SocialD
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Posts posted by SocialD
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10 hours ago, brabus said:
Unless there’s a large enough existing MOA with capacity, it’s a non-starter. The FAA is horrendous to work with - it’s their kingdom and they don’t give a fuck about training, readiness, national defense, etc. To top it off the AF majorly bent the knee to them a few years ago and slammed some huge nails into its own coffin on the airspace front.
Edit: I love the hypothetical idea, just am too jaded by the reality of bureaucracy that would immediately crush a good solution to a problem. Now if Elon gets involved, maybe we’re on to something!
I'm in agreement that this will likely never happen and there are lots of issues with it. But on your point, we did successfully created a temp MOA about 25 miles from base. It's turning into a published MOA in the near future, so it can happen...after a monumental effort lol.
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21 hours ago, Biff_T said:
UPT locations are a hard thing to sugar coat.
Given that we're a "total force" now, I've always said they should move AETC to the ARC. While some wouldn't care to teach UPT/FTU, many would. It's a ANG dream, no deployments, no chem gear, much easier job to maintain as a part timer...it's a no brainer from that perspective. You'd have no problem filling squadrons and keeping great experience around to teach the young studs. Free up all those AD IP's to fill the spots in AD squadrons. Rotate a small number of AD pilots through to keep a fresh look/perspective, but that will naturally happen as we hire AD pilots anyway. If we had something like that, I'd probably still be in.
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12 hours ago, BashiChuni said:
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So this guy says Putin doesn't want to take over Ukraine, yet at the beginning of the war he tried to take over Kyiv. That makes it seem like he was either wanting to take the place over or install his own puppet government. Either way, the speech at those minutes don't show a signed promise that NATO wouldn't expand east.
9 hours ago, ViperMan said:Make note, Bashi didn't provide any treaty or agreement that limited NATO's expansion - no such document exists. He provided you a video of a guy saying that Putin (Putin, specifically) warned us not to. That's different.
There is no reading of the facts which alleviates Russia's full responsibility as the aggressor in this conflict. They are in direct violation of every one of those treaties. One could argue, as Bashi does, that it was unwise to allow NATO to expand eastward, and that can be a basis for a good argument, but it's also fully opinion, and there is no treaty or arrangement that Ukraine or any other NATO member state has violated that Bashi can point to which places any legal blame on the West. Ask him to provide a receipt. He'll be unable.
This was more my point. Everything I've found says there isn't a signed agreement that limits NATO from expanding east. Even Gorbachev himself seems to agree that there was nothing agreed to about NATO and their eastward expansion.
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4 hours ago, BashiChuni said:
if you read history tell me what the US promised Russia in the early 1990s? you think the US would stand for Canada joining a Chinese military alliance?
Was there a signed promise with Russia? Legit question, I'm still trying to educate myself on the history. So far, this just seems like Putin being Putin in an attempt to restore Russia to their "former glory."
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23 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:
You had a literal cartoon of a toxic progressive running for president against Donald Trump. That's why Trump won. If you sincerely think that a riot at the Capitol is the most dangerous threat to the Constitution in the past decade or so, then you just aren't paying attention.
Shack! If your point could be turned into a video, it would be this guy. I'm right, you're wrong and I have the moral high ground, so you can't even talk. This is why Trump won.
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9 hours ago, BashiChuni said:
maybe the POS flag officer class needs someone from the FGO ranks to kick them in the ass
couldnt do worse than losing two major wars in the last 20 years
On of my 38 IPs (crusty passed over Major) said that every General needed a crusty, passed over Major by his side to tell him "no, that's fucking stupid" because nearly everyone else around him just says yes sir. His delivery was way better than I can every convey here, but I just laughed at the time. The longer I went in my career, the more I realized he was right.
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15 minutes ago, tac airlifter said:
Interesting follow up to the story. I gotta tell you, Elon Musk taking over Twitter and restoring free speech is one of the greatest things to happen in my lifetime.
Oh man, this is either good intentions being twisted into political fodder or there is about to be a shit storm in FEMA come Jan lol. I don't want to believe that this was a wide spread policy and that there was not one person with a spine to blow the whistle on such a thing. This will be interest to see how this plays out.
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8 hours ago, raimius said:
Don't worry we are designing a pubs-case stowable ladder for the F-16. It'll only cost a little over $500k to prototype...
Not joking...
Could probably swing by the sheet metal shop and have one built for some SQ swag and a few cases of beer.
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13 hours ago, MT near said:
Sounds like it's time to retire
The best time to retire, was yesterday.
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MODS: I apologize if I missed it, but can we get this (or any other thread that's already got a good list) stickied to the top? Given that the read file hasn't had a post in years, I assume this place gets more visibility.
I'm a firm believer that readers are leaders and I'd love to see what you're all reading. I'm rifling through books on audiobook at a rate of about 1 per week right, so I'm always looking for my next book. There area bunch of smart mofo's on this forum and I'm certain you all read some great stuff that may not be in my normal list of subjects. Not looking for this to be just a military book thread, but rather a collection of books that you enjoyed and you feel are a great add to anyone's reading list.
Of course I'll start with a military book. Just finished 53 days on Starvation Island and found it to be a great read. It follows a few survivors of the Battle of Midway through their combat experience on Guadalcanal. I can't even begin to imagine the shit these guys faced. Outstanding book...Hero's, all of them!
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30 minutes ago, Biff_T said:
https://youtu.be/aSMsdfY5B8s?si=2pjMv-N_Zq_mRmxs
The coolest thing I've seen in a while is Jimmy Kimmel shedding some man tears. What a loser lol.
It's funny to see Jimmy Kimmel talk about something being bad for women...the same guy who co-hosted the man show. Their hypocrisy knows no bounds.
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1 hour ago, O Face said:
Amen!! And while we’re at it, they should hold him down and forcefully shave off his fucking eyebrows!!
Just one of his eyebrows.
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It's more like 20M not showing up, 20M showing up, then 20M not showing up again. Not sure if anyone is looking into the data to see why the turnout was so high in 2020, but I'm sure it would be a great story for someone willing to nerd out in the data.
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Listen, I'm not a pilot but you did what you were trained to do, the board found it justified, and we know you just moved your family across the country to assume command, but fuck you, you don't deserve to keep command. Sounds about par for the course. Dude's comments were a lot more gracious than I'd have been, especially if he already has his 20 lol. "Follow on orders were offered and we're still deciding..." Not sure why anyone would want to stick around after that treatment. I wish him the best of luck and hope he falls into a cush post military career.
[quote]The investigation concluded the pilot’s decision to eject was ultimately inappropriate because commanded-flight inputs were in progress at the time of ejection, standby flight instrumentation was providing accurate data, and the aircraft’s backup radio was, at least partially, functional. Furthermore, the aircraft continued to fly for an extended period after ejection.”[/quote]
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2 hours ago, tac airlifter said:
Our self imposed rules (from 09-21) made killing them in amounts necessary simply impossible; as they advanced using large convoys in the open we were too caught up in “near certainty” and “proportionality” to be decisive and ruthless. Even the fact we used Type 2 CAS procedures instead of SCAR for interdiction missions with no friendlies present speaks to an obsession with control at the expense of combat effectiveness. I will continue to blame our generals and be convinced we could have killed our way to victory, and although our captains are great at killing our leaders suck at aligning those actions into a sum greater than its parts.
100% this. CH fought in a completely different war than many of us. Toward the end, we couldn't drop unless the GC (a general at AUAB) and his JAG, had continuous, live robot feed on the target and we certainly didn't drop if CDE got above 0.69%. But I know one thing, we all had the proper uniform on at all times and we were COVID free thanks to a 2 week sit in the mold infested, old coalition compound at AUAB...
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4 hours ago, ClearedHot said:
I've gone back and forth in my mind a thousand times, nine deployments was it a waste? Our yardstick of success tends to be the end state which is valid but doesn't tell the whole story. While it sucks the Taliban are running Afghanistan today I prefer to think about it in different terms like a relative peace at home for 20 years. Afghanistan was a flame the drew a lot of bad moths and we killed them all over there instead of here. Not necessarily the perfect metric of winning and losing but if you step back there is value to what you did, it was not a waste.
I cringe when I see the Vietnam comparisons. That was a fumbling bumbling proxy war against Russia, we wasted 58,220 American lives trying to keep South Vietnam "free." Our political and military leaders were stooges who tied our hands behind our back when it came to fighting. While far from perfect, the military was allowed to truly fight in Afghanistan and we created a killing machine that eliminated a lot of horrible humans.
The effectiveness of the War on Terror will be debated for many years to come. Wars always get front-page press because of the drama. A few stats for perspective:
From 2019 to 2022 107,941 Americans died from drug overdoses.
From 2011 to 2021 110,000 Americans died due to drunk driving.
9/11 alone we lost 2,977 Americans.
In 20+ years of fighting in Afghanistan we lost 2459 American service men and women.
I can't disagree with your point on Vietnam, I guess I just meant we allowed ourselves to get drawn into an protracted quagmire with no real objective or end state, other than just keep killing bad guys* (kinda...more below). You can kill as many bad guys as you want, but at some point along the way, you just keep creating more bad guys after you kill their grand-fathers/fathers/uncles. Also, how many were there fighting only becuase we were occupying their nation?
Your experience is probably vastly different than mine. My trips were marked with such a tight ROE that I really don't know why we were there. On my last trip we watched as we let a conga line of 75+ verified Taliban go because the O-7 and his JAG at AUAB decided we can't upset the Taliban at the table. This was just one of many events that were similar from that trip and the unit we ripped out had tapes of multiple situation which were much worse. As another point...when a GO/his JAG, over 1,000 NM away, are making every employment decision, then it's long past time to go home.
We lost 2,459 solider "over there, but as you're well aware, the real number is much higher and counting. Your stats above are well taken, as well as other opinions on the knowledge/skill we gained for our next fight. On the flip side, many of those stats would happen either way and how much further would our military tech be if we didn't funnel our tax dollars to go sling 2 x $80k JDAMs at the farmer turned sniper? How much better off would our national deficit be? Would have been worse off if we would have just killed OBL at Tora Bora and pulled chocks? How much peace was gained by the second decade over there? Of course that's up to debate and something we'll never really knows.
Maybe I'm being a bit too simplistic, I'd love to have this debate with many of you gents over beers.
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2 hours ago, DirkDiggler said:
Enjoyed the read and I hope this dude finds his peace. I really don't struggle to find meaning for my trips to Afghanistan (all post 2010), it can be summed up rather simply...a complete waste of my time away from family. Thankfully I'm at peace with that. Sadly, I think the lessons will be lost in time and the bureaucracy that is our government/military. If that weren't true, we wouldn't have made the same mistakes as we did in Vietnam.
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Nickel
🇺🇸
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15 hours ago, Arkbird said:
I'm literally just copying and pasting from the slides at the end of the night. I'm not going to fact check the FAIPs that put together units and aircraft.
Ha, further proof that FAIPs are idiots!
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55 minutes ago, StoleIt said:
UAF F-16 allegedly downs SU-34.
Follow ups:
- Do their Vipers have off boresight capability?
- Did we give them -9X's?
Not today Vlad!
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8 hours ago, brabus said:
Probably meant Hill Reserves
Hopefully they learn about the vast differences between the Reserves and the ANG before they make the decision to bail on AD.
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Reverend!
I can't say it felt like #winning as we watched a bunch of ANA/ANP getting overrun by the Taliban because of ROE and chicken shit civilian and military leaders. Felt like a metaphor for our time in Afghanistan. The few employments we had were probably just killing the kids of the guys we killed when I was there a decade earlier. We didn't have any semblance of a gameplan or objective when I was there in 2011...2021 was way worse. If we had taken out OBL at Tora Bora and subsequently pulled out (or left when we finally got him), I might have considered Afghanistan a win. Did we stop a possible terrorist attack on US soil during that time...maybe. Did we create more people who want to repeat 9/11 down the road...absolutely. We did find ourselves with aged jets, a few trillion in debt and more dead/broken soldiers, so we got that going for us...
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15 hours ago, disgruntledemployee said:
PS. My use of the term dude is uni-whatever and applies to man/woman/it. Why do I say this? I read some Delters duking it out on APC and apparently, calling someone Dude was akin to a societal travesty. Surely we are more normal over here, right?
Lol wut? Ima have to go find that one. But it is the internet, they'll argue about anything.
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1 hour ago, FUSEPLUG said:
While I hate to see us drawing down in a market, I'll be glad to not be flying there as much. ATC and our rampers there are top notch. But as soon as that door opened, nothing pleasant happened. Our customer-facing staff there are not good - borderline aggressive toward customers and crew members. Obviously it's not across the board, but I rarely had a pleasant experience on the C concourse of ATL.
It sucks for the folks based there. I hope their QOL-shift is minimal. But there's no way SWA's product could seriously compete in Delta's hometown.
Yes, ATL has few redeeming features. If I deal with attitude from a gate agents, it's in ATL. If I'm getting a long delay for wheels up time, it's into/out of ATL. If I'm getting slowed 150 miles out and vectored off the arrival multiple times, it's in ATL. If I'm getting nitpicked by a major asshole of a ground controller, it's in ATL (he was gone, but I heard he, or his disciple, is back). If I'm playing human bumper cars in a tight ass terminal, it's ATL. If I'm being greeted at food/coffee counter by a blank stare or a whachu want, it's in ATL. If I'm getting my nice rotation blown up to one of the shittiest reroutes into an off day...it nearly always when I go through ATL. In case I wasn't clear enough, my bid now includes avoid if landings in ATL.
Hate to see the SWA bros get displaced out of their base, commuting is the single worst thing about this job. Fuse, are they going to pump up BNA numbers to help absorb displacements?
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The Iran thread
in Squadron Bar
Posted
If they were really worried, they'd try some ACA assets.