Jump to content

Stoker

Supreme User
  • Posts

    386
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    1

Everything posted by Stoker

  1. I think it's about having a modern-ish fighter to sell for export to countries we like, but don't trust with the F-35.
  2. When I was applying five years ago, it seemed like maybe 25-30% of units advertised their announcements somewhere central. Most were either word of mouth or on individual unit pages. Now I feel like virtually every unit is posting on Bogidope. It's a lot easier to be aware of boards, which means more applicants apply to more boards because why not.
  3. The idea of having the majority of our electricity come from solar and wind is untenable. We don't have enough real estate (near places that actually use the power), we don't have enough raw materials, and we don't have even a tenth of a percent of the storage capacity necessary for a couple cloudy weeks of winter. Back it up with nuclear, you say, but if you're going to build nuclear plants that can handle 100% of the electrical load, in addition to renewables that can handle 100% of the electrical load... why not just build the nuclear plants and save literally trillions of dollars (besides letting people virtue signal by having solar roofs). The problem is that the time scale to build a nuclear plant is more or less twenty years at this point. Places that have heavily gone into renewables, like California, are going to face rolling blackouts for at least that long, and that's if their political establishment leans into nuclear today, which it won't. Gas and coal plants are reaching the end of their planned life (if not already years beyond, because replacements won't get permitted), so they'll be offline for maintenance more and more. Meanwhile electricity demands will go up as more EVs hit the roads and natural gas heating is phased out. We really need a national Manhattan Project II to push nuclear, rapidly, around the country, as a matter of national security. As others have said, the sooner oil is only used for niche transport applications and industrial/chemical processes, the better, as we can completely divest from the petrostates abroad.
  4. The sanctions don't just have the effect of making Russians miserable. The Russian government, unlike the US, doesn't have the luxury of buying weapons on unlimited credit. They need revenue to pay and feed their soldiers, buy new guns, weaponry, etc. Sure, they still have oil revenues, but my guess is that with the sanctions, the Russians sell less gas this year than they did last year, and next year their actual production drops as specialized, irreplaceable equipment and people become scarce.
  5. Russia colonized vast stretches of Asia, and enslaved the locals (although slavery wasn't a major feature of their economy, because they had serfdom until 1861). The Ottomans had an extensive slave trade, including but not limited to slave raids all around the Black Sea. The rise of the West wasn't based on slavery and colonization. It was based on agricultural and industrial revolutions. The places that built their economy on slavery and exploiting the locals (the South, Latin America) ended up far poorer than the places that didn't. If you're just saying that that's Russia's internal mythology, sure, I guess it could be, but it's far from true.
  6. I wonder. The wheeled vehicles they're using for the actual invasion have their tires falling apart for lack of care and maintenance. How likely are vehicles in storage for the past 30 years likely to be anywhere near ready to roll into combat? And even if you get a far-outdated T-72 running, how effective will the second wave of unmotivated conscripts be, knowing they have even less chance the first wave (since the mothballed stuff certainly doesn't have any modern electronics or reactive armor)?
  7. That's great. What's the most effective way for them to do that? Is it mirroring the entirety of a modern combined arms force, but in miniature? Or is it specializing in something?
  8. Not a crazy idea. Given how small some of the NATO members' contributions are, pretending they're a Tier 1 nation is probably wasteful. Our military has 40 times the active personnel and 100 times the reserve personnel of the Netherlands. Give the small guys a niche to fill and let them be good at that niche. Won't happen, for the same reason that Taiwan buys fighters instead of SAMs.
  9. The marriage penalty isn't something new from this administration; it's been around for decades at least.
  10. This isn't exactly news, look up the air mail scandal for an early example of military aviation lagging behind civilian when it comes to flying in weather.
  11. That checks. The ten year commitment doesnt hit until you are a rated pilot, and they're far more interested in filling a maintenance officer slot with a motivated prior E than a disgruntled UPT washout who is gonna bail in two years.
  12. Being an anti-Trump Republican is about as opposite from "swaying with the winds" as is possible.
  13. While inflation might eat away at retirement benefits somewhat (i.e. I wouldn't be shocked if in times of crisis you see COLAs set a point lower than inflation to save money), Congress has shown itself to be incredibly responsive to groups like military retirees, social security pensioners, etc. Because these groups live in every single district and have a huge financial incentive to lobby their reps, the reps have a huge incentive to keep them happy. No Congressman wants to see his opponent next election with an ad that says he made retirees live on the street.
  14. Agreed. “We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.” As far as the economic troubles of the Taliban go, it's not just a question of paying the bills. You don't have cities of four million people in a country where subsistence agriculture is the primary occupation. Famine by the end of next year absent the Taliban making a deal to continue food aid... Which may not be a bad thing from the Taliban's perspective, since Kabul's population is likely to be the one least friendly to them.
  15. Just because it's no one's fault doesn't mean no one is responsible. If you lose a war, maybe we don't want you in charge of fighting the next one.
  16. No, ARTs are explicitly denied Tricare. You get the standard range of options available to Federal civilian employees. The retirement is the federal pension. The base calculation is off your highest three years of civil service. Get 1% (1.1% if you retire later) of that amount for each year of creditable service. So if your high three average is $100k and you have ten years of service, your pension is $10k a year. You pay 4.4% of your paycheck for this. You need five years of creditable service to get anything, and that can include military time if you pay a few thousand bucks to "buy it back."
  17. I've heard of a guy who was one week from his TDART start date when the rug was pulled out from under him. Don't worry, the Air Force has solved the pilot shortage. /s
  18. Every business is going to try and realize cost savings from teleconferencing in lieu of business travel... Until the first time they lose. $5 million contract to the company that sent their executives out in person for a couple grand.
  19. Repaired, at a significant premium over buying a like-new, refurbished Beech 400.
  20. You also don't jump directly to hyperinflation. People forget that the main instances of hyperinflation were ones of government intentionally destroying their currency (Weimar Germany) or countries with no real economy left to underlay the currency (Zimbabwe, Venezuela). A decade or two of 15% inflation would go a long way towards debt reduction (at least, for that not on short term treasuries).
  21. TDART involves earning a fair amount of pay on the mil side as well, as opposed to a single income stream for pure mil. Maybe it involves working more hours, maybe not... Depends on how hard you were working as an O-2. They floated the idea of a contract (really, a promise) to do TDART for five years if you got picked up for UPT, but that lasted about five minutes before they realized they couldn't legally enforce it.
  22. It's not just straight GS, it's an OPM special rate table that adds maybe 25% or so to the base + locality pay. Also, you can always quit... There is no contract besides annoying your boss for making them do the paperwork for you to then leave soon. If your goal is airlines and you can afford the paycut, go to a regional and get 5x the flight time you'll get on the mil side. But if not, TDART ain't bad.
  23. I'm mystified at how Textron hasn't managed to lobby to sell a couple years' production of a random not-in-demand business jet as a T-1 replacement / jobs program.
×
×
  • Create New...