Lawman

We’ve been “continuously engaged” in conflicts since the end of the 2nd World War. To pretend that conflict is or hasn’t been an ever present part of human existence the entire time it’s been around is just bold faced ignorance bought from a position of insulated relaxation of not having to see the sausage get made. Somehow those little brush fire wars didn’t devolve into the end of civilization or industrialized warfare on a global scale. Again, the person I’m responding to has repeatedly over and over suggested that it’s not our place or responsibility to do anything about an autocratic land-grab via direct open conflict in Europe. Peace in our time so to speak. Yeah we’ve seen how that plays out before. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes, being isolationist in our foreign policy and allowing autocrats to take what they want is exactly how you prevent a World War… Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That’s happened to the Army every year it’s offered. They budget for about 1/3 the available population in the hopes of forcing guys to commit early and not wait until they are in a combat zone to file for it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I feel like there is a real lesson to be learned from the cartel drone subs out there. Expendable resupply vehicle that would force somebody to burn a lot of effort to find it or use it to build a wider intel picture. That seems like the perfect way to augment resupply of guys doing their best impression of the coast watchers where airdrop or other methods might show too much of your hand. But before somebody goes over the top with capabilities this like so many other things doesn’t need to be overbuilt. Stay with something that isn’t intended for the hard threat mission like the SDV, just something that will boat it’s way to your friendlies without shouting to the world a trail of breadcrumbs. Maybe something small enough it could be hand rolled off the back of a small amphibious ramp equipped logistics platform… dropped far enough from an island chain to swim without giving away their position or to just stash its self and wait. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

China is facing a demographic collapse which in the next 3-5 years will hollow out its “cheap labor” model. They can’t fix that, even if they wanted to it would require a massive effort that simply getting rid of the 1 child rule doesn’t meet. That will have a world wide impact as it takes full effect over the next two decades. That’s because it’s not just about their population decreasing, it is simultaneously aging so it’s an exponential curve not a linear one. Right now the people to fix the problem are all approaching 30, in a few years your big bubble of population will be too old to viably produce more than they are numbers wise let alone raise a minimum of 3 kids. China’s cost to manufacture is now 5-6 times what it was in the last 20 years. Which is why anybody smart has been pushing to decouple from China which has put its self in as a middle man on supply chain refinement not finished manufacturing. That is fine in an export based economy so long as the music keeps going. And no kidding we would drop a turd in the punch bowl to fight a war, the fact of it is while it would screw up our economy and trigger a lot of heartache and supply chain issues, it would completely destroy the system theirs is built on. They use their economy to keep people employed first and foremost. That keeps them from questioning the system while party centralized banking options are limited to government control which finances their whole economic loan system. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

China is effectively 4 countries. While the North and Central China have held power the idea that China is this massive united population is a false impression/oversimplification. North China is the China culture we associate as Americans when we think of China as an opponent, but they are about to go through a disaster to their economy and debt/savings structure that will make the Great Depression look mild by comparison. And their A2AD structure works both ways, so having this collection of countries that hate you as an immediate barrier island chain able to interdict your entire coast lines importation of sea going vessels is bad for their economic model. Especially when their economy is the largest importer of pretty much ever raw material/oil/food stuffs on the planet. We don’t even need it to go kinetic to ruin them. If you did what the world did to Russia with sanctions and market exclusion you would hobble their economy, cause upwards of 35-40% unemployment overnight and completely upend their ability to just issue state backed credit models to keep their economy churning. It would be a death sentence for their current unification and basically send them back to the 30s. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

The ground effect airfoil systems are essentially a higher speed version of hydrofoil/hovercraft type designs. They have specific niche areas where they work effectively to do rapid light transfers but they are extremely limited in any sort of dynamic open water environment. Start adding up distances and unpredictable weather patterns. There is a reason outside a very few areas you don’t see high-speed hydrofoils and even when you do, they are an augmentation to the existing heavy conventional sealift (good example the Greek isles). The real fear for the Caspian Sea monster and other ground effect systems wasn’t their ability to rapidly put a mass of troops and equipment, it was because they were effectively a warship’s worth of cruise missile platform that could rapidly move and maneuver from a relatively safe sanctuary to a firing position against a land or sea based target and then run away before presenting a viable target. Same with things like of the same era like the OSA missile boats. A swarm of them would present a real dilemma for a fleet forcing them to exercise stand off and render themselves ineffective. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

While I get the joke, go get the NGIC briefing on Ukraine and focus on the logistics and sustainment sides of it. (The non sexy stuff people ignore). We have hard number data now on just how much of a force multiplier a single forklift or K loader is because we are watching a peer military do without it. When I think of just how many pallets of stuff moved on Ramps at Bagram or Taji for a war where sustainment of ammunition wasn’t really a concern. Now imagine the same scenario without the automation and organized work gangs of 18-23 year olds who don’t want to be there and are poorly supervised. That is gonna be a major make/break point beyond simply having enough ready munitions in stock (the current shiny thing of focus). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Anybody that questions palletized ramp offload vs other options, go compare a Sherpa/Osprey/47 onload and offload of cargo to a C-12 or Dornier. Not pax’s and luggage I mean pallets of commo and tough boxes they need to do a job at a location. A single forklift can do the work in minutes that takes at least an hour because no only do you have people shuffling up a set of stairs with a yeti cooler of crap at a time, they can’t just turn around and back out. Also compare them as jump platforms or airdrop cargo because let’s face it that’s gonna be a big part of your customer option. Unless you can get a pallet sized sliding door on the side we shouldn’t even entertain the idea of a logistics platform that can only be loaded by hand. If it can’t be loaded up with a 10-15K fork loader it’s going to cost time and sortie rate as we unpalletized stuff that was delivered by big ramp aircraft to stick it in this and take it to a location only accessible by seaplane that then has to be unloaded again. If it’s being unloaded in a zodiac, try putting one of those through the door of the previous listed planes. Let alone carry the motor of it without accidentally dropping it down the stairs. And a rear ramp gives you an option to simply low pass and push floating supply pallets to be recovered to the beach by the receiving group. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Look everybody can agree the PBY is a classic design that has beautiful lines, but even in the time it was flying it was nowhere near the best flying boat available, just the most iconic. There have been a host of designs since then more suitable to tasks/mission sets we are now taking about. Not to mention a lot of understanding about aerodynamics or structural engineering for such designs. If this is first and foremost a logistics platform, using a sea borne scout plane as the base of design is a horridly bad idea. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

We were still directly actioning on targets from the Neptune Spear intel 4 years after the fact. That wasn’t just national building, it was dismantling active efforts by AQ and its leadership network. That’s part of the misunderstand we were there to make a democratic country. That was a secondary goal to all the stuff going on in numbered task forces. If we’d said that publicly it would have been honest, but that’s a harder sell to people. “Why are we still there?!?!?” “Well Mr and Mrs Wisconsin suburban voter… there are still a lot of S-heads that need killing.” Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It’s funny that right now Russia has had to pull their Navy back into safe havens even further from where they could steam BEFORE they invaded Crimea. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Do you have any idea how many prepared sites for supporting dispersed operations we maintained in Europe during the Cold War or currently maintain in Korea as various echelons? Do you know how many places in the Indo-PACOM theatre we have agreements but don’t prepositions at because it’s 3rd and 4th order contingency locations? Some of its shadow guessing. Drop some connex’s and a dirt runway you never intent to use and out yourself in the RedFor commander… gonna spend some Tactical Ballistic missiles on site A, B, C?… what about this other guy. Hey look we depleted your strike capability with deception ops. Or maybe we go there with intent from the balloon going up. Either way it’s effective. This isn’t new. This is prudence of let’s not write/staff/support an O-plan while the war is actually ongoing. That’s been a true nature for strategic planning not just for us but for every major power as long as power has been expeditionary (British Empire with things like the China squadron, German General Staff, US War plan Orange/red/yellow for USA, etc).

That’s a bit overly simplistic. CAS is any air delivered kinetic effect that impacts the ground forces elements of maneuver requiring the enhanced coordination between air and ground elements to mitigate risk. That’s why it changes relative to the weapons employed and not just a range or place. Air delivered high dud munitions for example would require a far wider margin of separation/coordination over an APKWS delivered at high angle. Same is true for our fires from the ground to the ground. 155 is different than an ATACM even though it’s all “fires.” You can be doing AI and still be well short of the FSCL. See all the stuff we did striking isolated pockets of resistance that our ground forces bypassed during things like the 03 invasion. If they weren’t supporting a maneuver unit in the conduct of a developing or direct fight, it was by default AI. Or you get into those weird “shaping” ops like using you guys to knock out a bridge when a unit realizes it’s flank is about to be rolled up. You are technically out of contact, so it stops being CAS even though it’s obviously an immediate consideration to a maneuver unit (whatever echelon). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

We had to explain to our Brit exchange guy that the phrase, “silly c*nt,” wasn’t nearly the benign comment he was used to culturally. Thank god the guy doesn’t smoke too… Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I’d say the same congressional zombies that have done things like hobbled the Raptor buy to <200 planes that have spent the last two decades screaming at people with stars on their shoulders at the mere suggestion of retiring the A-10 are doing exactly that. It is truly insulting as a guy in a green uniform to have somebody comfortably sitting in Congress and accuse another service tasked with a collection of missions that they “don’t care about the ground force.” Then after making their loud popular point they simultaneously cut back on the assets that deliver air supremacy I need to actually prevent a mass casualty event, or sign off on retiring our MTI capability, or don’t force a mass infusion in the collection tools critical to execute effective mission planning…. CAS is an effect. If a JDAm/Griffen/SDB II/etc is coming off a plane the ground force won’t care in the end what that plane (or robot) it is. They want timely application at the point of friction to maximize maneuver. That is all. Some of the most effective and timely CAS that I have relied on to change the outcome of the S show was delivered by a non pointy nosed aircraft. A damn Cessna could be doing it, just get it on target. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

It only stays unlikely in a game of balanced deterrence where the CCP looks across the water toward that Island they think is theirs and that Sea they believe is their beach, and then pause to remember that isn’t a given. Being equipped and capable of fighting is critical to them coming out of that pause with a changed mind. If they look out into that same environment to see a US military equipped and trained to fight real good in sub Saharan Africa or Southcom but not to take their A2AD and D2SOE, brush it aside, and cripple their infrastructure and military capacity they won’t feel that way anymore. We can teach an F35 to do CAS. We can’t teach AT-6 or some other Coincentric acquisitions platform like MRAP to do an effective multi domain LSCO fight. I mean we could try… but we will get some pretty predictable results. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Being less effective at the most likely war and losing it results in more S-head people in S-hole places continuing to do S-actions. Being less effective and losing the most dangerous one results in us either picking through the ashes for our daily meal or celebrating Glorious Leader’s birthday. I know which one I’d call higher stakes. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

One service is showing up to a combined arms fight with all three elements of the combat arms fight. The other very much isn’t and is making a commitment to engage in that fight with support from air assets. The entire Active Duty Marine Corps has 24 total HIMARs. The conventional Army had that many between 1st and 2nd SBCT at JBLM alone. The services are not congruent, even in names of unit types. The Army fight will be shaped around the Division as the maneuver element of action with the Armored Division of the engaged Corps being the vanguard of its advance. That hasn’t been the case for 20 years as we went to a BCT model doing wide area security. The bleeding edge capes of CAS will be far less important than effective AI or, what has largely just been assumed and forgotten about, Air Superiority for that units success. The guys at schoolhouses like to quote the famous “855 rounds of HE 155 to kill a tank company….” They need to understand it’s not 1982 anymore and update their thinking. There are shells in our M109s that will do just that in a single battery 6. More importantly the ground force organic firepower equation has changed from the Fulda scenario. Weapons like Javelin didn’t exist when that method of Air Land Battle CAS was modeled. The ground force even in light infantry or SBCT is capable of holding in the defense to a far greater degree, provided the Air can hobble THIER combined arms capability (IE take out their artillery/Fires/C2). That isn’t in the close engagement, it’s 4-40Km deep from the FLOT, and it’s protected by semi to fully autonomous IADS elements and directed by drones. We are far more likely to have a condition resulting in loss because we let the drone target a key element of the formation and had Red fires/aviation cause mass casualties in an assembly area than we are having to lean on organic fires because CAS wasn’t as available or plentiful as we have grown accustomed to. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

The Marines and the Army are not the same CAS customers. One service is divesting it’s self of tube artillery, armor, and basic at anything that delivers a weapon at range with precision that isn’t either a Hellfire missile or GMLRs fired off a truck (that they have limited numbers of). The other is less interested in CAS than it is in shaping operations. And before anybody points at the last 20 years of stupid as an example of how much the Army needs CAS, we could provide the effects desired from a Drone or persistent light weight Bronco style aircraft in Afghanistan and meet 90% of the mission requirements. For the other 10% a small slice of a wider population of advanced aircraft are more than capable of meeting the SOF raid requirement. The Army isn’t investing in M1299 or rapidly increasing capes in fires munitions for no reason. And it’s not so we can better provide immediate close fires, it’s so we can cause a mass casualty event two phase lines deeper than the point of advance while a reinforced Armor Division punches into the enemy support zone with concentrated application of mobile protected firepower. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

That’s just the point you’re trying so blatantly to step around. The method the justice department is charging him under negates the ability for him to ever be touched with that stuff again. He doesn’t even have to enter a plea to the Felony gun charge. It just goes away. And the whistleblower did testify, about documents, and they nearly had to hold the FBI director in contempt to get redacted items from that testimony. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

There is an FBI whistleblower testifying to congress that the DOJ has been taking action to limit and protect the son of the President, but you’re happy so I guess he’s wrong. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The fact you can look at those charges and refer to that as “not protection” shows how in the bag you are for “it’s ok and I’ll pretend I didn’t see it when my party does it.” Again, between this or Clinton deliberately destroying her server hardware to deny investigation immediate access and somehow that isn’t obstruction… Right bro. Totally on the level. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Go buy a gun illegally and not pay millions in taxes and see how many misdemeanors and dropped charges you get? He pled guilty to basically nothing. The gun charge doesn’t require a plea, and under the diversion now he can’t be charged with anything pertinent to the case because that would be double jeopardy. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk