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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.

Milton’s post is spot on. I don’t care how politically incorrect it is to say, the next war in Europe is more likely to be caused by Islam. Putin and Russia is a side show. A cultural civil war in Western Europe would be devastating but is absolutely a risk on the path they’re on. Islam is not compatible with western values. The sooner we realize that as a collective society, the better western society will be.

I'm not sure if and whether Russia is interested or even capable of gaining territory further into the European continent, especially the UK and Western Europe. Surely they are a malign actor, and a persistent threat to the Baltics and Eastern Europe. But I dont know that they have their eyes set in any meaningful way on Germany, France, UK, etc. Happy to have my mind changed on that, Putin is a bad dude indeed. I do believe Europe is at a civilizational tipping point, and I dont think Russia is the cause. A few years ago I would have rolled my eyes at populists and right-wingers who blamed "Globalism" and the uniparty/elites/NGO complex. The past year Ive changed my perspective. Broadly I think the dogma of liberal universalism, global movement of people/goods/money, and abstract ideas have been taken to their breaking point. Jd Vance and Marco Rubio's speeches to the Munich Conference and EU/NATO folks were also informative. I think they were on to something much deeper than just spending X% of GDP on defense. Yes, EU/NATO have sucked on the teet of the US defense arsenal for 30+ years and are woefully behind investing in their fleets, aircraft, technology, weapons, etc. And their ranks are thin. But even if they could magically flip the switch, crank up production, and field new weapons/platforms there are more substantial issues. Politically and econimically, Western Europe is a mess. They let go of manufacturing, built massive welfare states with dependent patronages, bought off on Net-Zero climate nonsense courtesy of a petulant swedish girl, and made housing and everyday living out of reach for working and middle class citizens. I beleive the recent quote I heard was that Mississippi (our poorest state) was wealthier per capita than the UK. On top of that, they thought-police their citizens, quash dissent, and subordinate national sovereignty to corrupt technocrats. Imagine youre a 25 year old Brit/Frenchman/German...cant afford a place to live or raise a family (while 3rd worlders live off the system). Would those young Europeans go fight the Ruskis on behalf of their political leaders? Take this one step further. The past 30 years has brought massive social, cultural, and demographic change to Western Europe. London is now ~30% white British, Viennas public schools are almost majority Muslim. Street violence, urban decay, capitulation to multiculturalism, DEI, etc at the cost of the native culture (psychologist Erik Kaufman calls this "asymmetric multiculturalism). Finally, the grooming gangs. If you are unaware, for the past 30+ years, groups of predominantly Pakistani muslim men groomed, r*ped, and abused thousands of white British girls, mostly lower/working class. They were subjected to the most heinous, gruesome abuse...and worse yet, British authorities knew and largely did nothing. The inquiry is slowly being made public, and IMO is shaping up to be the crime of the century. Some estimates say upwards of 250,000 girls were abused, some killed, many gang r*ped by groups of foreigners. They saw it as an act of conquest, the state covered it up as not to arouse "anger" or upset the multicultural experiment. The epitome of suicidal empathy and frankly a civilization-ending phenomena. https://spectator.com/article/why-liberals-ignored-the-grooming-gang-scandal/ A commentor above mentioned David Betz and his prediction of civil war. I read his papers a year ago and have listened to several of his interviews. He is a traditional academic, not an activist, mild mannered and level headed (from what I gather). Given the stabbings, violence, grooming/r*pe gangs across Europe, I cant help but agree completely. He has made his way into semi-mainstream podcasts and journalism, and I havent seen any substantive criticism of his claims. Just the grooming gangs alone are enough to convince me a civil war in the Uk is inevitable (if not already underway). And for that reason, I cant foresee those young Brits/Frenchmen/Germans/etc going to the eastern front to fight Vlad. Why would they? Their own nations have been hollowed out, made unafforable, and their leaders gleefully subordinate sovereign, native interests to hostile foreigners. And if all the fighting age men went East, who would guard their own cities and towns?? No, if anything, those young men will likely revolt against their own governments and attempt to restore what was once a good culture and civilization. Very concerning, but probable IMO. For those reasons, I dont believe Russia is Europe's number 1 threat. Putin is a bad dude, but whats happened in their own countries is far worse. Sorry for the rant. Brevity not my strong suit.

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.

Meins!! 🤗🤗

Maybe you should read the actual debates the framers of the 14th amendment had. Neither the declaration of Independence nor the original Constitution addresses this situation, which is exactly why the 14th amendment had to be written. Thank God the founding fathers knew that we would one day have you to be the sole interpreter of their wisdom 🤣😂 I'm not sure how you can have an ad hominem against a political group, but okay. It also happens to be true. As far as the forum for identifying yourself as a citizen, I will accept the least formal and most rapid forum that results in a negligible number of improper citizen deportations. Since you've been unable to identify a single recent case of an American citizen being improperly deported, we could just assume that it hasn't happened. As for the historical cases, those all sound about right. I especially liked the part where the deported citizens got hundreds of thousands of dollars in compensation for the government screw up. I'd be happy to 10x that penalty for any citizen involved in a similar miscarriage of Justice. That's not justification to tear it all down. There will always be fuck ups. Until then, from the time you are approached by the authorities (first opportunity), to the time you spend in a detention center awaiting processing with translators available (second opportunity), to an informal meeting with an immigration officer where you are allowed to make your case with phone and Internet access (third opportunity), to the time it takes to board your deportation flight (fourth opportunity), that would be plenty. But again this is all just an exercise false ignorance. You know damn well that proving citizenship isn't a problem. This is functionally identical to the voter ID debates that have been held in such bad faith by the left that it is almost beyond comprehension. It takes the same level of fake stupidity to believe that black people in America don't have access to identification as it does to believe that immigrants don't have access to proof of legal status. Do you have any immigrants in your family? My mother still has her green card number memorized. This just isn't a thing.

RIP Evil Him Him

My biggest fear for situations like this is that the cops realize they effed up and drop a bag to justify everything and avoid making him a millionaire. Again, the presence of cameras has helped mitigate that in modern times but still.

Normally I would but that lady is a weird type of fat. She looks like a meatball on toothpicks.

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.

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.

Haha England tied Ghana.

No amount of defense spending and rearmament will fix the political rot (is that even a strong enough word) and public distrust of governing institutions in the UK (and most of Western Europe). They need new weapons and an industrial base to match, but how much does the average Brit care about 5th Gen fighters or recapitalizing the naval fleet when their cities have quite literally been overrun with hostile foreigners?

Considering how great the Eurofighter program went this should end up being a winner!

Well, I just bought an EOTEC set worth well more than the rifle, nice now having a 5X magnifier. Windham Weaponry 5.56

@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.

The 1911 takes two actions, initially. 😉 And tactical lights help prevent shooting at the wrong thing. My dot is green, so I'm good. Seriously, someone will file suit and lawyers will spend citizen money because, dumbassery.

Welp

we had FON in the strait before the war started our own DNI threat assessment said they weren’t pursuing a nuke before the war started It’s pretty wild to see some of you guys cheerlead the admin talking points verbatim and then say I’m the one blinded by political bias.. Two thirds of your list of “clear war objectives” are this admin claiming the win based on getting back to the status quo we already had. This is like intentionally starting a war with Cuba and then patting yourself on the back for achieving freedom of navigation in the Gulf of Mexico.. like wtf are we even talking about. If I want to hear the admin party line bullshit I can just go listen to the press secretary, why not try presenting an independent thought that actually makes sense

The best fighter pilots in the world have been trained on an old piece of shit for decades. Stress and repetition, that's all you need. I'll take the graduating pilot who spent 300 hours in an analog dinosaur that kept him at the edge of his ability over the one with 100 hours in a state of the art, modern-day-relevant Gucci trainer. Cheap, simple, plentiful, and fast. That's all we need. But as usual, every acquisition is a vanity project for the good-idea fairies we call generals.

There’s another future millionaire, I hope.

Anyone who was paying attention always knew AFFORGEN was simply a force presentation model to be sustained in competition only; in crisis - all bets are off. Y’all keep acting like Trump just started this war out of the blue. We have been in conflict with Iran since 1979 with more Americans having died indirectly from Iranian actions than from any other country. Not to mention the impact to global commerce through not just the SoH but through the Red Sea and the funding of Houthis. We just finally had an administration willing to do something about it. This escalation was bound to happen at some point. We can debate the timing of said escalation but this is far from “Trump’s war”. Now I agree that we may have missed and opportunity and I wish we had finished the job when we had them on their heels early April; too early to call it a shit deal when we don’t even have a deal yet. We can reassess after the 60 day mark. Yes our military is sadly smaller than in the 1990s; blame generations of shitty leaders and politicians who ignored the clear need to modernize and recapitalize our military.

Everyone has to retire at some point. Guy was a 4-star general with 34 years..where the fuck was he supposed to go from here? COCOM, CSA, or Chairman. Also it’s been well known for some time that USAREUR is downgrading to 3 star command similar to USAFE. Not everything has to be some major conspiracy. Dude probably didn’t see a path forward and decided it was time to hang it up.

If our president wasn't obsessed with using the stock market as his favorite indicator of his administration's success, we could end the Iranian problem forever. Just a few sorties to Kharg Island and it won't matter anymore. We keep trying to avoid a global economic catastrophe that is unavoidable, but the longer we push it off, the weaker our allies become through their own suicidal policies.

Maybe I’m old fashioned or just naive on the wonders of AI, but the side getting strategic wins here is the one with the massive TBM stockpile and control over a critical global trade route, while the side with all the fancy AI tools is getting humiliated on the global stage. Although.. a slightly smarter version of grok could’ve advised us this war of choice was a shit idea to begin with, in which case I’m all for embracing our robot overlords

Vance

@Biff_T This is where you chime in and say “Save the fat one for me”. 🤮

I had T-41 training at the Valdosta airport prior to T-37s and 38s at Moody. I remember my T-41 instructor as a young guy, probably no college, wanted to go on to the airlines. He was a competent teacher and had the patience to put up with my fumbling around. Nice guy. I hope he found his dream. For what the T-41 program was intended for back then, he did a good job.

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?!?

At IPT now… If the goal is quantity, sure. If the goal is quality, there’s a lot to be desired. I’ll leave it at that in a public forum.

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.

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.

What is confusing? Government screw-ups are not justification for abandoning government action. This used to be a pretty standard policy of the left, considering how many of their programs were grossly mismanaged and abused. None of our laws were written for the situation we are in now. It was never a consideration that tens of millions of people who have no right to be in this country would nevertheless be here. The protections afforded to American citizens, and others legally present within our borders, cannot be extended to every person on the planet. It is not hard to prove citizenship. Neither for the government nor the accused party. That there are a few dozen cases out of literally millions is evidence that this is not a real problem, any more than a few aircraft mishaps out of millions of yearly flights are indicative of a widespread aviation safety threat. The recharacterization of deportation as some sort of punitive action similar to incarceration is the exact trick being used to slow down the process for the ultimate goal of preventing deportation entirely. Same with the refusal of an asylum claim. If you get on a plane to America without a Visa or passport, you are not allowed to leave the airport until you can be seen in front of a judge. You are put on the next flight back to your country. We have the ability for the vast, vast majority of illegal immigrants to quickly confirm their illegal status and return them to their country of origin. Since the problem has been allowed to grow to the tens of millions, there will unsurprisingly be some mistakes along the way. If those mistakes are measured in a fraction of a fraction of a percent, I don't have any problem with that. Once again, show me the American citizens being deported or denied entry back into the country by an intentional process and we will have some sort of agreement. But you can't show that. If you believe the people here illegally have a right to the resources of our country, we just have a fundamental disagreement. I do not believe they have any claim to medical treatment, education, assistance programs, or voting rights. Along those same lines, I do not believe they have any claim to our judicial system, unless of course we are attempting to incarcerate, fine, or otherwise restrict that human being from anything other than their unlawful presence within our borders. Once again, it is simply intentionally naive or disingenuous to act as though we can't figure out who the vast majority of the illegal aliens are. They didn't come here from Mars. They are overwhelmingly from countries south of our border that have fully functioning governments with records systems that track their citizens just as we track ours. The left is just trying to make this about something it isn't because ultimately what they want is for them to stay.

Alots getting waived on the USAF side, atleast from what I've been told. My unit just sent a guy to UPT with partial color blindness and I met another guy going through IFF at 38. I say start working towards that goal now and in 3-5 years you could be in a prime spot to get picked up. If you can keep your record clean (both medically and judicially) with nothing new, start building hours and show leadership potential it could pan out. Nobody knows how the landscape will look by then but you can still stack the odds in your favor.

Nice try. First two links have no deportations. Third link has no names, so the circumstances of the deportation cannot be determined, but every similar named case has been exactly the same. The illegal alien parents of a birthright citizen child(ren) elected to take their citizen children with them back to the country of their deportation. Not the same, and you know it. In fact there's already federal court precedence that removes qualified immunity from law enforcement officials that do not promptly release someone after proving their citizenship. Morales v. Chadbourne But it is a very compelling reason to join the rest of the world and the framers of the 14th amendment in abolishing the nonsense of birthright citizenship.

The UK is having a special election, which could force out Starmer. https://www.yahoo.com/news/politics/articles/most-important-election-since-1938-220311085.html

Thank you so much. I'm pretty darn far within/underneath age 33, and ever further away from age 35; So I'm a little confused what @Blue and @brabus meant. I'm gonna give it a closer re-read. Really appreciate the help! Certainly, unless I either 1: get an FAA third class and/or 2: become an active duty USAF, USMC, USN, and/or USCG aviator first, they will probably never take me LOL. I never considered it until now and it would certainly be a last resort, but maybe they would take sport pilot? I kind of doubt it, and I'm sure someone here has asked before. I'll look around. Edit: https://www.flyingsquadron.com/forums/topic/23227-does-have-a-sports-pilot-license-help-or-is-it-ppl-or-nothing/

The reasoning behind Trump deciding not to drink is one of his few respectable qualities. The way he orders his steak (and choice of condiment) is added to his many unrespectable qualities.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/air-force-identifies-8-crew-members-killed-b-52-stratofortress-crash-edwards-air-force-base

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.

I will never understand the argument that people in a country illegally should have a months- or years-long right to protest their removal. Are you here legally? If no, then you are deported. Deportation is not imprisonment or punishment, it is merely the cessation of violation. Where's the logical end to this nonsense? Should visa applicants in Zimbabwe have a right to "due process" if they are denied a green card? If not, why is it any different for the Zimbabwean who snuck in? If we are trying to give them prison sentences, then yeah, due process includes the right to a fair trial. But if we're just returning intruders to their rightful place, due process should include only food and water for the journey home.

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.

Probably for the best. The Navy should be going with an already proven platform vs the T-7 just like how the Air Force should have as well. We waste so much time and money trying to reinvent the wheel when we don't have to. UPT is a great example of that. We don't need some new revolutionary trainer aircraft, we need something that works. Same with the syllabus and all of the changes in the last 6 years for UPT. New pilots are coming out of UPT with less experience and that puts more pressure on the FTU to teach things that they should have learned in UPT like TOLD. /rant

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.