sherpa

People make mistakes all the time. Calling someone who has spent more time efforting against Putin and his lot infinitely more than you ever have a "coward," idiot," "liar," and most recently a "scumbag." is something entirely different. That is not a "mistake." That is grossly insulting, pathetic, and draws attention to crazy notions you post. Years spent on active duty planning to fight his group, teaching others as a Topgun adversary and Light Attack Weapons Scholl instructor makes me cringe when I see crazy stuff posted. To top it off, having my Moscow hotel room gone though in my absences on two separate occasions, as well as other crew members who indicated former military service on their Russian visa applications allows me to dislike that place and regime as much as anybody.

You can't find it? Or it doesn't exist. I've found it for you. Here's the procedure for launching a HIMARS off an aircraft. 1. Select which wing you want blown off. 2. Arm HIMARS on that station. 3. Grab ejection lower handle. 4. Launch HIMARS while pulling ejection handle prior to wing being blown off as result of launch. You are good at this.

Could you point me to this talk? I'd be quite interested.

Not really. Star doesn't show up. Beasley doesn't shut up.

Mid point last season I knew there were two players who would not be on the Sep 2022 team. Star Lotulelei and Cole Beasley.

Best post. Too many people trying to monetize observations on issues they they nothing about.

Technically, this is correct. For the edification of the class though, the UK did not take on "Argentina by itself." Ships passing in the night, things get "passed." Intel on sub locations get passed by a slip of the tongue among friendly nations.

Always amazing to assign monthly economic numbers to political issues. We shut down the economy for over a year. We've spent about three trillion dollars trying to re-stimulate it. These numbers are no sign of achievement. They are to be expected. Labor participation rate is a better indicator than unemployment, but nobody pays attention to it if their focus is on political promotion.

They'd have to deal with significant icing though.

It is way more complicated than simply training pilots. They have no ability to maintain them or arm them. We are already deeply involved in this, draining our own war stock with massive supply of arms. The Harry S. Truman is reportedly flying 80 sorties a day in support of this. That is a massive and unsustainable pace, as well as rapidly using up service life of these airplanes. (That, by the way, was a major issue in enforcing the the Iraqi no fly zone and part of the calculus to inform the decision to invade, though not often mentioned). For what I think is a reasonable explanation of these issues, and certainly describes my view, here is a link to a very recent youtube discussing it. The guys talking are a retired F-14 RIO, (back seater), who is extremely well informed on current military aviation issues and a Reservist Naval Intel Officer. It is well worth listening to for those who do not know what is involved in something like this and just want to "do somethng." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su34D4KnO6s&t=1227s

Not possible, and not a good idea. The simple reality is that they have absolutely no way of utilizing such systems. Total waste of effort.

They have no way of using any of these aircraft effectively, on so many levels Giving them those airplanes would be a big mistake

Absolutely not. The Ukrainians have come to the conclusion that airplanes are not the answer. The A-10 proposal was a really bad idea.

I think this is one of the issues that people who live in the west will never comprehend. Afghanistan is not a country in the manner of how we view countries. It is a tribal, nomadic group of clans with no common purpose other than survival. It was that way when the Russians invaded in 1980 and it is that way now. There is no way that any optimistic, come to the 21th century influence from the west was going to change that. Never has. The only way it can be dealt with is to eliminate the threats that occasionally emerge from there. Still, the "withdrawal" of our forces from there should have cost the SecDef his job. Just a total debacle by any objective measure.

I'm not sure of your logic here. Getting Zarqawi, and the weapons used, was a vastly different circumstance and operation. Regarding 9/11, I think you should remain "comfortable" about the conclusions.

On the other hand a reasonable corollary is that it takes a responsible gov/military to spend the money to get this to production. It is basically an airborne assassin aimed to get one person. Far more humanitarian than lobbing artillery shells or cluster bombs, which would kill everything within a football field area.

Charlottesville, VA. Four seasons with lengthy spring and fall. Premier university town Mountains nearby.

Prior to retirement, I worked in an industry where people could live or retire anywhere they wanted. Many "offshore" places, Argentina, Uruguay, Colombia, Panama, many places in Europe and the Caribbean, and all over the US. We went through the same process, and decided to live where we do now. My only contribution,, having listened to hundreds of stories, is to rent for a month, at minimum, at anyplace you are seriously considering,

What "subsonic warheads capable of long distances that cannot be intercepted" do they have? I'm not aware that anybody knows what can or cannot be intercepted. Anyway, modern warfare is an extremely complicated and detailed issue, and capability is far more determined in command and control capability, and integration of coordinated many forces operating together. If you look at the US deployment during Iraq wars, you see that capability. The Chinese don't have that command and control integration, or at least have never demonstrated it. They operate on the standard centralized command, inflexible model, which is not responsive and ineffective. Again, they have no real force projection. I'd never add nuc warheads to the discussion. When that is added, nobody knows how things head.

I fully agree and think they are way overrated militarily. They really have almost no offensive force projection. Their newest aircraft carrier is quite small, conventionally powered and requires underway replenishment very often. They are developing a nuc powered one, but we shall see. I have spent a fair amount of time there, at least in Beijing and Shanghai, and I was always surprised at the absolute lack of creativity in problem solving. They also have a demographic problem which is getting worse and limited resources. They need the rest of the world, not the other way around.

Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?

It wasn't Trump that was leading us, it was a number of developments in extraction and finding new sources of methods to economically "find," extract and refine fuel. We have far more natural gas available than we need. Fundamentally, it had nothing to do with politics until the Biden group got in and slammed the brakes on it. The Saudis were universally known as trying to stomp out the emerging US energy industry as they saw it coming. They were flooding the market and depressing the price to the point of making it impossible for the US to allow its organic industry to grow and compete. Then you get COVID and the market tanks with storage facilities full to the brim and tankers dead in the water off shore holding supply that was not needed and could not be delivered. Biden has a unique ability to be wrong at the wrong time, and this is a perfect example. Taking what had existed and getting to the point of ever talking to Venezuela or the Saudis is a totally unforced error.

Howie Long.

Can you not do this work yourself? The Trump negotiated cut in OPEC production was negotiated on or around April 13, 2020. Crude was $53 in Feb of 2030, and $23 in March. Extraction and refinement costs get US fossil, much cleaner burning by the way, at a cost in the barrel more than Saudi oil. Always has. Biden comes in an arbitrarily handcuffs US production to some degree. There is simply no valid, rational disagreement of this. None. Oil is about $105/barrel now, and he goes on a begging trip to Saudi Arabia. The man has simply never gotten anything right. But to the point, the Trump negotiated decrease in OPEC oil production was at a time when the pandemic tanked demand and prices; there were no available storage facilities, tankers were off shore awaiting ports, and the US production was at a severe disadvantage. Late edit, I'm not sure where you get information that Trump "almost went to war with Iran," but that's an entirely different subject.

A uniquely specious argument, devoid of factual context. The US energy complex was becoming completely independent. The course we were on would have made us completely independent of OPEC supply. The "pandemic" you mention trashed energy demand, and resulted in a situation where there was virtually no storage capability as demand dropped so significantly. Trump negotiated OPEC production declines to protect the US energy complex, while prices were tanking. Biden did exactly the opposite. He enacted an executive order that cancelled the Keystone pipeline and enacted a moratorium on drilling on federal land. Two completely different situations. One attempts to enable and support US production while asking foreign producers to slow production during a price crash. One, through US federal gov action, eliminates domestic production and jobs, horribly timed just before a nut from Russia cuts off a good deal of EU supply, spiking the world market. Two completely different situations. Biden has incredible timing