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Majestik Møøse

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Everything posted by Majestik Møøse

  1. If I were fighting an enemy that had gone all-in on high-end low volume $500M silver bullets with standoff weapons, I think I’d just pay some insurgent groups a couple $B to go start fires on the other 5 continents. The idea that we should only have assets that can fly west of Taiwan is ludicrous.
  2. A lot of us still fly like this, albeit with ForeFlight strapped to the leg.
  3. Intel defaults to doom and gloom baseball cards. Some of them seem to get enjoyment from telling scary stories to the pilots.
  4. That’s a net gain of a 14x14 mile square for the world’s 4th largest military after a year of force on force conflict. It boggles the mind how wrong we were about their abilities before the war started.
  5. Probably aided by Trump consistently disparaging POWs, WIA, and KIA as losers.
  6. Turn reversal at 6:45 was definitely fun
  7. …I’d guess the left but when pressed would doubt myself.
  8. Crossville, TN sure is getting taken for quite the ride. https://www.crossville-chronicle.com/news/local_news/dean-guest-speaker-at-fg-community-church-flag-day-event/article_7b695aea-0095-11ee-844b-4fa21924db71.html https://www.crossville-chronicle.com/news/glade_sun/salute-to-the-flag-retired-colonel-won-t-stop-honoring-my-country/article_dfd42a28-1044-11ee-981c-dba997986bc0.html
  9. I should say - to be 100% truthy - I’ve worked with some great O-6s. But they were in the minority, and at some point almost all of them said something that made me think twice. Never let your guard down. The really good O-6s we’re the ones that shielded you from bullshit so you could remain of pure heart and mind and give them the best information possible.
  10. Exactly the same experience. Reminded me heavily of the board room scene from Margin Call (which by the way is an outstanding movie heavily inspired by the Lehman Brothers collapse): the big boss at the head of the table engaged directly with the analyst who’s telling him “there’s a big problem that’s going to tank us all”, while the middle managers in between just want him to be quiet because they all want to hide mistakes or don’t really know what’s going on. Or a little bit of both. “You’re talking to me, Mr. Sullivan.”
  11. Bobs lie to their bosses about how things are going. The Russians did it leading up to the Ukraine invasion and I’ve seen it amongst our own O-6s+ in real time. The Full Bird Reset (where they fall in line with the orders of their superiors with the renewed loyalty of an E-1) is a real phenomenon and I swear they can’t see that they’re doing it. Policies, Guidance, Ways Forward, already decided COAs - written by a non-expert AO/staffer and approved with a nod from a 4-star - could be completely out to lunch but if there’s even a perception that an O-6+ is pushing back they’re done career-wise. Read about Xi’s Thoughts where everyone in the Chinese government is required to understand and think the same way as Xi…can anyone see echoes of that mentality in our own failed endeavors? The good news is that we’re different, because that lockstep mentality doesn’t exist at most of the Capt-Maj aircrew level. There are enough of them that they can air their informed opinions and grievances when things aren’t looking quite right, but still remain relatively anonymous. And sometimes that trickles up, skipping echelons when the wise GOs wander down to the slums to get a feel for things. Which is their duty, IMO. Don’t ever lie to your boss.
  12. It was the military’s fault for never pushing back, first on regime change without economic investment and then on leaving based on an arbitrary timetable. Edit: ok I just read the article, and from looking at the graphs the confidence increases greatly when your favorite politician is president.
  13. You could plop two of the same guy into the Air Force (or any other organization) and get completely different outcomes regarding performance, experience, and morale. Or you could have guys from wildly different backgrounds reach the same outcomes. The morale and personal outlook certainly varies by assignment and time, and sometimes you get far enough behind the morale power curve that staying in the Air Force is no longer worth it to either you or the organization. I think that’s all that @Standby was trying to say. Everyone, including the government, is glad for the work you did.
  14. Seriously, why would the USAF entertain the idea of spending $69B to develop a new A-10 when they could use a combo of Vipers, EXs, and F-35s to do the same thing? When the existing A-10 already 1). works and 2.) costs well under $2B/year to operate and upgrade. If the answer is “because the senators want the airplane builders to have steady income,” ok I’ll buy that.
  15. Lockheed always gets their $69B annual revenue; don’t worry they will also plan and execute the war for us so we don’t need you guys
  16. Your troll game is slipping!
  17. Agree, deterrence. I’m not sure if anyone in this thread is arguing that.
  18. Yes of course it takes a lot of work to prepare to fight China, thanks for that insight Brabus. Train/equip as if it’s likely? Sure. Is it actually likely? No, and I already have a nice bottle of whiskey bet placed on an over/under date.
  19. “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone…”
  20. Most Dangerous War vs Most Likely War. I think the problem is that the most dangerous war will also include the most likely war.
  21. So less entrenched, more punching requires less CAS?
  22. The people that do CAS care about CAS, there’s zero doubt there. Do the visible or invisible hands of acquisition, budgeting, and rhetoric care about CAS? I just don’t see it. Leadership only talks about the first day of a peer conflict. CAS barely makes it into LFEs. Green Flag is an afterthought. The POGO paper referenced earlier. So you’re saying that USAF and Navy air actions are required to win enough control of the air to be able to move ground forces in (totally agree), but then say that chopping ATO sorties to CAS afterwards is a poor use of resources? Unfortunately I think you’ve hit the nail on the head: everyone actually agrees with that, which is why the services with CAS requirements aren’t going to make forces available for the Air Component to send them 800 miles downrange or crossrange to their FLOT just to service 1% of the day’s JIPTL. Not to mention you might not get the jets back afterwards. Would you as a Marine 1-Star let your meager amount of F-35s and Hornets be chopped to an AOC process that’s 6000 miles away, disconnected, and working on perpetually old information for where the FLOT even is? I would recommend absolutely not to, because the AOC will burn them up either mechanically or via attrition on not-CAS to satisfy their (understandable and required) objectives, leaving you with not enough air support later. The same goes for your organic airlift and AR capacity; be very cautious about giving that away for other components’ tasking. So scoping out more: when the Air Force said years ago that they would always provide CAS for the Army and Marines, I can see a very logical reason for those other services to be wary of that. Not because of the lack of commitment from Hogs, JTACs, MQ-9s and everyone else doing CAS (because they’re clearly committing their life to getting it done), but because of a perceived lack of commitment at the institutional level.
  23. Well this whole discussion proves why the Marines feel the need to have their own Air Force. If I were them, I wouldn’t trust the other services to help me whatsoever. I’ve said otherwise in the past, but now I get it. Trust no one.
  24. The Air Force is locked into throwing jets into the “survivable” or “not survivable” bins as a justification to promote them or delete them to congress. The Air Force actively promotes the KC-46 as “survivable” and the scoffs the A-10 as “not survivable”, even though who is going to get shot at and when is dependent on lot of stuff.
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