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I think we can all agree the Pakistanis are a wicked lot.

I have serious doubts as to the Taiwanese will to fight. Their attitude seems to be that the Americans will ride to the rescue and do all of the heavy lifting. For example, only buying enough air-to-air missiles for their fighters to fly 1-2 sorties but they are out doesn't smack of preparedness to me. Also, I went to the ROKAF Staff College with a Taiwanese F-16 pilot and I was concerned about some of the statements he made. Sample of one but if he represents the mainstream thinking, their heart really isn't in it/in a lot of denial about the threat. A Taiwanese-American retired USAF officer friend of mine who has gone to Taiwan numerous times for FMS and security cooperation visits with their top brass has doubts too. A massive TBM barrage along with a blockade might be enough to force the Taiwanese to capitulate. I hope I am dead wrong. Anyone fly with their guys in F-16 FTU or UPT and have a different experience? And there isn't a lot of will in this country to fight and die on their behalf either.

We can't solve the gang violence problem in any major U.S. city, but sure, let's go try to remake Afghanistan into a functioning country though we don't understand the language, culture, history, who is who, the centuries old feuds, etc. with a population who have an average IQ of 85 and most of whom probably have PTSD from the decades of war, UXOs, child rape, complete lack of safety culture, banditry, etc. FFS.

And ten years later, what the article said has finally dawned on the "elites". FFS.

The irony of a free press is that it is simultaneously a democracy's/republic's greatest defender and greatest threat. When the press does its watchdog role faithfully against the government irrespective of who is in power, it is vital to our system of governance. But when it decides to become merely the propaganda arm for one political party, then it is dangerous.

Can't get people to give up their liberties and freedom if they feel safe....

I asked a TPS grad who was a BUFF EWO about the re-engine thing a long time ago and he said the four engine thing was kinda out because there wasn't enough rudder authority to counter the asymmetric thrust from an engine-out situation, or something along those lines, IIRC. Let the smarter people chime in...

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9387769/F-22-stealth-fighter-pilot-reveals-forced-Air-Force-racism.html I didn't see anything like this with the African-Americans I flew with or served with. Heck, most of them did better than I did and went to USAFWS, SAAS, AWC, and made O-6... YMMV though.

Imagine you're the INDOPAC commander and the day the invasion of Taiwan starts you get a text stating all your bank accounts have been drained, your IRAs drained, etc. and if you lead the response it's all gone permanently. Sure enough, you check and all your accounts have been erased. Imagine how that would mess with your head...

We will NEVER achieve MLK's dream in this country because far too many people on both sides (your Al Sharptons and David Dukes, et al) make a good living stirring up racial animus. And far too many listen to those fools.

The damage "experts" like Fauci have done to the credibility of the government in general and expert opinion is vast and will be a wickedly hard problem to correct.

Therein lies the problem, the vast majority of politicians advocating gun control are not operating in good faith. They are just moving the ball down the field towards their goal of eliminating the 2A.

Who the hell at Walmart decided that was a good idea? I mean seriously, have they ever been to a buffet line!?! Same fools that are loading their plate one kernel of corn at a time now are gonna self-checkout in an expeditious manner? YGBSM. Now going to Walmart takes 3 times as long. <rant switch off>

Well, whatever happens in the wake of the Capitol riots, you can rest assure the DC types will handle it in such a way as to create the worse possible outcome for everyone, especially the rest of the country who wasn't there taking part... They seem to excel at that.

Nice strawman. But fine with me. Coast Guard is the only service that defends the homeland as it's primary mission. The rest of us are defending our freeloading "allies" and corporate access to overseas markets. See, two can do this strawman thing.

The basic problem is the government has too much power and control. If we could dial it back to what it was intended to be, then it wouldn't matter who was in the White House or in Congress. With so much direct involvement in the lives of every American, the stakes are too high to let the other side (whichever side that happens to be) be in control.

That's just for us retirees...

The 28th BS, at least, had their patch approved by treaty with the Mohawk tribe/nation and it was updated in the late-90s IIRC. It also takes the tribe's approval to change it from what I understand.

I still think we should have bought the Goodyear Inflatoplane (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodyear_Inflatoplane). If I had to eject over bad guy land, if someone dropped this to me, I'd take my chances with flying this out of Dodge if the HH-60s couldn't get to me.

https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/2459225/newly-acquired-afrl-test-aircraft-to-aid-personnel-recovery-research/ The Air Force is thinking of using a XCub bush plane for CSAR? Wow. Would be sporty to fly that into hostile airspace.

We'd probably be better off having everyone get a PMI Project Management Professional (PMP) certification instead of SOS. That was more useful than anything I learned at SOS....

The sad thing is everybody are so emotionally invested in programs, we can't even have the discussion about what to cut. People just lose their minds when you bring up their pet thing and refuse to even consider it. For example, Service Academies, two ground branches, EUCOM, etc. Just watch how much flak I will draw for mentioning those few items. I personally think DoD could take a massive cut without significantly endangering our national security IF AND ONLY IF we were willing to make the hard choices.

I really don't get the subdued spice brown patches, nametapes, etc. It's on velcro; if you truly need to be camo'ed, just take them off, like we do with the flight suit.

The people arguing we need to do something about global climate change would have more credibility if they were open to other options (such as technological solutions like Viperman mentioned) but they insist the ONLY option is turning the U.S. into North Korea/Stalinist Russia. Me thinks the objective isn't mitigating climate change but rather it's political power... At any rate, unless you get China and India onboard, anything we do is futile.

Just spent a year and a half running a state nuclear response team (loved the job but to tell you how much the upper management in state government sucks, I just took a job as an AFJROTC instructor-would rather deal with teenagers...), the whole radiation thing is way overblown and the risk of a serious nuclear power plant accident that impacts the public is extremely small. And the safety culture at nuclear power plants makes Air Force aviation safety culture look positively careless from what I could tell.