Lawman

Oh I’m not saying he’s some paid KGB esque Russian actor, just a useful idiot (and an anti-Semitic piece of crap too). Russia has just used his vocal stupidity and bonafides of his “credible historian” to amplify this narrative that it’s somehow NATOs fault. His quotes and statements mirror stuff on RT and other state run propaganda outfits and other sources have pointed out the dubious location all all the sudden like/subscribe/share of a lot of his more anti-NATO Russian apologists posts. There is definitely an effort to put his and similar opinions in front of as many people as possible to generate opposition to continued support to Ukraine in opposition to Russian intent. Thats simply an Info War tactical (non kinetic) effort translating to operational and eventually strategic effects. And the fact so many people parrot it despite the fact that NATO didn’t go trying to expand, Poland and Hungry went looking to join to gain article V protection to their newly found sovereignty and made multiple efforts to attain it shows it’s been effective against a good size chunk of our population. Similar to that there was an early narrative in the war to show pictures of Ukrainians welcoming the German soldiers and talk about actions in WWII to say “see they are really Nazis” without including the context that after and the Stalin era the Ukrainians weren’t Nazis, they were simply desperate for survival. The Russians weren’t attempting to make the media out in space, just to control the caption of it and share it with as many people as possible. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Also an important to point out that Meaesheimer’s viral video is getting a buttload of help from Russian assistance with their troll farms pumping the algorithm to keep it in view. Weird how a video from 2015 somehow breaks out all of a sudden across social media (especially TilTok) around about the same time it’s useful for Russia to attempt operational impact by eroding support for Ukraine. Almost like they understand the information part of multi-domain warfare…. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yeah… it’s not our fault. NATO didn’t force him to do anything. He was never promised anything, and for that matter neither was Gorbachev. More to that point that when NATO did start expanding, there was permission given from the Russian government at the time in a quid pro quo exchange of billions in US currency to prop up its market economy (preventing another coup during the Yeltsin era), and agreements in time table that would be advantageous to both the Clinton and Yeltsin elections going that year. We (UN Forces) were active Combatants in Korea having actually exceeded the original mandate to protect South Korea by then attempting to unify the country crossing north of the 38th, the internationally recognized border in an attempt to punitively unify the peninsula only to get pushed back south of it and lose Seoul a second time…. Retake it…. And end up in a stalemate mostly along the 38th for over a year. South Korea didn’t give any territory or make concessions to just not have Inchon or Sokcho be theirs anymore. We negotiated for a return to the original status quo. We (UN/NATO) weren’t and aren’t active combatants in any of the territorial annexations through force that Russia has executed over the last two decades. A more apt comparison of what is being suggested now for a truce in this conflict in terms of a Korean War would be like the UN stabilizing the Pusan Perimeter for a while simultaneously having no combat casualties doing it, and then telling the ROK “ok this is the new South Korea, enjoy what we negotiated for you.” Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

South Korea had been a country for a grand total of 2 years at the beginning of that Conflict. And it had been ruled by Japan from 1910 to 1945. Comparing that negotiated outcome to a conflict where the Ukrainians are solely the force on the ground conducting combat operations is at best a bad comparison for how things should be seen as necessary to negotiate ceasing of the conflict. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It kept their pilot corps more in line with current technology for simple cost than any other aircraft in the option group. Pays off for those that suddenly get their priorities in order now. It would be great to see a side by side comparison of the training hours, additional academics, retrain events, etc that occurred between aviators from later simpler aircraft like F4/Mirage/MiG-27/29 etc and then try to move to their new shiny F35s vs say a country that bought a handful of late model Vipers or Gripens. I’ll bet there are a couple people on this site that could offer anecdotal observations of foreign pilots coming from both groups to train up. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

There is a flaw in your logical format. The duty of a peace officer executing a warrant isn’t to determine guilt/innocence of individuals encountered in the conduct of their duty, it’s the preservation of civil order (ie non violence or destruction/chaos) and protection to bystanders at large and themselves in the execution of a legitimate action by the state. Somebody found on the premises being searched isn’t deemed a bystander at large, they are going to be detained which is within lawful permissions and cleared primarily on two protected grounds, preservation of evidence and officer safety, but with a load of case law behind them. The burden of right to detain/question/apprehend and hold within process limitations is met already by issuance of the warrant. Thats not on the officers following protocol, that’s on the state and the judge in demonstrating the burden to take that step across what is the status quo of respect to constitutional privacy. It’s a grey area our more vehemently libertarian minded refuse to acknowledge. That’s why they have to go to a judge to execute a proactive action like a search/arrest warrant vs a reactive situation like a situation of exigent circumstances or a simple response to dispatch call. People can scream “guilty until proven innocent,” but reality is there are stages every citizen goes through between innocent to guilty, an example being pre trial custody. The entire concept of bail is built on that being constitutionally permissible. Same is true of assumption of connection to crimes by being present in a location that has met the burden of a warrant. This guy isn’t the poor bastard that responded to noise in the night and the door kickers got the address wrong, this dude is living in a house knowing or ignoring his actions as a felon and expecting to be treated the same as the guy that isn’t doing that. Sorry not sorry, no different than running human trafficking out of your basement, you are actively engaged in crime, so the idea he could have innocently thought it was anybody but law enforcement is a made up argument. Look I can’t stand the ATF, because they are redundant and clown shoe in their professionalism compared to other agency’s, but using this shooting as evidence of the police state is a bad hill to die on. This wasn’t invented charges, or victimless crimes, and if this dude had been slinging Coke/meth/etc and killed by the DEA it wouldn’t have been a blip on the Glocktalk/NRA/USSA forum type circles or generate any action in Congress. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Hey who had “Color Revolution Theory” on their IA Campaign Bingo card? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Battle of 73 Easting was the last major tank on tank engagement during the 91 Gulf war. Started in a sand storm as a movement to contact (the big left hook of the ground war), named after the geographic position that it took place on since it happened literally in the middle of nowhere. It was a complete routing of the Republican Guard unit encountered which was vastly superior in size to the force that encountered it. 2nd ACR basically conducted a text book example of movement to contact by a Cavalry unit conducting “covering” (security mission) for a Division and decimated a larger force through speed, surprise, and violence of action. I’m doing so they cemented the Abrams (and Bradley) reputation in the question of what would happen when it came up against T-72. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_73_Easting Leo is the shorthand nickname for the German Leopard tank. Widely considered the only real competitive model of tank to achieve the same prominence and capability of the Abrams because of its wide export market. The A5-7 series are impressive, but I’d argue the limits on the Leo are more to do with the way countries use them rather than specific capability of an individual model. Personally I really like what the Koreans did with K2, but they have a lot of unique capes built into that tank specific for where they plan to fight with it that we don’t necessarily need for the cost it would add to the unit price. Honestly the greatest tank improvement would be including a true ECS system to provide and maintain crew comfort. You wouldn’t suffer nearly the danger to having hatches unbuttoned if it could maintain a viable temperature inside the hull. It would also vastly increase crew effectiveness from a rest/fatigue mindset, but the Army doesn’t think about that hence no requirements paperwork until we spent 30 years deploying tanks to the desert. We are only now starting to see that get into fighting vehicles of all types. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I think a lot of people have built some sort of mythic reputation to the Abrams kind of like the A-10. It’s not invincible, in fact we have had them knocked out of action in every major fight they’ve ever been part of often times to RPGs. It’s just that story doesn’t override the “legend of 73 Easting.” Abrams and Leo are both just as vulnerable to action as would be expected of any Armor vehicle. But what they do remarkably better than other tanks (specifically Russian ones) is crew survivability. We can always make a new tank (with the exception of the British which is a whole other issue). It takes a lot longer to make and train good tankers much less teach them to fight as a combined arms unit. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not only that, but in order to join NATO following the illegal annexation of its territory in 2014, Ukraine would have had to officially recognize the Donbas and Crimea as Russian due to the requirements in NATO for applying. Since Ukraine has refused to do that (along with most of the western aligned world) it would be impossible for them to join NATO. Putin’s narrative of NATO expansion as some existential crises to Russia is built on bullshit. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Wait I thought they had to invade to stop the Nazis… Which Russian talking point are we committed too this month? Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You’re deliberately misquoting or cutting out statements of context and then misrepresenting or ignoring parts of those statements for your own twisted up ends. Absolutely nothing I said in the first 2 paragraphs were disconnected from the actual 3rd one you decided to cherry pick from, nor did I ever imply that these systems were the end all replacement for higher cost munitions you did. You made that part up in space to circle us back to a wider “we can’t afford and therefore,” narrative., and now you’re trying to pretend you didn’t. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

We get our touring USO cheerleaders… they get theirs. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No it isn’t “logical” to assume anything, because you aren’t assuming anything you’re deliberately misrepresentation the facts of the conversation for your regular drum beat of abandon Ukraine. That’s the “point” you’re trying to make. I specifically said a COIN mode of usage for a low cost kinetic system (which we have similar programs in active acquisition), and you’re screaming about Ukraine which is without a doubt not a COIN fight. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

In other news…after two years of war… The last Russian Black Sea vessel with the ability to conduct Kalibr strikes against Ukraine is gone. https://maritime-executive.com/article/ukraine-confirms-strike-on-last-russian-guided-missile-warship-in-crimea Russia has apparently now lost its ability to conduct strike from an entire domain of modern warfare to a country which has no significant Naval power. On top of that the Ukrainians have begun targeting Novorossiysk which the Russians evacuated most of their fleet too after Sevastopol became untenable. This is probably the greatest embarrassment for the Russian Navy since the Russo-Japanese war. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

So again… you don’t know what’s going on or what’s funded or what we are/aren’t doing. You don’t have any idea what is in testing, in the field, or been shown to be suitable in one fight but not another. You’re just here to continue sport bitching. Very useful. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Well I’m trying to think of a better way you could demonstrate you’re so far removed as to have no idea what’s going on in the current military modernization efforts, but damn if I can think of one. What do you think the Replicator initiative is? Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

The funny thing is this absolutely has a COIN application. You could have replaced a huge portion of the air assets over Mosul or Raqqa in 16/17 if you had this technological solution. Just put something the size of a C17 flying as an airborne arsenal of FPVs with a Wolfhound or similar sized platform acting as the “crew quarters” full of operators. Now you’re literally just hunting people until you’ve killed enough to break their will or their means instead of dropping a 2k lbs bomb or pounding M36s into a target to reduce it, because you can literally chase a single bad guy with a backpack or on a motorcycle down. Effectively air delivered mobility denial and sanitation of any force that wanted to move underneath the wide arc it could cover. And it would be a F load more economical than spending a 100k dollar anti tank missile on a Toyota full of 3rd world dipshits. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

So the STRAC drives what a unit can or can’t do with regard to ammunition for training. It is based off the type of unit in classification, and swings a very wide arc in how much or how little incentive is placed on weapons qualification. Echelon of that unit also changes it. I’m for example in a position where they allot exactly 0x5.56 for me in the grand total of rounds, same as grenades, AT4 rounds or HMG rounds are 0 for anybody in a flying paragraph number because wtf there are other people to train. We used 40k rounds of 9mm for a reflexive fire event and another 15k of 5.56…. That two week 70 person event was two years of 9mm for an aviation battalion of ~500 soldiers. Meanwhile your regular light infantry unit will have tens of thousands of rounds of small arms for a similar number of troops…. But they also don’t get a strac of ammunition for aircraft or main gun rounds for tanks. They’ll also get a buttload of 81mm mortar and grenades compared to a mech unit which gets more 120mm and 25mm for the Bradleys to train with. I don’t need my quartermasters or Chemo’s to shoot like infantry though…same as I don’t need cyber guys doing that. I need them good at their job. But if you want to play the “look at the dumb Army game” posting some support troop (seriously look at her kit) I’d be happy to post videos of some of our AF weather kids the next time we have a range. I mean when they hit the ECP at Bagram and all the kids in the CJOC were running around losing their shit, there is a reason all the Army guys just went outside to the wall. That was the safe place to be. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

I’m just imagining a Betty voice saying “Inshallah…” with the broken syllables like Pull-Up. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Apparently some crazy guy in Oregon with some machining capacity that we should probably all check on… Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Stumbled upon this randomly and while I’m not a big shotgun guy I know a lot of people that slug hunt. If you don’t want to sit through the whole video just jump to about the 16min mark where they shoot the ballistic gel. These might be the most wickedly destructive round I’ve ever seen when thinking about the potential wounding capacity to a target. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

No you asked a loaded question (which we could all see coming) and then implied if that standard of “victory” can’t be achieved we should give up now and force the Ukrainians to capitulate. And another thing, no leader is going to publicly proclaim victory is short of an ultimate end goal, doing so would be suicidal to any negotiation. Plus this isn’t a new thing for Ukraine, they’ve been fighting to get their land back since it was annexed illegally, we just widely didn’t pay attention until 2022. If you think there isn’t a real scenario currently playing out where outcomes like Crimea is no longer under Russian control you are paying attention to the wrong talking heads in the info space. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No now you’re moving goal posts. If they can’t have it all back it’s not a win therefore we shouldn’t help them “lose.” And what’s more you only want to evaluate based off the last 6 months of Russian “success” as some would misrepresent it given how little it has achieved, its costs, and the restrictions we placed on the Ukrainians. That’s absolutely ludicrous given that they’ve retaken ground, sit in a position where Crimea is becoming an untenable position for the Russians to maintain combat forces, and have only very recently been given tools necessary for shaping actions necessary to precede any offensive action like taking back territory. And what does it achieve? Despite the sapping of any Russian combat power necessary for future aggression and rebuilding our own deficient military supply structure? Well there is the fact that Ukraine is positioned on the southern flank and effectively the most powerful ground force in a Europe, acting as a check against future Russian aggression to take the Baltics (which Putin has stated his intent towards). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk