Leaderboard

Alright... I'll come out of retirement for this one... been watching the discussion for awhile now, so I guess it's time to weigh in. Be careful where you get your sources from-- the "anonymous Hog Driver" quoted by The Aviationist in the 1945 article is a long-time F-16 pilot who only recently converted to the A-10... and is a big advocate of a particular unit converting back to Vipers in the near future. The discussion of the gun seems shocking to anyone who's never flown the A-10... ermahgerd.... you mean it's not good against armor in the face? As Paul Harvey so eloquently put it... and now, for the rest of the story... The study referenced here and many other places is based on the LAVP (lot acceptance verification program) that began in 1975. The study was written in 1979, but the bulk of LAVP occurred between 1978 and 1980. Why does that matter? Because the systems on board the A-10 at that time were DRASTICALLY different than what is on the aircraft now. The aircraft at that time were non-LASTE (Low Altitude Safety and Targeting Enhancement), meaning that the pilots essentially employed iron sights without the benefit of PAC (precision attitude control, which essentially ”locks” the primary flight controls to hold the pipper on the aimpoint and get better bullet density). In other words, the system has gotten BETTER over the years. MUCH better. Some quotes from the test: “Only 93 passes were made in high-rate due to restrictions; and all passes after November 1979 were further limited to low-rate, 1 second bursts. Although not ideal for bullet density, all ammunition fired for LAVP was pure API, not combat mix.” In other words, the results were limited by the test parameters of the time. Even given those constraints, “Of first importance, all the Pk’s were HIGHER than expected; and the low-angle were comparable to the high angle.” A final key note relates to the non-LASTE nature of the test: ”hits usually did not occur after the 25th round fired.” That’s a situation that has been rectified with modern upgrades to the airframe. As the text follows, “ LASTE enables burst length and density to INCREASE through the use of a constantly computed impact point (CCIP) and PAC“. In other words, the gun was good back then, it’s even better now. For the "shocking" part... ALL Hog Drivers are taught that we don't shoot tanks in the face if we can avoid it-- that's where the machines are designed to be the most effective in terms of armor, so naturally we train to hit them from the side, top, or rear. You don't always get that option in combat, so M or F kills are just as acceptable-- any EFFECT that degrades the enemy's ability to fight is a positive step in combat. If you think that Pk of 1.0 is widespread, you're watching too many movies and not spending enough time in the vault. Here's another kicker: the gun isn't the first choice against armor for many Hog Drivers. Gasp! The maverick missile, which was designed simultaneously with the A-X program as a PRIMARY munition for the new A-X, provides much better effects, some standoff, and precision capability. Given the right circumstances and approval, the Hog can sling six of those, rifling three on a single pass. Think about that-- a PLATOON or armor, completely wiped out by a single Hog on two passes. A 4 ship can render a battalion of armor combat non-effective on 2 passes with that loadout, and we haven't even gone to the gun yet. Now, back to the original discussion of the thread. Could the A-10 survive and be effective in Ukraine? Absolutely. In American hands, in the American way of major combat ops. Turns out, the Hog community has been training side by side with every aspect of the USAF in major exercises for the last 40 years. If the Hog was truly an unsurvivable liability as proven in every Red Flag and ME (now WSINT) vul, you bet your ass that Corporate Blue would have trotted those stats out immediately. I can recall many a RF vul thinking to myself as a Sandy One... "gawddamn... I'd have my hands full after this round..." ... and none of them were Hogs. Our way of fighting is an overwhelming, integrated approach to these kind of operations. Hogs might be slower, so we launch first, land last, and often times can make it happen without siphoning off tanker gas that the other guys need. If you haven't read many of the open-source articles written by some Hog Drivers that occasionally pop up, then you may not be familiar with the applications currently being explored out west-- adding SDB (16 per jet), MALD, and potentially JASSM to the Hog makes it an incredible support asset that makes 5th Gen even more lethal-- freeing them up to do their thing while the swine saturates the battlefield. And the kicker is that even once the Hog launches all that "new" stuff, depending on the loadout, she still has enough weapons to engage up to 20 targets. Each. Now, if you send the Hogs into a fight alone, with less-than-optimum weapons, without SA, without SEAD (neither side has dedicated SEAD/DEAD assets), without effective tactics (both sides are, shall we say, less than impressive), and without training (how long does it take to train up ANY pilot to this level of warfare), then the results will be predictable. And I'll throw it out here since it's been floated on other sites: you send the Ukrainians ANY of our fighters, give them minimal time to get fam'd with it, maybe don't provide them the best weapons we have, and the results will be the same-- disaster. Tactics, training, and operational integration are key to major combat ops. They don't have it, so it really doesn't matter WHAT weapon you put in their inventory.

B5 currently, soon to be followed by Donkey Punch Pox. Heard that one will be a real pain in the ass!

According to DAL’s chief health officer (impressive med background), the new strain is weaker than the traditional flu. So yeah, everyone move on with life and stop buying into the bullshit.

There were people on the news back in the 70s saying the same thing. Mandy is certainly from the city and she's not alone in her thinking. This is why the electoral college is important. There is no way big city voters should run the country.

Our country is where it is because Mandy votes.

Reading the Air Force AMN/NCO/SNCO page on Facebook is both comedy gold and shocking at some of the BS so called leaders are doing. In the latest installment when have warrant-less phone searches en mass.

Wish I had my coloring book from RTU which showed the most effective areas to shoot a tank. In the face wasn't it. Also, a crowd pleasing fireball explosion isn't required. For example, a Marine M60-A3 main battle tank is slightly lost and in the wrong place at the wrong time during an exercise. A Hawg is called in on a target and shoots the M-60 with TP ammo and not HEI or API which will do far more damage. With the Target Practice ammo, the tank takes 5 hits. With just 5 hits from TP ammo, the tank is no longer capable of moving and it's no longer capable of using the main gun with the added bonus of the crew being incapacitated. The cannon is far more effective than the author admits. Back when we might have to go toe-to-toe with the Rooskies in the Fulda gap, we trained for enroute at 200-300 feet and IP to target at 100 feet using forward firing weapons only. If someone was dumb enough to load freefall weapons on your jet, that was going to be jettisoned before departing the IP. We did expect to take substantial losses but so did everybody else. Nobody is going to fly the same way as was done shwacking jihadis but will adjust tactics accordingly.

Over/under of Ferrari firing their strategists during the break? Seems Merc has finally got their shit together. And glad they let things happen organically at the end vs imposing team orders.

Thank you Sir and congratulations on your new home/new chapter in life! I'm glad you were well served by my whole team. Roy, Olivia and Jen are all rock stars! We've made a lot of improvements to take our customer service and our rates to the next level which earned Marty the #1 VA originator ranking in the country for 2021 and I was #8. Constant improvement! I'll keep you on the radar to do an IRRRL for you when the market declines! As everyone knows rates are up as a whole but they are actually down over the short term. Obviously no crystal ball where things will go for the rest of the year but we'll seeing rates similar to the spring of 2019 right now when the bond market was moving up but at a slower pace. The Federal Reserve rate hikes are not directly connected to mortgage rates so don't let the news scare you. Streamline refi's will be a player again probably by the end of 2023 or in 2024. Rates are still well below the 5.5% I got on my first home loan back in 2009 on a VA. The 10yr treasury bond shows the trend of the mortgage market and if you do a 3 month look back you can see a the bond is down .8% since it peaked in Jun. Happy to chat or give you a rate quote over the phone or email. Cheers! Jon 850-377-1114 jk@mythl.com

I have not heard anything

Yes, almost twice, but I was able to resuscitate myself by drinking....

That’s taking the “Captains I don’t want to fly with” list to the extreme!

I don’t know man, how many threads on Baseops lately have devolved into garbage political pissing matches. Was kinda nice to have one dedicated to other funny shit.

edit: I went over to the money thread...time I'll never get back...and realized what Random Guy really is, so I'll stop feeding the troll.

IMO, at this point, if she doesn't go to Taiwan now (for literally any reason) it will be such a PR victory for China. It will give them confidence that they can dictate US political travel in their AOR.

And now you know how Colorado natives feel about Californians… Sent from my iPad using Baseops Network mobile app

Before someone posts "Yeah, but the gov is giving people money", or "When the gov spends its inflationary". Private banks do the exact same thing. Credit cards are loans for consumption, banks create the deposits from nothing. Home mortgages (makes up ~50% of total money in the US economy) are unproductive, houses don't produce goods and services for the public. Margin debt, for stock trading, that's fresh deposits created by banks from nothing for speculating on stocks. The big difference we see if that private banks have created huge amounts money, printed money, and directed it towards housing and stock purchases. Which caused asset price inflation. But people don't consider this 'inflation', when it is.

Which part is pedantic, can you elaborate?

The purpose here is to learn about financial systems, reconnect folks' instruments panels, so to speak. First, private banks do lend unsecured. But I don't follow your argument that private money creation is never inflationary, but gov money creation is always inflationary. In the case of Fed QE, inflation for consumer goods was low from 2008-2020, yet Fed money creation was quite large. QE supports asset price inflation. The gov spending from 2020-2022, on the other hand, was directed towards goods and services, and we see an associated increase in consumer goods inflation. Wages are muted, profit margins have increased. In effect this was gov transfer to businesses in the form of profits. But this is getting quite into specifics when you haven't quite nailed down clearly for me what money is and is not. I'm not here to argue the merits of MMT, whatever you think that is. I'm here to discuss operations and dynamics of financial systems and money. MMT is largely about policy, and I leave policy up to each of you. We can reconnect your instrument panel, what you do with the jet is your choice. It seems as though you have swapped one word, money, which you don't have a concrete understanding of, for another word, productivity, in an effort to escape the investigative spotlight. So, I'll ask you define your new term, what is 'productivity'? And, let's get specific, imagine a town without money (common in the anthropological record, ~4000BC time frame, middle east). A group of folks living together who go about their day as a team, assigning tasks according to a hierarchy, and living without any monetary constructs to allocate labour or other resources. They eat mostly barley, have simple tools. Is productivity present in this setting? In the context of productivity being any increase in outputs for any given combination of inputs, the exchange of 'money' is irrelevant to the technology used by the folks in town, isn't it? If a member of this team organizes the digging of irrigation ditches to increase crop output, does money somehow magically appear, agreed to by everyone of the team, to facilitate an exchange of labour for an increased crop at harvest time? Why? Or, imagine your younger self (instead of the Sumer example). Brand new 2LT, copying and pasting data from one document to another. Your wage is fixed. You discover "Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V", increasing your data transfer productivity 2x. Does this create money? Does it require money in order for you to learn something new? Are children not learning because they aren't paid or because insufficient money exists in circulation elsewhere? What would be an example of misdirected or negative productivity changing a quantity of money or the capacity to create money of a money creator like a bank?

This is how money is created: A borrower goes to a bank to borrow money. The bank and the borrower sign a loan contract, which states that the bank will loan the borrower 100,000 dollars. The bank writes onto its ledger that it now owns a loan contract, market value of $100,000. The bank then writes into its ledger an 'Account Payable' of $100,000 and labels it deposits. That's it. $100k of freshly printed private bank money.

Why is posting about financial systems trolling?