Pooter

Lol you guys threw an almighty sh!t fit when the left called the George Floyd riots "mostly peaceful" and then you turn around and act like the thing we saw happen at the capitol was no big deal.

I'm talking about the thousands of people smashing in windows, destroying police barricades, assaulting police, vandalizing the capitol.. you know.. literally every other video of the event aside from tucker's super sweet 5 minute compilation. But you're probably right I don't know what violence is, I'm just a soy boy cuck. Not a big strong stone cold killer marine like you 😂 Do you hear how you're coming across right now? Here's a hint:

I think we're arguing two different questions and kinda crossing the streams. Question 1: how was capitol police so bad that the building got overrun by maga buffalo hat retards Question 2: what do you do when you're a vastly outnumbered cop in a building overrun by maga buffalo hat retards question 1 is a valid concern and worth investigation and reform so the capitol doesn't have such limp dick security. question 2 is basically a distraction/red herring and what the Tucker videos are about.

I've reached that viewpoint based on the body of his coverage of Jan 6th which seeks to generally minimize and downplay the severity of the event. As a result, he latches onto anything, no matter how small, which feeds that narrative. This video is just the most recent example. Putting aside that this is a 5 minute compilation in a sea of violence and mayhem, there are plenty of non-conspiracy explanations for why the cops were nice to buffalo guy for 5 minutes. -the capitol is a large building and the cops in the video didn't know what was happening yet -this occurred early prior to violence breaking out -they were vastly outnumbered surrounded by thousands of rioters I find the third explanation particularly convincing. Put yourself in their shoes. You're a low rent cop in a building that's already been evacuated and now you're surrounded by 10,000 maga nutcases. Do you: a) be nice to them and prevent escalation b) start unloading with your service weapon, guaranteeing a panic, and probably get trampled/assaulted to death c) arrest buffalo guy and march out the front door.. and probably get trampled/assaulted to death If I was a betting man, Id say most of the cops left in the building by the time it was breached.. at least the smart ones.. went with option A. Pop quiz: what are the first two things they teach you in the hostage portion of SERE? -Do and say everything you can to avoid being killed immediately -build rapport

Good post. To steel man the other side for a second, I think the big concerns are that we'll get sucked in to another prolonged conflict without a clear goal or end state.. it's kinda what we do. And we're dumping money and weapons in when we have lots of problems that need fixing at home. Seems like we repeat the same interventionist cycle over and over. Steel man over. Bottom line here is we are tanking Russias hegemony, Putin's admin, and decimating their military without risking a single US military member's life. To me that is an objectively good trade off, and the fact that it deters China is a great bonus. And if you think the weapons bill is steep now.. try giving Ukraine to Putin, appeasing him for the next few years and see what the bill is like when he tries his luck on a FSU nato country next. What is it they say about an ounce of prevention..

Of course it's a waste of time and money. But if democrats incited a riot that happened in the capitol building of our country during an election certification vote, you and I both know the right would have a political theater conniption too. Dems are going to milk this for everything it's worth, and they'd be stupid not too. If you don't want useless committees and hearings calling your party evil insurrectionists, maybe don't give democrats the best ammunition ever. edit: final put.. I don't know about you but Jan 6th didn't feel like a run of the mill riot to me. There have been a lot of riots in this country in the time I've been alive, but I only remember one time when the riot was inside the literal capitol building.. in direct response to a vote currently in progress.. for the presidency.. egged on by the guy who lost the presidency. That feels pretty damn unique to me.

Definitely violent and definitely a riot. Some of the particularly low IQ people in attendance probably thought they were taking control of the government as well. But that doesn't make the whole thing an insurrection or mean the country was on the verge of collapse, or that it's worse than 9/11 or pearl harbor. That's left wing alarmist nonsense. And tuckers argument that there's nothing to see here is right wing minimizing, excuse making, equivocating garbage. So in conclusion, as per the usual arrangement, both sides of the legacy media are an abject dumpster fire.

There's thousands of hours of violent riot footage. The fact that Tucker can piece together 5 minutes of people milling around proves nothing.. other than the fact he's a political hack eager jump on the tiniest shred of video that confirms his biases. Get it together and do some critical thinking, dudes. This wasn't a near-insurrection but it sure f-ing wasn't a docile guided tour either. Some of the crap you guys post here looks like it came straight out a boomer spam email forwarding chain.

Emcon

@Danger41 The tactics examples you mentioned are all good stuff and the reason I get out of bed in the morning as well. Don't get me wrong I love my job. I love flying fast jets and I love trying to get better every day and improve how the CAF does things. Like you, I also have been involved in some meaningful changes on the tactics and instruction side. I also really really care about teaching the FNGs coming up the right way to do things. From an ops perspective I am 0% jaded. But there is a whole other side of my job, and that's the one I'm pissed about. I notice none of the innovations you cited have anything to do with queep reduction or admin. The administrivia side of the Air Force is kind to those who "play the game" so the only people who ever make rank high enough to change the game are the people who played it in the first place. You asked why I want specific directives from top level leaders. It's because I believe that's the only thing that will dismantle the queep empire that's been built. I don't need specifics from majcom/ccs about tactics or mission leadership or how to manage my flight. I want specifics because generic inspirational fluff does not make it down through the 69 layers of administrators to result in any change at squadron level. A perfect example of this: a few years ago when Debbie James was the secaf, they did an additional duties reduction initiative. Big email got sent out about it saying something generic about how we're going to get leaner and reduce add'l duties. Literally the next day I was appointed the squadron emergency management rep, and DTS AO. The secaf email and my new appointments email were sitting right next to each other in my inbox. The next one was some horseshit about looking for volunteers to run that year's CFC. I screenshotted it at the time because I couldn't believe the irony of these 3 emails sitting next to each other. But anyway, cheers. I'll keep trying to fight the good fight, get better in the jet, and the moment I can get chat gpt to automate the queep side of my job I will spread the gospel far and wide.

You've inspired me, I'm going to attempt to start a grassroots campaign of queep conscientious objectors. 1st order of business: no one submit for OPRs or awards. When the queep lords as why we'll tell them we were in the vault studying. The movement will spread to the sister squadrons, then throughout the airframe and the majcom until flyers Air Force wide refuse to waste time on queep you crazy son of a bitch this might just work

A. I'm not in AMC so I have zero CYA B. Most crewdogs I know including myself don't have the time or energy to start a chain of command food fight over the interpretation of this vague nonsense. Your comment literally acknowledges my chief complaint about the memo. It's too broad and middle management is going to maintain the status quo like they always do. One captain lighting his career on fire by going VFR direct to the IG or the f-ing majcom cc is not going to change shit. I will repeat for a third time. If Mini can be overly specific about clips, vred, and 135 drone delivery, why can't he be specific about things that would actually make a difference?

Maybe the marines run it differently but all the Air Force vaccine hold outs I know still had to go to work.. on top of all the legal BS they had to deal with. not to mention the massive risk of an other than honorable discharge which follows you long after your service is over. Doesn't seem like free money to me

I really hope this is true. I'm doubtful though based on their insane pace of military development in the last few years break/break @Clark Griswold point taken. I can see the argument that having a few wildcards out there in command will make enemies think twice. Break/break I'm willing to grant that he has the right intent here, but to be honest this reads exactly like the same "accelerate, change, or lose" drivel we seen for years without anything changing. You're smart and experienced enough to know that the status quo will continue unless you spell things out explicitly and force the change you want. We all know the saying about the difference between the Air Force and Navy.. in the navy they check the reg to see if it says they can't do it. In the Air Force we check the reg to see if we can. So you know damn well that these two paragraphs are not going to reduce queep one iota, because it's not explicit enough. Waiver authorities aren't going to change enterprise wide without specific direction to do so and top cover to go along with it. The queep administrivia will continue because these vague paragraphs get laundered through 6-9 levels of command until it's just status quo by the time it reaches the squadron level. I'll repeat my previous question: why are the only specific directives in the memo about firearm training, vred, and pie in the sky 135 drone deployment? Maybe I'm hyper sensitive to the admin issue right now because I just came into a very queep heavy job. But I truly believe on this issue, we say one thing and then do the exact opposite. We say we're going to accelerate and change, but all I see at my level is myeval turning the OPR process into even more of an abortion. Leaders say they want you to take calculated risks, but the waiver authority to make a tiny syllabus deviation in any upgrade program is with the first two-star or higher. As if they have literally any idea what we're asking for, and we all have weeks to sit around waiting for an eSSS to route up to the NAF and back. My point is the bureaucracy is too deep for generic talking points to make any difference. And you have to remember us peons at the lowest level are just trying to follow the rules, make good decisions within our power, and CYA so we don't get crucified. So as strange as it may sound if you want to elicit any actual change from a high level, you need to be hyper specific. I'm sure the 135 drone thing will at least be workshopped. Because he explicitly mentioned it.

Glad they're trying to make things right, but I do have a question for your buddy. Military and gov't leadership hasn't changed, and the vaccine requirement was only rescinded after multiple years of consternation and a gradual shift in public opinion/medical data. But who's to say a bad variant doesn't pop up and then the military reinstates the mandate? If your buddy was ready to separate over this, and now he's back in, isn't he just exposing himself to the possibility of the same thing happening again? Personally I see the issue differently, but if I was so dead set on not getting vaccinated that I was ready to separate, a simple "whoopsie we're sorry" from the DOD would not be enough to keep me around.

Interestingly, there are a bunch of countries that don't do ranked choice voting but do have multi-party systems (3+). So it makes you wonder how that came about. I also wonder if 3+ party systems are maybe inherently unstable and over time trend toward 2 party systems as the power gets more consolidated. The other piece to consider in America is that as the political parties siloed into their two camps, so did the media. To the point that you had a huge media infrastructure on the left, and on the right, with very little in the middle. I think a big step in the right direction would be campaign finance reform. Right now the money is so heavily concentrated in the two parties, it's impossible to mount a competitive campaign without party donor backing. Even Perot, a billionaire who pulled the best independent popular vote numbers ever, barely made the double digit percentages. I so desperately want there to be a viable 3rd party, and I think it could arise organically out of the reasonable middle. But.. I think its far more likely you'd get a viable 3rd party from a full blown schism on one side or the other. And you can bet whichever party isn't undergoing the schism will have the upper hand for quite a while. Both extremes of the political spectrum seem to have gone particularly insane these days with the hardcore trumpers on the right and the hardcore wokes on the left, so I feel like the time is ripe for a moderate right or moderate left camp to break off into the middle.

I'm sure some people agree with his assessment. But the point is it's not his assessment to make and blast out to the whole world. His job is to manage AMC, make sure it's as good as it can be, and leave the strategy up to the secaf, csaf, secdef, Congress, potus etc... Attaching a specific year to your prediction is especially asinine because you're almost begging for it to happen on that timeline. He could have said something like "near peer conflict in the pacific is likely in the coming years so I need you to all be ready." That says basically the same thing inside AMC without everyone in DC having to run damage control for you.

From the outside looking in on AMC I think I speak for a lot of people by wondering: Why is Minihan mouthing off about war with China, firing clips, and drone delivery good idea fairies when the two tankers that constitute almost our entire capacity to project airpower around the globe are f-ed up with no end in sight? This is also the dude behind single pilot tanker ops right? Seems like he is big on new age pie in the sky nonsense and not very big on the fundamentals. If he's actually so concerned about war with China, maybe he could do something about the fact that the tactical experts in his (and all majcoms) spend 60-90% of their time on administrivia. Do you think chinese pilots are worrying about quarterly awards? I doubt it.. And in case he's reading this thread here's a non all inclusive list of things he could enact literally tomorrow that would immeasurably improve our lethality and mobility: -abolish all awards not related to combat operations -enact single line OPRs and EPRs that show your strat 1-n and that's it. -reduce the waiver authority for literally everything in every reg to no higher than OG or WG level -reduce readiness reporting to once a quarter -abolish TMT -order your subordinate commanders to eliminate the every additional duty that does not directly contribute to readiness/lethality. If he ever did any of that, I'd take his memo a lot more seriously.

Makes sense

Totally checks. I only brought them up because I don't see how tanks fit into the equation. They're not asymmetric, nor are they long range standoff strikers for targets behind enemy lines like himars are.

You sure? The internet is absolutely overflowing with videos of Russian dudes in trenches getting their dicks blown off by grenade laden drones. Go to r/combatfootage right now and see what 90% of the videos on there are. I don't dispute himars has obviously played a huge role and has taken out many important targets. That's why I mentioned it. But as far as influencing public perception of how the war is going for Russia, the daily HD imagery from these things is putting the front lines into the public eye more than any other conflict in human history. That importance and sway on public opinion can't be overstated

Makes sense, I'm just wondering what Ukraine's capacity is to field and appropriately support these tanks. Russia certainly doesn't seem to be able to do it, so is the smaller and outnumbered force going to be able to? From the very non-expert armchair I'm sitting in, it seems like Ukraine's biggest successes have been through asymmetric warfare. Small commercial drones dropping grenades on entrenched Russian soldiers and the like. And some pinpoint standoff strikes on key Russian nodes with the himars we gave them. Just struggling to see where the abrams fits into this model

@nsplayr are you guys at all concerned with chatgpt asking you to verify with your cell phone # ? Seems sketchy to me especially because I already verified an email. I've been super interested in the platform for a while now but giving away my cell number to an open source AI program gives me serious heebie-jeebies

Question, because I am not smart on tanks. We've seen Russian and Ukrainian tanks repeatedly dumpstered by anti tank weapons throughout this conflict, so is there any reason to think the same won't happen to the abrams and leopards getting sent over there? Do western tanks have vastly superior countermeasures or something? Just not really seeing how a few dozen western tanks are going to last long out there or honestly make that much of a difference.

Totally off topic but I spent 9 hours writing 1206's for annual awards today for people who don't event want them. That is more hours than I have flight time in the last two months, and I am (supposedly) a CMR instructor pilot in the CAF. We are going to lose the next war.