Stoker

Does this even solve a problem? Are we short on copilots now? If you do single pilot ops, presumably that's an IP flying around themselves, which means the FPs aren't getting hours for upgrade, which means the problem gets worse in the future...

I don't think "deploying somewhere shitty" is really the problem. It's "deploying somewhere shitty for a lost cause no one believes in."

Oh, the retirement is still moving forward - but also here's a bunch of last minute taskings we have absolutely no one else to do. What do you mean you don't have a crew?

This program seems tailor-made for someone who's been trying to get picked up by a Guard/Reserve fighter unit for a couple years without any luck. I'd have to imagine anybody who made it through this program's initial training would be exceptionally qualified compared to almost anyone else off the street. And whatever civilian commitment you put on paper gets trumped by USERRA.

I wouldn't think so. The law says you have to provide proof of honorable discharge or proof that you're currently serving in the armed forces, and have been rated a military pilot. It's not UPT graduation that lets you have an R-ATP, it's being a military pilot (not a civilian pilot who flies for the military). Presumably if we sent a new pilot to a foreign program as an exchange rather than UPT, they'd still qualify for the R-ATP if we rated them.

To that point, there was something of a bumper crop of LTs at a bunch of Reserve units during Covid times. A general came by on a road show (not to my unit, so paraphrasing) and asked why people weren't upgrading to AC... "Hard to get upgrade time with one local every other week." Asked what could be done to fix it, and one co mentioned sending excess FPs back to UPT as some sort of Reserve FAIP. The response was, absolutely not.

What if we allow abortions, but we require a certificate of no abortions in order to dine in at bars and restaurants, use the gym, or cross the border?

If there's one thing I learned from reading Ibrahim Kendi's book on antiracism, it's that anything that has a disparate impact on minorities regardless of intent or cause is inherently racist.

Shot themselves in the foot by fighting for late term abortions for so long. Radicalized the opposition, when something like 98% of abortions take place before the end of the first trimester (i.e. the line drawn in Florida recently). Lots of people are perfectly willing to say killing an 8 month old unborn baby is just as bad as killing a newborn.

Democrats learned the wrong lesson from 2020; they think their agenda won, when really Trump lost. Rather than assessing their weaknesses, they've been emphasizing them. Not that Republicans have done a ton to present a more coherent and logical message, but at least they have a couple potential candidates on the right side of 70.

I think it's about having a modern-ish fighter to sell for export to countries we like, but don't trust with the F-35.

When I was applying five years ago, it seemed like maybe 25-30% of units advertised their announcements somewhere central. Most were either word of mouth or on individual unit pages. Now I feel like virtually every unit is posting on Bogidope. It's a lot easier to be aware of boards, which means more applicants apply to more boards because why not.

The idea of having the majority of our electricity come from solar and wind is untenable. We don't have enough real estate (near places that actually use the power), we don't have enough raw materials, and we don't have even a tenth of a percent of the storage capacity necessary for a couple cloudy weeks of winter. Back it up with nuclear, you say, but if you're going to build nuclear plants that can handle 100% of the electrical load, in addition to renewables that can handle 100% of the electrical load... why not just build the nuclear plants and save literally trillions of dollars (besides letting people virtue signal by having solar roofs). The problem is that the time scale to build a nuclear plant is more or less twenty years at this point. Places that have heavily gone into renewables, like California, are going to face rolling blackouts for at least that long, and that's if their political establishment leans into nuclear today, which it won't. Gas and coal plants are reaching the end of their planned life (if not already years beyond, because replacements won't get permitted), so they'll be offline for maintenance more and more. Meanwhile electricity demands will go up as more EVs hit the roads and natural gas heating is phased out. We really need a national Manhattan Project II to push nuclear, rapidly, around the country, as a matter of national security. As others have said, the sooner oil is only used for niche transport applications and industrial/chemical processes, the better, as we can completely divest from the petrostates abroad.

The sanctions don't just have the effect of making Russians miserable. The Russian government, unlike the US, doesn't have the luxury of buying weapons on unlimited credit. They need revenue to pay and feed their soldiers, buy new guns, weaponry, etc. Sure, they still have oil revenues, but my guess is that with the sanctions, the Russians sell less gas this year than they did last year, and next year their actual production drops as specialized, irreplaceable equipment and people become scarce.

Russia colonized vast stretches of Asia, and enslaved the locals (although slavery wasn't a major feature of their economy, because they had serfdom until 1861). The Ottomans had an extensive slave trade, including but not limited to slave raids all around the Black Sea. The rise of the West wasn't based on slavery and colonization. It was based on agricultural and industrial revolutions. The places that built their economy on slavery and exploiting the locals (the South, Latin America) ended up far poorer than the places that didn't. If you're just saying that that's Russia's internal mythology, sure, I guess it could be, but it's far from true.

I wonder. The wheeled vehicles they're using for the actual invasion have their tires falling apart for lack of care and maintenance. How likely are vehicles in storage for the past 30 years likely to be anywhere near ready to roll into combat? And even if you get a far-outdated T-72 running, how effective will the second wave of unmotivated conscripts be, knowing they have even less chance the first wave (since the mothballed stuff certainly doesn't have any modern electronics or reactive armor)?

That's great. What's the most effective way for them to do that? Is it mirroring the entirety of a modern combined arms force, but in miniature? Or is it specializing in something?

Not a crazy idea. Given how small some of the NATO members' contributions are, pretending they're a Tier 1 nation is probably wasteful. Our military has 40 times the active personnel and 100 times the reserve personnel of the Netherlands. Give the small guys a niche to fill and let them be good at that niche. Won't happen, for the same reason that Taiwan buys fighters instead of SAMs.

The marriage penalty isn't something new from this administration; it's been around for decades at least.

This isn't exactly news, look up the air mail scandal for an early example of military aviation lagging behind civilian when it comes to flying in weather.

That checks. The ten year commitment doesnt hit until you are a rated pilot, and they're far more interested in filling a maintenance officer slot with a motivated prior E than a disgruntled UPT washout who is gonna bail in two years.

Being an anti-Trump Republican is about as opposite from "swaying with the winds" as is possible.

While inflation might eat away at retirement benefits somewhat (i.e. I wouldn't be shocked if in times of crisis you see COLAs set a point lower than inflation to save money), Congress has shown itself to be incredibly responsive to groups like military retirees, social security pensioners, etc. Because these groups live in every single district and have a huge financial incentive to lobby their reps, the reps have a huge incentive to keep them happy. No Congressman wants to see his opponent next election with an ad that says he made retirees live on the street.

Agreed. “We must be very careful not to assign to this deliverance the attributes of a victory. Wars are not won by evacuations.” As far as the economic troubles of the Taliban go, it's not just a question of paying the bills. You don't have cities of four million people in a country where subsistence agriculture is the primary occupation. Famine by the end of next year absent the Taliban making a deal to continue food aid... Which may not be a bad thing from the Taliban's perspective, since Kabul's population is likely to be the one least friendly to them.

Just because it's no one's fault doesn't mean no one is responsible. If you lose a war, maybe we don't want you in charge of fighting the next one.