Lawman

This, and a cafeteria to put them on meal cards. This woe's me shit from people who somehow make fortunes as "public servants" is crap. These are the same people that would see something as absurd as time limit adjusting per diem rates because after 30 days you're gonna negotiate costs down in Japan and think that's ok.... but not for me.

TDY? Their job takes them to D.C., that's a PCS for an assignment as far as it would be concerned for me or any other service member. We make captains PCS for the career course which is barely a year and then move immediately following. Instead of TDY they should either move their families to their duty location or could make the choice to go in a 2 year bachelor status the way any service member that doesn't want to uproot their family for such a short period of time with no predictability on how long they will be there and let them pay out of pocket like we would. these people for thinking they are special because their "duty" takes them away from home that we would be told to either move or receive no extra pay for.

Phone autocorrected it. MSIC, part of that huge Intel apparatus we own/ignore/misuse... https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missile_and_Space_Intelligence_Center Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You should talk to the nice lady on the directed energy desk at MSIC. She will paint your a terrifying picture.

Not to mention getting your daily dose of "Merica!" Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Good stuff. See I feel like the guys that keep spouting that mantra ought to do a better job of shutting up and highlighting incidents like this. Probably the worst enemy of our continued evolution and reinvestment into the force is our own "we are invincible!" PR campaign. Even amongst our own commanders I can tell you a high population of the Army leadership simply doesn't even view air superiority as something we will ever go to war without much less a trend we should keep allocating research toward improving. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

So if (hypothetical) there were US imbeds with the SDF on the ground there, and the SU-22 in question made runs on them resulting in the shoot down... Does that qualify as breaking the streak of "No US troops have come under air attack since the Korean War" Air Dominance tag line we always hear?

To somebody who has spent 1/2 of their almost 6 year marriage deployed or in the field that sounds amazing.... But hey they are talking about an Army Bonus soon. So I got that coming for me.... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not only that. In the 30 years since FSW designs were being tested our knowledge and effective usage of fly by wire coupled with computer aided flight management systems has moved way forward. If the idea is to build an inherently unstable airframe because that's the only way to make in maneuverable and fly at high alpha we can make up much more of the margin between conventional and FS winged aircraft now that we have learned to make control surfaces work in a more concerted effort. Add thrust vectoring to the list and the juice on FSW just isn't worth the squeeze even if it does look sexy. Same reason you don't see a big barn door speed break on new designs. In the end I think FSW will go the same way as variable geometry. It's a neat way to accomplish something and cutting edge for its time but their are less demanding ways with less accompanying negatives out there to achieve similar results. We've come a long way with our understanding of what was only theoretical 30-40 years ago. I'd be real interested to look forward another 40 years and see how much different the evolutionary line goes from F-86 to F-15 to Raptor to god knows what....

We should just be honest with ourselves and the fiscal reality that will be pushed on the DOD. The F-16 will be extended to however many hours until the wings come off one in flight..... And then they will "re-evaluate."

Ryanair..... because a Ford Tri-motor full of live poultry wasn't available....

Anybody else finding it ironic he signed the post RT?

While we are laughing at Iran.... What happens when you get way too drunk watching Blue Thunder and get ideas to upgrade your Bell 206. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Except only 1 of those three things ever required specialized transport via air. Between the SRBs and ET, only 1 was reusable and we already had transport capability for them that wouldn't require another specific extremely expensive 1 off development. Plus the only place you would launch a shuttle outside Florida would be Vandenburg. Every other movement was recovery back to the Cape where it wouldn't be dragging an ET or SRBs. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Oh great.... twice the MEL items to break.... I can't see how this possibly seemed like a good idea to anybody on the concept team. The entire point of a space shuttle carrier was external carry. Using two huge volume internal carry cargo planes to make one giant lifting monster with its cargo strapped outside makes little/no sense. Yes they can lift a high gross weight, but so can any other large aircraft with big motors. There's a serious diminishment on returns. It would be like using an empty super tanker to tow a barge. Thank god the simpler option of the 747 prevailed in the end.

Just another night in SOUTHCOM..... Nothing to see here. I don't know about the rest of you but I'm looking forward to whatever 4 hour GTC PowerPoint training is coming thanks to these guys.

Your cargo is now distressed....

I find its best to view it as two sides being children and hoping in the long run they got what they really wanted which was not Merrick Garland or a similar justice. Democrats knew he was a poison pill but they were banking on that. They thought they would win two battles out of this where they get to spend 9 months embarrassing the other side in the media because "he's perfectly qualified" when like I said you and I know how a "perfectly qualified" justice who had said he didn't support gay marriage would have been a non starter. Then they get the second victory because everybody just knew Hillary was gonna win and they could get a justice they really wanted and rebalance the court to their liking. Republicans were playing on the hard 6 and hold the line on the odds they might actually pull this off. Most importantly it left this issue as something to campaign on and drag more people out to vote which they knew they would need. Neither side was interested in the health of the court or what's best for the country. It was about consolidating power and whipping up fury in their respective base. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

How much advising did Obama ask or accept from the other side of the isle. As I said neither side gets to call the other obstructionist. Not after watching them slow roll and filibuster all of Trumps confirmations. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don't think it mattered. Neither side of the isle has a leg to stand on calling the other side "obstructionist." The fact was democrats wanted to appoint a Supreme Court justice for life while dismissing the differences between him and the man he replaces and their views on personal liberty, plus they wanted to do it during the lame duck period of the presidency. This after they argued so hard against Bush getting to "decide the fate of the court" during the twilight of his presidency. Then they turned around and drug out the confirmation of the elected presidents nominee and filibustered the perfectly qualified after screaming about the need to have a "full" Supreme Court for the last 8 months. So spare me the whole this outrage that a republican senate refused to entertain the hearing on a justice they already said didn't meet the ideological requirements that had been set. It would have been as much a non starter as if Trump put somebody forward who said "marriage is between a man and a woman period end of story." Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not only that it's a mainline. I'll bet if you look at Regionals the numbers would be even more grim as the hours threshold is easily obtained for an ATP within an initial service commitment.

That given the election could have gone another way, if it had the best situation gun owners could hope for was a Supreme Court nominee who didn't view the second amendment at an individual right shifting the balance to a more "progressive" view of the 2nd amendment. That's the best case scenario with a Hillary win. I doubt the democrats would have offered Garland post election because they wouldn't have a need to and could appoint something more in line with the Kagen/Sotomayor type model they had under Obama.

Since the majority of NATO countries have no effective ground maneuver to support anyway that's probably in line with the rest of their joint capability. Denmark was the only country I saw actually use tanks in a way similar to how we would use them (massed formation). Everybody else tanks were just mobile bunkers that would go somewhere and assume a security posture. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

There is a crazy amount of love fest fandom out there for an airplane that has literally done nothing to prove it's self besides some photo shoots and demo flights. There are literally a dozen small jet attack aircraft with actual blood on their records but nobody is talking about how great those would be for this job. It's like it's going the way of the F-20/Arrow/Tomcat21 with a lot of preparation for an aviation the media circle jerk. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I dig the looks of it, but only because if everybody equates the A-29 to a modern version of the SPAD, then the Pacura is the closest thing out there to this monster... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk