Lawman

Nobody cares about the middle child… Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If you took every square inch of the missile bay and turned it into a fuel tank you’re talking about ~2 million gallons worth of space…. That would never actually be possible with all the other parts and pieces involved in that space. Realistically, you at best get a couple hundred thousand gallons of fuel. That’s not a whole lot when you figure the average aircraft carrier is holding 3-3.5 million gallons of aviation fuel and burns through it in a matter of days in some instances. Not to mention the loss of a strategically more important asset to hold and move gas. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Watching Seattle politics on the homeless was insane. You have an entire spectrum of people who refuse to even acknowledge a connection between addiction and the homelessness up there, and some of them will consider it a form of bigotry to even suggest it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You and others might have a leg to stand on as far as the “ignore the past and let’s do the right thing!” tack had the whole shut our eyes and pretend it didn’t happen gone way outside of just Hillary Clinton. Her entire inner circle and everybody on her staff was negligent and should have lost their clearances immediately following the revelations of what happened. Instead it was a meme joke to the left with “buttery males” while nobody connected to that shit show lost a clearance. You could still look them up in JPAS. Likewise, nobody is calling for Trumps staffers to face any kind of punishment just that they want him jailed like he was sitting in his room tweeting off cell phone pictures of papers from SAPs and STO stuff. The problem with suddenly pretending to be concerned now is that it’s intellectually dishonest to argue that conviction when we’ve seen just how far it will go ignored to not punish anybody on a political side, not just the key Target political bullseye in Clinton or Trump. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

50 Cal ricochets for literally nothing. And it’s still got a butt ton of velocity in it at the ranges we usually shot it in range setups. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Canadian Air Force guy. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I’m hearing from a friend apparently we’ve always known how to do this. Apparently it was figured out with the Luftwaffe Fulcrums post the wall coming down. Guess somebody just found the old copy of the book. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I’d settle for less money and a stop move… Seriously keep the money. I want my feet firmly planted where I’m standing for 5 years, and I’m not even at what most would consider a desirable location I just like my neighborhood and my kids going to the same school for a while. PCSing to chase Busy work deployments and other “opportunities” has been the biggest sap for keeping people in Army Aviation. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Nothing but vapor ware and hope as far as I’ve seen. Keep in mind this was during the same period of time as A6F and A7F were being presented as ideas. So draw a cool picture of an existing plane, say glass cockpit and advanced power plant as many times as you can… The GAO and others lampooned the AV-8B upgrade when it was compared to all the contemporary platforms it was operating along side with. It was a vast improvement from the A, but it was wholly a decade behind the rest of the aircraft in its peer group. Basically a what does this plane bring to the fight outside forward basing and shipboard flexibility, look at all the deficient problems related to performance etc… So the Marines started pursuing a next Gen harrier AV-8E for simplicity of discussion … problem was since the mid 80s the Brits had pretty much washed their hands of seeking any sort of super advance in the Harrier design so the Marines already had finite dollars to pursue anything on their own hence why the AV-8Bs left a lot on the wish list as far as upgrades over the original pursuit. The Marines were exactly nowhere as far as moving forward with a replacement. Osprey was all consuming as far as their budget. Meanwhile the Navy had JAST and the Air Force JFX viper program was coming along well. Marines already fly Navy planes… mash the two together and get on board so to speak. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I mean… they didn’t originally want or ask for it. This all stems back to the people in charge saying make a 5th Gen plane that does everybody’s replacement requirement. The Harrier follow on as conceived was a 4.5 Gen aircraft similar to the evolutionary progression like in the E/F Hornets. A new aircraft yes, but not so much a clean sheet design and damn sure not an L/O driven aircraft. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Not so much an equipment as mission focus point he was making. Talk to guys in Vietnam and the most effective platform for CAS was often times F-100s because that was consistently the mission set those guys spent developing. Hornet when it can on line had a very heavy Attack cadre come over from A7s that drove a lot of the “how we do business” in the community that has largely never left. I’m every conflict some communities focus on particular skill sets and a smart staff recognizes and uses that. Even the Air Force acknowledges that close air support is a concentration same as SEAD or any other “don’t F this up or it’ll really hurt” mission sets. That’s why as part of workups prior to OEF/OIF deployment those Viper units slated to it would spent a lot more mission training sorties on CAS focused mission scenarios. Marine aviation by default understand their position in the universe as there strictly to make the ground side of the MAGTF more effective and tailor their focus to that. At the Joint Planning level that means yes, they are assets to be apportioned, but send them to the missions they train to and they won’t get butt hurt about not getting some other cooler more glamorous mission set. They’d rather be dropping in support of their buddies on the ground than doing the big package to Tehran or something. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Considering the last 8 years of assistance and training, this whole thing should go down as the most effective FID mission ever. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

That was probably the biggest shortcoming with Obama as far as foreign policy. Putin tested him, validated where and how quickly he would back off any demand, and the rest of the world knew it too. He was essentially sitting at the poker table with his cards backwards and everybody else knew dead to rights what he had to play. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

They actually talk about in a featurette how much they were trying to make that exact formula from RO work and just couldn’t get it right. Apparently that trick set a trend that everybody wants to follow so perfectly. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I mean even if at this point it’s just pulling together some boneyard parts birds, this is the kind of thing we (State and DOD) should be trying to put into effect. If we had commonality of equipment I’d be all for letting the Ukrainians run up an owe me tab in the AMARC. We don’t, so let’s play the you be friends to my friends and I’ll be forever appreciative card, and make some deals. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Honestly this is one of those “just buy me 6-9 cheap ______s so I can stop bending expensive metal” problems. A couple J-3 Cubs with big bush wheels and a cadre of experienced instructors who specialize to that task would be perfect for building that comfort zone without them taking the expensive MAS and figuring it out in their own. If you put “the kids” in bumper cars to learn Tail Wheel in a safe environment then really short of killing themselves in something spectacular the regular bumps and prop damage events common to tail wheel (by comparison) won’t be as big a deal. It financially won’t create class A’s so nobody in leadership need worry about perception that would ruin their career. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ok… Couple points to make here because like so many things it’s been destroyed as a term and turned into something perversely not reality because OIF/OEF…. 24 hour ops… That does not mean continuous attack on all axis or more specifically 24 hours of continuous coverage by assets. Yes it is extremely beneficial if we can continue to make things go boom in an enemies support zone without rest, but reality is no force to include the ground force you guys exist to prepare the way for can maintain operation indefinitely. Munitions consumption would be extreme… You’d have aircraft and crews servicing targets of a lower priority vs taking a tactical pause in the cycle to prioritize and build robust packages so you can achieve greater effect against stuff higher up on the HPTL… This idea of “get big gun, go forward, reign hell” = effective CAS is just mind numbing from the perspective of the ground element you’re supposed to be supporting. I’ll say this out loud for the people in the back… We Can Kill Tanks! In fact we really don’t need that done for us because we are pretty damn good at it. And we can straight up murder BTR/BMP… What we can’t do, is set ground conditions favorable to the offense/defense to do that under rounds of artillery and heavy rocket fire. No you killing 3-4 armored vehicles advancing on line in a pass doesn’t make or break for effecting the fight, because by prioritizing assets and dollars to that fight you’ve ceded a point where you could have prevented it and the need to stop and dig in entirely! You guys want to talk about old Cold War tactics and requirements and why we needed Hawg and Apache to stem the armor, it wasn’t because of us it was because of our allies in the Fulda scenario. Penetration was talked about earlier (STS)…. There is the often quoted “855 rounds of artillery” from the Joint Firepower courts… Yeah thanks for reminding us that HE point detonating fuse 155 is the least effective way to engage tanks in the maneuver. We appreciate that….Well when the air delivered tank killing requirement was determined the primary tank gun in NATO armies was the rifled 105 L7. NATO acknowledged that across the board even Chieftain not adequate parity to what the Russians seemed to be developing as far as Armor. With the 105 you can kill plenty and deliver it very accurately. What you can’t do is reliably shoot in the face and kill a T-64/72 unless you use DU from within the effective range of their 125mm… So acknowledging that nobody wants to do that an on top of it most of our allies won’t use DU, that’s gonna be at problem. Enter the Reinmetal 120mm…. Well 73 Easting kind showed what that will do to a tank. Regardless though, Tanks aren’t the big problem for us. Tanks won’t produce the MASCAL event that will shape the battlefield and politics unfavorably for us. The Russians and armies modeled after it have fire support as their center of gravity, not armor. Kill his artillery, get into the support zone and eliminate that threat, and the ground force will deal with the Armor. If you can kill their fire support they lose their most effective enabler to attacking our ground force or resisting counter attack. And considering artillery assets will be further back and staged under more robust defense and ideally in their own revetments requiring more deliberate high angle targeting, suddenly the survivability argument presented earlier changes drastically. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

As one of the Gunships primary customers, that’s an epically retarded idea… And I could give you a list of ARSOA flight leads that would tell him that to his face. The J model AC and the EC are the single most effective enablers in the stack for a HAF. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes but will it be “Fully Acrobatic?” (Actually heard this asked in an FMS meeting on selling this to an ally) Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This thing is going to be critical as the ground mission keeps expanding in AFRICOM but being kept on a shoestring budget of actual assets. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Oh now he and others are upset by what a bunch of us were already telling them… https://apple.news/AD7zsvHxkS4a42WNVSFzHgg It’s like they didn’t care if you were a good ally or a bad ally, because you’re really just a useful idiot to them Adam. But hey thanks for the help in what the real goal of all this lending your name to justice was, setting up their long term campaign plan because they never actually cared about that. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I can guarantee you the ground side of this discussion just assumes air will be there and make their problems go away. They do not believe anything can stop aviation and act shocked as hell when suddenly the threat causes even a pause much less losses (reference the SA-6 launch in Syria last spring and resultant restrictions that went in place). I’ve routinely had to 3rd grade explain to a GFC who doesn’t want to apportion anything to SEAD, “No I can’t just kill the ADA… he’s designed to murder me. So I’m gonna need some of those big boom boom guns to make him at least put his head down for a minute.” Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

So… what do you think the stock portfolios of certain in the know members gets of Congress looked like say 4 days ago… Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

From the Army side, we could not have maintained the constant deployed footing we did without the C-17…. Unless we had some sort of doubling of the 5’s we would never have been able to meet the movement requirement of width of cargo with the 141 or other platforms. The entire maintenance model for ARSOA is built around the fact we have a wide body stratair platform that can support a theatre requirement to move airframes back for major maintenance. Not arguing that everything is a trade off… but we would have been solidly F’d on numerous occasions without something fat wide and capable in between the 5 and 130. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I think a lot of our belief in the effectiveness of CAS is misconstrued by the success of what we can do with AirPower in COIN fights we’ve been in. Even in the opening phases of OIR we didn’t face the kind of threat systems out there, nor did we try and execute against an enemy that enjoyed camouflage and terrain advantage (because it’s the wide open desert). This scenario provides extremely limited opportunity to develop the situation and game plan with a ground force because you can’t risk the exposure and they don’t have the datalinks and 10 digit grids we’ve grown comfortably accustomed to. So if anything your limited ordnance would be best spent on trying to hit those HPTL items that the GMLRs can’t get to. That’s gonna require mission planning and support that probably doesn’t exist in any robust fashion on either side over there anymore. Either that or you keep them back as an augmentation to your ground fires hurling ordnance the way we’ve seen some of their aviation doing with toss bombing and massed rocket salvos…. Or you’re a permanent reserve to counter attack the Russians doing some sort of uncoordinated element thrust. Great.. we don’t need a Hawg to do that, I’m fact its probably a logistical intensive way to do that compared to other means. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk