Lawman
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Everything posted by Lawman
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And in fairness Rumsfield/Cheney carried out some of the same crappy kind of retribution firing before that. That’s the whole thing that drives me nuts with this every outrage is a 13/10 in the news cycle. Trump isn’t playing some new game, he’s just not nearly as good at playing it as the career snakes that came before him. Nor is he being given the benefit of that reflection by his critics who hear any past precedent of that behavior and scream “whataboutism!” Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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NDAA suspends Turkey getting Lightning’s for the moment. https://thehill.com/policy/defense/398458-final-defense-bill-looks-to-block-f-35s-to-turkey-going-against-mattis At least somebody somewhere seems to have their eyes open. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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My mother works in Hospice care at a major assisted living center. Medicare is spending truck loads of money to basically keep people from dying today instead of next week. Part of it is the completely lack of oversight on spending like giving a healthy donor heart to an 85 year old instead of anybody else. The other bigger part is families not ready to let mom go to the point it’s cruel. Have you ever seen a full code before like in real life and not on TV? It is violent. It is destructive. CPR breaks ribs on healthy people... and you’re doing it to a 91 lbs frail 80 year old who will spend the next few months dying slowly in massive amounts of drug washed pain, because we as a society won’t accept death is a natural and sometimes correct state.
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Yeah so I actively pulled my wife out of Tricare prime specifically because there were better options available when I’m not dictated by my government what form of care she would receive during her pregnancy. But hey maybe the 3 year fight to get her knee surgery or watching my retired father (who works for the VA after a 20 year medical career in the AF) have his standard of care eroded every single year under “tricare for life” is all just an illusion. Do you seriously want to sit there and tell us our benefits haven’t gotten worse as the belts have tightened? You think something as well funded for as low a population it has is going to work better when you dump a couple hundred million more people into it and leave them with no real recourse against it that it’s all gonna work better?
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It won’t matter what it costs to supporters of the system, they’ll continue to pull numbers out of thin air because on the end all that needs to be done is establish the government program. Once it’s built it’ll never be removed short of the total collapse of the government and the people at the head of the show (Warren/Sanders/etc) know this. It’ll be no different than social security; an entity which in no way was formed to be what is is for so many millions of Americans today (a crappy retirement program). But now it’s so engraved into stone as an “entitlement” when it was really designed to be “the social protection to keep you from dying in the street as destitute when despite your best efforts the system crushes you,” that you can move millions of votes to your side or the other simply by saying we need to do something to fix it.
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Dudes who tell their air medal stories and all but a handful can think is “I’ll just keep my mouth shut about what I did/went through.”
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If this idea of trying to teach a 46 year old airplane how to be relevant in a peer/near peer fight doesn’t highlight the stupidity of the last 15 years of acquisition decisions I don’t know what does... “Hey Air Force, we can make you a Super Eagle... that does cool stuff... because you guys didn’t buy the 500+ F-22s when you had the chance and now this is gonna be more expensive than it would have been then to do that, but your only “cheap” option today.”
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There is a bit more too it with this situation. The Phils had all of 3 operational OV-10s in their fleet in 2014, and they were unsafe to fly at night because the instruments were in such disrepair. This was after we spent a multimillion dollar program to put PGM on them and train 1st Strike Wing to use them as part of our campaign against the Moro insurgents down south. Giving them “new” OV-10s is a band aid to maintain that cape in a regional power with a history of bad maintenance but it’s the only way to keep them flying outside of watching them screw up another FMS contract in favor of a DCS program they are woefully incapable of succeeding in.
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You wanna take a wild swing at how many times while deployed and receiving the orders and guidance directly from the top I had to watch CNN and other “investigative journalism” complete hack their way through to a different reality of what was going on so as to avoid giving any kind of credit to the Trump administration? even now there are no shortage of “he was just doing what Obama already laid out” reports that are complete and utter bullshit. So yeah dont sit here and pretend that the media doesn’t have a slant (all of it not just the big ones slanted against Trump) and will find whatever source and distort whatever facts they need to build a narrative that stirs up the crowd and clicks/advertisement.
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The only saving grace we have is that as crappy as ours is everybody else around the world is even worse. Same with the military. We aren’t that good at War, everybody else is just F’ing terrible at it.
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Which is why anybody that knew better was laughing at the Russian demonstrations over Syria with the Kuz. Yeah they flew a few sorties.... then wrecked a plane and immediately emptied the deck of the carrier onto land to fly them off a regular runway.
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And what? we need to defend politicians playing decades old political games, or the sitting president saying stuff that can be turned into a 13 second sound bite to bitch about? How about this, the second one of the presidents screaming autism angry critics critical of all things he does comes on here to defend moving 2/3 of our standing military forces off of Europe by the previous admin and how that has not weakened NATO more severely than any tweet or public down dressing by a Trump of our allies, we can talk about the ridiculousness of the Helsinki press conference. You know the one where the media was asking questions they’d never dream of asking a more flexible president in order to do the press corps equivalent of a bunch of third graders screaming “fight fight fight!” While they try and stir up two kids to throw punches at each other.
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Let’s compare the war record of Hornet/Rhino vs Raptor shall we? Look I get it is without a doubt the slow fat kid on the playground when compared to the purpose built Air Dominance aircraft, but it’s far from useless. One more thing slinging 120s in the Stack that those Flankers have to expend time, energy, ordnance, and fuel contending with before they come for you and me.
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Well the Saudi’s will... only because the treat equipping an Air Force the same way they treat filling their garages. Buy every flavor of super cars they can’t drive/maintain and then throw oil money and Phil labor at the problems afterward...
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Just remember with the Eastern Europeans, it’s not genetics but poverty that keeps them that skinny. Also Germany is the ugly friend of most of Europe.
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The U.K.-headquartered firm will lead “Team Tempest,” which also includes engine-maker Rolls-Royce, Italian defense contractor Leonardo, and the European missile consortium MBDA..... Because we learned F@ck-all from Tornado, Typhoon, Eurocopter Tiger.... Jesus guys. You were the only country with a legitimate chance at getting Raptor and that got jacked up for Typhoon... now they want to repeat history when we will sell literally anybody not Russia/China F-35s to get the per unit cost down and even let them build their own.
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Yeah but there is a multi billion dollar program for a new bomber (really 5th gen F-111) funded and working. Meanwhile stuff like RC-135... And it’s not service unique. We do the same stuff in the Army (hello OH-58/Shadow)
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The Air Force (and they aren’t alone) has truly been missing the forest for the trees over the last 2 decades ignoring all the mission speciality 707 aircraft who thanks to the march of technology could have been replaced effectively with a modular designed package capable aircraft ala commercial civilian aircraft. Instead we are chasing the bleeding edge of fighter/bomber technology and ignoring the fact that JSTARS and other like aircraft are critical both in the current fight and the big scary one we are supposedly preparing for.
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My mother works as a nurse in nursing home/hospice care. Every resident she has regardless of age or level of infirm status has an ID. They have to in order to pay or have access Medicare benefits. Jesus the level of contortions people will go to the explain why it’s ok to not have any form of identification yet exercise an action as big a deal as voting is ridiculous.
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I’d recommend: 1. refusing to acknowledge Russia is a geopolitical foe 2. Slashing military forward presence with the removal of 2/3 of standing forces from Europe 3. Continued ignoring of major partners in Europe not meeting their NATO member spending obligations to include its largest economy being unable to field more than 2 battalions is Armored forces 4...... Wait this all seems oddly familiar to the actions of the previous administration. Long answer is while Russia “did something” it’s a red herring for a party that wants to focus on any excuse for losing what should have been their election. It’s just as big an overblown actual effect as the secret army of racist white guys that came out to vote in places like Montgomery County Ohio and then the box from blue to red for the first time in 30 years because “MAGA.” The people saying we “aren’t doing something” about Russia... chances are they haven’t seen the ATO or been in theatre where we seem to be pissing them off daily. And for what response they want to see for this IO campaign, keep in mind they are a permanent security council member with veto power whose cooperation we need on bigger issues (North Korea) and we didn’t go to war with them previously over invading a sovereign country whose protection we promised when they gave up their nukes in the 90s, or shot down an airliner in the 80s, or Armed our F’ing enemies with state of the art hardware in war after war. We aren’t gonna do more than sanctions and blustering over them running a social media campaign exposing largely the crappy activities the DNC was actually truthfully engaged in.
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The way the media framed that whole incident right up until the Supreme Court decision really showed how biased it wanted to be in virtue signaling. The guy didn’t refuse to serve anybody, gay or otherwise. He refused to engage in artistic creation via his medium (cakes) for a cause/subject he could not in good conscious support. And then the state came down with what was said by the Supreme Court to be an entirely biased view in which religious consideration in why he would feel that way was invalid and not open to discussion. Meanwhile the critics of this artist are treating it like a lovely gay couple walked into Joe’s tire shop and cakes and the owner looked up from his copy of Stormfront long enough to say “you qyeers get the hell on out of here, I ain’t got nothing for you.”
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Trump didn’t show up day 1 in office and flip over the damn desk on the deal. He went a year, certifying, threatening, and finally making good on his promise to either move this crap deal that was nothing more than a bunch of concessions in blood money to keep the Iranian backed militias collocated with us in Iraq to not start shooting at us. Ever hang out around the PMF guys at Q-West? Remember the 24 hour stop supports we had for particular groups in Mosul because of overt threats they gave to the accompanying Americans? Iran continued to do plenty of nasty crap and the insinuation their program was stopped when we deliberately weren’t allowed to check military sites is a wishful hope at best. Turn the sanctions back on and hit them repeatedly in the stomach until they come to the table. But instead now because everybody has to #resist they are more interested in empowering the mullahs and saying we should be nice to them than recognizing that his form of hardball diplomacy where you actually back up threats (as apposed to Obama’s redlines) has actually made headway where the “smart people” said it was impossible.
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Dude, we were running PT tests at Erbil.... in f’ing August. This is while we were still overhead in the fight for the old city. Who gives a crap about the flight schedule or crew rest... Division won’t process end of tour awards if the packet doesn’t include a <30 day old PT card.
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Have you seen the Army’s approach to computer/electronic warfare? We’re a service where that phrase conjures up ideas of shooting bullets at the other guys radios/computers/generators. Yes for the love of god take this venue away from us for our own good. We are a service applying metrics of excellence adapted from the idea of basic soldier tasks. That means the smartest space/cyber/sat guy will be passed over for promotion by a stupid one that has a good run score and can regurgitate information about the M2 .50cal he isn’t MTOED to the board. We need to look at this like the aviation discussions with Mitchell pre WWII. A lot of protectionist generals are telling us we don’t need this to happen, which immediately makes it suspect. On top of that a future war with an opponent where this is defined and figured out as far as what it can/should do will result similarly to what happened between Germany and the Expeditionary Force during the opening days of WWII. The force that has its shit in a sock with regards to this new dimension of warfare is going to roll over the other guy regardless of whether of not that guy has better tanks or bigger numbers. It will be something that takes all the initiative and doesn’t give it back until it’s all over, and it will happen to fast for the adaptations to take effect and catch up.
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There are a host of systems that will provide both the standoff and survivability to keep a platform like this viable for the next 25-30 years. Until DE becomes so cheap and easy dudes in man dresses living in caves can do it, there is a lot of the world that with a small commitment of money we can put these aircraft without excess risk (CIRCM, CMWS, good sensors, APKWS, etc). We’ve got helicopters and FW slow-fat-kids-at-dodgeball game operating in airspace with an active Red Air Force. It’s possible because they know we have committed a small but lethal CAP and a willingness to use it and against the stuff threatening to the area we overcommit the willingness to kill it (watched the strikes F up a whole city block to get a ZPU that took a crack at us). Here’s and important thing with this light CAS thing though, that’s not gonna be and shouldn’t be its only role. You’re not just replacing Viper/Hawg/Dude, you’re providing a multifunction platform that can lessen the commitment of multiple platforms necessary for small scale operations typical of SOF. This has to be the aircraft that can be sitting in a recon role and do what a U-28/Predator does and then swing roles and start dropping hate in place of an Apache or Hornet against what some ODA teams or Route cleareance patrol needs when the call goes out. That saves the flying hours and cost off all those other platforms saturating airspace to spend 96% of their time waiting for valuable work. That’s the only way the cost of buying keeping and feeding an entire new MWS makes sense. Otherwise we ought to just spend the money on a few more of everything else because we haven’t really lowered the cost/stress in a valuable way.
