook for a lot of commitment. Yeah unless you've been an ALO you really haven't seen the full lengths of the stupidity of ground leadership making air calls. I like to tell people we aren't any better prepared for it, we are just a lot closer to the fire and get burned a lot more.

No, and it's a fight to get anyone to listen to myself and others in the closest thing to a tactics and employment track because for 12 years we haven't done anything but club dudes in man dresses with impunity. Also we have nothing even resembling 3-1 or a vault to study it in so those of us that know about yours cheat and steal it. Definitely nothing platform specific hour we are trying to push out a generic helicopter 3-1 equivalent in the next 3 years. We can barely get aviators into joint fires or any other kinds of course. Occasionally you will hear of a "Master Gunner" course, but that's not an actual tactics class it's how to design gunnery ranges. There is a push to create some kind of a weapons school for TACOPS as well as giving TACOPS (our closest equivalent) some kind of evaluation power but that is being fought tooth and nail by the IP branch because they are the sole holder of the red pen and don't view TACOPS as a real track but can't find a way to fold this into their realm. Really the Army doesn't put enough emphasis in aviation so we don't have the resources to get where we need to be. I've seen exactly 1 secret level pilots briefing ever, and that was on 429 ROE not threats or tactics etc.

Grey Eagle is being restructured as part of the 58 divestment as part of the "Full Spectrum CAB" model. At the moment, no they don't exist in significant numbers nor will they ever exist in the numbers currently enjoyed by GFCs in our current Stability Ops model. When you have currently 3 CABs in all of Afghanistan that would leave you with roughly 20 GEs in the country to support whichever RCs they are set to cover. However as of right now there is only one full spectrum CAB in the Army. That doesn't even begin to cover the, not really being designed for independent units to attach as needed where needed to SOCOM. Gray Eagle and Shadow are going to form a huge part of our recon element since we are losing our air scouts. Basically each of he CABs 2 Apache battalions (24 ship SQD equivalent) will have a company (6-10x UAS) of one or the other dependent if they are Attack or recon. Rather than having 30 Kiowas in a recon regiment and a single heavy attack battalion of Apaches.

We definitely F'd up on Raptor. Especially when we are 10-15 years down this road from today and don't have a fleet of old A models in the desert and an assembly line to rebuild A's as B/C models and fly into 2050. We have an expectation to fly an airplane for 40 years... That works when you build over 2000 of a plane and only fly 800 of them 30 years later. While all true on cost I think part of this problem is grossly magnified due to a lack of comparison between 1. Other 5th gen fighters (because there is only Raptor) 2. The rapid rise in cost of other aircraft who aren't even 5th gen In a lot of ways we are like the dude that shows up to a car dealership after ten years of vehicles increasing in price and wonders why his payment is so much higher than his 2002 accord cost him. Yeah 35 definitely bloomed more in price than we thought it would but when your talking a min of 65-100 million dollars for pretty much any comparable 4.5 gen fighter some of the fire from the omg it's so expensive argument is put out. At this point I don't think we could build even a simple aircraft for cheap. Super Tacano is almost as much now as we paid for Vipers in the 90s and no way in hell do we get as much airplane for our dollar with that comparison. Same would be true for people screaming "let's make A-10 2.0" I can't see us in a world where a turbo prop plane costs 20-30 million making anything with Hawg like capes and modern tech that isn't also a 50+ million dollar plane. At that point even if you hadn't tried to fold harrier/hawg's jobs into the platform and had a 80 mil 5th gen plane your still buying a 50 mil plane to go with it.

The Phil's seemed bottom to top very of the opinion that this fight is going to happen and that they are counting on our involvement. Seeing the island expeditionary airfields that the Chinese are building on Philippine Islands because they view it as something we won't get in a fight over is dangerous as hell too. Eventually this complacency toward Chinese expansion is going to lead to their leadership feeling so emboldened that they do something more provocative. Combine that with them trying to interpret when the US civil opinion is "f it not my problem" and you have conditions for a real no kidding shooting war, or for the failure of US projection and the reversal of roles between us and China.

Well for 1, you can't just keep flying the current fleet forever. That's the thing that boggles the mind when I hear people say "let's just build more _____s" Silent Eagles are up over the hundred mil mark at last check. The A-10 tooling is gone, along with rooms full of file cabinets to actually make the tooling and the engineers are retired by now. Yes we could buy Blk 60 Vipers or even say F it and go to a land version of the next gen Super Hornet Boeing is pimping if one wanted to. Here's the big problem though, the money on F-35 is already spent. Any "cost savings" at this point will be massively cut into by all the country partners in the program wanting their money back. So we will spend near the same money and now not have a 5th gen jet fleet.

How long has Raptor been IOC? Still doesn't have JHMCS despite it being our premiere air dominance platform. My point is this needling and sharpshooting of any detail in the program viewed as a "serious flaw" is either ignorant of the rest of the aircraft in the inventories problem or just dredging up crap to dredge up crap. It's like screaming "new F-35 can't fly inverted" because they were still on the ground taxi phase of testing. It's not true but it makes a good headline. Now if there was something like Guns removed and plugged due to catastrophic failures in testing... Or the redesign hat was needed on the tail hook of the C model after landing tests that would be a worthy article. But that's the problem, so many people and sources are jumping on anything they think they can spin as negatives of the program that any real big deal issues get lost in the noise. I fly the E model Apache... It's currently 5 years behind the D model as far as software and avionics but nobody is screaming it's an inferior platform. Because that gets fixed in late 16 with lot 4. Till then we wait.

The more and more these articles get posted all over facebook the more I'm reminded of the early 2000s stupidity with the Tomcat retirement. Admirals writing op eds, people calling out the Hornet for not being able to carry the Pheonix when the last few years it was in service neither could the Tomcat... Just nonsense. It's the aviation equivalent of "the sky is falling!"

Well our administration just called it an "act of vandalism".... Pretty sure this qualifies as an act of war by most standards.

You should talk to the Laser expert over at MSIC. She paints a very grim picture at just how far the Chinese have progressed in directed energy. Shooting down like Star Wars, no nowhere close to that yet, but they are further along than we are to look at the number of systems and complexity they have spent money on. Essentially that and cyber/sat/GPS Attack are part of the big deny access plan to take away or at least severely effect our major advantages.

Hey Sig Saur's answer to all am I questions is "fuck off and learn to shoot right handed." I'd settle on most guns for a safety and mag release.

Good luck and congrats. Now, don't F it up for the next guy. God knows there are a whole bunch of 58 guys still wanting to fly somewhere for somebody where they get to keep wearing a flag on the uniform.

Meanwhile, 140 Joes crammed in the back of a C-17 for 11 hours while wearing body armor because SgtMaj said so have zero fucks to give. Tops in Blue, living out all the High School drama club/band stereotypes well into adulthood.

Resiliency training is a crock. It can be summed up with "always look on the bright side of life." Or, for people that eat meat, "quit your crying and stop being such a pussy."

The police/USAF M15 (.38) and police/FBI M19 (.357) have a little bit of nostalgia value, but the sheer number of them produced means short of being a mint gun that value addition is in the tens of dollars. About the only ones that seem to com,and any money for that era are the shortie detective/chief model .38s and .357s. I've got my dads old M19 which both him and his father carried at one point or another as a deputy. It's become a family heirloom but it's still a shooter. They are very fine guns though they lack some of the more modern ergonomics of a true shooter pistol. Grips are of more of the old style peacemaker shape that seemed to carry through on revolvers so they make good slow fire target guns but won't give you some of the rapid fire control of a more modern gun but that's pretty much true of any mid 50s-80s revolver. If you can pick one up and you've been looking to add a .38 to your collection you could do far worse. Me I'm partial to the heft on the M19 over the M15.

The F.....? This reads like a storyline out of the more recent walking dead episodes. http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Peace/2014/10/31/Congo-crowd-kills-man--eats-him-after-militant-massacres--witnesses

Well I found out from a guy that used to be on it, that the Air Force sponsors a skateboarding team. Maybe this is like that........a complete waste of money.

Bought an M&P shield to replace my P7 as a semi auto carry gun. I don't think I could find a mo'betta option of small & light while staying rugged, and in a caliber I already owned in bulk. The thing is tiny, and I can hide it in just about any type of outfit or weather I would want to carry. Also came with two different mag options so if I really need to make it small in shorts and a tshirt I can for the option of 7 instead of 8 in the mag. Still one more than my S&W .38 and same profile but skinnier. Shoots pretty well, though not spectacular like the P7 but at nearly 1/2 the weight and the fact it's a close quarters option only really that doesn't bother me.

Saw it. Holy hell that was awesome. They took the mantra "Death Before Dismount" and really ran with it. A lot darker and more serious than I was expecting too.

Well it's obviously a workable model for employment. Haven't you had to deal with the lazy good for nothing accountable to nobody fungus people who occupy (I don't want to say work) in the finance offices at every military post. Government job creation in action ladies an gentlemen.

Fixed it for you.