Lawman

If they can put Army Rotary Wing in the airspace, they can put a low tech CAS solution in the airspace. And we did....been there, got the T-shirt. Put CAP and SEAD in the air and tell the people that might make things complicated “go ahead bro... we love proving just how good AMRAAM and HARM are.” The authors point reads like an advertisement for more 5th gen solutions to A-10/U-28/Predator problems. We don’t all need to be contingency capable for the knock down fight with the Russians. There was a reason for the Hi-Low mix, and this makes it out like we will completely ignore the Hi part of the equation which when you look at how we supported Raptor and Lightning while wholesale abandoning stuff the 4.5 gen fighters need like the loss of Raven, Weasel, etc we did exactly the opposite.

I don’t think you’re getting my meaning. He never went through the ordeal to become a Non-commission Officer. He was promoted to specialist (E4) a year into captivity. A year after that he was awarded E5 and with it the title of Non-commissioned Officer. He never boarded for it. He never had his points matched to his MOS to meet the promotional requirement. He never did anything to actually earn his stripes except F up, walk away from his post, and get captured. So when I read posts like I did earlier in this thread of “how does a coast guard washout make Sgt in the Army?” I think it’s important to note. He didn’t make crap, the Army and administration made him something for the purpose of his family and his face value. Bergdahl never was and never will be anything but another private.... and he can even claim that with any sense of honor now. Best thing this guy could do is move somewhere remote, get a different hair cut, and never talk about the Army again. Jus wait until our collective short term memory moves on.

Important note... He’s not a Sgt. He never really was a Sgt. He was promoted retroactively and was actually an E-3 when he deserted. But now he’s private again.

So basically learn nothing and repeat the mistake the Marines made on skipping the Super Hornet to wait for 5th gen.... Yeah what could go wrong?

Is that like when weather always seems like it is exactly within the minimums even when you walk back from the aircraft soaked/covered in snow. Gotta love that crap.

Having just come back from the AOR I can tell both of you guys a lot of "wtf?!!" Went on immediately following this event. A lot of stuff and requirements were re-evaluated and/or changed. All and all though Syria is muddy water to say the least. The TAGS/AAGS diagram really doesn't cover the whole picture.

Range with usable load, loiter time, ruggedness to austere field usage, etc. If the point of this whole scenrio was: 1. Display minimal show that the US is in town. 2. Money is tight, do this on the cheap. 3. You need minimal footprint for logistics because where you are going is far more forward than a Bagram or Balad. 4. Have an aircraft you could train the locals to fly while you do mission and support with FMS. For the partner nation it was a question of how do we support operations against targets in a pacific scenario but it works to our what a mole coin game too. How do I take an airfield that can barely be called that in the middle of craptasistan and put enough planes there so as to provide these CAG guys with 3 strike lines on the ATO a night which plane is best suited?" The AT just killed the A-29 and AT-6 when the numbers stacked for comparison. Particularly for persistence with a pod and a useful amount of variable mission packages at ranges away from the MX hub. We were war gaming it against the other 2 options and it just killed them. Scorpion changes the equation a bit because with the added speed maybe you can support from a bigger hub, but if you go look at some of the crazy high side stuff going on in the fight in OIR, getting in the dirt is an expectation you can't get away from. Hell even at Al Asad or Erbil yeah the concrete is well poured, but who is to say there is enough lift in the theatre to support you better than if you were living in the dirt. Africa/PACOM/SouthCOM would be the same kind of problem. We need an aircraft that can be comfortably used in wars we aren't trying to be full might of the US. We've grown entirely too comfortable with the idea there's always a C-17 ring route, you will always live in a CHU, and sustainment is a given because 19 KBR convoys come in and out a day. Take a look at Q-West right now and tell me that logistics and sustainability wouldn't be a primary planning factor for putting a light weight CAS plane over Tal Afar or the Western Syria-Iraq border over speed, sexiness, 2x 34s instead of 4x 114s.

You know I spent 6 months with 2 other AF pilots trying to convince the leadership in the Phil AF that the Air Tractor was the quantifiable better in every catagory that mattered aircraft for their turboprop CAS program. That was in addition to the guys that had been there before us trying to convince them of the same thing. They were hung up on Tacano. And their aversion to the AT came back to the same problem, it wasn't sexy looking and it had the name Tractor. I wonder how much of that same stupidity is coloring our guys opinion of it for the trials.

Comparing artillery effects from pre-1950s to now would be like comparing military effects of strategic bombing from pre jet age to now. The stuff assembled prior to the modern era didn't have anywhere near the lethality of current systems. Also most of those historic numbers of thousands of artillery pieces are inflated with dozens of separate sized field guns, direct fire short range howitzers, carriage guns of modern equivalence, and mobile carriage mortar systems being part of the count. By comparison the Army of today has 2 artillery calibers with 105 and 155 respectively and 3 mortar calibers ranging from 60 to 120. We have simplified to the number of systems most generally effective for their role. So have they. Gone are the super heavy railroad guns etc designed to reduce ground works or entrenched defenses. Gone or replaced with man portable missiles are the field guns like the 75mm or 88mm which was good for a pillbox or tank but not sustained battery fire. Tens of thousands of modern artillery pieces and MLRS pointed at Seoul is a city sitting underneath and umbrella of fire that is the total equivalent of what the Soviets planned to attack across most of Europe with. Look at it this way, throughout the later half of the 20th century air power has carried most of the fight with artillery being left in favor of high mobility and rapid movement by ground forces. Even so, if you could up historical casualty numbers despite the unquestionable increase in effectiveness and depth to attack undefended targets in the enemy's support zone vs artillery working against defended targets and the fact that by eastern doctrine they mass 3x the amount of arty we do by comparison in combined arms maneuver.... Artillery still has air power and even direct combat casualties beat for production of loss in the 20th century. Not by much, but still.

At this point I'd be totally ok with China just annexing North Korea and taking the head off the wild dog living in their yard barking at the neighbors.

Well... it's both good and mildly depressing to see that the one universal across the branches is "leadership" telling everybody to smile while they eat their shit sandwich. Army has the same problem and they are even further from admitting it. There are a few senior guys out there that will honestly tell you the truth of, "the next 5 years will suck... but you'd have to F a goat at a preschool to not get promoted since we are short people, so you have that to bank on." Other than those guys everybody pretends it's still 2007 and that Envoy and other airlines aren't willing to throw money at guys to get out.

Within Aviation branch no.... however Aviation branch doesn't run the Army. We are merely closer to the fire as far as some of the wtf stuff you guys complain about when supporting the Army. Concepts like crew rest are met with the same disgust, the difference being with Army units the approval to mitigate it is blanket approved without any review. Watching the ground brigade here in theatre use/abuse its organic MI unit shadows co-located with our organic Aviation unit shadows has been a very interesting comparison in just about everything.

This... There are a couple foreign service exchanges for the Army into like platforms (England/Holland for Apaches) but they are practically unheard of. If you take a Post command captain you're really displacing his timeline to get all that stuff done the Army needs him to do to be competitive in his year group. And forget getting Warrants as there aren't enough to fill our own manning, and the prevailing incorrect attitude amongst the Army is we don't have anything to learn about how our other platforms do business much less the Air Force.

You would think somebody would be smarter than that. You've gotta have a contract for production and get the money budgeted. Then you cancel the airplane to be able to fund it into different programs not before hand. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Benelli M1.... Absolutely untouchable semi auto.

I'm not sure there is any way we could do it without incurring some sort of crazy death pact act of aggression with that lunatic. Plus the biggest threat in a non military situation would be a complete collapse at the only thing keeping North Korea together which is its functioning totalitarian regime of crazy. Without that NK becomes the anchor around the neck of the entire Asian economy because it will take trillions of dollars to fix the fact that it's stuck in 1957.

I'd agree with the sentiment of BMD and secret squirrel stuff while trying to get regional powers to either force or guide the regime out of the weird la la land it lives in. If we were planning on doing something militarily to stop Nuclear proliferation into the DPRK that ship has long since sailed. One nuke popping off in the region would be devastating globally as it would create a humanitarian and fiscal crises that the world is ill prepared to simply absorb. At this point dealing with what can best be described as irrational leadership in that country. The only way we would end up even ok in a situation like that is we strike the hell out of them, Kim tries to retaliate as a dying act of desperation, and somehow cooler heads within his inner circle decide they don't want to commit suicide and remove him from power. That's definitely betting it all on one number at the roulette table.

20 minutes on a SIPR computer will pretty much dispel these Manchuria candidate conspiracy theories. The fact that Democratic Party members who only go in front of the Camera with the parties blessing keep milking this forward is nothing more than partisan politics. At this point Trump could bomb the Kremlin and critics allude to whether or not he is trying to conceal the evidence.

The media group who accuses a president for attacking and marginalizing them as fake news going out of its way to hold its critics hostage.... Irony doesn't seem to cover it.

I'd have to wonder what the delineation line would be. Kinda like with the current surface to surface ballistic missile or Air Defense models, at what point do the service patches change by doctrine. That seems to be a lot harder with space when a lot of what you are talking about is ground based to monitor both air and space (big radars in Greenland etc). Same with say the big missile field. The dudes living underground are only part of the transition. Does the Space Force just inherit a huge chunk of the AF UH-1 community and the security guys that go with them? Do they get slots in AF flight school now? This won't be easy to rewrite the book. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Considering the dick dance done over intra-theatre transport, ISR, and Ballistic Missile Defense, etc.... I don't see how you could watch the services come to the table in front of Congress arguing they need job X over service Y and come to any other conclusion.

Key thing to that box you're thinking in... DE opens up a new form of Kill that can be achieved. Right now AAMs and other weapons are meant to primarily cause catastrophic structural failure across an airframe with secondary effects being destruction of vital systems and components. Missile hits jet... either wings come off and crumble under stress or hydraulic lines are all shot away and it's over for that thing in 30 seconds when it augers in. We aren't necessarily targeting the same things DE anti-air is attacking. Essentially you don't need to kill the jet, the jet will do that just fine.... once you completely blind the pilot from millisecond exposure while they are attempting to maneuver around the battlefield. That's the whole purpose behind all the Chinese systems currently fielded, destroy EO/FLIR sensors at range and destroy pilots. The aircraft or drone becomes effectively useless. You can protect with those fancy visors on set spectrums but the only way to negate the whole EM spectrum of lasers currently leaves a surface that can't be used visually.

Tennessee did that too. Wasn't restricted to air medals either you'd see guys with Bronze Star, MSM, etc. Lot of teasing until people realized just by the grace of being stationed at Ft Campbell you could get a free plate forever.

For those of you at or near JBLM.... https://www.leavenworthoktoberfest.com/

You basically die and go to Comic-con, but not the one in San Diego, it's the one in Ft Wayne Indiana.