Pooter

@Lord Ratner it’s a fun non-argument from Coleman but please tell me what Russia and China developing nukes slightly ahead is schedule 70 years ago has to do with a DNI report on Iran from 2025. Netanyahu has been saying Iran is weeks from a bomb for 30 years, so which is it? Are they ahead of schedule or behind schedule? Silly me I guess I just read the current intel reports from the current people doing the job. But to your second bigger point, there are numerous other countries that have enriched uranium and set up infrastructure to have what is referred to as a “latent nuclear deterrent.” Germany, South Korea, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, and a few others are all considered to have the volume of enriched material and technology to rush to a bomb if they need to. Iran may very well have been in this category too but by all available intel they were not pursuing a weapon. These countries do this as a bargaining chip and insurance policy—basically “don’t fuck with us because we could rush to a bomb if we wanted to.” By any rational analysis this is what Iran was doing. They want regime survival and not to be fucked with. They aren’t irrational head choppers who are going to fire a nuke the first second they get their hands on one because they know Israel has nukes too and would be headed right back their way. A latent nuclear deterrent is the middle ground they were shooting for where they don’t have to have the risk of having a bomb on paper but have some the bargaining power of the ability to make one. I guess if you think launching a war to deny them that bargaining power is a good thing.. fair enough. But it’ll be hard to prevent it forever.

I’m not getting the alarmism from the media.. it’s from your post: “It is completely conceivable they would strike us, Israel or Europe first with a nuclear weapon in an unattributable manner.“ No it’s actually not. Why do you just take that as a given? North Korea has nukes now, why haven’t they funneled one to a terror organization and blown up Seoul or Tokyo or NYC? Because it would be obviously attributable.. you think if a nuke goes off in Tel Aviv and because the terrorists that hypothetically did it weren’t draped in Iranian flags it’s some giant mystery where they got it from? Did they get it from France? Of course it’s attributable. These regimes want the nukes as a deterrent and tool to ensure their own survival. You think they’d spend all that time and energy to make one and then give it away to some 3rd party who may or may not even set it off properly? You guys act like all these countries are lunatic isis-style suicidal head choppers but they actually spend most of their time acting in their own rational self interest. And the whole point is moot because our own intel community assessed they weren’t building a bomb but clearly we’re gonna keep ignoring that.. This hypothetical nuke situation is all just another GWOT WMD pretext for war and maybe you don’t watch Fox News but somehow the Mark Levin boomer talking points have filtered down to you through the algorithm. Netanyahu has been saying Iran is weeks/months from a nuke since the 1990s. You can find the compilations on YouTube.

Russia and China were well aware that our military is dope before we showed it off yet again. This isn’t some “oh shit” moment for them. They’re patiently watching, collecting valuable intel, and they’re celebrating that every JASSM, MOP, TLAM, PrSM, and high end interceptor missile used against Iran is one less we have for an eventual fight with them. We moved CSGs, marines, fighter squadrons, patriot and THAAD batteries, and countless weapons from other AORs to the Middle East and I’m supposed to believe this makes our force posture toward China stronger?! Our resources are vast, but not infinite, and everything you expend against a second rate regional power is stuff you won’t have to fight against the big dog. Also agreed, Iran with a nuke is not a good thing, but as I posted earlier, our own intelligence community assessed they were not trying to build one as recently as this past year. Which I guess is just an inconvenient fact that we’re gonna continue to gloss over. Then we “obliterated their nuclear program” in midnight hammer but now suddenly there’s an imminent nuclear threat of the bomb we already assessed they weren’t making, then “obliterated” … So what the fuck are we even talking about? This is all boomer GWOT Fox News alarmism. “IF WE DONT ACT NOW THEYRE GONNA NUKE TEL AVIV OR NYC NEXT WEEK.” How do you guys not see this is just the same old script the establishment uses to sell every war?

100% This is gonna get blown up into a controller/FAA manning issue (as it should) but a huge portion of the responsibility shared by the fire truck crew is going to be lost on most people. Nothing against our emergency response folks but anyone who’s been a pilot long enough knows they kinda blast around airfields with very little regard for clearances. In the few times where I have ground egressed a jet, my primary concern after getting out was not being hit by a firetruck. And they aren’t pilots so they’re not going to have the same mental picture we might have after listening to a tower freq for a minute or two. I hope this incident prompts more airfield ops training for emergency crews because in my experience their shenanigans on the airfield and generally garbage comms tend add more chaos to emergency situations than they alleviate.

Yeah if there’s one thing sure to improve our positioning in the world it’s getting sucked into another middle eastern boondoggle 🙄 Russia and China are absolutely salivating over this. Why do you think they haven’t stepped in to broker some kind of ceasefire? Because you don’t interrupt your enemy when they’re in the middle of curb stomping their own dick.

Phew thank goodness the 2026 DNI report says China isn’t gonna move on Taiwan now because of our big dick moves in South America and the Middle East. I’ve always considered the DNI report to be the gold standard analysis. Wonder what the 2025 report said about Iran.. checks notes.. “WMD We continue to assess Iran is not building a nuclear weapon and that Khamenei has not reauthorized the nuclear weapons program he suspended in 2003, though pressure has probably built on him to do so.“ 2025 DNI report pg. 26 https://www.dni.gov/files/ODNI/documents/assessments/ATA-2025-Unclassified-Report.pdf well shit. I guess the main thing to know about DNI reports is that you should ignore them if they don’t justify another forever war in the Middle East

https://www.cbsnews.com/amp/news/u-s-deploy-82nd-airborne-iran-middle-east/ mmm yes it’s all going according to plan. -we’re actively in talks with Iran according to trump -but also we attacked them the last two times we were in talks -and also Iran says we aren’t in talks -and now potential movement toward boots on the ground -but it’s probably just to secure Kharg island which is like.. not really boots on the ground.. Goalpost shift in 3.. 2.. 1..

Don’t be silly dude, this is baseops.. disrespecting the troops only matters when left wing presidents do it

@Lord Ratner You’re correct that the sky isn’t falling, but to me that’s kinda the most key insight. Unless we have another 9/11 god forbid, these boondoggles never feel like the sky is falling at the time. They’re an incremental forward march of tit for tat strikes, dick measuring, and reprisals that get us entangled in these things for the long run. It’s hard to sniff out as it’s happening because we can get easily distracted by our dope ass military fucking shit up (admittedly awesome.) It’s much easier with the clarity 20 years of hindsight provides to see that Iraq/afghanistan were an exercise in futility. I genuinely hope this is wrapped up quick and I’m eating crow with you guys telling me I told you so on here in a few days.

@FourFans disagree on all points. -the Iranian navy was not “much vaunted” to anyone except the Iranian regime. now that we’re in this stupid boondoggle I’m happy to see it decimated, but I’m not particularly impressed that we could do it. Like I said I never had any doubt in our abilities to wreck shit.. but what is the plan now? -a small dog cornered can still do a lot of damage especially in their own back yard. And they’ll be hell bent on rebuilding with the express purpose of getting revenge. Has Middle East insurgent math just flown right past all your heads all these years? When you whack the top guy in a government and bomb everything to shit, it doesn’t just stop being a problem. You create a power vacuum where often the most violent and radical people then take over. Hmmm wonder if we’ve ever seen this before 🤔 -trump isn’t holding his cards close to disguise some 4-d chess plan. There is no plan. We are making this shit up as we go. Rubio and Johnson already accidentally admitted we got pulled into this by Israel who was gonna go with or without us, and WH and mil staff are now leaking trump is getting frustrated that this thing hasn’t wrapped up already. He’s the one offering off ramps to Iran and they are choosing not to take them. -lastly I think it’s perfectly within bounds to criticize foreign policy as it’s happening. I’m far more “in the arena” than trump ever has been or ever will be, so I don’t accept your “let it play out” suggestion. It’s our asses on the line and time away from our families to go fight the war of choice that trump explicitly campaigned against. And as with the rest of our middle eastern boondoggles this one looks like it’s going to drag on far longer than we initially intended and result in tons of money spent for negligible gain

Dude you post this like we’re out of the woods already, except: -Iran is striking civilian oil tankers as we speak -regime is not changed, in fact we now have a more hardline ayatollah in charge with nothing to live for but revenge -if midnight hammer was such a glowing success why are we back here doing the same shit 6 months later -nuclear material is still not secured (and probably won’t ever be without a catastrophic boots on the ground op) -regime is now backed into a corner in survival mode where their only real move left is terrorism, attacking soft target civilian infrastructure, and even more severe internal repression -trump admin has signaled off ramps now multiple times and the Iranian regime isn’t backing down -no discernible plan on our end other than to just keep blowing stuff up And none of this is to say the boys aren’t doing amazing work over there right now. They are. But wrecking shit was never our weakness, it’s having any semblance of a plan for what comes next

@Clark Griswold I just say 50 by going off historical precedent. We were supposed to get 700+ raptors and 100 B-2s. There are already talks of cutting F-35 production in favor of NGAD paper promises. We’re dumping the wedge tail and can’t field a single engine jet trainer without a litany of issues. I’ve ranted about this in other threads before but I don’t think we have the attention span to stick with programs or build jets in numbers that are tactically relevant anymore. I would bet on getting 25% of the airframes we originally planned for. 50 would be 50% of the original B-21 order number which given how f-ed our acquisitions are right now would literally be a moonshot best case scenario. Would love to be proven wrong

Back on the B-21 topic I think we should all keep in mind that we’re probably only getting 50 of these things (if we’re lucky) so the question here is how comfortable are you trusting a very limited strategic asset to a single pilot? Bomber pilots will all tell you these long duration sorties really wear you down and little mistakes creep in as the fatigue gets worse. The airlines have figured this out too and they operate with a far higher degree of automation than most military jets. I know our fighter brethren are all high SA giga-chad superheroes who can do everything themselves but with all due respect if you haven’t flown a sortie over 24 hours un-augmented, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You need two pilots on this plane unless you’re comfortable putting them into the ground on a semi regular basis.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here but even for a decent pilot it takes numerous hacks at landings and A/R in a heavy aircraft before they’re even remotely close to safe. And this talking about a winged pilot who has flown UPT fingertip/CT/fluid maneuvering and then done all that stuff again in the FTU as well. The scope of the upgrade required here is to bring the WSOs up to speed is basically just.. pilot training. This is an idiotic and borderline suicidal idea enshrined by a 4-star who was on their way out the door and in search of a silver bullet to fix their self-inflicted manning problems. Probably the suckiest part is that when it’s inevitably walked back the WSO union is going to feel even more betrayed and sidelined than they already do now. And then we’ll be back to square one where there’s still no plan of what to do with them.

An interesting wrinkle here is that the B-21 is already flying.. with two pilots. So I don’t know at what point they’re planning to transition to single pilot ops or how global strike plans to train up some WSO monitors who could theoretically AR or land in a pinch. Just an all around wildly bad idea. Root cause here is they have no clue what to do with WSOs as airframes that have them gradually go away, while we simultaneously hemorrhage pilots. Get stoned, kill two birds I guess.