Lawman

Dude I can’t wait to tell the DCG tomorrow that the reason we can’t invoke article V to defend his home country is because of their “historic ties to Russia.” He’s gonna be confused for a second and think it’s as stupid an idea as I just said. That deserves to be laughed at. But it goes to a wider conversation we had about why it seems like a good size chunk of Americans want to give Putin Eastern Europe like it’s his. After spending the pages of response to point out how clueless Bashi’s points are who give a crap at this point if we just agree he’s an idiot and state it openly. Go read a history book on Russia’s “historic ties” to the Eastern European states some time. If you would describe that as some sort of equal relationship and not just outright soft/hard power conquest and subjugation you’re clueless. It’s also a repeated line of justification by the Russians to execute the annexation of Ukraine as legitimate but it wouldn’t be the first time he and others have peddled those talking points. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

“Historical Ties to Russia/USSR.” Well that’s an incredibly stupid point to stand on given the argument. Most of us are arguing the necessity of stopping Russia in this fight to avoid them invading the next 5 nations who are all in NATO and apparently have “historic ties to Russia.” And yes NATO kicks in… against an opponent who is as you described justifiably fearful we will simply destroy them and likely to retaliate early and immediately with Nukes or Chem to immediately force us to stop short of a full exchange. That’ll only cost Stuttgart or Antwerp or something… no big deal right? Earlier in this thread you were screaming about the dangers of escalating with nukes because of our political support, now you’re telling us to pick the best COA likely to lead to their employment. God damn 4D-Clyde’ian-strategery right there gentlemen. Make that man a flag officer. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Plenty of people making MPX adapters to a standard lower config. I don’t know anybody with an MPX or similar setup that is upset about the decision. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Then why rank them higher than Georgia if it’s a simple as they aren’t evaluated to be that competitive. More specifically why do it 2 weeks after you already put them at one place in the list with said world changing quarterback? The default answer is a cop out of “the committee is an evolving evaluation based off ____.” Then it ignores its own precedents when inconvenient. And the default answer is “we aren’t wrong and weren’t wrong then, we’re just somehow more informed now.” FSU got hosed for one simple reason, the money/views provided by the SEC participation in the final 4. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yeah FSU… they “aren’t the same team without the QB” But we can let them play Georgia because that makes sense. By rights FSU could be playing OSU with the history on bowl alignment. That would make sense if they aren’t good enough to be in right? After all the ACC isn’t a real conference or some weird crooked post BCS logic. Runner ups of B1G and SEC and have Georgia replay OSU for a rematch but nahh, that makes too much sense. FSU should be in, and the SEC should have been exposed and left out having no clearly defined greatness as a Georgia without 2 key players couldn’t put away an Alabama that lost to Texas. But no way will dollars ever be left out of the discussion and if there is one thing that was not gonna happen is was leaving the SEC booster money out of big bowl games played in their back yard. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No lie, one of my IPs in primary was in that movie. Decades on and apparently he wasn’t allowed to introduce himself to his students without one of the other Instructors bringing it up. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Let’s just go with this video is full of bad Wikipedia level research and these guys are making click bait not informed information. For reference, anytime somebody tells you about Apaches with Stingers or doing Barrel Rolls, just know nothing they are talking about came from first hand research. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

That doesn’t help him. The number of Army pilots (particularly conventional) that have experience and understanding of denied area ops is abysmal after 2 decades of coin. Helicopters aren’t limited because of the nature of their engineering, they’ll be limited because of the lack of fused planning or understanding and synchronization of enablers evident by the war fighter we just did. The people who don’t know what they are doing and never received training in how to do it are now leaders and they are as a population resistant to being told anything by anyone outside their experience model. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Ward Carrol is a 2 decade out of date Tomcat RIO who has as much understanding of helicopter aviation as would be expected by a Naval strike pilot who only ever saw them operate over blue water. I don’t hate the guy, but he’s waaaaay outside his wheelhouse. If somebody doesn’t think Attack Rotary wing can function in LSCO and their examples are the Russian Hostemel “Leroy Jenkins” or the famous attack to destroy yourself by 11th Regiment in 03, they are cherry picking. Kurt Waldron and the Israeli Apache community would have a very different opinion on the survivability of helicopter aviation in a LSCO/RF arena. Most of the Russian helicopters lost have been from…. Indirect fire. Surprise, helicopters are vulnerable when they are sitting on the ground same as fixed wing. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Mods delete. Something is corrupted off those YouTube links

Not just that I’ve flown both methods of Helo. Explaining tandem aerodynamics and control principles is truly dark voodoo. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don’t necessarily find fault in this explanation. To use a metaphor, effectively we (the population) are in the “pilots seat” but we merely make inputs into the CDU. The aircraft is completely coupled to the FCS, and we merely make inputs every 2-4-6 years to the parameters of that system based off our interpretation of what we should make the aircraft do, but in the end it’s the computer (government) that will make all the action functions in our behalf. We just have to hope the input we made wasn’t completely batshit. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It’s not just they have the will to fight. They are expressing competencies they didn’t start the war with largely because it takes months to build them. People who used our optics of what ah offensive move looks like forget they are a military built around maneuver in order to conduct fires where we are the opposite. If they had tried to conduct the break through that US and NATO forces were advertising and using our tactics to their demographics would look a whole lot worse. They would not have had the core competency’s to conduct regimental actions of that kind. It’ll take years to rebuild them to that model. Same reason night action is so infrequent in this war, it consumes roughly 3 times the ammunition when we do it. They can’t afford to strain sustainment like that. At this point in the war it’s a convergence period, one where they have effectively been pushing back Russian counter attacks. And the weaponeering required to effectively destroy the bridge just aren’t their with the tools they have in their arsenal and never really were at the outset of the war. That said with what they have had/received/and importantly invented themselves they’ve effectively put the Russian Navy out of the fight minus being a Kalibr platform. Even of that they have eroded that from surface task forces to individual ship ops from longer lines of sustainment because they Ukrainians are effectively threatening Sevastopol now. If they have the will to keep fighting let them. And more importantly resource them when a lot of the billions of dollars of weapons we are sending are largely systems we own close to end of lot life like all those non unitary M26s. And you’re right about demographics as an expendable item to track. That’s why it was so critical to get them our sides tanks and IFVs. There is no question about crew survivability in comparison which keeps the most important military resource (the trained guy) in the fight to go again after reconsolidating. Russia isn’t getting the same option. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

They aren’t “stuck” It’s the rain and mud season so the entire pace of ops on both sides has gone down significantly in a war that is primarily about Fires in the form of artillery guided by collection from various UAS. They just successfully performed a Wet Gap crossing (something they couldn’t have done at the start of the war). That has pushed out the leading edge of their controlled areas the limits of a range to target the Kerch straight bridge if they wanted to risk it. But they need the unitary ATACM to do that. We haven’t given them that… yet. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Mission approval authority: “Leave it on… I want these bastards to know what and who they are F’ing with!” Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

“Sir target located designate Sierra 43!” “Jefferson stop looking out the window and help me with this life raft.” Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The downside being we won’t big enough fodder to actually do those training sorties and honed the edge on the spear so we’ll. Why won’t/can’t we fly Raptors for 40 years has nothing to do with some sort of obsolescence and everything to do with not having enough tails to solve the attrition of flight hours. There will never be an F-22C. How good/proficient an Air Force would we have had we stopped building Eagles in 1980 and vipers in 1987. If we’d been trying to limp that fleet at 5G maximums how many less sorties would you generate and likewise people could you have taken from 1LT to patch wearer. We are quickly becoming the militaries we used to laugh at. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

We just did a Division exercise where JSTARs MTI was being briefed as the primary collection asset at the target working group. The ALO and I had a laugh at that in the back. That’s the real worry as the military services rapidly divest capes in a vacuum to preserve their own sacred modification and renovation requirements. Nobody is talking to each other about what serious capability gaps are going to exist for the next 6-9 days/months/years while we adjust. See the Marine Corps entire reinvention of it’s self and divesting all it’s Armor and Tube artillery. Yeah it’s nice they want an identity of their own, but the MAGTF concept as it existed was a critical piece of a lot of O plans in between the light airborne speed bump forces and the arrival of the heavy divisions that have to be floated into theatre. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The funny part about this is with a LSCO fight we keep forgetting about our opponents SOF and what they will be doing. It is entirely possible we will need a heavy dedicated asset to remain behind the forward line of troops in the support zone both to keep an eye on whatever strongholds we bypass, as well as be there to smack the shit out of whatever irregular forces they try and hit us with. Nobody wants to brief that as their chosen mission set because it’s not sexy. I for one would feel a lot better in a division combined arms rehearsal or target decision board if we weren’t standing around a table but simultaneously worried about Charlie jumping the wire while the MPs are busy picking their noses. The murder bus being overhead for persistent security would help solve that. That would be the Gunship truly going back to its roots in being the overhead persistent ass whooping for any ground troops in Asia. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Who knew how much you could accomplish with 7.5 to 8 inches….. Somebody needs to get Yeet into any brief on said concept. Still I think there’s something immediately applicable with SDB and a rocket engine that could be translated later to something like the air launched effects project working in the Army. I think we need to look at some form of common “standoff shuttle” that can handle a family of effects types over what appears to be JASSM in a smaller package with the same costs. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

We’ve seen what launching an SDB on an M26 rocket can achieve. I wonder if somebody has looked at how much extra push you could swing by mounting something like an old sparrow motor to the back of one and just telling it to climb to space with a 10-18k foot head start. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Somebody needs to campaign on that metaphor. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

And we will get to play with Nuclear response when the conventional fight starts going against them…. Yes much smarter strategy than letting your enemy burn themselves out against a non nuclear nation which after 18 months they still refuse to unleash the genie against. That’ll be much less costly than losing say… Antwerp or Stuttgart (god forbid say Baltimore) and the resulting costs of that fireball and fallout. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Again… Russia has invaded (really reconquered) neighbors continuously over the last 3 decades. You acting surprised at a desire we stop them in the last nation they can invade (other than Moldova) who isn’t a NATO country is your inability to grasp why they are motivated to their current and past line of action. Ukraine is the place we either burn them down, or we get to do it in an article 5 country. When facing NATO what do you think Putin responds would be to losing given what we could potentially do to his regime? Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Until Russia isn’t holding forced in reserve for the impending fight for NATO, they are not attrited. Tats how this ends, a Russian incapable of either conquering a NATO neighbor or threatening an invasion of the Baltic states. Until then we are far from broke compared to what a nuclear exchange with a Russia that foolishly invades and responds to losing would cost us. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk