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I’ve posted this before but I’ll tell the story again. I’ll never forget sitting in the base theatre in the Middle East around Xmas 2020. We had the opportunity to listen to the CSAF, CMSAF and the Sec of the AF. I was genuinely interested in what they had to say. There was a lot going on at the time. Most notably, Covid. We had been through a lot just to get in theatre with quarantines and such. I sat there and listened to two women and a black four star general talk for an hour about social issues, discrimination and how we all needed to do better. That’s all they talked about It was one of many turning points in my long AF career. And it was one of the most disappointing. I can’t even say that they thanked us for being there during the holidays.

Much to learn you still have young Padawan...it appears you have not learned the true history of the empire. Naked Gunner Hugs are a PAVELOW incarnation (yet another F'd up thing that community did to AFSOC). Ever hear the story of welcoming the new guy by forcing him to drink a beer from the prosthetic leg of one of their pilots? As a former Eagle guy (you still "tight" with your crew Chief?), and "SEAL of the Sky", I know you are hyper-sensitive to your underlying desire for man meat, but don't project on us just because you couldn't get a gunship. For years the Harrisburg guys have been pursuing a mission change. Knowing the limited utility of the Solo program given there are many new ways to accomplish including roll on roll off, they wanted to remain AFSOC with a more mainstream mission. The inside baseball is CRAZY...don't F with guard jobs! Single Ship...yes a divergence from the ACC multi-ship model but this is Armed Overwatch NOT Light-attack. With multiple sensors this starts off as a long-duration ISR platform with the ability to provide strike support. Gun is a possibility but given the current weapon options it would likely be the last resort. This leads to another misconception about this mission set...these planes will operate from the dirt but I don't think the CONOP will have them down fighting in the dirt. Just like our current manned ISR assets, this aircraft will have MX-20s and weather permitting they will operate at much higher altitudes and have the ability to provide a deep magazine of precision fires from those altitudes. We all understand GBUs and Hellfire, but many have not seen how APKWS can change the fight. There is still much work to do and as a dude who spent most of his career looking through a HUD shooting 20MM, 40MM and 105MM on the nuggets of bad people I am guarded but hopeful that in at least some situations AOW can provide highly accurate and more importantly highly effective fires single ship form high altitudes. There is another benefit and that is the reduced manpower requirement this aircraft brings to the CONOP. For a better description check out this Collapse the Stack Brief.

Well, he picked that battle… Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

https://www.pa.ng.mil/Site-Management/News-Article-View/Article/3103505/193rd-special-operations-wing-preps-for-mission-conversion/ "The 193rd Special Operations Wing is undergoing a substantial transformation of its primary mission. The wing is transitioning from its legacy EC-130J Commando Solo aircraft to the MC-130J Commando II." I can't find a source online that directly says the old EC's are being used for MAC testing so I guess you just have to trust me.

A toast to all who helped find and pop this son of a bitch. 🥃 Well done all!

8 Hercs embargoed at the LM Marietta plant. Built for Libya back in 80s and never delivered. 0 hours, but may need new tires. Not sure of the story on the P-3 and or the L-1011...

Ok… Couple points to make here because like so many things it’s been destroyed as a term and turned into something perversely not reality because OIF/OEF…. 24 hour ops… That does not mean continuous attack on all axis or more specifically 24 hours of continuous coverage by assets. Yes it is extremely beneficial if we can continue to make things go boom in an enemies support zone without rest, but reality is no force to include the ground force you guys exist to prepare the way for can maintain operation indefinitely. Munitions consumption would be extreme… You’d have aircraft and crews servicing targets of a lower priority vs taking a tactical pause in the cycle to prioritize and build robust packages so you can achieve greater effect against stuff higher up on the HPTL… This idea of “get big gun, go forward, reign hell” = effective CAS is just mind numbing from the perspective of the ground element you’re supposed to be supporting. I’ll say this out loud for the people in the back… We Can Kill Tanks! In fact we really don’t need that done for us because we are pretty damn good at it. And we can straight up murder BTR/BMP… What we can’t do, is set ground conditions favorable to the offense/defense to do that under rounds of artillery and heavy rocket fire. No you killing 3-4 armored vehicles advancing on line in a pass doesn’t make or break for effecting the fight, because by prioritizing assets and dollars to that fight you’ve ceded a point where you could have prevented it and the need to stop and dig in entirely! You guys want to talk about old Cold War tactics and requirements and why we needed Hawg and Apache to stem the armor, it wasn’t because of us it was because of our allies in the Fulda scenario. Penetration was talked about earlier (STS)…. There is the often quoted “855 rounds of artillery” from the Joint Firepower courts… Yeah thanks for reminding us that HE point detonating fuse 155 is the least effective way to engage tanks in the maneuver. We appreciate that….Well when the air delivered tank killing requirement was determined the primary tank gun in NATO armies was the rifled 105 L7. NATO acknowledged that across the board even Chieftain not adequate parity to what the Russians seemed to be developing as far as Armor. With the 105 you can kill plenty and deliver it very accurately. What you can’t do is reliably shoot in the face and kill a T-64/72 unless you use DU from within the effective range of their 125mm… So acknowledging that nobody wants to do that an on top of it most of our allies won’t use DU, that’s gonna be at problem. Enter the Reinmetal 120mm…. Well 73 Easting kind showed what that will do to a tank. Regardless though, Tanks aren’t the big problem for us. Tanks won’t produce the MASCAL event that will shape the battlefield and politics unfavorably for us. The Russians and armies modeled after it have fire support as their center of gravity, not armor. Kill his artillery, get into the support zone and eliminate that threat, and the ground force will deal with the Armor. If you can kill their fire support they lose their most effective enabler to attacking our ground force or resisting counter attack. And considering artillery assets will be further back and staged under more robust defense and ideally in their own revetments requiring more deliberate high angle targeting, suddenly the survivability argument presented earlier changes drastically. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Here's a quick and elementary video about inflation and the fix. Simple straightforward and what most on here have been saying. Get rid of fiat currency and attach our currency to something with intrinsic value (gold, silver, platinum, etc). The standard puts checks on government (why the end of the standard was initiated in 1933 by the douchebag FDR - and finished in 1973 by Nixon) and prevents them from turning cash into fancy toilet paper. It would cause some disruptions/issues as we worked through it, but would be beneficial to our long term existence as well as return some confidence in our government.

Y'all are a little insensitive, don't you think?

Funny you should post that. Years ago, I'm at Carlos Murphys West in Tucson for a 4th of July soiree. I'm with another A-10 dude and somehow we end up taking to this liberal couple. When they find out we are Hawg drivers, the liberal chick says, "How can you gun down women and children." Well, if ever a softball question was tossed my way, that was it. Just like the movie quote, I replied "It's easy, you just don't lead them as much." The shocked looks on their faces was absolutely priceless. We also ended up drinking with a midget wrestler who was the regional distributor for Coors but that's another story.

They should make a batch of covid tests that always pop positive. That would keep a lot of idiots from leaving their covid caves (homes). I feel like I could start another Jonestown for all the dumbasses in the USA and solve a few of our country's problems with a good batch of kool-aid (This is obviously a joke, I am not an advocate for mass murder...or am I?).

He’s absolutely real.

I like the way you think but I was envisioning the flute being shoved from the opposite direction, feed the douchebag beans, and have him blow Mozarts Magic Flute out of his ass. Punishment with classical music appreciation and education all rolled into one.

☠️CMSAF in shambles

That is one way to make shawarma.

Boomer being escorted out of Hood Canal West of Seattle.

Heres a 747 at a park near Jakarta Indonesia. I found this when I was doing searches for aircraft used as housing or restaurants. I wanted to buy an old plane and convert it into a guest house. The logistics of getting it to my farm in TN was going to be challenging (read very expensive).

This might have been posted here in BO previously. This is one of my favorites google finds near Hooks, TX outside of Texarkana. F-111 at an Army Navy surplus store.

East German. Here's a pic from better days... https://aerialvisuals.ca/AirframeDossier.php?Serial=6652

Yo this dude is a legendary internet troll. I bet his BO.net name is General Chang.

We’ll I’ll be damned. Thanks for the link/education.

By the time he gets out of prison, he will have learned how to play "Bungle in the Jungle" with a plethora of different types of skin flutes.

Dude deserves to get that flute shoved so far down his throat that it kills him.

Barring further evidence coming to light, the most likely working theory is that this was an attempt to visually check the damaged right main while in flight, gone horribly wrong. Anyone who has ever been anywhere near an open Herc ramp in flight, wouldn't think of doing so without a harness attached.

Easy to see it from the street, have driven past it many times.

I found BQZip’s mom on a corner in the Bronx but I couldn’t zoom out far enough for a screenshot.

Exactly - while I give credit to Biden for taking the shot, homeboy was taken out in downtown Kabul while standing on a balcony. It does show the Taliban were in violation of the agreement they made to not harbor terrorists. If you are a professional and invest time in reading the intel you will see there is a SERIOUS resurgence building since we left. It is time to test the "over the horizon interdiction CONOP this administration promised.

Big blue doesn't like the ambiguity of platforms that require anything approaching "art" to employ. It doesn't fit with the algorithmic thought process to war planning. What they want is the ability to run an equation: A aircraft x B munitions x C sorties = we win. Basically an operational level JWS. I suspect that is the actual root cause, but also influenced by shrinking training dollars and some other stuff.

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.

As proud as I am of being a proper single-seat, single-engine, single-tail fighter pilot… I can give respect where respect is due. You’ll never hear me say it out loud in a public forum or at a Flag, but I know Eagle drivers are goddamn good at their job, and I wholeheartedly hope they are my escort team lead on night 1, no matter the theatre. I am proud to be 4G4L with them - 4th Gen 4 Life!!! Happy Birthday fellas!

I remember them firing them off at Kandyland as well. Always made me wonder what we were actually shooting at. Probably the producer's EBITDA margin.

https://www.amnesty.org.uk/press-releases/ukraine-military-endangering-civilians-locating-forces-residential-areas-new

Thanks for sharing. I want to debunk alot of what's offered in this video, so I'm going to go through section by section, starting with the components that are most commonly misunderstood (myths), especially the 1921 hyperinflation in Germany. I know that most people here might not like Tooze as a source, instead many republicans rally around people like Scott Sumner, so I'll provide a link to his work as well. In short, the rise of national socialism in Germany was caused by deflation, not the hyperinflation which occurred over a decade earlier. This myth tends to be commonly understood by everyone in the US, while an actual understanding of money dynamics are not. In fact, the austerity policies following WW1 which were implemented in Germany were universally pursued and the largest contributor of deflation-induced political unrest which began in the 1930's. Which brings us to the first two sections of the video: coinage and the history of money in Rome & British Isles. What causes coinage to have value, why did rulers 'cry-up' or 'cry-down' their currencies, why was metal content often changed, and how did this affect prices. Generally, Desan is the best source for a modern understanding of coinage, although there are many others. The video begins with Rome, but this is some 3000 years later than the earliest recorded money known today, which is best represented in the clay tablets used for recording ledger entries in early Sumer (modern day Iraq). They even developed a method of signing ledgers, not unlike modern cryptographic hash functions (it's not ironic that many of these artifacts wound up in the personal libraries of bankers like J.P. Morgan, who themselves sought a deeper understanding of 'how money worked'). Many of us may have walked over the ground or even seen archaeological pieces of this society during our deployments and not noticed it, including the salt deposited throughout the territory, which accumulated over time from the irrigation ditches used to cultivate the land. The water from the Turkish mountains contains trace amounts of salt which became lethal to wheat and later barley over 2000 years of irrigation. It was these ditch digging activities which led to some of the earliest forms of money. Contrary to the video, we should really begin our investigation of money and inflation at the beginning, with the Sumer clay tablets, silver coinage, and barley unit of account. This was a monetary economy, with commodity money settlement (silver and barley), executed almost entirely with complex credit systems recorded on ledgers.

We can trace the origin of money from early civilization in Sumer through Egypt, Greece, and Rome. The video claims that what gave Roman coins value was the metal itself (with silver being more valuable than copper, because metal has intrinsic value). This is false. Here are excerpts from Desan covering the creation of money as instruments of 'value' (links available in earlier in the thread), and how the origin of value in fungible units was not the metal itself: