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Haha England tied Ghana.

@17D_guy I doubt this MOU goes anywhere, including an actual deal. But if somehow a deal is reached, and it looks anything like this MOU, it’ll certainly negatively impact our standing in the region and in the world (like you mentioned - NK, etc.) This is a big fail for Trump currently, and I hope any deal reached doesn’t look like this MOU.

Short of a dropping nukes or a full ground invasion, I think this conflict has proven we don’t have the firepower needed for Iran to capitulate. It’s not about what the public will or won’t support, because we already proved we’ll go ahead and launch a super unpopular war. I’m talking about the real world limits of our military power. This might be a tough pill to swallow but we had 3x the fighter squadrons we do now when we took down the far smaller country of Iraq in 1990. And in desert storm, airpower was paired with a ground invasion. The notion that we can ramp up to some previously unseen level of air power just isn’t reality. Almost the entire tanker community is deployed already and run ragged with crew rest waivers. We redirected more carriers to the region than at any point in the last 30 years and one of the CSG’s retasked for this thing just completed the longest carrier deployment since WW2. Idk if you guys follow the meme pages but one of the running jokes right now is that big blue basically took the entire AFFORGEN model and threw it in the trash when this kicked off. They just said fuck it and deployed everybody. Now folks are tired and ready to be done with it. There’s no world where we turn this back up to early March levels of strikes, let alone exceed that intensity. We shot our shot, and it didn’t work. And now we’re taking a crap deal to get out of a crap situation. I think this is a super valuable lesson to learn after Venezuela folding like an house of cards got us high on our own supply. If we’re serious about deterring China we need to learn the actual lesson here: we aren’t all powerful anymore. If you want to sustain operations against a determined opponent, you need volume, and a deep bench. We’ve become insanely good at lighting people up night 1 with all the shiniest most expensive toys. But we’ve become terrible at sustaining that pressure over time.

I’d certainly offer it to boom operators. They talk on the radio, learn approach plates, and are already trusted to not carve their initials into 5th gen paint. I’d rather have instuctor boom E-5 — E-8s become warrant CFIs than civie CFIs teach LTs how to fly. If that’s a choice I’d ever have to make.

That made me laugh. I recall a 1980s USAF program that put new UPT grads into ANG/AFR units as a first assignment because there were no slots in active duty units. So we put an impressionable 2Lt into a unit of folks who essentially were people who wanted out of active duty for a variety of reasons, some good, some not so much. What could go wrong with that?!

The shit show continues... Top Army General Who Was Last U.S. Soldier to Leave Afghanistan is Suddenly Leaving His Post WASHINGTON — The Army’s commander of its forces in Europe and Africa — who was famously the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan in 2021 — is unexpectedly stepping down from his post after just 18 months in the job, the Army confirmed late Tuesday. GEN Christopher Donahue, commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and Africa and commander of NATO’s Allied Land Command, will relinquish his command on July 2, according to an Army statement provided to The Associated Press. He is the latest in a line of nearly two dozen top military leaders to either retire or depart their jobs early under the leadership of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has undertaken an effort to thin the ranks of the military’s top brass with the mantra “less generals, more GIs”... More at: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/army-general-christopher-donahue-unexpectedly-leaving-post-rcna351524 Other reporting indicates this is a forced departure as directed by Hegseth. Sure, there are a lot of potbellied GOs that need to transition to lucrative consulting gigs, but this guy seems to have a lot of gas left in the tank and it makes me wonder if Hegseth is now targeting generals that can do more push-ups than he can! If anyone has other insights, I'm sure we'd all like to hear them. Speaking of which, remember how the purges ended up going for Stalin?!?

The morality of the general public, whether correct or incorrect, is going to prevent us from bringing the firepower needed for Iran to capitulate if this kicks off again. The administration vastly under-estimated the effort needed to succeed. We are world champs at converting tactical success into strategic loss.

Relax, it was a post with words and some sarcasm (call MX on your detectors), not a Kelis song, which ironically, is probably how a lot of MAGA is feeling right now on Trump.

Well given that all the TDS experts on here have gone completely quiet on here since the MOU and the VP just confirmed we've lifted sanctions on Iran effective today in return for literally nothing it's certainly a combo 1, 2, and 5.

The worst part is this sheriff has zero skin in the game - there will be no accountability when his decree gets destroyed in court. There needs to be real penalties for public “servants” decreeing wildly anti-constitutional bullshit with reckless abandon. They’re like monkeys throwing shit at the wall constantly to see what sticks.

This MOU is hot garbage. It’s also not a deal and pretty much meaningless. The obvious reason Trump signed this POS is the midterms coming up. We did well for 40 days, then the train went off the tracks with a dumb idea of a ceasefire. Should have never happened, and it just keeps getting worse with this latest thing.

Hey all, just chiming in as someone who got picked up for UCT a couple years ago. Knowing a lot of people out there want to go fighters, just wanted to share that it is definitely possible through UCT. F-15 WSO slots seemed to be the one consistent part of the UCT drops, around 3-5 every class out of 14-20 students. For reference, the average class probably had about 6 people who ranked them high on their dream sheet. There are so many other cool platforms CSO’s go to that the fighter slots sometimes aren’t that competitive to get! Just something I wish somebody put out there when I was applying.

It is “incoherent” to you because you are blinded by your hatred for this administration. This is actually the first military conflict I’ve ever seen with clear strategic objectives (1) Attrite their military and military industrial complex (2) Ensure FON in the SOH (3) Iran does not possess a nuclear weapon Also please a huge shoutout to our kick ass Airmen across every platform and specialty who projected power under circumstances that none of us alive to this day have experienced. That extends to all the guard and reservists who were involuntarily mobilized and knocked it out of the park.

A few thoughts: This deal is going to be ass, but any deal no matter how bad is better than continuing the incoherence we’ve witnessed over the last few months. Any amount of cash given to the Iranians, be it pallets on a c-17 or sanctions relief or a $300B tip option on a square reader, is pennies on the dollar compared to the economic damage this thing was going to cause if we continued through the summer and ran our strategic reserve dry. I am happy to let Trump claim the win if it means we get to stop the abject retardation and putting our folks in danger for little to no strategic gain. The “biggest state sponsor of terror” line is so tired and silly. First of all, with the materiel we left the Taliban, there’s zero chance we aren’t the biggest state sponsor or terror on an absolute monetary level. You can say it wasn’t intentional or it’s all biden’s fault but over the years our blunders and failed interventions have financed and engendered more terrorism than anyone else.. by far. But more generally i just dispute this framing. “#1 state sponsor of terror” implies there have been countless Iranian backed terrorist attacks in our homeland. Except the reality is WE are the occupying force in the Middle East and the Iranians have financed groups that have attacked our troops in THEIR hemisphere. Still fuck Iran and every American service member killed is a tragedy but I think we can be more accurate/mature with our language and say “Iran acts against our interests in the region.” Their sponsorship of militant groups that attack our troops is no different than us attempting to arm Kurds to overthrow them. Just be honest and admit we have opposing interests and neither of us really consider morals when we are deciding who to finance to fuck over the other side. I know this point is bound to get a bunch of pearl clutching over “moral equivalence” but I think it’s more productive to acknowledge that our countries operate in our own (or Israel’s) interest with very little regard for what is morally “right.” Ultimately we’ll have a lot more to discuss once the text of the MOU and the eventual deal go public. Because we can’t be sure what’s in it. But what we can be sure of is the reaction: The left will hate it because it’s just JCPOA but with more money and more steps The zionists and neocons will hate it because it isn’t total war with Iran And the maga loyalists will love it and see our president’s months of unhinged waffling as completely vindicated and a totally brilliant negotiating strategy.

What you need is the 2808 which you can request under medical clearance in IMR then work with your flight med to complete. Eventually once you jump through all the hoops it'll be routed and be returned stamped as eligible for FC1 assuming all goes well. If you haven't started that you're behind. It took like 3-4 months from me completing the tests and having the flight doc sign it to getting it back stamped from HQ. Whatever date the stamp has on it is where the 4 year mark is based. In my case, my IFC was stamped in July of 2024 so it is good until July of 2028. This year's board would be the last time I could apply on that 2808 before I'd have redo everything to get another one since it has to be valid through 31 Dec 2027 IAW the PSDM. The 2992 is for current fliers showing their current flying status which is probably just to check that you're not currently DNIF.