Leaderboard

3rd year NB FO. Worked 88 days this year and flew 559 hours. I grossed $169k. Good luck Air Force!

Agree to disagree...having led a 13 person crew in combat, when it is working properly the crew construct can accomplish FAR more especially in a dynamic and often confusing situation. On more than one occasion I've seen a non-verbals completely change an engagement. I've also seen having another set of eyes and ears stop a potentially very bad situation from happening.

A few points to ponder: 1. It is NOT a foregone conclusion that the Russians hacked anything. Shockingly the mainstream media is starting to push back on the administration narrative that it was the Russians...technically things don't add up and a lot of insiders have been not so quietly questioning the recently released report. I don;t give a lot of value to wikileaks statements but they do deny getting information from the Russians. There are also reports, suggesting it was a disgruntled DNC insider, I absolutely agree we need a bipartisan investigation to help shed some light on what happened. 2. I don't think anyone wants a foreign power hacking our "stuff" but it is EXTREMELY ironic that you are more upset about external criminal action that the fact that the DNC rigged the election. Truly that should be the story of the year, the DNC under Wasserman Schultz fixed the primaries in order to secure the election of a chosen candidate rather than the will of the people. 3. Where do you draw your foreign influence line in the sand? When expressing outrage that another nation might have tried to shape our election how do you response to Obama less covertly tried to hack the Israeli election, not just with words, but with a LOT of money and behind the scenes action. 4. I also find it extremely ironic that liberals are convinced the Russians hacked the DNC emails and are equally convinced there is no possibility they could have hacked HRC's bathroom server. Truly UNREAL! 5. We have been in a cyber war for years and expressing outrage over what might have happened seems to ignore the likely fact that we have done the SAME thing to many other adversaries...

Sometimes, it speeds it up too much. The point is to make correct decisions, not just fast ones.

Some great tweets out about that. "ISIS claims responsibility for Maria Carey performance."

So if a foreign nation hacked the re-election campaign computer networks of President Trump in the run-up to 2020 and released, say, his tax return, his medical records, evidence of his internal political dialogue or strategy, etc., you're ok with that? See the lengthy Rubio quote I posted earlier. The intellectually honest answer would be that if you're ok with Russia hacking the DNC and the Hillary campaign, you're also ok with them or the Chinese or some other state hacking the RNC or the Trump campaign next time around. Playing Red Team / Blue Team on this stuff is not the right way to handle national security issues IMHO. I will stand up and say no. As much as I want Trump to be defeated in 2020, I don't want a hostile foreign power hacking his campaign or the RNC and I refuse to support any Democratic candidate or movement in the future that might think to use hacked information for political gain. I do absolutely place campaign infrastructure and party infrastructure as part of our "democratic institutions" and they should be protected. Obviously hacking voting machines or state voter databases is a higher level of provocation, but it's all part of our election system and foreigners or domestic bad actors need to keep out. Someone earlier said they want a full-up bicameral, bipartisan Congressional investigation...my magic 8 ball says you may get what you asked for in the new Congress.

Yes, the Porkins Package is a factory option, but it cuts into the useful payload.

Good thoughts. I'd like some articles reading/sources for point 1 if you can link them. I've yet to read anything, outside of political malarkey, that says Russia was not the culprit for these hacks. Note: the professional commercial cyber corps (which is a lot former AF/DoD-cyber dudes) are saying, and have been saying out loud for awhile, that the Russians are in everything. What motive do they have to say otherwise in relation to this hack? Concur on all. Again, I think it was this limp-dick foreign policy coming back to bite them in the ass at the worst possible time for them. That coupled with things getting worse and worse for not responding to Russian escalations (re: harassing diplomats, Crimea, etc) and an incoming President who appears to be infatuated with Russia spurred Obama to respond now. Additionally, I think our slow-roll of anything Cyber (orgs, forces, systems, IT system updates, etc.) has caused great consternation within the Administration. While I try to give my leadership the benefit-of-the-doubt always, I also think this JRA might be pressure on the DoD to speed up getting Cyber to where the admin wanted it a year ago. Unfortunately we've got the US Code thing to work through, which I think is going to be heavily modified as we move into real Cyber Ops.

My thoughts: 1. Our current President, Senate Majority Leader, Speaker of the House, DNI, FBI Director, etc. etc. etc. et al are convinced that it was Russia. There is public evidence it was Russia but obviously there is also classified evidence that I'm guessing the vast majority of us are not privy to. I'm very supportive of a joint select committee in Congress to investigate (that will be controlled by Republicans) and the release of more evidence publically up to the point that it would compromise sources and methods. The President-Elect claims he has counter-evidence and that he'd release some of it this coming Tuesday or Wednesday. Let's see what the leading skeptic has to back up his stance. 2. I disagree that the DNC "rigged" the election. They showed a clear bias toward Hillary, which is not ideal. Big picture though, she was a long-time party insider and Bernie is an independent Senator who only briefly switched his official party affiliation to Democratic in order to run. Despite being a long-time member of Congress, he had few allies in the party. Is it really a revelation that the party supported Hillary? I don't approve of some of the seemingly illicit assistance that was given to her, she didn't need extra assistance from the DNC to win the nomination. By the same token, it was very clear that the RNC did not support Trump and would have preferred just about any other nominee, right up until the point that he won. They perhaps did a better job of at least appearing more neutral, I'll give you that. Hillary won 54.8% of pledged delegates in the 2016 primary. By contrast, Obama won 51% of pledged delegates in 2008 even though Hillary actually won more votes in that set of primaries. If anyone was ever screwed out of a nomination by their party's system of super delegates and delegate apportionment compared to vote totals, it was Hillary in 2008. 3. I'm honestly not a fan of the U.S. interfering in foreign elections. We have a terrible track record in general. Clearly we have national interests that may be served better or worse by one particular candidate or another, but we need to take the high road and let other countries that are free and fair democracies do their thing. Does not apply nearly as much to places that are not democracies. I strongly believe Bibi is leading Israel into a really bad spot and I'd love to see different leadership there, but regardless, we need to let the Israelis (and everyone else) decide on their PM relatively free of our opinions or our dollars. 4. The IC concluded that the Russians hacked the DNC and John Podesta (among others), while an FBI investigation turned up no signs that Hillary's private server suffered the same fate. So although we should be skeptical, I'll take the investigators at their word. There were issues with the FBI investigation into Hillary (access, cooperativeness, etc.), and her decisions in terms of INFOSEC were very poor, but the conclusions of each investigation reached different conclusions WRT hacking by the Russians. 5. When WE, the U.S., the good guys, conduct offensive operations, I'm clearly gonna be more supportive than when our enemies do the same to us. I'd rather us take the high road when able and not do the same stuff we condemn, but I'm a realist and sometimes we have to take actions we would not want done to us in return. I would have greatly preferred a more robust response to cyber attacks on the U.S. under Obama, especially the Chinese hack of the OPM data I'm sure we're all familiar with. It can be a tough spot because you don't want to automatically escalate and make things worse. Overall, the thing that troubles me the most is that we have several other true peers in terms of cyber, where as in conventional and nuclear power, we are clearly superior to all comers. I want us to speak softly and have the biggest stick by far.

The will of the people doesn't factor in to it. The DNC (and RNC) are private organizations that can do whatever they like. If people don't like how they act I suggest they quit supporting their candidates (no, seriously, please do).

But how would they be able to non-vol you to a 365? Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network Forums

New year, same problem... https://www.breitbart.com/texas/2016/12/31/breaking-cartel-gunmen-fire-border-patrol-agent-arizona/ Build the walls, fences, security systems, expand CBP/ICE, deploy the Guard (Army/Air) permanently to secure the large open areas not physically blocked. If it takes a lot of money, so be it, if it keeps a POS like this guy out: https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/mexican-man-charged-rape-19-deportations-removals-44472938 It's worth it.

Zoum you are welcome for that extra raise! The AF can't even come close to competing with the airlines on a monetary level. I had no idea separating that I would be making as much money as I have been. I flew a greenslip (think overtime) the other day to fly a 3.5 hr flight from LAX to ATL then Deadhead home. Total time gone from home less than 12 hrs, it paid 25 hrs. On second year pay including retirement contributions, profit sharing and base pay that trip was worth $4500. This year was mostly at second year pay for me. I grossed $150K base pay, with another $22K of retirement contributions. I expect that my profit sharing for this year paid out in February will be worth around $30K...Not bad for for second year pay and it only gets better each year. You can bet from a financial position leaving AD was a no brainer. The rest of the QOL stuff is again no comparison with AD.

I'm exactly as OK with that as I am with HRC's. That is to say, I absolutely don't want a foreign power subverting our networks, but I do appreciate the value of unvarnished information. Everything about modern political candidates is fake/staged/analyzed/brainstormed/etc... Given that our media is complicit in crafting the desired image, I appreciate getting a peek behind the curtain. Perhaps if our politicians had to hold themselves to a higher standard in private, we'd see a higher standard of politicians in public.

Again, Dem, don't play try playing the red/blue piece here. I didn't say I was ok with the action of hacking; I said I don't think we should be taking escalatory/retaliatory action on hacking a political party with their tail between their legs. Foreign powers are more inside the political parties with their purse strings than with their computers. The harm here is superficial. It's not actual secrets, nor actual government infrastructure, nor commercial espionage.

My decision to leave just keeps getting easier and easier. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

In no way will they let this benefit us. But that would be a nice incentive! Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network Forums

Does it come with a sweet Rebel Alliance flightsuit and helmet like the guy in the back is wearing?