Leaderboard

Hate Trump all you want.. Hang your hat on Jan 6th, but you are an absolute hypocrite if you don't give the same hate towards the Democrats that illegally contrived an impeachment.

TLDR version: Finland proves you can exercise deterrence against a numbers-bully. No capitulation on your sovereignty required. Wordy version: Russia doesn't have any incentive to negotiate back to pre-Donbas annexation, so that's not gonna happen. They'll keep throwing their expendables at the grinder, as is the way of that ghastly Russian so-called Federation, which in all honesty has always been a shaky held one at the point of many rusty, but outnumbering guns. Ukraine could capitulate even more territory, but all it buys them is time for the next assault. Ivan will come for them again. The Ukranians need to read the Finnish playbook more deeply. Finland almost went the way of Ukraine historically, but managed to reach the lifeboat with NATO membership and more importantly, a very strong homeland-defense prepositioning policy. Finland is the mother of all, living-defensive line. Heck even shouldering up with the actual Nazis was necessary in order to bloody up the bear's nose, no fucks given by Finland. Life is grey, at least for us Realists. Fact is if Lenin hadn't been so easy on Finland the first time (1910s) they broke away from Russia, theirs would be a similar story as today's Ukraine. So people need to give Ukraine a bit more benefit here on the whole capitulation front. Remember, population wise, Finland is a piddly tiny country compared to Ukraine, yet the deterrence outcomes between the two are stark. Yes, Ukraine got saddled with the Soviet Union proper after WWII, that's of course the biggest historical obstacle. Let's also remember that Finland too, gave up some land. But then they effected a brilliant homeland deterrence policy for a Country of such small size. Ukraine needs to go full Finn once any cease fire is afforded to it. The Finns don't forget the 11% they gave up to this day, and neither should Ukraine.

I think it's more of a long term sequel. But in that Biff vein, often sequels suck too.

I think you guys are focusing on the wrong metric in the totals vs totals discussion. What they can put in the field is not the same problem set as what they can command and maneuver. When this was started the Russians showed a complete lack of command and synchronization above the Battalion Task Group level (hence having essentially 4 axis doing 4 separate things and failing in all of them to achieve victory). The Ukrainians weren’t much better off but they only needed parity to achieve an effective defense and they had plenty of depth to surrender in the defense. That was an Army that had effective small unit weapons but lacked the thousands of armored and artillery pieces that would later be given in aid. Last year we started seeing the effective growth of Brigade level staffs in the Ukrainian Army, starting with their pushing back and regaining territory. It was largely limited to a few specific brigades. Since then we’ve seen a wider group of effective command and staff officers gain experience and now are fielding enough combined staff effectively to start thinking about Divisional actions (exactly what just happened in Kursk). There is a deliberate force generation going on to take advantage of this capacity, but that takes time to train and field and will probably be another 6-9 months before another wave of action is attempted based off all the troop-company level training that needs to be done so you aren’t just issuing impossible orders to conscripts. The Russians on the other hand are not really getting better, they still effectively can chew for ground by just throwing bodies at it, but it’s why they can’t present multiple dilemmas effectively across the broad front. Remember May when they were so sure they were taking Kharkiv? Yeah they don’t either. So when people say “the Russian victory is an eventuality” it’s really saying if the Russians are allowed to fight the war the only way they know how, eventually they win… at a ridiculous cost. The Ukrainians don’t have to allow them to fight that way, but they do have to be equipped and trained to change the name of the song that’s playing. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Down goes Michigan...hard to win when you can't steal signs. Down goes Notre Lame...and they paid NIU $1M to come kick their ass.

But abortion isn't.

https://theaviationist.com/2024/09/05/mc-130j-crews-earn-award/

“Its website lists six right-wing personalities, including Dave Rubin, who has more than 2.4 million YouTube subscribers; Tim Pool, a podcast host with more than 1.3 million YouTube followers; Benny Johnson, whose YouTube channel has nearly 2.4 million subscribers; and one user on an obscure military aviation forum whose members haven’t been cool for more than a decade.”

USMNT is going backwards.

Tail flashes don't make heavies look any cooler....lol. that was just a joke heavy drivers. 😳

Perhaps but the bear is not as strong as they try to project, Putin will continue to throw meat at the grinder but how much meat will he have? The Russian population has been in decline, WITHOUT the war the UN is projecting that the decline that started in 2021 will continue, and if current demographic conditions persist, Russia's population will be 120 million in 50 years, a decline of about 17%. Last August, The New York Times quoted unnamed U.S. officials as saying that up to 120,000 Russian troops had been killed and 170,000 to 180,000 wounded. They are creating a huge gap from age 15-29 and when combined with the bubble that follows, they are going have a REAL issue in a few years.

Doesn’t matter when you can find any aircraft that’s flying in civilian radar coverage. Just need the hex id for it. Technology has become a opsec problem now.

Zebras did their best to keep the Irish in the game too! 😂

The Marines have been doing ACE for ~250 years and we're over here in an O-6 circle jerk trying to get approval for hot re-arming in a hot pit area.

They had an obligation to fight, and they didn't. There were certainly individual acts of valor and individual members who were invested (one dude was shot down, disguised himself as taliban and walked 90 miles back HKIA and continued fighting; he's now a sensor operator for a firefighting company in Montana). But in aggregate, GIRoA and the ANA/AAF were not good faith partners. And not just in some ethereal policy level strategic sense, I mean at the member level they'd use A29s to bring honey back from their bee farms in Fayzabad instead of sitting alert for TICs. And when the city was invaded they left their families to the fates, stole planes and fled. Can you imagine doing something so cowardly yourself? Guessing you'd struggle to even comprehend that level of douchebaggary. I typed a long response and realized I remain to angry about the situation to have a constructive discussion. Suffice to say 1- 3% of people evacuated meet your above criteria; the vast majority were criminals (purposefully bussed from prisons by the Taliban to flood the airfield), AWOL military members, government bureaucrats, and randoms. Imagine watching 50 commandos throw down their weapons and run from 3 guys in a truck and I'm not allowed to shoot the truck... WTF. Same thing happened in Mosul when ISIS invaded in 2014 (large & well equipped Iraqi army threw away weapons and ran from a minimal enemy force) although this one was more dramatic and at scale. I feel nothing but contempt for those people, and certainly no obligation to bring them CONUS.

busdriver's summary above is spot on. I flew the CV for 12 years. I wouldn't say chip burns were a 'common' thing but a singular chip burn would be seen every so often. The only time I got multiple PRGB chip burns I turned home after the second one, had a third one on final, and subsequently MX found the gear box was chipped out. I was just doing local training, easy call to go home. I also flew over open ocean frequently and we would talk through various EPs that would suck (such as PRGB chips or a drive system failure). Overall, the general consensus was that unless we doing a no fail POTUS directed mission, don't fuck around with chips. Another thing from this accident that irks me is the rosy path we were led down by bell/boeing. We were always told to 'look for secondaries' associated with gear box chips. Well come to find out, you will see secondaries....about 6 seconds before the gearbox fails. Looking back, the logic was flawed. Reading through a lot of helicopter gearbox class A's shows that they don't give a whole lot of warning, such as loss of oil pressure, typically less than 30 seconds. The V-22 has an emergency lubrication system, that 'should' provide up to 30 minutes of lube. But that won't help if the loss of pressure is due to a gear coming apart. You just don't know what is failing inside the PRGB....not that it matters. Overall, I loved flying the Osprey. I firmly believe that if the Marana crash had not happened and set the political firestorm that was the V-22 program back then, people wouldn't be so emotional about the program as they are today. The safety record is smack in the middle of the pack. Oh and let's not forget that CAT5 lists the CV-22 on his bio....funny....because he crashed one.

Tom is good people. He was a phenomenal commander at 1 SOW. He’s got his flaws, but we all do. I appreciate how disruptive he is to the bureaucracy and those who pledge their careers to the status quo.

Once in a lifetime leader - should’ve been the next CSAF The one individual who may have revectored AMC from a bunch of careerist bus drivers to a command focused on war fighting.

Wasn't an issue for Hillary...