jazzdude

I don't think numbers killed is a good yardstick to compare conventional war to nuclear war. You're right, war is devastating, even without nukes. As we learned more about the negative effects of using nuclear weapons, we started to reign in where we put them and who has the authority to use them. I think our better understanding also raised the bar on how significant a threat needed to be before we'd consider nuclear weapons. I think it's time for us as a nation to rethink if the President should have the ultimate authority to nuke whoever he wants at will, particular for a first strike, especially since Congress holds the power to declare war and a first strike with nuclear war is a de facto declaration of war by the President. even a retaliatory strike can be iffy. Not saying there aren't scenarios where the use of nukes is justifiable, to include first strike. Just that maybe we should have some checks and balances on the employment of nuclear weapons.

I think what makes the use of nuclear weapons, particularly in a first strike capacity, involves the military necessity and proportionality. I don't think number of people killed matters in this context, it's the use of nuclear weapons in the first place that changes the discussion. There's also the environmental fallout of a nuclear strike to deal with that you wouldn't have in a conventional strike. Plus the suffering of survivors exposed to radiation creating a humanitarian crisis. Even if it's not a war crime per se to use nuclear weapons, there's going to be international backlash and condemnation. So unless we're ready to exist in our own bubble, this backlash will affect our other instruments of power. With conventional military campaigns, Congress could decide to stop the campaign. Can't really put nuclear war back in the bag. And all of this rests on the President, who could decide to ignore all his advisors, ignore the principles of necessity and proportionality, and unilaterally execute nuclear war. Congress has the power to declare war, and putting nuclear first strike solely in control of the President circumvents this power.

Maybe it's time we reevaluate our nuclear posture. Consolidating the power into one person pretty much guarantees a retaliatory nuclear strike if we are attacked with nuclear weapons. This is good for the mutually assured destruction concept. Consolidating the power into one person also means that one person could initiate nuclear war with no check or balance. The only safeguard is the assumption that no sane person would initiate a nuclear strike unless absolutely necessary.

He hasn't been winged yet, so the AF could opt to not wing him and deny him the pilot aeronautical rating, which means no mil-comp for commercial/instrument ratings. Best case for him is the system is slow and he wings. Worst case is what I have above. Most likely is being put on admin hold and rolling a class or two while the commanders figure out what to do.

"Standard" for the UPT commitment is 2x tours in your MWS, 1x outside your MWS (UPT, IFF, FTU, ALO/AMLO, etc). Manning in some communities doesn't allow this (I think fighter community is staying on the line, for better or for worse). ETA: not a hard "rule," but probably covers 75% of pilots

Remember, in America healthcare is a business. If it isn't profitable, it's not getting done. It's not a bug in the system, it's a feature Plus, there's been a shortage for a while in healthcare, where demand has outstripped supply. Even doing things like adding nurse practitioners to cover for a lack of doctors had been a band aid fix at best

I agree with you here, and a national mandate for the general public is overly heavy handed. And both sides, republicans and democrats, grab power when they can to limit freedoms. Healthcare is a hard problem. It's driven largely by the insurance companies, who's interest lies in making money. There's not a lot of choice people have in their insurance company, unless they make/have enough money that they'd be well off anyways. On one hand, I agree with you that healthcare is not a right. On the other hand, I'd like to think that as a country that believes we are truly exceptional, we should take care of our own and provide a safety net for our fellow citizens.

There's this underlying assumption that if people need to be treated at the hospital, they can be. But in some places, that's just not the case. So this gets back to triage: there are limited ICU beds, so if you ran the hospital, who do you treat when you hit capacity? It's not a trivial question, especially if you're living in a smaller town where there might not be alternate facilities. And you can only have the hospital staff surge for so long before they just straight up quit (appealing to their Hippocratic oath or desire to heal would go over about as well as the AF telling pilots that separating after their initial commitment is unpatriotic) Should people delay medical procedures because of COVID? As in hospitals delaying surgeries because they don't have the capacity or resources to handle complications due to ICU capacity? That sounds like they are losing their freedom and ability to pursue their life as well because of COVID deniers. I know I would be upset if I had to delay a procedure to resolve an issue that causes me daily pain, or restricts the activities I can do, because the hospital doesn't have the resources available because they are dealing with COVID patients. The anti vaxxers/COVID deniers are making a choice as well, and it has consequences as well. And they are free to do so. But if you think their choice doesn't affect the freedoms of other people, you're mistaken So that brings us to this question: is access to healthcare a right in the US? If a private hospital decided it would not treat unvaccinated people, is that their right as a business? I ask that not necessarily in favor of nationalized or socialized healthcare, but rather in the context of: you can do what you want if you value freedom, but it you get hurt, well, it may just be tough luck for you. So if you've made that choice, should others that have chosen differently have to help you?

Those positions are political appointees, so it's not surprising. A better question would be why are they needed in the first place?

The hard part in all those is that from the aggregate, as a society, it makes sense to vaccinate given the low likelihood of adverse affects. The benefits to the overall society out weighs the risk to a few within the population. However, at the individual level, you bear the risk and burden of any realized risk, and society might not (probably won't) step in to assist you. But at the same time, it makes sense for your neighbor to get the vaccine and breast the risk, because you get to read the societal benefit of them getting vaccinated. So this puts individual choice ("freedom") at odds with what is good for society, even if that societal good benefits the individual. This notion is amplified in the US because we're a very individualistic society. Like you vaccines and autism example, from a (previous to COVID) antivaxxer, even a small chance of vaccines causing autism (which they don't) is a risk they don't want to take, given that the diseases being vaccinated having been largely eradicated in modern countries (ironically, because of vaccine mandates). The threat of the disease isn't real to them (who gets the measles any more?), but the perceived consequences of taking a preventative action to protect against the disease is viewed as real.

Part of the issue is that all the training and exercises seem to focus on day 1 of the fight; kicking in the door and seizing the airfield. There seems to be very little thought into large scale exfil/retrograde in an at best unstable/degrading situation or at worst a hostile situation. I'm sure our SOF forces train to similar situations, as does our personnel recovery forces, but those are usually small scale efforts, and not retrograding a large number of people/equipment. It seems planners can hammer out aircraft flow, parking, etc, but it seems the ground piece gets forgotten about: you need people not just for security, but to wrangle the people and equipment being retrograded, and once those people are pulled back, your ability to maintain any real sense of order in loading jets decreases significantly. In other words, there needs to be a phased logistics plan for who leaves when, maybe with some to level contingency adjustments.

Physical hospital space and available beds is one problem, and that's an easier problem to solve because you can throw money at it to fix it. Staying and patient loads are a bigger problem. I mean, it's not like it doesn't take years to create doctors and nurses to staff those hospitals (as well as everything else medical related such as clinics and nursing homes), and the pipeline (particularly for doctors) is already maxed out. It's like the AF pilot retention problem, except doctors don't have an ADSC and there's no real way to increase the production of doctors in a year like the AF can with pilots.

Yeah, that's not an ATC problem, that's an airfield security and aerial port problem. Point is, an AWACS controlling the pattern and acting as approach/tower doesn't solve that problem.

What happened to all the chest beating about uncontrolled airfield ops? Make your pattern calls, visually clear the runway, etc. Same for the terminal area, at least in VFR.

My guess goes the other way: if a mental health evaluation shows he has no mental health issues, it clears the way to drop the hammer on him in a very public manner, moreso than has already been done. If he does have mental health issues, I'd guess that at best paves the way towards possibly finishing his career and getting to retirement, or if nothing else, an honorable discharge. As for his business, well, generally it pays to not piss off the leadership of an organization that encompasses your entire customer base. I wouldn't have been surprised if any other vendor had make public statements bashing DoD leadership and then had their contacts terminated or items taken off the shelf either, especially for non-mission critical items sold in the exchange. Unfortunately for him, it's a double whammy. Might be time to revamp his website to do direct orders rather than rely on the MCX and improve his advertising game to reach his customer base.

https://www.washingtonexaminer...358nA9wgs9Pa0eHqAlSICijzKkWzEA Sometimes when you take a risk, that risk gets realized.

They weren't military working dogs, but rather dogs from an non-profit animal shelter https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/09/01/dogs-kabul-airport/ https://www.npr.org/2021/08/25/1030227075/afghanistan-airlift-evacuation-animal-rescue

You realize test pilots do more than just ride along, right? Even for TPS syllabus flights. You've got a valid case for GOs that list jets they've just ridden on, that's dumb. Not the case here though

1. MEPS qualifies you for basic military service-much cheaper and could screen out people who don't meet basic military medical standards, and reducing workload at Wright Patt. The evaluations are for different things, entry into military vs entry to a specific career in the military. 2. That office is the AF flight surgeon. It sucks that your life is on hold as you fight an uphill battle, but the open secret is the AF just doesn't care about you as an individual, as the machine keeps grinding on and UPT slots get filled. They still have enough applicants that are medically qualified, either outright or with simple waivers that are accepted *at that time* based on demand. It sucks, but luck and timing are just as important if not moreso than just being good. 3. Once you have your wings, the AF is more willing to give waivers since you've already been trained and they would like to keep their investment. Any time invested in an applicant who needs a complex waiver is time that can't be spent getting an active flyer back on flight status.

Reports of 10-15k Americans in Afghanistan, though a few thousand have been evacuated already. It's likely we'll need to put troops back on the ground to secure the airfield, or maybe even go outside the airfield to recover Americans who cannot make it to the airport, which will increase the number of Americans that will need to be pulled out, plus whatever equipment they bring in/out. There's also aiding our NATO allies with pulling out their citizens (unless we just don't care about our NATO allies anymore, who again, are there because we forced them to participate). All of that is on top of any refugees we want to pull out. Activating the CRAF means CENTCOM and TRANSCOM screwed the pooch planning the withdrawal, since there's no reason contact airlift couldn't have been scheduled as part of the pullout plan. State might share some blame for not having their transportation requirements communicated to CENTCOM. Same goes for not having mass pax staging areas identified and at least in the process of being prepped when we kicked off the evacuation. I'm not surprised though, seeing how transportation requirements were planned, and the friction between military and DoS. But yeah, we'll likely need to use the CRAF because we're so far behind and are in reactionary mode, and COCOMs don't like to share resources. Flexibility is the key to airpower, especially when you can't plan worth a crap.

Allow me to translate: Airlifting Americans out of Afghanistan is not important enough to get TRANSCOM priority over other ongoing military transportation requirements. The only reasons I could see using the CRAF is if we are going to help our NATO allies evacuate their citizens as well and we're surging airlift ops already, or there's a lot more Americans stuck in Kabul than initially reported.

Similar boat as well, except for my first child. On top of that, it was a difficult/complex childbirth resulting in a weeklong hospital stay, during which my boss considered my duty location to be the hospital while mom and our newborn were there. Access to the military chaplain helped us get through/talk through some significant emotional events during that hospital stay. It was great having the 3 weeks of (paid) paternity leave to help care for my kid and take a lot of the burden off of my wife so she could have an easier recovery and not feel overwhelmed.

But think of the fuel savings not having to tanker gas through Kabul...

I wonder if this is the beginning of the end for NATO? Trump talked about kicking our allies to get them to contribute to NATO like they are supposed to, and took a lot of spears for straining the alliance. Biden pulled out of Afghanistan so fast that we left our allies hanging in Afghanistan, who were there in the first place because we invoked article 5 of the treaty.

To what strategic end does this help? Sure, it'd feel good from the tactical operator perspective. But that's expensive (cost of weapons, flight time, basing and associated support and logistics infrastructure). On top of all of that, Pakistan has been friendly towards the Taliban, so how long does it take for Pakistan to close of overflight rights to deny airstrikes in Afghanistan?