Danger41

I purposely stay out of all this stuff but holy shit, this is sad.

It’s the time of year for these transfer portal (a whole other discussion there) and this one is great. ”Since I am not very tough and Leach is glad I am leaving, I will be entering my name into the transfer portal”. Mike Leach lmao.

I looked it up and according to the Marines website (https://www.aviation.marines.mil/About/Aircraft/Tilt-Rotor/) The inventory between the MV, CV, and HV (Navy) variants should total about 450. These started flying operationally in 2006 and have hit 700,000 hours in that time. For comparison, the U-28 fleet with 1/15 the fleet size, has amassed the same amount of hours approximately. I highlight this point purely to show that I really, really, really hope that the V-280 has alot of the maintenance issues figured out. I'll admit that the V-22 is much more complicated than a PC-12, but damn.

Completely agree that it’s not as fun, but as a tax payer I’d rather have these crews getting training in a cost efficient and representative manner. If that’s with 70 year old T-38’s that can’t takeoff from Ellsworth due to TOLD issues instead of U-28’s that have life out for the next 20 years*, then I’d prefer that. Maybe I’m just jealous that I was never a part of a flying club community that had 38’s sitting on the ramp for me to go train in. But I’ve taken U-28’s into some pretty awesome places and that’s pretty fun too. *The slick PC-12’s flown as companion trainers don’t have that much life left. Apparently doing 30 landings in dirt per sortie wears them out pretty fast. Who knew?

It’ll never happen but they should take the U-28’s getting retired IVO the same time the B-21’s start flying and use those as companion trainers. You won’t have any TOLD concerns, reliable as hell, and I’d suppose that the PC-12 is a better companion trainer than a supersonic white rocket.

Will it though? What do you think it is that keeps USA Men’s soccer from doing better?

Nah, he just left those on the floor for me to high step over like Barry Sanders.

As your roommate on 5 deployments and still AD slug, this hurts. I’ll forever treasure the memories of you crapping your pants in Bagram and owning that intel SrA in Call of Duty.

I’m actually watching this live and watching Christian Pulisic get back in after scoring the goal and getting pretty badly injured has been pretty awesome.

To continue my rugby hijack and to highlight the toughest/crazy sports story I’ve ever heard. TLDR - Dude lost 3 teeth and had his nutsack ripped open in a game, finished the game, and had it sewn up in the training room.

Not to hijack the thread but on the overarching theme of American disinterest due to a perceived lack of action, I wish Rugby would get more of a following here. There’s constant action, violence, and toughness is encouraged. And the culture of player respect (“hooligans game played by gentlemen”) would play well with uptight Americans. I legitimately think if soccer outlawed or at least penalized the flopping, it’d get more of a following here. That part of the game is so antithetical to American sporting culture that I think it’ll hold the sport back here forever.

The greatest and most enduring American contribution to soccer in history.

For the College Gameday fans, Pat McAfee’s first appearance on the show was sitting in for Adam Vinatieri (SDSU alum) as guest picker. Hilarious stuff.

Close. Jackrabbits get all the girls. The girls school you’re thinking of is Middle Tennessee. Funny story about them…back in the day, I went on a recruiting trip to Nebraska and they suffered their biggest home loss ever up to that point (38-9 to Kansas State). They offered me and then subsequently fired Frank Solich (for bad recruiting) and ended the Tom Osborne coaching legacy. It’s all been trash since then. So basically, I destroyed the Nebraska Cornhuskers.

How about the #1 seed South Dakota State Jackrabbits! LFG!!

I guarantee I would’ve signed that at 22.

Not a tanker guy so pardon my ignorance, but why the “tanker” in quotes? And is a 48 hour mission going to destroy a jet because that’s just absurdly long duration or what?

For a point of reference, I got an email from Delta this morning with my availability 10.5 months in the future.

Ukrainian missile hits NATO country and article 5 gets invoked to roll the Ukrainians now?! Didn’t see that coming.

Referencing that document proves my point that merchant vessels can be valid targets if they meet the rules (Paragraph 41). Skipping over the arguments that we could have from paragraph 46 and going to the meat and potatoes of Paragraph 60, specifically section (g) but just for good measure in my Malacca scenario (e). In a true wartime scenario, we shut the straits down and say anyone coming to point x will be stopped and inspected and if they don’t, they’ll be attacked (e). If we know they are providing war materiel to China, they’re already legitimate targets (g). I hope I didn’t come across as not just schwacking any Chinese civilian vessel or civilians in general because I don’t agree with that. But when a country is as dependent on imports as they are, we’d be idiotic to not attack that in a true war. Regarding your comments about never targeting civilians, how do you feel about attacking critical infrastructure? Basically strategic attack? That will have a massive impact on a civilian populace. For history’s sake, how did you feel about the Christmas bombings and the mining of Haiphong harbor?

In a declared war those are absolutely legitimate targets. Hell, the Submarines alone in the Pacific theater shut down over 50% of Japanese shipping, which the Diet referred to as the biggest reason they lost the war (https://web.archive.org/web/20080409052122/http://www.navy.mil/navydata/cno/n87/history/wwii-campaigns.html). And you absolutely don’t need to blockade the whole coastline. Focus on areas like the Straits of Malacca and watch those oil stores on the mainland tick down. See how the cultural elites in Shanghai and Hong Kong like that after a couple months.

If it comes down to fighting their military like Vietnam and an actual war against the Chinese state, I hope it is a straight up war. Reason being is in a real war against the nation of China, we park our navy in some strategic straits and use the AF to help massacre their merchant fleets. Give it 9 months to a year of that and China ceases to exist due to their reliance on imports. We decide to muck around in the SCS and the island chains by fighting militaries, that will end horribly for all parties and not make a lasting difference (in my opinion).

I was deployed in SOF roles so I luckily had that authority. Tying my shoes on the other hand…

The long pole in the tent (to me) with this concept is lifting the weapons that high in significant numbers to matter. All the sensor stuff that is mentioned above is true, but shooting up that high in a platform designed to loiter for a long time means you won’t have the ability to maneuver much and/or loft the shots. Probably don’t need much loft up in the bozosphere, but it’s an interesting math problem. And the maneuvering isn’t that important if the red air sleds right at you, but when you start having to maneuver to set geometry, it can get interesting.