Lawman

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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

I do t k ow why you would need that or all this other access. According to him all you need to do is grow up "next too" an Army base and you'll know all the details of how Attack Aviation works and it's shortcomings. That's how despite no actual experience I know how to assemble a GMC Sierra pickup. There was a GM plant in the town I grew up in. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Because it shows a lack of honesty on some of the more interesting things RPAs have been doing recently and are doing right now. There is plenty going on right now today with drones and other tools that resembles far more closely the scary scenarios than the permissive scenario of putting a predator orbit over a mud hut in Afghanistan for days on end. Everybody wants to scream "RPAs aren't mature for the near peer fight" well after 15 years of coin-centric warfare neither is probably 60% of the military. The Army has only just been getting its shit in a sock to do Brigade level maneuver warfare again. I've been in units where my senior NCOs don't know how to put up a GP medium because up until now they've never had to. But if you or others want to sit here and pretend that the RPA structure from tactical to strategic is just gonna throw up it's hands and say "we can't play" either you're inventing a scenario that doesn't exist or ignoring the laundry list of other systems/players/platforms that are going to be just as screwed or have to work around just as many issues in the nightmare worst case WWIII fight.

I honestly think if we could metaphorically hold a gun to their head and make them actually BRAC, it might not go the way most would want. Votes are votes, and those nice locations with the functioning economies of a metro area don't really need or in many cases want us. Plus as stated earlier a military base is a huge landmass of developable (meaning valuable) property that could line a lot of pockets. Those outlier installations 3 exits down from the edge of nowhere don't really attract anything but social welfare votes. I'd see them more likely to tell us enjoy Cannon/Polk/Fallon/etc while they close and repurpose the Mcdills of the force structure if you made them chose between option A/B.

I'm guessing by the timeline you just suggested your not exactly in the loop with the current goings on. Given where UAS exist in the active targeting cycle and the targeting cycle it's self, the necessity/history of work of guys developing TTPs for the scenario described, and the current daily validation of them doing a lot more than just thump guys in man dresses who have at best a ZPU.... yeah drones have actually been doing a hell of a lot of proving themselves. I guarantee you right now there is a drone orbiting somewhere that 20 years ago some Intel troop or planner would have said "we can't sent anything but the 117 there...." And they are only getting more refined and supported. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

And this becomes relevant again.... https://youtu.be/XPxs9WQ6ZW8 Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I would worry about timing any sort of adverse location bonus to a specific amount of time. That's way too easy of a "fix" for assignments to accomplish where they simply PCS two guys from two separate crap locations at the year X-1 day mark to the other guys crap location (and vice verse). Then they get to pretend the PCS cost nothing and that they "saved the service money" in not paying out a bonus. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It would be an amazing concept for the services to actually offer a hardship location pay to some of the spectacular locations stateside like Polk or Minot. I get prioritizing cost of living adjustments but BAH is designed to handle that, what isn't handled is money to make being 7 hours away from anything and any family in the middle of the desert. Another factor I would say all the service branches need to see is what there actual needle is at with the constant game of "that's where you're PCS'ing enjoy the sandwich I gave you." I can count on one hand the number of people told to go to crap location that threatened to drop their papers and leave that didn't, but I can count at least 15 guys that are out for the same reason. How many times does HRC have to lose that fight while still calling themselves successful before somebody tries to make a change. Maybe treating people eligible for retirement/guard/etc like they have no option but to take the hand dealt isn't a good policy to stick to when you're simultaneously facing a manpower shortage. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

What? I had to reread that first paragraph a few times to figure out if you were actually serious. I'm guessing you've never served in either the Army/Marines or been near either of their helicopters let alone have any idea what happened at Karbala huh. Your impression of the ROK forces doesn't match much in the way of mine or others I know. Language barriers not withstanding, those guys can fight, and given the choice between watching their cities glow/absorb massed artillery or taking their vastly better fed/equipped forces north I've got a good idea which one they'd want to do.

I'd go Fairchild before McChord. Put you on the right side of the mountains to get to Yakima during 8 months of the year, by plane or car. Love my house at JBLM but god did we find a way to make the field so close yet so far.

For the most part every unit will request you, because it's easy to hit copy/paste/send. Nobody is actually expecting you to show up. If you do it's a huge bonus for that ALO to look good for the Bde Commander, but I've seen tons of Calfex's that were deemed successful without the Air ever actually being there. It just becomes a JTAC on a radio pretending to be Hawg. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No but if you're talking about doing integrated training with supported customers SF/Rangers are the guys to lean on, because your average BCT may do 1 Calfex a year and in that the JAAT is about the only time they care if fixed wing shows up. Those are largely a waste of time depending on rangisms present at whatever particular base causing them to be extremely scripted and often times not reflect realistic scenarios. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The customers for this kind of thing (SOf/Rangers) have money to go TDY. More importantly there is literally a SOF group in every region of the country so it's not like you're gonna be off on your own unless you go to Hawaii/Alaska. Pick a base wth good combined vehicle/air ranges or at least access/range to them. I'd say try an East/West model where you get the most bang for your buck with customers. For example any reason you guys couldn't do Peterson with 10th group or Mountain Home where you have Orchard with all the Rangers/SOF from JBLM? Somewhere in the SE US to cover Bragg, Campbell, and Benning would take another huge swath of customers up. The worst thing you could do is stick this thing somewhere like Cannon where you are hours away from anything that wants to use you by plane let alone by car. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm 100% tracking capes and lims. It certainly is not a hell fire replacement, but I also don't have enough hands and feet to count the number of times I watched an R9 target something that was agr-20 wheelhouse. Or the number of times I've watched hell fire impact, dude runs away. The hell fire family is a great weapon, but the AGR-20 is no distant slouch. That said, I don't have much SA on the RW version. Clearly impact angle is far more limited when shot from RW than FW. As you said, this weapon is probably a far more significant capes increase for FW than RW. We aren't shooting these things from RW altitudes and angles. 10k feet is 10k ft and it's the same rocket. It's all about what the rocket tries to do where it picks up guidance and comes in at the shallowest angle it can. That's great when you're talking about taking all that warheads lethality and delivering it into a target like a truck, but given the PD warheads blast/fragmentation it works exactly opposite against any sort of area target like a group of dudes around a mortar position. We've pushed this up in Army circles to BAE and the answer isn't forthcoming on when/how they plan to fix it. I know the Marines were talking about a flechette version but then you hit a new problem of needing to know/control which rockets are in which tubes so you can properly match warhead to target because there is plenty a flechette can't do. When you mix that with the R model 114 getting a programmable HOB setting to better combat that effect of driving into the dirt and killing its blast/frag lethality. I agree it's still aggravating as hell to see a guy get up from a Hellfire strike but a lot of the times we've seen that it's either due to poor gunnery technique driving the missile off target or effects like terrain which would make a PD even less effective due to it only having a PD fuse. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It has greatly caught on all the way to the service levels, and is significantly cheaper than every PGM we're using in the current fights (sans a nose plug GBU-38...but that weapon cannot do what the AGR-20 can). Again, not saying we should be paying $25K for a rocket, but it beats the $100K+ Hellfires we're also shooting at an asshole riding a horse, and provides a capability to bring a lot more low-CDE firepower to the fight vs. fighters showing up with only bombs and being useless in many situations. It may not be perfect, but for once we actually did something that surpassed spec, works well, is relatively cheap, and all in a fairly short timeframe for our typical acquisitions process. You need to look at some of the delivery limitations on it particularly it's angle on impact vs the bug splatter charts . Until they put a programmable trajectory it's never going to supplant Hellfire, especially when you factor in the R model having a programmable warhead while APKWS is essentially a very target position vs point of impact dependent hand grenade with only a single type of fusing. Don't get me wrong we've shot them plenty (most of the Army's total inventory) but the time and place that I can use it is far more limited than Hellfire, but it wasn't designed to do what we are trying to do with it in this fight. Really it wasn't even designed for us, it was built as a way to put a PGM into the hands of air forces that own a lot of crappy planes/helicopters with old 7 shot pods they inherited from our Korea/Vietnam era weapon that is the Hydra system which is why it's totally self contained vs DAGR and other such systems. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That's fine and can be done, but it starts with the Supported elements ALO being actually competent in the weaponeering and tactics that he has to convey will be employed for that GFC. DA fight yeah get out of the cockpit, but COIN where CDE and all the after effects are major factors that GFC has to have trust and confidence that the air isn't going to make more problems being on a long chain to make their own decisions. He's the one that has to send guys into that village next week after the strike and deal with the aircraft having done X/Y/Z to meet that intent. It's the same problem we have with them and we wear the same uniform. If we send an LNO that can't confidently and accurately reflect the needs and capes of the supporting element we end up getting dumb requests like "we want you to use 30mm instead of hellfire to lower CDE" from 3km standoff. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Fixed it for you. APKWS is a good place to start, but that weapon has some pretty serious issues that need to be resolved before it's ready to get fully utilized as the PGM of choice the way hellfire is. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk