Lawman

His Twitter isn’t for anybody but his base who wouldn’t care and want to hear what they want to hear anyway, and the idiot critics who are so obsessed with everything they can’t accept about the guy that they can’t figure that part out. People actually trying to have some sort of high brow philosophical discussion on how he’s “unfit for office” and bringing evidence to the court of discussion being “well he lied about crowd size.” Seriously that’s dumber than his constant bragging and bullshit. He’s what we get for being so TMZ. This a country that votes more to select who is gonna win a reality karaoke show on TV than for the leader of the country. Guess what, it doesn’t care enough to change the channel because Trumps Twitter. Get some better ammo or get a better candidate for 2020, because otherwise this guy wins again while the Democratic Party splinters it’s self into a dozen pieces trying to find the hardest route to an easy victory by deliberately making it more difficult for themselves.

“Combat operations in Afghanistan are over....” ”no boots on the ground....” ”we will engage in a support capacity in Libya...” i mean I guess we were all some kind of special forces or something from 2012 until 2016, because I swear I was engaged in a war that was so secret it couldn’t even be acknowledged publicly.

Oh I know. It’s just the inevitably that’s where we end up dropping 70% of our stuff. It’d be nice if we had some sort of betterstrategy of procurement that involved buying weapons well suited for both types of conflict. It’s what avoids dumb stuff like having to half ass modify all the anti-tank Hellfires (K -> K2A) in the inventory because the war stock was prepared to shoot 20k tanks, but not the targets we were actually servicing.

20k independent drones for 1 militant in a Coin fight is ridiculousness and excessive beyond all logic.... which is exactly why we will do it. Somebody call Raytheon! I’ve got checks they need to cash!

The problem with the near peer fight isn’t going to be offensively overwhelming an enemy. The problem is going to be facing an enemy capable of ranging into your support zones and offensively impacting them to much the same degree of lethal results as you inflict on them. Swarm weapons with some form of semi-autonomous AI will be the 21st century equivalent of the LGB/JDAM revolution though. Even in a coin fight they just provide such a generational improvement over current limits on going kenetic. Now instead of dropping a Hellfire into a window and hoping I catch the guy, let me send a half dozen bird sized drones able to go inside said building, look around corners and stairwells and find the guy all while directing its kenetic kill to ignore the mom and her kids or going high order when they find a few of his friends in said room.

Fighting a war in 10 years is going to work/fail based far more off the fact of what we have/haven’t put into the other stuff Raptor, M1A2, F-35, etc.... we’ve never found a tip of the spear project we didn’t want to invest in. What we haven’t invested in is all the stuff that makes that stuff so lethal. I wonder if you went back to the guys planning the first night for desert storm “ok do this same idea but without Raven/Jstars/RC-135/etc oh and this new GPS thing... yeah it’s not gonna work” what they would tell you besides “that’s insane why would we ever do that.”

Oh it’s a phenomenal aircraft no doubt, but It’s the wrong fit for you guys in a lot of ways. For one the development of all the stuff that makes the G so capable isn’t run from Boeing or PM 47, it’s run by SIMO at the regiment. The avionics for CASS as example are a completely independent buy from Rockwell-Collins for both it, th SOAR 60M, and the H-6. Boeing did the avionics for the E only, and everybody hated it. You would undoubtedly get a lot of helicopter, but it would kinda be like if the Army said “hey we want some of those C-130s you guys have for this mission but own them ourselves.” You would be beholden to what SOAR needs/pays for if you wanted to stay a viable customer upgrading down the road. The Brits are currently working through that pain as they try and acquire the G themselves.

Let’s be honest, nobody wants to commit on buying anything but short term solution “proven Helicopter” until the Army shakes the bugs out (and spends its money) on future vertical lift.

Or look back to the 80/90s at how long we had Century series fighters still flying in CONUS Guard units. Or how long it took to totally phase out the Phantom from our ranks when it had long been proven inferior to every other aircraft in our toolbox. We’re they part of a national defense strategy? Absolutely.... one that realizes the Montana Guard isn’t going to be doing the merge with Flankers over Bismarck. There was still a useful spot for them to perform. The 15X is the definition of requirement creep because all these “wouldn’t it be nice if....” The fact we are talking about spending more money than on Lightning just to get a fresh jet 15 should immediately sound insane. Especially since whatever “cost of operation” math trick you do we don’t just stop flying our old worn out beat up planes tomorrow when we sign the contract. It’d be one thing if they were coming down saying “hey we updated the C a bit to replace components that simply don’t exist anymore, it’s 45 mil a copy and won’t take a bunch of new training” but they aren’t after that. This whole idea looks exactly like the perception that if you’re not a fighter pilot you’re a second class citizen that was my dad’s Air Force. We are flying 50+ year old aircraft across the spectrum in critical low density high demand positions some of which are retiring with no replacement, and what do we commit money to fixing... a fighter jet so it can chase down a lost Cessna that strayed too close to a restricted area with a bitchen new AESA Radar.

Yeah there is a solution to that, stop pretending that every scenario requires you to fly your well worn but useful for the low intensity mission to the edge of the envelope. The Tomcat had a 6G+ limit and half a dozen additional limitations (inverted flight etc) placed in it for most of its last decade in service specifically to stop people from breaking stuff doing unnecesarry stuff and that was in a plane still deployed forward to combat. Accept the fact that a population will perform said boring stateside air defense mission, and tailor the beating you put on a jet to maximize its life instead of “train worst case” on every airframe and melt the life out of them through fatigue. Thatll piss people off to find out they are JV and not Varsity in the lineup, but that’s smarter than burning F-35/F-whatever/specialty mission aircraft money to buy the random guard unit a jet just so it has a new car smell.

The real BS about it is that it’s not confined to Hillary... You know who still has a clearance? All of her inner circle. That’s right the peons she blamed for sending/receiving still got to keep their clearances much less not face charges. Meanwhile Joe says the wrong thing in a Facebook message to his wife dropping a callsign in the conversation and his ass is in a sling. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Until I hear a president say “I’m withdrawing and recalling all troops from Kuwait” the deployments will do nothing but change location and day to day ery. It’s hysterical to see this sudden concern for Iranian influences by the same people screaming at us stopping the actual proxy shooting war we are having with them in Yemen against Hezbollah Part II. Trump is F’ing over the Kurds who did the lifting for us and expected us to back their bid for Independence, just like every president since Bush I. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

They’re still upset we finally bought an M9 replacement so now they can’t just run that story every 4th issue. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The only person happy about this new PT test is whatever A hole created it and got the Above Center of Mass rating on his OER. I give it 2 years before they issue a waiverable status to is where units can “in case of necessity” just use the old APFT. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Same thing coming out of the field for the Army. Every call to the boss just goes ”I need a one time flight approval....” and 2 hours later there is a flight of 4 outbound from Irwin/Polk/etc where only is FMC and 1 should be flat out red X.

It’s the ghost of BQzip... back to take his revenge. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Why are you wasting your time here. You have so much to tell the guys at TCM. Don’t forget your suit... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Neither were you jackass. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Dude not just an Apache guy (though former now), I was overhead at Frontnac We were useless. And that was a situation where I didn’t have to spend 8 minutes launching an aircraft while the horde closes in around me chucking grenade and small arms fire at my incredibly vulnerable aircraft. Yes despite the fact making fun of SF is fun, they do in fact have a point. Security is produced and maintained at the lowest level and will be made or broken there. Saying “who needs crew serves and other stuff we’ve got Apaches on the flight line we can launch” is something said by idiots. Either maintain and train a security personnel cadre that is equipped to deal with the real world threat (small team synchronized raid style attack not drunk mom in minivan breaching an ECP) which we could find both in COIN or as an asymmetric use in near peer (NK SF forces on OSAN for example) or just kill the mission entirely and pay the Army or somebody else to do it for you. Otherwise you’ve learned nothing that hasn’t been repeatedly demonstrated since the Rat Patrol first took the legs out from under the Luftwaffe in NA with nothing but a couple Lewis Guns and Jeep’s. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No.... no they do not. I have been fighting this mentality for years. Even Army leadership doesn’t understand the error in this thinking. We were told the same BS this last rotation through Iraq with the security risks from some of our “partner forces.” Having Apaches or Cobras on the field did literally nothing at Bastion. They will do literally nothing the next place and time either. You’ve got an enemy dressed like the good guys fighting small pockets of good guys in close proximity with nobody aware of where anybody is. Even if you could get the aircraft launched under fire then what? I get to just start picking and choosing my best guess and laying out 30 and rockets? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Dude seriously... This... exactly what you just said is the attitude that fuels the notion the Army gets that the Air Force is disconnected and uninterested in supporting the warfighter. You say this to some Ranger riding in the back of a Chinook to the X night after night or to the poor bastard that’s rolling down Route 1 doing yet another IED clearance patrol and you get (and largely deserve) a complete scoff. To think otherwise means Kuwait is a Deployment, active combat operations actually ceased, and dudes getting IDF’d at Dahlke we’re tragic victims of some accident as part of a forward deployed “supporting effort.” Is it perpetual and self serving, absolutely. Does our collective leadership seem to be writing its guidance in sand/crayon... no doubt. Are we still actively engaged in combat with a military force who seeks to do us harm both there and abroad... to deny otherwise would be foolish. And no that attitude isn’t exclusive of service. God knows the Army Fobbits turning people away at the Independence Chow Hall because they have dirty uniforms don’t understand it’s a war either. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

They did “sue” the Navy over that exact COA (and somehow won which I don’t get). Really the Marine thing is just stupid. They did the equivalent of the kid that gets handed the candy licking it all and saying the other kids couldn’t have any. Especially considering all they did was steal a Canadian pattern and with the help of some Army money “develop” and patent a unique pattern like we hadn’t been wearing the same pattern at the time. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ah I misread that, yeah that makes more sense. Fair warning, the Velcro they use isn’t high quality. If you wash your stuff with the tapes/ranks in place it’ll fray at the stitching holding the back on after a while. If you remove the Velcro every time you wash it will quickly turn the Velcro it’s self weak and probably tear the stitching up as well. I’ve got it both ways for sewn on for “regular” and Velcro for “beater.” The prisoners making our uniforms are really sh!t seamstresses. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I’m surprised you’re allowed pin on. It’s not in the Army specifically because it “negates fire protection” by no measurable and meaningful amount. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk