tac airlifter

I love this thread; we should have every UPT class patch up here. Wish I'd saved a copy of the 04-10 patch.

An argument I was replying to was essentially that we must protect Ukraine in order to defend NATO from follow on incursion. You're making an unrelated point, which although laudable, is not good enough reason for me to support continued un-audited spending on UKR while our border remains open. Sorry dude, US first then I'm open to your perspective.

When Germany starts acting like they actually believe Russia might expand past UKR and fight NATO countries, and is willing to commit serious money to that problem, that's when you've got my interest. However the current situation is that we're rushing to rescue Western Europe who doesn't feel threatened or inclined to break the bank investing militarily due to ann imminent Russian invasion. At the same time we have ever more serious domestic issues. The reply always seems to be "it's not either or, we can secure our border and the borders of Ukraine" except we can't, or we already would have. No love for Russia here, but I 100% believe our over-investment in Ukraine is strategically foolish. CH, I get your point on pre-WW2 isolationists, but I am unconvinced Russia is analogous to Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. It looks like a regional dispute to me. And instead of engaging in thoughtful discussion to convince me, the prevailing approach is to bully me by claiming I'm parroting Putin talking points like a stooge. If Covid has taught us anything, it's that people yelling thoughtless demands and name-calling must be ignored.

Well that's just absurd, you can't really mean that. Here's a short list of groups who disagree with you: the Taliban. The third Reich, the Japanese imperial army, general Ulysses Grant, the native American tribes, Cortez. GMAFB. I'm not sure what you were trying to say, but this is one of those squishy hearted axioms like "violence never solves anything" that we must reject as an outright falsehood. People win in war and people lose. More than any human endeavor war has very specific winners and losers. Your sentiments are a result of our soft and protected lives here in the modern west, a lifestyle made possible by wars we have won. And someone will win the war in Ukraine. Right now it appears Russia is winning, because they are not bothered by the people and material lost thus far provided they attain their objective which grows closer daily. I don't want them to win, but I am also unwilling to deplete our treasury in pursuit of stopping them. And what's more, I'm disgusted at people who cannot have a logical discussion about what actions the US should take in the Ukraine war to best serve our interests, people who claim anything but blind support to the Zielinski Dictatorship is somehow pro Russian.

Secretary Austin is a disgrace.

Prohibition doesn't work, and I'm sick of the knee jerk reaction to ban things for promises of safety. The same GO restricting booze sales to "keep Airmen safe" doesn't think twice about dropping a tasker at 1700 on Friday and sending those Airmen home to a furious wife after the kids are asleep. In my experience senior leadership should look in the mirror when trying to understand rising suicides in their force. Instead, they hit the easy button of restrictions & claim a halo for their duplicity.

I'm not sure what you're saying "no" to since Trump gave no specifics; his manner of communication seems to be tossing out vague ideas and seeing how they play publicly. I don't necessarily like it, but it's better than whatever Biden is doing by operating in an echo chamber. Had I been POTUS (good thing I'm not) I would not have allowed WA to dither for weeks while CHAZ/CHOP stole territory, set up borders, and inflicted misery on citizens of that state. I haven't thought through specifically what I would've done, but certainly using the military in some capacity would've been on the table. The fundamental question is this: when elected state or city leadership completely fails their citizens, what is the national government to do? One could argue nothing since citizens voted those elected leaders into office, but one could also argue that outright insurrection is a federal crime and enforcement supersedes state authorities. Not being a lawyer I don't know what the right answer is, but ruling out potential COAs before they've been fleshed out seems like a recipe for more losing. Something our military leadership is unfortunately quite adept at.

I took several of these tests with no prep and failed about half of them the first time. Probably because given the choices above, I'm always shooting the bus full of nuns.... it's more scalps and moving targets are fun. But they're looking for different priorities. The majors were a 6 month pause before reassessment, so I recommend being as honest as you are on the post deployment health survey when they ask if you have more than one to two drinks a month. Of course you don't.

Good replies gents, thanks for the perspective.

Does the logic work both ways? Would you also say Russia has the will to fight despite their forced conscription? Because I hear a lot about Russian forced conscription being symptomatic of imminent defeat, which seems like selective bias. My take is that if the general public hates the war so much they’re dodging the draft (which wasn’t a factor during WW2 but definitely was during Vietnam) you can’t say a democracy has the “will to fight.” Because they don’t. Of course, neither Russia nor Ukraine are democracies so it’s a grey area of discussion.

I'm not sure forced conscription counts as "the will to fight."

You have become the submarine to hunt the submarine.

No matter what the next crazy event is.... if the synchronized narrative immediately becomes "no time for deep thought and debate, we must action this now!" you can bet outcomes will favor globalist progressives, cost more than we can afford, restrict freedom, and all initial reporting will turn out to be lies. some of us are debating the things themselves. I encourage us to start looking for patterns & be predictive. We are Psyops targets.

"Equality" is camouflage for special privileges.

Also work for a female Col at WG, get sent to staff with perfect strats, then get school when all the people putting in time on the line are denied. Have said Col order your attached SQ/CC to upgrade you, take 18 months on a specially made syllabus, then never fly and ask the SQ/CC to make you an evaluator on paper. Come back as the SQ/CC, don’t deploy, wreck any lethality of the team and continue upwards. Much inclusivity, very diverse and warrior queen.

This was a very well articulated reply, thanks for the thoughtful words. I don't agree with everything you've said. But you're right that I dropped because I was there (not because I was an optimal choice) and TEA trusted the weapon. And I definitely grant that no one does CAS better than your community... in pylon turn employment. "Pushing 5 minutes" was a real radio call I heard when they were doing CLT shots. Compared to other assets engineered differently that reported "in continuous." But that's a result of forcing gunships to do something they weren't built to do. Thanks for writing this, good post. FWIW I don't agree with the decision to divest the 105 and, despite poking fun at gunships sometimes (who send more than their share of shit at other communities), I have extreme respect for the effects they bring to the fight and the heroic things they've done. My favorite part of your community is the aggressive mindset they inculcate in crews. It does make you hard to work with sometimes (and hard to talk to), but we're here to kill not make friends. Even so, drinks on me if we meet 🥃

Gunners would love it but you'd have a real issue with fratricide. Kidding aside, I'm sure CH and other old school gunship warriors did amazing things with the 105. But since I arrived on station in 2009 they take about a dozen rounds to get on target. Unless it's containment fires in which case they kill the squirter first shot, lol. And that's fine when you're responding to a TIC with barricaded HMG ambushing eagles out on patrol... but it comes at the cost of other things which might occupy that real estate. Things that SOCOM wants more, given there aren't many eagles being ambushed on patrols, not to mention SOCOM wants out of that game permanently. I understand the frustration with herbivores leading the command, but 3 stars work for 4 stars. This didn't originate in AFSOC without coordination between the two 4-star commands who rule them. Since numbers were given above I'll mention: I've dropped PGMs during CAS at 7 and 15 meters from friendlies (granted the 7 meter shot had a Hesco protecting falcons); with low yield, time of fall at 20 seconds, and 1m CEP there are highly responsive options outside of a giant cannon flown so low targets break contact before you can kill them. Which, like it or not, is the gunship story during the final years of AFG.

Whatever happened to the gunship lasers?

Liberals are 100% consistent: they want to defend the democracy in Palestine from the first-strike tyranny of Israel. Hamas values trans-rights and Israel just wants to ban music festivals and gay people. #freeukraine

Great discussion. Agree with the identification of misinformation being a definite threat to our society, and agree with CH on all points; Covid proved we absolutely cannot have a government sponsored disinformation effort as it will 100% lie to advance a false narrative. As Thomas Sowell says "there are no solutions, only trade-offs." Human issues are rarely solved, they are mostly managed. Thinking like that is a good start on this problem set. In that vein, the X construct of allowing added "community notes" to provide a counter-point is a decent compromise between allowing free speech while also real-time tagging it as propaganda. We are allowed to consume both sides. I also think long-form style interviews (Joe Rogan) are healthier to view than the news, which is either constant arguing or a series of 10 second quips lacking any depth. That style of information is no-shit rewiring our brains to make us dumber. Great book if you'd like to read more: How the news makes us dumb. I'd love to see the fourth estate actually function & hold power accountable (on every side). But they're hard core partisans and proud of it, they even view it as their duty.

FYI: in my professional experience 90% of cases are false accusations.

Agree, and a great reason why we shouldn't lower the voting age to 16.... as one of the parties is trying to do

I'm surprised we're exposing POTUS to this level of danger by sending him into theater. I understand the value of optics, but a trip right now doesn't seem prudent.

Same reason we must defend democracy in Ukraine but not Israel.