Lawman

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.

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.