busdriver

So sidebar story: wearing ABUs/ Camo two piece things enabled working with the Army ground types, they didn't immediately lump me in with their perceived zipper suited sun god view of the Air Force. It doesn't matter that their perception was wrong, I was a communicator, the only thing that mattered is if I was effectively passing the message to the receiver. If I have to change my approach to passing the correct message to ensure my intended receiver understands correctly, that's what I'll do. It's no different than changing your instructional approach to get through to a student. You can bitch and moan that the non-ers are pussies or that Army Infantry officers are fucking idiots, but at the end of the day if you could have made things better by changing your approach, who's really at fault for fucking things up?

Dude, poo poo it all you want. It's human nature. Know your audience, dress appropriately.

Of course, not gonna happen. I'm not sure the JFACC would know what to do with helos if TACON went that way. I know I would certainly get rid of the coordinating altitude. That fucking thing has become a crutch and in some respects a hindrance. But it did make me chuckle when the Army (I assume at the behest of Aviation branch leadership) moved the AH-64s up to higher echelons a couple years back. It's like they realized that air would always be short of demand and that penny packets don't work........ Fuck I just had an ACSC flash back.

Army Infantry leadership is extremely ignorant of the realities of aviation. I listened to an Army Apache O-3 tell a GO about his limited ability to support an operation given limited loiter time and distance to the nearest FARP and the GO's response was: "is that because of your crew rest?" I shit you not a one star thought his AH-64 crews were going to have crew rest issues 2 hours into an op. That telecon infuriates me to this day.

Draining the liquid from the pickled jalapenos is key, drain the jar when you open it then keep it in the fridge. Any cold liquid will reduce the energy in the kettle. Reference the EM chart in the preceding paper...

Current A3TW recipe: Just under 1x Solo cup of corn (top of the ridges) ~.5 cup of oil (ends up being about a 1:3 ratio of oil to corn) enough jalapenos to cover the bottom of the kettle without stacking 1x plastic spoon of jalapeno powder 1x plastic spoon of flavacol Put the oil in the kettle and let it heat up, toss in one jalapeno. Listen for the sizzle. Once you get sizzle, toss in the rest of the jalapenos. Leave the stirrer off and arrange the pepper slices into one layer. In a solo cup mix the dry ingredients. Once the jalapenos start to brown around the edges, dump in the dry ingredients and turn on the stirrer on. Wait, corn is coming End result: spicy corn, jalapeno slices that are crispy on the edges and chewy in the middle, adjust to taste....

Yep the fried Jalapeno slices can be cooked to make them the perfect surprises, while the powder controls the overall corn hotness. Best of both worlds. No need to over cook the jalapenos or overload the kettle to make the corn spicy. Back to that EM diagram concept.

I think JQP is a bit off, I really don't think Gen Post made that remark "knowing that in chilling the civic participation of his subordinates, he made it unlikely any of them would risk his wrath in order to take the actions necessary to manifest a complaint against him." My impression of him at WEPTAC was that he really was just speaking from his perspective. In this case, he just can't fathom that anyone would know what's at stake and still think keeping the A-10 is good idea. In other words a self-righteous a-hole who can't fathom that A-10 bros might actually have some kind of valid argument. I went in thinking his bro-level input from a GO-level was pretty cool, but some of the things said tweaked me a bit. It makes me wonder if a GO can actually provide bro level input at all, it seems all too political.

Agreed, the EM chart is awesome, keep in mind some kettles have adjustable thermostats if you take the kettle apart. That said 1:1 corn to oil is way too much oil. Also: Jalapeno Powder we have this in the shop and it makes adjusting the spicy level very easy, then Flavacol, it's like MSG for popcorn.

The whole thing can be summed up with the comment that we'll accept short term risk in capability to get the damn thing up and running with the hope that we're buying down long term risk.

It's always about the money.

Guy's the point isn't that we need to be able to dominate China with no losses. The point is that we should be able to dominate a place like pick-a-shit-a-stan without resorting to the losses RedFox refers to. If we're forced to accept those kinds of losses to deal with pick-a-shit-stan, we need to get out of the power projection business altogether because it isn't sustainable.

Adding to brabus' point: Algeria Air Defenses I'm not claiming we need to be worried about Algeria, but it makes the point about proliferation of advanced SAMs into what is clearly not China/Russia. I do think the AF has woefully underfunded self protection jammers and EA/EP in general, let's face it the legacy fleet is going to be flying for a very long time before the F-35 has fully taken over. 25 years ago was GF1, that's almost how much into the future we can expect to have 4th gen fighters around. I think a large part of the current thrash is preserving the F-35 timeline. Acquisition delays will drive up cost, and start the project down the rising unit cost death spiral. This is a direct result of learning from the F-22 experience. Or I could be totally wrong, sure as fuck wouldn't be the first time.

I agree, I think the problem is more along the lines of being able to operate in pick-a-shithole when double digit SAMs have proliferated to just about everywhere.

I've heard through the bro grape line that this wasn't surprising. Don't know what that means but take it for what it's worth

That's disappointing, the interim dude actually seemed to show some candor when he spoke at Nellis a year or so back. Granted it was one "town hall meeting" and he was always just an under-secretary, but still....

Sorry a crappy way to put it I guess. The most successful German interrogator of WW2 was famous for not using any physical coercion. One of his prisoners later commented that he was positive he gave up info but to that day didn't know what. That's what i meant, if they don't realize they're giving up the ghost, the intel is more reliable. The Scalia argument is interesting; is there a point where our morality as a nation is less important than some critical info? It also reminds me of the joke: You: hypothetically would you have sex with a stranger for 10million dollars? Her: Yes You: What about 10? Her: What do you think I am? You: We've established that, now we're negotiating.

By the logic you present: We are A OK to tie up our prisoners by their wrists behind their backs and lift them off the ground by that point of contact until their shoulders dis-locate. Because that's better than cutting off their head. What you're saying is that as long as we don't kill them, we can do whatever. We shouldn't be engaging our suspects in a battle of wills (aka torture) but but fucking them up with a battle of wit.

My point is that mock executions are pretty widely accepted as unacceptable. I have no problem with actual shit heads getting what they deserve, but until they get something that approaches due process who's to say they are actual shit heads? Should we be able to grab a dude off a compound and water-board his ass to gain intel about who his boss talks to at dinner..... when said dude is a cook and is just doing a job to get paid. It's an extreme example I get it, but at the end of the day either the means are acceptable or they aren't. We claim we're better than them, if we want to hold that claim we need to actually be better.

I agree with Mark1, there's a huge difference between getting a limited exposure to these things in SERE and actually having to face them with no end in site. However, I think there's a misunderstanding with what water-boarding really does. From what I've read and watched (there's all sorts of idiots on youtube trying it) it basically makes it feel like you're drowning. That said, having been a lifeguard in high school (great job) no matter how good a swimmer a person is, eventually that feeling trips a natural drowning response similar to a fight or flight type thing. The result is the "classic" drowning person flailing arms, ineffective kicking and head tilted back, eyes rolled back sheer panic look. They'll crawl on top of their rescuer trying to get out of the water. Water-boarding is more than a mock execution, it's a simulated execution that despite knowing going into it that you won't die the procedure will access a primal level of your brain you can't control to make you experience the level of fear that you are in fact dying.

QUE?

I think the outrage is the strangest thing about the whole report. Didn't we already know that this shit was happening? Discussions about whether or not "torture" produces accurate intel is a red herring. I think our society is built on ends not justifying means, so the question is are these means acceptable? I really want to know where is this generation's Hanns Scharff?

https://breakingdefense.com/2014/12/the-tale-of-the-f-35-and-hot-jet-fuel/ Turns out the blogosphere may have been wrong. I know I've seen F-35s flying in Vegas in the middle of summer, and haven't seen any white fuel trucks that I remember. May be less of an aircraft shutting down issue and more of avionics overheating and slowing down to protect themselves issue but now I'm really pulling shit out of my ass. That or the pilots are so bored they figured out to play pocket tanks on the MFD and it was too much for the computers to handle.

You people are insane. If OC is an ingredient....

You haven't seen an F-35 in person have you? Not what I would call pretty, more like chunky monkey.