Lawman

So we get rid of the programs like F-35... And get nothing in return because canceling the program won't net any quantifiable amount after all the fees and everything else are paid out. And then we can spend hours talking about how great it will be to have Hawgs fighting the Armor in some rough and nasty brawl ala desert storm.... just as soon as we launch another billion dollars worth of TLAMs and lose another dozen legacy platforms trying to kick down that first 3 day IADS.

They aren't the same thing?

Again, you can teach other planes to fly as Sandy. Build a syllabus to train to and do it. The only reason for the commitment to the Hawg doing it is it's the only aircraft that has been doing it. You can't teach/make a Hawk to fly higher and hotter or further, or stick any more mission equipment on it without making it even more of a pig. Even the whole Mike model buy your getting into is a half way measure.

And you think the forceful fighting in congress over keeping he A-10 around has anything to with combat effectiveness, OR/sortie rates, CEP, or any other metric we would use? This is about votes and jobs. Congress doesn't care what the airplane does. If we could force them to chose between a hypocritical A-10 vs Light Grey Eagles retirement the first question wouldn't be "how many planes can do the Eagles job." It would be how many bases and jobs will close if we divest the 15 mission to Multirole Vipers and the Raptor.

Your CSAR argument is kinda moot though. CSAR is far more limited by he fact you are still using old worn out G model Hawks than what's running the RESCOURT package. The problem is the Air Force is trying to divest a heavily guard integrated Airplane. Same problem is happening in the Army with Apache. Nobody cares we are retiring the Kiowa what matters is we are taking away guard jobs moving Apache and there for voters are mad. I think that's why you didn't see anywhere near the screaming on the hill when the Navy retired Intruder or Tomcat or the AF retired the F-111. There wasn't a large angry population of Guard guys and all the other jobs attached that vote for their respective districts.

I was gonna say isn't that what E9s are supposed to be for? That's the only thing they are good for in the Army.

Wasn't that the Political bureau guy the Russians used to put in military units to make sure nobody said anything mean about Stalin. That's sure as hell what it sounds like.

I went to Flight School with a few Utah/Arizona guard guys at do Border Patrol as their civ job. From what hey describe talking about being on an island. Think two dudes in a blazer or Tahoe driving around with just enough Ammo to start a fight and being sometimes hours from anyone that could be considered friendly. Dudes talked about rolling across groups of armed individuals at night and just letting it go because starting that fight was a guaranteed lose for them.

True but this is Army Aviation we are taking about. Most of us in the Warrant corps are already spending half our base pay keeping 1-2 dependapotamus harpy monsters happy and fed. Now that I think about it that would be a good discriminator on who we send.

That and Alimony payments are the two things I would be most worried about

Army is sending a small aviation task force of Lift and Attack on what is supposedly to be a rotational basis. First units are slated to head here around September of this year. TDY in the Philippines.... What could possibly go wrong.

Remembers in the 90s when people were making awful websites on Geocities and Tripod.... Those people work for the DOD now. Which is why it takes 9 months to get a SIPR token in he Army.

Ft Carson has spots for Housing mayors and family members of POWs.... And they are closer to it than the "expectant mother" spots which is just funny.

Weird, the Army is working on the opposite idea. They got tired of people cheese dicking it through the C course after spending money on basic and advanced aircraft training and having to either boot them or give them a pass. But our SERE course is also at Ft Rucker so no TDY just 3 weeks in a sequestered barracks with no phone and occasional trips to the "woods."

You can get some ridiculous good deals on display model stuff like outdoor furniture/grills. I bought a 500 dollar weber grill for a little over 100 when they were clearing out the PX to move in the Xmas shit.

I don't think you've got to much to worry about being the only service sitting in front of congress looking foolish when it comes to acquisitions. Everybody has their big pile of fail to fall on. Navy has the LCS debacle. Army has ######ed up Comanche and the future ground combat vehicle not to mention Crusader. Marines have the expeditionary fighting vehicle and it's gonna take 30 years to pay off the Osprey Karma no matter how well the thing performs now. We as a military are ######ed when it comes to getting new stuff, just uniforms are a bridge too far now days. Billion dollar development programs are just a bigger circus of fail.

Did a lot of support missions with the Poles in RC east. They are some ballsy sons of bitches who are not afraid of a fight.

I think the bigger point is if only there weren't just 6 NATO members meeting the prescribed budget for military spending they agreed to. Gotta pay for all that socialized bullshit first.

Ron Pearlman and Charlie Day made that movie for me.

One more going I was thinking about, watch your bill vigilantly. Every so often some scam will come around and they've been known to go dipping into weird fees and scams on Servicemen with contracts. The big one that went through a couple years ago they were selling your info to 3rd parties outside of Germany and those parties were sending you adds via text... Telekom was then fining you for whatever didn't count as free in their contract. It took JAG action to get the notification to knock that shit off for a few of our guys.

There are literally 2 phone company's to get a cell phone through in German, T mobile.... And whoever the hell else the other one was because nobody had it. Euro cell phone policies are stuck in e early 90s states phase where somehow the whole of Europe is one big batch of roaming zones by country borders. Sucks ass when you take leave and go to say Italy because you either shit off your phone and do it old school with a map and a guidebook, or pay ridiculous fees. Know some guys who forgot to turn off before crossing borders or making drunk calls... Cost serious cash like hundreds of dollars. I wouldn't worry on unlocking your old phones, whatever TKS store on post is selling phones hey will have a contract special on either the new hotness iPhone or droid for as cheap as buying the SIM card to work on the euro grid. You can do internet through TKS as well, makes bills easier. One thing you will need to do is set up with the on post bank because Germans want an in country bank to set up payments from. Internet is interesting dependent on village. A lot of smaller villages have limited port numbers for their population so it's not nearly as fast as it should be in the 21st century. Then again you'll also find lots of dead spots for cell service the same way. 4g is non existent and lots of areas just drop out especially on the train to either low 3G or Edge which is butt ass slow.

I'm thinking somebody found some stock photo of one and just ran with it. I don't remember seeing anything on Syria getting Flankers.

Somewhere on F-16.net.... A thousand Flanker fanboys cried out and then were suddenly silenced.

This is where your tax money goes.

Fulda Gap in the era of Power Point.... Russians will be having Crepes in Paris before we get the damn slides for the counter attack AMB revised for the 7th time. The XO says we didn't use the Brigade standard format.