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I don’t understand why a system, the E-7A, that is already operational with other air forces requires so much development investment, is so expensive to acquire, and has such a long lead time. I suppose the Air Force monkeyed with the requirements too much but still, should have been off-the-shelf.

The land components just lost two wars and are mainly responsible for our Euro-centric defense posture that allows the Europeans to freeload whilst we go broke defending them. Not interested in a damned word the Army has to say...

Well, it does run through 2034...

https://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract/Article/4218062/

I hope the US Air Force is paying attention to this and has countermeasures in place. If the PRC attacks Taiwan and doesn't do the same thing here in CONUS, they would be fools. Doubtless there are already PRC agents in place given our lax border security and student visa program.

I was not impressed with the will to fight, or lack thereof, my Taiwanese F-16 pilot classmate displayed (at the ROKAF Staff College), albeit that is a sample size of one (and this is before the Hong Kong crackdown, which probably stiffened some spines in Taiwan). However, I wonder what the will to fight is among the Taiwanese military and civilian population now. I wonder how it would stand up to a massive PRC missile barrage and a naval minelaying campaign, both of which could happen before we could intervene...

I assume everyone complaining about tariffs are just fine with all of the tariffs everyone else puts on our exported stuff. The basic problem is there are structural problems with the economy but one of the very few tools Trump has to try to fix it are tariffs. The rest is up to Congress, but regardless of which party controls Congress, nothing gets done (except for some more rigging the game in favor of the elites). We need to make energy cheaper, pare back the massive, massive overregulation, reform our education system, etc. but none of that is going to happen because Congress is lazy, it's all against the interests of the Dems, and the GOP in Congress lacks any semblance of balls. Also, we can't negotiate our way out of the trade war because the State Dept is basically worthless. When they negotiate anything, they negotiate for what's in the best interest of the State Dept, not the country. Look at the disastrous free trade agreement we have with South Korea. Let's face it, none of the reforms needed are going to happen and we will eventually have an economic collapse due to government overspending and the structural issues with the economy. But we'll argue and fight over irrelevant social issues all day long (to distract us from the real problems). On top of that, our main enemy, China, is eating our lunch and we can't carry out effective countermeasures because half of the country envies and admires the CCP's system. Our only hope is that China's demographic issues and their economic issues catch up with them before they can really put the screws to us.

The other wild card is whether the PRC would allow reunification, especially if was done under the South's system and how much the PRC would help or hinder. Reunification would probably give the South a sense of purpose that it currently lacks but the competition in the labor market there is already insane so I'm not sure the effects of adding a bunch of cheap labor to the economy would be. Several years ago a medium sized city in South Korea advertised to hire two garbage men and got like 20,000 applicants including people with PhDs because a government job is seen as a stable job. Apparently these days, entrance into the military academies has gotten much more severe for the same reason.

Just imagine the environmental cleanup they would have to do, let alone everything else. The whole country is probably like a giant Superfund site.

Nah, most South Koreans just want the North Korean problem to disappear and don't actually want reunification (except for their Left, who wants the North to takeover, which staggers the mind) as they don't want to crush their standard of living paying for reunification.

Was a Korea FAO and went to the ROKAF ACSC as an exchange student and talked to my Korean classmates and staff about this stuff extensively. I can't see the ROK letting us conduct ops from their soil against the PRC, even ISR, unless the PRC attacks the ROK first. The ROKs greatly fear the Chinese and have noticed how many times we have left allies twisting in the wind. Also, whenever I would ask the ROKAF guys about what they thought about us packing up and leaving Korea, they would only mention that they don't want us to do so because it would cost them too much money to replace what we bring to the fight. They never mentioned the alliance, friendship, etc. Well, one ROKAF officer did but he was the NKAF F-6 (MiG-19) defector from 1996. Of course my info is a decade or more old so take it with a grain of salt. There used to be another Korea FAO who posted on BO.net so maybe he can chime in. As the ROK pays a huge amount for the cost of stationing US troops in Korea, IMHO, that's one of the main reasons we still keep forces there is because it's cheaper to maintain that force structure than it would be in CONUS, plus the fact that the Army is loathe to give up the USFK/CC 4-star billet (maintaining GO/FO billets seems to be DoD's #1 priority).

https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/nation/2025/03/205_393831.html I wonder if the USAF would publish what went wrong this quickly. More like we would say it's under investigation for the next six months.

Lucky CSOs are flying in Navy T-6s else the AF would probably go to 100% sim for UCT and then off to the FTUs...

The country is going off a cliff in 5th gear due to the debt and yet there are a lot of people arguing, "Let's drop down to 3rd gear. Too much chaos otherwise." How about we turn the car around or at least parallel to the cliff?

Yea, so hard Left it makes me seriously despair for the future of this country.