Lawman
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Posts posted by Lawman
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That dude is a very enthusiastic aviation nerd, but ignorant. He's fundamentally a technologist/journalist in the same vein as the folks who write for a website like ars technica.
Gell-Mann amnesia and all.....
Yeah looking through his archives it reads like he’s got access to trade shows and shiny sales sheets from Raytheon but no actual institutional knowledge.
Anybody calling the 64E the Guardian is either a direct employee for Boeing or hasn’t ever actually worked on the thing.
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No doubt, I see the cancellation as a resources saving issue not necessarily as a recon scout helo is not needed/viable issue
Same was true of Comanche.
That thing was an albatross around the neck of wider more critical acquisitions (even if it had worked).
Killing it paid for the Army to make the fleet entirely D model Apache, put MTADS across said fleet, and upgrade the Chinook fleet to Fox model which was miles more critical in the GWOT fight than a stealth Kiowa prone to damage maintained by guys putting blade paint on the skin because “black equals stealth.”
As much as we wanted it all, FARA was the long sell for the Army. I’m already getting talks from ATIC guys asking for 64F concepts they want to compile for the next senior leaders discussion. Suddenly the end of the railroad track for going beyond Version 6 or 8 no longer seems like a hard stop. Sky is the limit… well… 17.5k is the limit probably, but that’s still Sky.
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Decent little article on the subject
https://www.twz.com/air/cancelling-the-future-attack-recon-helicopter-was-the-right-move
That article has a lot of misdiagnoses of the situation being quoted as gospel.
The Army isn’t stacking on 100-150 knots to increase protection, it’s doing so to provide the capability of traversing greater distance in a convergence of enablers. That’s necessary to push out effectively from sanctuary of Air Defense and ground security.
Showing video of Russians being dumb as a way to justify getting rid of the RW part of multi domain disintegration of the IADS is because you won’t find the opposite argument plastered across Reddit. Anybody that thinks Helicopters have no part in going offensive in the IADS should probably let the Israelis know… they seem confused by that.
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This is why we can't have nice things. Billions and BILLIONS wasted on this program that the Army has now decided to cancel. While the Army spent $6B, industry spent 3X that chasing the program. Most of you have these defense companies in your 401K so you get a double kick in the nuts as both a tax payer and investor. And as is normal, no one will be fired or held accountable. Disgusting waste.
US Army spent billions on a new helicopter that now will never fly
What?
I can’t hear you over the sound of all this burning contract money and the 1/3 of Chinook fleet life we bled moving cargo/people we couldn’t get transported.
FARA was always the Army’s lowest aviation priority, and the Victor is a disaster so thank god that’s gone.
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Lindsey Graham said the other day that we can see at least 4 major oil refineries in Iran. Obliterate one and tell those SOBs now you have 3. Want to try for 2? Oil refineries are already primed to blow anyway.
At a minimum hit the pipeline nodes transporting oil to the tankers in port. If they can't get it to port they can't sell it. Now That's a sanction with teeth.
Even if they stack ADA around the refineries it's damned difficult to cover the entire pipeline network. Turn off the cash cow and you turn off the ability to make trouble.
F’ing Christ….
We are literally running the script of Iron Eagle as Geopolitics now…
Word for word it’s the threat given to rando middle eastern strongman’s military and the reaction at 3:20…
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One of the saddest accidents when stationed in Germany were four Italian F-104's crashing on departure out of Bitburg.
Accident Lockheed F-104G Starfighter MM6575, (aviation-safety.net)
My dad stationed in Italy when the 104 was in wide service.
Using a lot of them in a Recce bird profile was probably not a big help for them. San Vito would get requests to assist every time they’d Lawn Dart one south of Naples and that was scarily often since most of them were in the norther half of a the boot. They’d put one in the dirt… dad would suddenly be gone a day and a half.
That plane was notorious.
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Outstanding!
But one point of correction: based on the title I was thinking it was a Kirov or another Slava (remember when they sank the Moskva back in 2022) class...the ship in this video was "only" a Corvette.
If they keep this up, “Flagship” will be the default title for whatever the Russians have left in the water.
That should simplify things for journalists trying to do Navy vessel identification.
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I have owned three EVs, all of which were/are great vehicles:
- One was made in Germany
- Plus production of that model now takes place in Tennessee
- One was made in Illinois
- One was made in California
They were final assembled in those locations.
Look up the supply chain of EV battery production (or solar panels for that matter) and see where the middle point takes place after minerals extraction.
China has positioned its self where ~85% of the worlds Lithium and Nickle battery production has to flow through it. You know what their industrial thermal requirements are powered by? F’ing Coal. And most of it can’t be simply offloaded to Nuclear or cleaner green power because it’s not just a matter of Kw generation, it’s about temperature for productions.
And as the world has massively upscaled demand for more EV tech components they have only been able to match that upscale with more coal. It’s why for all the carbon we’ve reduced in the US and Europe they increased 5 fold.
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Yup
I think this is “fixing the glitch” in whatever’s F-35 numbers you wanna believe
More operators for bigger economies of scale for more ways to hide higher than published life cycle costs
What the hell, just print some more money and shovel it around…
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It’s also far easier to deal with the attritional impact of Large Scale Combat and rebuild our numbers post conflict by simply buying up their spares at premium with the promise of new shiny later.
A country that sits in the NATO order of battle like for example Moldova doesn’t need F-35s, or Abrams, or really any other top line piece of tech that isn’t worn/carried. But it can rent them for a while….
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Video series on a WW3 scenario, offered for entertainment and thread churning:
I love his series even if it overstated what it turned out to be real Russian capabilities.
The scene where the US Brigade commander is on the VTC and is cut off mid sentence with the President because of his gawd damned cell phone got his head quarters targeted was great. We’ve been preaching that for years to be ignored by people who are too important to not have their phone.
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If you’re looking to delve into the topic or international relations Peter Zaihan is pretty good. He takes a topic and distills it down in about 10 minutes or so in a way that doesn’t confuse me or make me feel stupid.
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He’s also been disturbingly accurate in his prediction on some of this.
Zaihan may be a little more “end is near” than some for my taste, but his tie in with demographics in China and their hard stop coming economically has to dire a set of consequences to be avoided.
Unfortunately when you look at EV tech adoption our top level policy makers look to be hurtling cash into the sinking ship and ignoring our own industries that we will need in the immediate future. To them geopolitics comes in a distant 2nd when matched against climate interventionist vanity projects.
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The first one seriously ed some people up. Will Joe remain feckless and allow this to go unchallenged?
If anybody wants to know, Garrett’s surgeries have gone as successful as can be currently hoped for.
There is still bits of shrapnel in his head that will probably have to come out in a future attempt, but he’s stable condition now.
Long way to go from there, but he got moved from Landstuhl back to Walter Reed a couple days ago.
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Claims made without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Still, it’s striking that in America, it’s those that present themselves as “weak” that are the biggest bullies and thieves. Abroad, America has little moral leg to stand on, to put it mildly.
Your appeal to reason lacks evidence and is non-falsifiable; there is no control group scenario in which America husbands its strength instead of “engaging.” I see an enormously powerful economic engine, powered substantially by inertia, that continues to dominate the world in spite of its government and foreign policy, not because of it. Not a libertarian statement, by the way. I believe government can play a commanding and positive role — ours just isn’t such an example.
What?
I’ll just take ISIS for an example but have you been in Iraq in the last decade?
You’re making an argument we have no moral righteousness in use of our military but we were fighting guys literally putting Christian and other Muslim villages to the sword over there like it was the 14th century.
And remember we have been the world’s most powerful economy since before our participation in the First World War. We had surpassed the British and German Empires… that didn’t stop them from having two world wars. And now that the economics of the world are global in supply and resource chains there is absolutely no way to sit it out. Unless you want to just absorb whatever happens to the price of everything because we can’t move ships off the Red Sea anymore just as an example.
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So Desert Shield, Panama, Grenada, Kosovo, Haiti, Northern and Southern Watch...those didn't happen. Cool. Very factual of you.
Current actions in the Red Sea…
The Tanker Wars, Prime Chance, and Praying Mantis…
But remember, unless a major global power ceases to be afterward through complete capitulation of its government it’s a loss and total waste of effort in his brain.
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The U.S. is in imminent peril of being ejected from the western pacific by a country that had a triple digit gdp per capita in recent memory.
You mean that country that imports most of its Food and fertilizer along with all of its energy via the Ocean… that country?
The one that could be singularly isolated because it can’t project power further than those Island chains/peninsulas that all hate and surround it during a conventional conflict?
The one that has lied about 5% GDP year on year growth because we know it’s BS and is currently in a demographic free fall while we (the developed world) all make movements to reshore the sunk cost of cheap manufactured goods out of it?
I’m not saying China and US going at it doesn’t result in collective pain for the world because any conflict between the great powers will (hence why unified western support of Ukraine is such a good deterrent). But the Idea that China’s trajectory is just gonna keep increasing and they come out of this to supplant us is a dream.
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the United states would sill be the united states if we never went into korea or vietnam.
theme: US getting involved in small regional conflicts under the premise of "saving democracy". dangerous and foolish.
also your red flag analogy is bull shit.
What Asian trade partners would we have in Asia right now if we sat on our ass in Korea for your example. How much trade would we do with a unified peninsula under the DPRK and what would that then do for our economy.
Middle East same question during the Tanker war or the current stupidity off the Red Sea.
Foreign policy is an active game, you can’t just sit it out. We aren’t Monaco.
Again listening to you talk about the deaths and regional conflicts we “lost,” is like listening to a guy up millions of dollars at the casino still bitching about that 20k loss he took 6 hands ago. You’re winning, recognize that.
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tens of thousands of American lives for useless wars. that enough for you?
For Christ sake…
You are an American. You sit in the velvet rope section of being the single Super Power atop the panicle of Human Achievement and experience.
How do you think we got here? Because our great grand parents damn sure didn’t experience that position in the world. More importantly how do you think we managed to stay there all these decades?
By your bullshit metric every life lost training at Red Flag or service member killed in a rollover at NTC was “wasted,” because it didn’t come as a tally in a massive global conflict we could stand around in the ashes of and call ourselves the winner. Deterrence and effects of statecraft and influence cost blood and treasure. They cost a lot less than results of disengagement and apathy leading into a wider global conflict.
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And?
What do you think set global conditions to stabilize and evolve enough to allow that?
Exactly what did we squander?
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you're moving the goalposts. the argument is clearly defined as post WWII american military conflicts resulting in victory.
Something like 60 million dead between combat and civilian casualties…
Yeah we should really feel bad about “losing” since then.
You’re a loon to think we have anything to apologize for in the status quo that was maintained between then and here. Especially if you go full nationalist view point and only care about the cost in lives to the worlds only remaining super power.
We won the last 70 years, you’re attempt to try and define it by losses in small scale conflicts is just more of you trying to find a way to explain how the sky is falling.
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The greatest squandered hand in world history.
The longest continual span of human prosperity in recorded modern history?
You know we doubled the average human lifespan since WWII right?
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Concur and it will be see how the Orcs respond. Combined arms is a multiplier on the battlefield and something the Russian do very poorly, it at all. It looks like a deal is almost done to get them more funding which will make the spring very interesting.
The thing is the Russians are following their doctrine for the purpose of the way they wrote it to match equipment and recent fights.
They leveraged IFVs and put bigger guns on BTRs on purpose to fight mounted with little Infantry both to achieve shock value of action because of speed mounted vs dismounted and to make up the value of having a conscript heavy force. They’ve never thought they would need it because they were supposed to follow the principle of annihilation fires followed by maneuver to the objective. It worked against Syrians for the last decade so they embraced it into their system because “this is way better than Chechnya!”
They’re also learning the hard way that the battalion tactical group also worked great…… in Syria… and it has no place in LSCO because it lacks the ass to achieve and exploit the offense. We already figured that out and have been working away from it for the last ten years.
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Far from emotionally attached. It sucks for the dudes over there. One is defending their country (despite how you feel about it) and the other is in a supposedly modern battle tank by itself not using any modern tactics getting thrown into the front with no support or training and it shows.
Compare that to recent videos of Ukrainian combat footage using platoon and company sized Armored elements in effective combined arms maneuver because we’ve been training them. The Uke’s didn’t start the war capable of that across much of their formations. Mostly individual armored vehicles as supporting assault guns or ambush. Maybe you’d see a platoon but their movement was uncoordinated and sequencing was staggered so like a series of individual punches and not the synchronized sledgehammer that Armor and combined mech infantry functions as when used effectively.
They are growing as a force, and use of western Tanks and IFVs is allowing survivability and carrying lessons to the next fight of the trained soldiers. That’s not something the Russians are getting.
They are still Fires centric where we model off maneuver and I doubt that will ever change for them either culturally or looking at economy of force.
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In Soviet Russia Operation Secure’s you!
Beers for the guys at Raytheon.
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Nick Saban Retiring
In what amounts to perhaps one of the most seismic of shifts in the college football landscape in recent memory....Nick Saban retiring at Bama.
While I can’t stand the man, nor the throngs of people anxiously waiting with lotion soaked hands too cup his balls throughout the state of Alabama….
I respect the fact he waited until after the Championship was over to announce this and it make it about him after Alabama was out.
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Russian Ukraine shenanigans
in General Discussion
Posted
There is a deliberate separate Border bill that went through the Senate and is effectively torpedoed by the house to allow Political hay to be made out of it for the election.
Congress had the opportunity to do something about the border separate of Ukraine and they are deliberately choosing not to. Don’t now use that to justify not supporting this action.
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