Clark Griswold

F-35 / 22 concept:

Maybe but I have a naive hope that when the JSF was in a conceptual stage the real and likely increased risk of technological compromise due to the wide sale among various partners was openly addressed and mitigation was baked into the concept with the most sensitive information being limited to the US or UK only (Primary and Level 1 participants). Any info leak is a compromise but perhaps not a ship sinking hole in the boat. On other F-35 news: https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/how-stealth-f-35a-just-surpassed-f-22a-one-key-metric-59552 More F-35s delivered to Big Blue than 22s built.

Yup. One day, one of these carnival barkers we elect every 4 years will have to tell the truth: More has been promised than can be delivered and that like after any period of excess, a period of sacrifice will have to be had by all. The rich will pay more in taxes, the middle class will have to wait till they are older to retire and the poor will receive fewer benefits. We will do less on the world stage than others are used to us doing, we will have to stop borrowing & loaning to our enemies and rivals and require more from those who desire our protection.

I would not put it past prominent Dems to ask foreign governments to not recognize the winner of a race as the President if they didn't like the results and thought they could get away with it. They could state they recognize Candidate X for President and if the State Governments of the largest, most prominent states refused to accept the results, the world just might follow them. As it would be the equivalent of an H-bomb on our economy, this might cause all the other institutions in our country to say screw the real results and give in. They currently flout federal law, interfere and attempt to hamper federal law enforcement when it suits them and ignore the growing censorship, exclusion and harassment of "woke capitol" on private citizens in the economy and public sphere when it suits them. They suffer no repercussions and only have more incentive to try more. The Republic as we know it is dying.

Listened to this podcast: https://warontherocks.com/2019/07/net-assessment-is-america-poised-to-lose-the-next-war/ and read this article it discussed. Not a short read but not onerous either: https://s3.amazonaws.com/files.cnas.org/CNAS+Report+-+ANAWOW+-+FINAL2.pdf My TLDR summary: The way the Joint Team fought in the 90s and 2000s for Desert Storm, Kosovo, OIF, etc... MOB establishment, unrestricted overflight rights, piece by piece threat/enemy destruction, etc... will not work in potential conflicts with Russia, China. A new approach will be required to dissuade aggression, defeat if required and allow options for favorable escalation/cessation of hostilities. Worth a read IMO, from an AF perspective it seems the AF to support this New American Way of War needs greater range, greater self-deployment capability along with a dispersed/austere basing capability. This would mitigate the reliance on safe, relatively close MOBs as Russia/China would not allow those sanctuaries to exist or function in a potential conflict within reasonable range of the conflict, enable faster surging for to Deter and React if aggression appears imminent or occurs and presents the enemy with a much harder targeting problem by proliferating tactical assets to unexpected or changing temporary locations. He mentions several times hard choices and giving up on assumptions, ideas, paradigms that will not work or don't apply in a Great Power Conflict, to me this sounds like (in relation to Airpower) the classic Destroy the Enemy's Will / National Capability to Fight vs. Destroy the Enemy's Forces. The Strategic (conventional) vs. Tactical. Equally applicable to other services in shaping their Capabilities Portfolios. I'm not 100% convinced he's wrong, putting aside our personal preferences and biases, is it time to reforge the AF to meet this growing threat? More Strategic and less Tactical - thoughts?

Driver Cited For Using 30-Can Beer Pack As Toddler’s Booster Seat

Ordinarily I would agree with you @pawnman but when one side is no longer a good faith partner in a rule of law, respect for minority rights, democracy by their open secret perversion & warping of our immigration, asylum and legal process(es) to rapidly change the demographics of this country while demanding a less rigorous process to vote than to check out a library book while simultaneously using what parts of the American government, economy and institutions they do control to harass and intimidate their enemies... IMHO, it is possible that neither side will accept the election results and then where do we go from there? This is likely an inflection point for American Democracy as we currently practice it, do we trust the processes and accept the results?

Yeah, not having Russia bully the Euros is in our interests but they will not change unless the circumstances they find themselves in change, namely operationally significant amounts of US forces stationed in their countries that provide deterrence thus allowing atrophy of not just their military forces but also the cultural will to use them. The evidence is there IMO that it (oversized direct American provided European military deterrence post Cold War ending) led to an erosion of national will of several of the major Continental European powers, I would liken it to trust fund kids and the often corrosive effect of not being either in danger from irresponsible actions or required to pay/work for the resources you enjoy. Leaving NATO is not desireable but appears to be necessary, they don’t change no matter if a conservative, liberal or nationalist administration prods them, something else has to be tried. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Light Attack in FY20 NDAA Amendments: https://rules.house.gov/bill/116/hr-2500 Amendment 73 with 6 FL Republican sponsors (A-29s here we come): Revised Provides U.S. Special Operations Command procurement authority for Light Attack aircraft in support of the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) Combat Air Advisor (CAA) mission. It also directs the Secretary of the Air Force to obligate, or transfer to USSOCOM, the necessary funds that have been made available for light attack aircraft to procure the required number of aircraft for Air Combat Command’s Air Ground Operations School and AFSOC’s CAA mission

All true points, cost to stand up TDY units vs. permanently based units and I would give the Euros some chance to pull it together and build a credible deterrence, but I have to ask if they won't defend themselves when they have the capability but choose not to for various reasons (economic, cultural, etc..) does that obligate us to defend them? If your neighbor refuses to cut his grass, are you obligated to cut it for him? Yes it keeps the neighborhood up but keeps you on the hook for responsibilities that are not yours. Imperfect analogy but there comes a time when people must stand or fall on their own, if they are not willing to secure and defend that which is theirs when they have the capability then they are not worthy of sovereignty. Why defend them when they trade with our enemies (Iran, Russia and China) in ways the undercut efforts we expensively and with considerable risk perform to ensure a rules based order vice an only might makes right world? You may say those are two different things but as all blood and treasure that is paid by the United States ultimately comes from one source, the tax-paying citizenry, they are all interconnected. You can not truly be our friend and look for ways to undercut major security efforts we undertake not to defend our homeland but to defend a reasonable world order against aggressive repressive dictatorships. https://schiffgold.com/key-gold-news/european-alternate-payment-system-to-circumvent-us-iran-sanctions-nearly-ready/ What kind of "allies" are they? Fair weather friends for the most part it seems. Some are not as bad as others in their pack but this and other actions are not acceptable. They want the security of friendship with a superpower but no significant costs in terms of restricting their foreign and economic policies. Alliances are not meant to last forever, history moves on and it is time for us to move on from the NATO alliance. There are still nations in Europe that I think we should assist in defense and deterrence (Poland, Baltic states, Czech Republic, Romania, Bulgaria, etc...) of their territorial sovereignty only but not major continental European nations. They can and should stand or fall or their own. I'm a 40 something and the world has always had NATO and a firm trans-Atlantic alliance for defense between the US and Europe, but just because something has existed for a long time doesn't mean that it should continue forever. In 25 years, will we still be the de facto defense force for Europe? When will it end? What if they just disband their militaries entirely? Are we still liable for their defense then? I am fully aware it would be a political/economic shock MUCH larger than Brexit if the US announced its withdrawal from NATO and ideally (IMHO) proposed a new strictly defensive alliance with Central & Eastern European nations but it needs to happen. What we have now is unfair, unwise, unsustainable and unnecessary.

Yeah, aircrew manning would be an issue but the ARC would probably bite if it was a decent deal, contract pilots would probably be the solution though. I'm not opposed to the dual qual concept @HuggyU2 mentioned above either if the companion aircraft to their primary is simple enough and the CT beans are not made too stringent. Dual logging instrument currency could be helpful and keeping the Liaison Aircraft beans basically type specific (takeoff/landing/practice EP maneuvers) could probably make it feasible with the pilots in theater needing this capability. That said, the Grand Caravan would then be likely my recommendation. Probably speedy enough and at around 1.8 mil a tail and about $500 an hour to fly, affordable in aviation terms. Now it is it needed? Still TBD but methinks it is justifiable, just needs better arguments for it.

True on both points, may not be worth the cost and how do you prevent abuse which would be tempting to say the least. That said I don't think the idea is not without merit, just maybe not enough merit to warrant acquisition, not sure as they had plenty of anecdotes but no other data that proves there is a need. How many times has this come up in recent operations? In recent history? On your point of maximizing pallet space or capacity, I think that is a different issue than the one they probably should have emphasized which is timeliness. This asset would not really be (IMHO) for more efficient deliveries of small cargo by using a smaller asset vs a grossly oversize one but for timely deliveries with little or no time from tasking to dispatch of small cargo hopefully truly high priority cargo. Yeah but that anecdote (short notice F-16 tasking) was really about the poor customer service (the authors imply) by using only civilian delivery services once in place. Not that a military owned Cessna based light airlift capability would have gotten them home sooner but that it would have helped to have a military owned and thus focused cargo support capability to access while deployed. They should not have put int the snarky six-month comment in to imply they were still there because of want of airlift support just that they were there probably longer than anticipated and having support capabilities like light on-demand military airlift would have helped operations significantly. At least that's how I read it: In yet another recent case, a small package of Aviano F-16s was deployed on 48-hour notice to an undisclosed location on a 21-day taking. Six months later, they were still there. Supporting the operation was a challenge in the months to follow due to the initial logistical movement — whatever could be packed and loaded on a pair of C-17 for 21 days of operations. After the initial deployment, all logistical support was pieced together by either DHL shipping or the occasional contract flight that flew in near the location. The time lag to get parts on-site severely impacted aircraft readiness while deployed. The authors should have emphasized (IMHO) it was about timeliness not efficiency per se. If it is about timeliness then other options are probably warranted (if the AF was really interested in this), a King Air 350i with a cargo door, upgraded engines/props and STOL options would be fast and efficient.

Groking on this concept more... it seems a niche or occasional capability that might not fit into the doctrine or strategy that the Force Providers have but one the COCOMs want, if it is this small in terms of total footprint (cost of acquisition, sustainment, operation, training) is this a case (maybe like Light Attack) where the COCOMs could/should buy/own this iron?

Another earlier article by the same authors advocating for light airlift and discussing distributed ops, particularly in Eastern Europe: https://warontherocks.com/2019/05/uplifted-the-case-for-small-tactical-airlift/ Amen

Copy all and was surprised that they did not seem to know about the various turbos that AFSOC has that could perform this mission. Yeah, we kinda already have this capabilty (small on-demand airlift) but not integrated as part of conventional operations. I think that is what they were hinting at, airlift capability directly tasked by the customer vice customer putting a request into an AMD and waiting to see when they will get airlift for the small, high priority widget or party to travel between close to moderately separated locations. How much is enough or necessary to be operationally relevant? 50, 75, 100 tails?... felt they should have filled out that as they allude to losing LOCs in a European conflict and needing this light airlift to fill the gaps created by losing a bridge, port, major runway, etc... How much capability does this platform (if accquired) need? Range/speed, payload, defensive system, comm cabilities, NVG cockpit, etc... they seem to want to keep it basic (I would agree with that) and not too customized from a likely civilian airframe but would likely need some options not offered regularly offered from the factory... Just my two cents but if there was a way to pull some shennanigans and gain a possibly relevant capability, co-locate these with RPA bases and some overseas locations for good deal tours. Not the cheapest airplane but a Cessna Grand Caravan would probably fit the bill for STOL, speed, capability and adapability for other roles along with most of the desired military capabilities already engineered for this type

Interesting argument for light (very light) on-demand direct airlift for small, specialized cargo/passenger requirement. https://warontherocks.com/2019/06/featherweight-airlift-for-want-of-a-nail/ Is there a requirement for this? Is it affordable? Does it offer secondary benefits? It was interesting that the authors were/are respectively both fighter aircrew and not airlift aircrew advocating for this, thoughts?

Like Tucker Carlson and apparently so does Trump, article on the subject and excerpt that confirms I will be voting for him again: https://www.thedailybeast.com/fox-news-tucker-carlson-privately-advises-trump-against-iran-war “Trump thinks Tucker is one of the sharpest minds on television—[Trump has said], ‘So smart, a thinking man’s show,’” one knowledgeable source told The Daily Beast in August. It wasn’t always like this. In a piece Carlson penned for Politico, published in January 2016, the Fox host described a voicemail he recalled receiving from Trump, back in his celebrity-businessman days. “About 15 years ago, I said something nasty on CNN about Donald Trump’s hair,” Carlson wrote. “I can’t now remember the context, assuming there was one. In any case, Trump saw it and left a message the next day. ‘It’s true you have better hair than I do,’ Trump said matter-of-factly. ‘But I get more pussy than you do.’” “Click,” Carlson wrote. —Adam Rawnsley and Andrew Kirell contributed reporting.

That's a risk but doing nothing is not a COA in this situation IMHO, too many pokes in the chest to not earn a solid pushback. The key is that it has to target the IRGC to the maximum extent possible. Yeah, it's an excrement sandwich but chewing thru seems to be our only COA. Not a bomb the shit out of them response but very targeted, very painful and one that demonstrates that if we choose to we can flip them on their backs like a turtle and step on them if necessary. They loose face and deterrence is re-established. The regime needs an external enemy to remain in power therefore they will always be a-holes what we need is for them to be afraid that we can embarrass them at will. Keep it to air strikes on IRGC targets via stand-off weapons, seize Iranian assets, isolate diplomatically and covert actions. Doing nothing will cost more in the long run.

So DMPIs on military / industrial targets or both? They export oil, cripple that and the regime loses 45% of its money, they would not have the ability to withstand another Iranian Green Movement.

New AWACS business jet project, not big wing but... https://embraer.com/global/en/news?slug=1206607-embraer-and-elta-to-create-a-new-market-segment-with-the-launch-of-the-p600-aew https://www.flightglobal.com/news/articles/paris-embraer-and-elta-team-on-p600-aew-aircraft-459043/

Europe thinking about AWACS recapitalization: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-airshow-nato-awacs/nato-faces-big-bill-if-it-does-not-pick-awacs-successor-soon-officials-idUSKCN1TG0C1 Get a volume discount and Boeing needs the business, re-cap AF with 737 NG based platforms

Apologies Was in another article I read on this today: https://www.foxnews.com/world/iran-shoot-us-reaper-drone-oil-tanker-scene Maybe but I think a cyber, clandestine maritime program to give Iranian shipping a lot of unexplained problems along with keeping the support to the Saudis to keep Yemen from falling to their proxies is phase I, phase II can come later if they choose to escalate Time to start another Op Earnest Will part 2 in the meantime

Concur They took one of the crews into custody / hostage from one of the tankers and are now taking them to Dubai, just wanted bent/burnt metal not bodies. History rhymes Ok, so how do you give feedback to let the Iranian regime (not civilians) know this will not be tolerated? What do you strike, seize, deny that causes the regime enough pain to stop?

Iranian SA-7 shot at a Reaper: https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/06/14/iran-fired-missile-us-drone-prior-tanker-attacks-defense-official.html

More on the subject of potentially divesting F-15Cs and replacing with F-35As: https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/06/11/the_wrong_fight_over_fighters_understanding_the_f-15x_purchase_114494.html