sherpa

A link to what? The CVR is quite clear. She didn't deny anything.

Not that anyone cares, but this non skid stuff is kind of interesting. A friend of mine, also a carrier aviator, was involved as a civilian in the F-35 program. During testing, the carrier suitability tests are done at Pawtuxet River MD. They do normal carrier landings and very hard ones at the runway there prior to sea trials. Everything was fine. When they started sea trials on the F-35 there was an unexplainable and dramatic increase in engine damage because the engine mounts to the airframe were failing. Months and millions spent, and nobody could figure it out. One day this Navy buddy of mine was working on it and he was watching the carrier landing testing at Pax river. He mentioned to his cohort that the only thing different in this environment was the lack on non skid on a runway. They did the testing and found that the non skid on the carrier was causing a harmonic through the landing geat that was vibrating the airframe to levels that were causing the engine mounts to fail. Solved the problem. Saved well over a hundred million bucks. Carrier aviation is weird. There's an old quote from somebody years ago. "Carrier aviation. It gave me moments of extreme exileration and moments of extreme terror, but either way, it will always be with me."

Almost never. If they are re-spotting in heavy seas, and they don't unless necessary, they'll put a guy on each wing carrying chocks, and if something goes awry, they run up to the main gear and get the chocks under, hoping to stop it. I can remember a few times when the deck was really moving and after I landed they had our guys with chocks follow me throughout the entire taxi to a parking spot. Once you park, you are immediately chained, every time.

Sure. I guess you're referring to the Truman based F-18 that went overboard. At sea, airplanes are chained to the deck on the flight deck, anywhere from a four point to a twelve point tie down. So four to 12 chains, depending on sea state. When they go below to the hangar deck they are also chained. When they have to be re-spotted, (moved), without the engine running, they put a maintenance guy in the seat as the "brakerider." The problem is that if the engine isn't running, they have no hydraulic power, and thus, no airplane brakes. They use a "tug," which is a big low built byt very heavy vehicle to tow them, connected through a tow bar which hooks to the nose gear. To re-spot an airplane to the flight deck from the hangar deck, it is towed to one of three elevators, goes outboard to that elevator and is raised to to the flight deck. They don't do this in heavy seas for obvious reasons. Anyway, it looks like calm seas, a re-spot tow underway and the ship, for some reason, Truman an abrupt maneuver, which caused a significant list which was enough to exceed the braking capacity of the tug, which is significant. Tug driver and brake rider bot jumped out and remained aboard. Tug, tow bar and F-18 deep sixed. As an aside, after about two months at sea, the flight deck loses a good deal of it's "non skid," which is a thin layer of abrasive material to give ample traction to the steel deck. After a time, this wears off and the combination of small jet fuel leaks, hydraulic fluid and other lubricants can make the flight deck quite slippery. When you launch, you man a chained up airplane and the chains don't come off until taxi to the catapult. If this ship is moving because of sea state or turn, this can get quite interesting. That's why we always arm the ejection seat when getting in. I can clearly remember one day at sea and the deck was quite slippery. I was taxiing to cat 4 for launce and the ship started it's pre-launch turn into the wind. Airplane started slipping sideways and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Fortunately, whoever was at the helm eased the turn and all turned out well. Next day they cancelled the morning schedule and hosed the flight deck using sea water. They always apply new non skid during port calls at places that have the stuff.

No offense to you because you are just reiterating what the NY Times reported after "investigating." What they "concluded," and what was linked to above, is completely false, and totally not supported by the voice recorder. That is what happens when you get people "investigating" something they know nothing about. This crap happens all the time.

I understand your attempt at humor, but the situation is far more complicated, and these people are not stupid. Moving airplanes on an aircraft carrier is done with great care. If the carrier needs to maneuver very quickly, and it is unanticipated, ie., when repositioning a hangar deck airplane, where the the engines are not running and no hydraulics, stuff can happen. Back to basics, it is a boat, and boats can do things that cause the deck to be inhospitable to towing airplanes.

I'd be all over it. Jack Kemp made a compelling case against it, but in the decades since, it has gotten way more desirable, and I think, necessary.

That is what I am suggesting.

Not me. We need to attract the best people for public service. Denying them the opportunity to participate would be a major deterrent. My view is that a blind trust should be established, managed by a competent, approved group. The Representative is allowed to participate to whatever level they desire, but has no influence over the portfolio.

I really regret the way the administration has not informed our country on how obvious this situation was, and that something absolutely needed to be done. We were getting abused by China, India and the EU. A response to this is absolutely justified. China is the worst, but our other trade partners are nearly as guilty, and the situation needs to change. The Treasury Secretary was on CNBC for an extended interview this morning and his most informative comment was that when they started looking at this stuff, he couldn't believe how bad it has gotten. This gets worked out, but it wasn't moving in that direction.

Russian intel is pretty good. Having a phone number isn't condemning to the person.

No offense intended, but this is an incorrect conclusion from the reality. It was a checkride. You don't "refuse" on a checkride. She simply didn't respond immediately. It was a stupid process, but the reason was the switch to a different runway and not holding the helo at that point, well out of the way. It wasn't "her."

Even that premise is ridiculous. The comment I made about enlistment rate trends being a positive were a direct and immediate response to someone claiming such a situation was a bad thing because it was budget busting, which is preposterous. After that, the pure fiction began.

So you invent quotes that were never said. Create viewpoints never expressed, and now demand responses, as if you have any qualification to do so. The point is I don't care about Hegseth. What I do care about is cabinet level influence at the Pentagon, which ultimately goes downstream to our services. I do care that the past four years were marked by political appointments that were identity driven and not positive nor effectual. Much the same as other gov institutions. If Hegseth can reverse that and redirect the focus on fighting wars instead of social experiments, I'm OK. If not, or if he proves to be a risk to that goal by lack if discipline or incompetence, fire him. Not complicated. I care as much about him as I do about you.

Add another to the list of things I've never said.

Stop the senseless judgement. You're wrong again.

We can be better "friends," once the gross abuse is addressed. If you are not aware of that, and I am, you seem quite happy to tolerate it as long as it doesn't effect you. Trump is calling a spade a spade, but like the frog in heated water, we have put up this this horsestuff for years. Whether it's trade, NATO or the UN, the American worker has been abused by these entities for years. I feel pretty good about how it will work out, but it absolutely needed to be addressed. Perhaps not in his tactless manner, but it needs to stop.

Not me. Not for a second, and I'm not a fan of Trump at all. The previous gov was clearly a Regency gov., and none knew who the Regents were. DOD was a mess. FAA was a mess. Hegseth cannot make another security misstep, but the plan underway, which is to return warfighting to DOD, is far better than the strategy to run it as a social program, appointing people nobody respected. As those are cleared out, there is bound to be the usual Washington blowback from those impacted.

Just bought a 100k CD for our vol fire dept. Six months. 4.1%. Yield curve still inverted. Nothing close to 5% available unless you go full lunatic, and even then, not available.

This is so typical of your stuff and the stuff that gets put out here all the time. This, or these, were strikes against a country which has no air defense. There is no evidence, anywhere, that such information effected anything. You have two carriers in the Red Sea. That's a pretty small body of water with a lot of ships and a few belligerents who could have clearly seen the arming and positioning for the strike. I'm not excusing the idiocy of putting this on unsecured social media. What I am saying is that it had no influence on anything. Comparing this to any serious strike against a target that had significant anti air defenses is silly. The guy screwed up. It amounted to nothing. I don't excuse him for that, but I think comparing it to anything of a serious nature is wacky politics at play, as always. If the second charge is true, and not accidental, get rid of him. If not, get over it and be glad that we are finally doing something that makes sense, saves airplanes, shipping and lives, which we absolutely weren't under the previous group of who knows who making decisions. And by the way, with all the crap thrown around here, I have never seen anybody, ever dispute what I have stated about the strategy involved, which is far more important than Hegseth's stuff. That is what matters. That is what I have posted on, repeatedly. Never seems to be an issue with folks here. It's all about getting political pound of flesh, and not what matters.

No. Wrong again. Hegseth gets no pass from me. The "grunts" as you call them don't need a SecDef as an example. They need to be trained, prepared, equipped and deployed capably and honestly. Most couldn't name the SecDef, and that is fine. I think you are amazingly naive about this. There are secrets and there are secrets. Your comparison of this to Mossad is ridiculous, and I guarantee you the SecDef is in possession of far more things that would climb the ladder to your analogy which he wouldn't disclose. Didn't happen. Again, I have no interest in defending the guy, and couldn't care less about him personally, but firing him? I say that with the caveat that I really don't know what the second circumstance was, and if he has a defense, I'm willing to listen rather than send him out to the firing squad because, be assured, there are entrenched individuals who will do whatever they can to avoid upsetting the status quo. Just like illegal immigration, DOD is an independent industry that seeks to maintain their current circumstance.

People in senior positions don't need to have an "example." Doing this, if he did it intentionally, and I think there is some question, is a stupid, irresponsible action, but these folks in senior positions don't need to be led by example. They kind of know what they're doing after 30 years. What they do need is sensible, rational policy, and choosing leaders based on record of performance instead of gender and ID politics.

It's been happening since war was invented. That is not to say it is OK, or should be tolerated, but if you fired everyone who shared info with a spouse you wouldn't have anybody left. Again, condemnable, but if it ends now, I'm over it as I think we have have far more serious things to worry about. The press loves the story because it's easy and requires no knowledge of actual import, but, if it was related to a strike where any level of capable integrated air defense was in opposition, I would be very disturbed.

Perhaps you should stop telling people what to do. I don't know enough about the changes at DOD to do that, and I really doubt anyone here does either. I do know that the previous DOD and senior Pentagon people were not well thought of by the people in positions I am familiar with, and they had a bit of the Vietnam control from Washington going on, where there was significant disagreement between the guys with the triggers and the suits in DC, and that is never good. Hegseth was a strange and risky choice, but he expressed solidarity with Trump in getting the war fighting aspect back instead of this insane social experimentation that was going on in both training and appointees. It's too early for me to have an opinion on him, except to be displeased at these stupid mistakes that thankfully had no consequences.

You should apologize because you lied. I have never said anything close to the quote you invented. Further, nobody here has any "responsibility" to anyone else, except maybe to be honest and not lie about them or assign views. The Hegseth thing was really stupid. I'm not certain the truth about the second occurrence is really known yet. Still, the impact was zero, because the Houthis couldn't do anything about it. But it can't happen. The impact of actual insanity in handling our military is absolutely impactful though. To wit, the foolishness that Washington imposed on Red Sea carriers that were firing million dollar plus missiles against few hundred dollar drones. Seeking authorization to strike in Yemen, they were denied, except to attack sites that had just launched drones. The Houthi actions resulted in length deployment extensions for the Ford and Eisenhower task forces. These extensions really impact maintenance schedules and subsequent deployments. More importantly the dramatically impact retention rates, which are more important than recruitment goals. The US servicemen throughout the ranks operate very sophisticated systems that take years to master. Senior enlisted and junior officer retention is critical, and it is really harmed by continued extensions to scheduled deployments. You recruit the serviceperson, but you "retain" the family, and understanding that is crucial. In the last few months, the Pentagon has OK'ed offensive operations against Yemeni positions that support or supply the Houthis, and that is a logical, sense making approach compared to what we were doing under the previous admin. I don't care if the fire Hegseth or not. I care immensely that our military is deployed with purpose and intelligent response.