FlyingWolf

*Small Cruise Missile has entered the chat*

Well layed out thoughts here, you largely supported my intuited fears. What is a middle class man to do in such a world? Best I can figure, its buy arable land and ammo, but more practical advice would be appreciate.

Simply put: Effective CAS requires and provides high situational awareness coupled with rapid, precise, and accurate fires. The AC-130 and A-10 reign supreme here. Other measures of performance matter a lot too, of course (range/endurance/magazine depth/hardened target legality/CDE/survivability/cost/etc). These additional factors all define how much, where, and when effective CAS can be provided, and some other platforms beat out the AC-130 and A-10 in some of these. This discussion is ultimately about how much do we buy in to a jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none platform (F-35) vs specialize and diversify… as many others have already alluded to. I am a proponent of maintaining some specialization/diversification.

https://andmagazine.substack.com/p/hundreds-of-fighting-age-chinese

Put a HAAR pod on one side and the laser testbed version of the AC-130J could basically do all of this... Haven't seen rocket pods done yet, does JATO count? Gun out the right hand side though... Blasphemous Edit: Fixed the meme for ya

Starship Troopers had a lot of compelling ideas packaged in that cheezy-but-entertaining veneer. I, for one, vote we adopt using "Sir" regardless of gender.

Nah... Do you not believe in drug cartels? You seriously dont think people in the military "join or work together"? Conspiracies happen all the time, they are fundamental to the concept of society itself. Often we call it politics. Sure, the wizard behind the curtain concept is unrealistic. Its often groups of likeminded individuals who have convinced themselves they are the good guys and fall back to ends-justify-the-means philosophy.

You must have had an incredibly interesting career, with all the insight you bring across topics. Well deserved rocking chair status. On this one... spot on. It troubles me greatly.

My personal conjecture/anecdote supported theory: AO is one of Slife's moves to try to end the AC-130.

We're looking at the highest inflationary environment in most of our lifetimes, big airline hiring at the beginning of a long term surge, and omicron likely signaling endemic C-19. All on the heels of a dramatically poor take rate last year. You would think an adjustment to the contract offering would be a no-brainer... but who knows, maybe we need to fail catastrophically before we change.

Can you support this claim? I'm onboard that its clear there is a few week delay in full reporting. I haven't seen convincing evidence of underreporting. Closest I've seen is comparion of C-19 deaths vs excess deaths, which was a weak argument given the numerous other causes of death that could reasonably spike due to individual and organizational covid fear responses. (ex delaying care for critical conditions, deaths of despair).

Yes, though that is not how it was originally sold, nor is it how it works with all vaccines/viruses. and it begs the question... Which presents more evolutionary pressure to a virus: partially inhospitable immune systems or unprepared ones? I don't know, it probably depends on particular variables, and there is some evidence partially effective vaccines may encourage mutations. There is a line of argument out there that the unvaccinated are causing the mutations, but the opposite may be more true here. It will probably be a while yet before we know.

Indeed. Neither does the F-15 listed in her bio. To move the thread back on topic... I can't help but wonder if the admin is partially relieved for Hurricane Ida to distract from Afghanistan. I imagine we will see a huge national relief response with lots of media coverage. Good for the folks dealing with yet another hit, but I hope we still see some accountability on the the Afghanistan debacle.

Its okay man. Heavy background folks turned TPS grads still don't typically call themselves "fighter pilots", if that makes you feel better.

Being pedantic here... I agree. Science doesn't push anything really, people do. Science is a method and a body of evidence. A lot of people sure did claim the moniker of "science" in their political BS though. I actually really appreciate the study and wish I had seen it sooner in all this. I think the mitigation/suppression framing should have been part of the discussion all along, with empirically based analysis informing our inherently values-based public policy... out in the open... with leaders being particular about the science and the values informing their decisions... the humility to admit the huge data quality limitations... and the courage to defend values outside of simplistic "if it saves one life" first-order-effect focused demagoguery.