jice

The royalties may mean actual money… everything else is budget dust to budget dust. The lease bond is returned after conclusion of the lease, unless there’s an issue—then it becomes budget dust on the insurer’s books. Probably won’t make gas cheaper, but once the dust settles it likely won’t have a meaningful impact. Except, as bus driver pointed out: Incentivizing extracting the same product in places where the Public has less of a stake. This is a nothingburger.

Science, obviously.

Thanks. No questions; cleared off. Anybody *with SA* on the actual advantages to designation as a FIS? (as opposed to a fighter squadron or aggressor squadron that conducts air defense missions, which was a relatively regular occurrence). Put another way: what follows with the name change in terms of budgets, manning, etc.? Why FIS rather than Fighter Squadron (wrt resourcing, etc.)?

More local than the DAF re-org… https://theaviationist.com/2024/04/04/u-s-air-force-18th-aggressor-squadron-redesignated-as-18th-fighter-interceptor-squadron/ Neato. Anyone with SA able to explain the ‘why?’

Neat fact: the President doesn’t require a security investigation or formal clearance while in office.

One of the coolest jets around. Slight correction: remain on loan to NASA from the USAF. No danger of them coming back though; it’s manned and therefore cannot possibly be useful for recce in the modern world. /s

At that Army General: Tell me you think dozens of miles at a time in a poorly contested EMS without saying you think dozens of miles at a time in a poorly contested EMS.

Gotta figure out some way to pay for the $50k bonuses we tricked a bunch of 27-year-old-second-assignment-no-ground-duties bros into taking. Anybody have previous years’ increments handy?

Not a professional; consult one… Not directly. The payout will be withheld as a bonus, but remember: it’s taxed the same as any normal income. If that withholding is at a significantly higher rate than the rest of your income (unlikely, I’d guess), you COULD adjust to “flatten” that bubble over the rest of the year to hit 0(ish). Consult a pro & don’t dork up the math. Not worth the pain or risk of messing it up without realizing it… IMHO.

Maybe not as dumb as it looks… It’s Southwest. Open seating; those seats go unfilled anyway 97% of the time, since you can’t physically put somebody there and nobody’s going to insist on lifting a love handle to take their seat. I guarantee you that fat, cheap people aren’t buying two seats en masse with southwest now. This way they can charge a fee to process the refund (or keep the cash in exchange for travel credit) and they get to put the cash to work between purchase and refund. At an airline committed to open seating, this is how you create a surcharge while winning a PR victory in the community you’re extracting dollars from

Yeah man, I think that’s obvious. I’m saying it’s a complicated topic that people have been trying to figure out for thousands and thousands of years. I’m not able to add anything… We’re all about 60 lifetimes of reading behind as is. For the purpose of this discussion, re: ‘will to fight’ it’s the folks who have the credible and enforceable authority to order forces to fight on behalf of a state. Also for the purposes of this discussion, it obviously varies by how you bound things in time (among a billion other ways to frame). For example, in our system the ‘will of the state’ comes down to exactly one human at a singular point in the first few minutes of a full-scale nuclear exchange… but you can zoom out from there to all the factors that put the button in his hand, and farther to the system in which that button exists, ad infinitum.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_(polity) I’m sure we’ll settle this over the next few days by blaming team D or team R, but “what is a state” is a worthwhile recurring rabbit hole.

Yes. Yes. The people who say that are conflating a state’s intent to fight with the consequences of the policies it uses to do so. Those are related concepts but not the same, regardless of form of government.

Is there something I’m missing that makes the Ukrainian draft unethical/illegal? Or are they just drafting people because… Russia invaded them (again)? Or, in insanity land… you’re right, that greatest generation had no spine because conscription provided 10 million personnel.

Which demographic are you talking about?

1) I’m proud of you for not ‘laughing out loud’ for a whole post, Biff. Well done. 2) There’s still a chance!.. depending on how froggy this (and the rest of the world) gets. …lol

Lighten up. Delicious? I don’t share your belief; don’t see your point. Like I said, weird hill. If that’s the one you choose to look down on us from, I don’t think many will bother to charge it. Cheers.

Homeslice just wants to drink a beer, fvck his horse, and catch an episode of “will it euthanize.” Why are we picking on him?

So I think I understand you to mean: You strongly believe that animals do not have rights. Therefore, laws that treat animals differently are hypocrisy. For example, if a person supports shooting a coyote (and leaving it to rot, I guess?) but not fighting dogs, that they’re a hypocrite. Therefore your preference is that dog fighting be legal to avoid hypocrisy? Does this attachment to the idea that animals don’t have rights make your life so much easier to live that you’d prefer a world in which dog fighting is legal? It’s a strange hill, bro.

@HeloDude I don’t understand your position in this debate. Could you state it for somebody who’s obviously missing something?

Are nukes on the table for Russia? Yes. Just like they’re on the table for us. Is it likely to escalate there? Almost certainly not. Many were surprised that we DIDN’T use nukes in Korea. Maybe the talk about nukes dragged us in a different direction. The point is: if you argue that Russia is concerned about certain actions triggering escalation and assume they are actively managing those risks, you have to consider the increasing possibility of that mitigation failing at some point (human error) as the conflict drags on. The USSR and US traded aircraft during the Cold War, sure. That was the norm. It is not the norm now, and retaliation in kind would be both justifiable and escalatory should that situation have ended differently. Would it be WWIII? Probably not. Is there a series of unlikely, unavoidable events that would get us there? Yes. The folks absolutely convinced that this is the road to the big one are probably nuts. But anybody whose job exists in the security apparatus has to consider it as part of the strategic context.

Reference the news about the Brit RJ from a couple pages back… stupid stuff happens in protracted conflict. The hedge against escalation due to a mistake is escalation dominance, which is achieved by positioning troops to do exactly the thing that your adversary fears and is trying to avoid in the first place. The detectable signatures look a lot like planning an entry to the war… due to the fact that you’re planning a [contingent] entry to the war. What trumps that planning? Nukes. Nobody wants this to go that direction, but there’s a primrose path ready to be walked because of dumb f’kn luck. It’s a dangerous world out there, and wringing of hands, worry, and being ready to divert that train is 100% appropriate.

You’re right. Unnecessary noise… what’s the valid mission need for making life less convenient/pleasant for families? ETA: if there is a valid need: Great. If not, just follow the rules and let these folks figure out the definition of “suitable” on their own.

Lots of talk about demo teams in some other threads. Figure I’d revive this one. 11 years later the F-16 and A-10 are back! Looks like there was a T-6 demo at one point in the early/mid 00s, coinciding with the T-6 coming online. Anybody have experience with that one? What are your thoughts on a revived T-6 demo team? Seems like high-school football flyovers followed by a “and come see them fly at podunk airshow tomorrow” could be a low-cost way to get young minds thinking about military aviation.

Could you elaborate? What’s ‘high ops tempo’ mean for AETC life?