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Godholio posted:Yes, just the Marines. And they made that decision KNOWING the gun wouldn't be fully integrated. That's one of the ways they're being loving stupid. This cross-post is relevant... iyaayas01 posted:That said, it's worth mentioning that the program office's IOC report for the F-35 explicitly calls out CAS as being one of the mission sets that the system must be capable of performing prior to declaring IOC. That's true for all three services. So yeah, according to the program office themselves the F-35 is supposed to be able to perform CAS in order to declare IOC. That's not me or Winslow Wheeler or Pierre Sprey or some other crackpot defense thinker saying that, that's the F-35 JPO themselves. Also the Marines aren't declaring IOC in 2016, they're still set to declare IOC by the end of this year (July '15 is objective, Dec '15 is threshold). Air Force is 2016 (Aug '16 objective, Dec '16 threshold), while the USN isn't until 2018/19 (Aug '18 objective, Feb '19 threshold). So according to the F-35 JPO, by the end of this year the F-35B will be capable of conducting "CAS, Offensive and Defensive Counter Air, Air Interdiction, Assault Support Escort, and Armed Reconnaissance" with a weapons loadout solely consisting of AIM-120C-7, GBU-32, and GBU-12. Okay...that seems a little limited to actually be able to truly carry out the full range of those missions, but okay whatever, it's USMC Aviation we're talking about here. Also worth bringing up that the most recent DOT&E report (published in Jan '14, includes data through FY13) makes mention of "non-operationally relevant workarounds" as the only way that weapons delivery accuracy tests were getting completed with Block 2B OFP, and that the only way that all required weapons tests would be completed on schedule (Oct '14) would be development of the software to a point where it was operationally relevant...I haven't seen anything publicly announcing the full completion of those tests on schedule. Block 2B weapons integration testing likely won't be completed until April '15...how in the hell you complete weapons integration testing in April and then declare IOC 3 months later in beyond me. Also the threshold value for Aircraft Availability rate that is supposed to be required in order to declare IOC is 50%...but as of the most recent DOT&E report the -B's average AA rate at its only "operational" base (Yuma) is south of 30%. Oh, and ALIS still sucks and isn't capable of operating anywhere other than a CONUS base with established infrastructure...but no reason that would stop us from declaring the system operationally capable and ready to deploy because it's not like you need ALIS to be able to do literally anything with the aircraft from a mx/log perspective, oh wait. But like I said, there I go again expecting people to follow the rules in acquisitions and actually hold contractors accountable when the pieces of poo poo they manufacture fail to meet established requirements. I'm looking forward to seeing the excuses and leaps in logic that takes place to make sure IOC happens on schedule to avoid a schedule breach...just like I'm looking forward to seeing the tap-dance that takes place to avoid a breach based on the failure to meet the required AA rate. fake edit: I just finished reading through the operational suitability section of the DOT&E report (i.e., measuring effectiveness of mx/log stuff, i.e. my current job on a different platform) and holy poo poo  . Really looking forward to the 2014 DOT&E report to see if any of this poo poo has improved.
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Jan 4, 2015 01:31
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A "bad" season of The Wire is still better than 99% of the poo poo that's on TV. Season 5 is still well worth watching even if it's not quite as good as some of the previous seasons. e: If nothing else the series finale is well worth watching, and the exploration of the newsroom is very interesting if a little flawed. Remember that David Simon made his living in part as a reporter, so if there's one thing that he knows it's a newsroom. Season 5 is still the best exploration of the newspaper business depicted on TV. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 06:05 on Jan 4, 2015 |
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Jan 4, 2015 06:02
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holocaust bloopers posted:
My sister was living in a studio apartment in SF that cost almost double what it was costing me to rent a 3 bed/2.5 bath house in Vegas (and I was a fair bit under my O-3 without dependent BAH). So yeah I can totally believe that.
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Jan 7, 2015 04:35
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E-5 with dependents BAH for San Francisco is $3840
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Nostalgia4Infinity posted:No it's an amazing public policy idea but so are a lot of things that get fought tooth and nail. The best part about stuff like this is that a significant portion of the people who will fight it tooth and nail (or more accurately, will vote for the people who will fight it tooth and nail) are those who would benefit most from the policies in question. holocaust bloopers posted:By many accounts, Chris Kyle was a a huge prick, a liar, and a douche bag. He was also exceptional at his job and clearly carried the burden of it with him. He can still be praised for his work while acknowledging he was a deeply flawed human being. At least he acknowledged the burden and tried to work through it/help others with it...he's definitely deeply flawed but he's still better than Marcus Luttrell in my book (not that that's saying much.)
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Jan 9, 2015 06:04
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Casimir Radon posted:There was some HBO thing that got posted a couple years ago where they went down to Mississippi to talk to people about why they continued to vote against their interests. Some old mostly toothless guy acknowledged that it hadn't helped him so far, "But it could!" I can understand voting against your interests when it's for the greater good/some other altruistic reason, but in this case it's literally "I'm going to vote this way so I can keep getting hosed and the top strata of society can keep getting better-off, but at least it'll let me feel superior to them coloreds that take govt hand-outs." maffew buildings posted:I gave up reading "Lone Survivor" after instance 892 of how the LIE-BERAL MEDIA was responsible for every thing that went wrong ever in Afghanistan/Iraq/The History of Man. The fact that he framed the conversation around what to do with the goatherd and his kid who discovered them as "If we do what we should, kill them, the liberal media is going to crucify us" was pretty disconcerting ROE/LOAC? What's that? Also the whole "we voted on it" thing was pretty hilarious. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Jan 9, 2015 |
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Jan 9, 2015 06:55
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Intel5 posted:Out of curiosity, why is Luttrell a hunk of poo poo? Start reading. Also because in addition to the poo poo in his piece of poo poo book he doubled and tripled down on it in interviews and public statements given since. e: This post is only tangentially related to Luttrell but it's pretty hilarious. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 07:24 on Jan 9, 2015 |
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Jan 9, 2015 07:19
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Best Friends posted:I don't care about the cheating at all. His wife should have known it was a sham political marriage from the start. That it's completely routine and really, not even noticed, that powerful connected people sell their influence to financial firms, probably to facilitate felonies, is just a depressing sign of the age we're in. I only care about it because he was director of the loving CIA when it was going on and stuff like infidelity that opens you to blackmail is kind of a big deal when you occupy a job like that. That said I care a lot more about the fact that he was director of the loving CIA and thought it was totally cool to release classified info to someone without the appropriate accesses and without a need to know. But lol if you think someone like Petraeus is going down for something like this, DOJ is way too busy prosecuting whistleblowers anyway to deal with the guy whose sole motive for releasing classified was profit.
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Jan 10, 2015 05:05
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RonMexicosPitbull posted:Sometime in the last few years free speech became a "Republican"thing people hide behind and therefore bad. To be fair, in the last few years a lot of the people who have suddenly found cause to defend free speech aren't really interested in free speech, they're interested in protecting speech that's directed against the bad people (usually brown and not Christian) while freaking the gently caress out if anyone ever says anything bad about white people/Christianity. See also, the people who are screeching about free speech/expression in the wake of Charlie Hebdo but were cheerleading the French hijab ban just a few years back. Both are attacks on freedom of expression (and arguably the latter is a more serious infringement on freedom of expression since it was enforced against millions of citizens by a government with the full weight and power of the state behind it as opposed to the actions of a few violent extremists targeting a dozen people.) I'm not trying to defend the Charlie Hebdo attackers nor am I saying their actions were in any way justified by the hijab ban or anything else...but if you think the motivations of the people involved here in the free speech debate are as simple as "one side is completely for unrestricted free speech for everyone against anyone and the other just hates us for our freedoms" you're really missing the larger context. e: And yes, before we get sidetracked on violent vs non-violent I fully recognize that the utilitarian consequences of taking someone's life isn't at all comparable to banning someone from wearing a headscarf. When I say "more serious infringement" I'm talking about the larger concept and theory, not the utilitarian impact. iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 01:26 on Jan 11, 2015 |
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Jan 11, 2015 01:22
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Smiling Jack posted:The Red Army Faction will always have a special place in my heart. Yeah, these guys are willing to go out in a blaze of glory, but the first generation of the RAF managed to pull off a coordinated mass suicide inside a maximum security prison. Reminder that The Baader Meinhof Complex is a pretty decent flick and you all should watch it.
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Jan 11, 2015 09:09
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Zeris posted:Nothing beat laughing w/ pred and reaper sensor operators as they blew up muds in IRC like it was a GIP hangout Nah, there's still plenty of shenanigans in pred/reaper related IRC Actually still plenty of shenanigans on IRC in general smertrioslol posted:I get basically no work done on a computer because I'm too busy talking up LRS girls on lync. lol I would pay money to see the ratio of communicator/lync usage for actual work related poo poo vs hitting on people
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Jan 13, 2015 06:37
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Godholio posted:I love ancient mil hist and even I didn't read most of that. For you plebeians, that was the Melian Dialogue from the Thucydides classic History of the Peloponnesian War. It's basically the OG description of what is now known today in IR theory as realism. If you're too lazy to read the whole thing here's the key takeaway: "while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must." Zeroisanumber posted:IIRC, Goodluck Jonathan wanted us to come in and solve all of his problems for him and told us to gently caress off when it became evident that all we really wanted to offer was intelligence and drone strikes. Also we were planning on putting some relatively minor restrictions on that stuff along the lines of "you aren't going to be able to use this to help you completely wipe out entire villages in the northeast." He didn't like that.
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Jan 15, 2015 06:53
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Apparently the Nigerian govt gets upset when people have the audacity to point out that Nigerian security forces have been responsible for just as many (if not more) deaths of non-combatants as Boko Haram. And not like "oops we droned a wedding" non-combatants, we're talking "we took every 'military-age male' in a village, lined them up outside of town, made them dig their own graves, and then slit their throats. Also we filmed the entire thing."
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Jan 15, 2015 07:14
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Also Western companies also have to (in theory) at least pretend to find a way around whatever law(s) from their country they're breaking by doing business with human rights violators, Chinese companies get active encouragement from their government to deal with those types as long as they're offering the best deal.
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Jan 15, 2015 09:40
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GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:Social security numbers being used for everything is still a loving bullshit idea, even if it's less so than it used to be. It's still ridiculous that the DoD uses your social security number on so many forms when there's a perfectly good unique identifier on your ID that isn't linked to your entire life. Yup. The fact that the TSA of all agencies is actually ahead of the curve on this one should tell you something about how retarded it is to use SSN's for everything (you submit your DoD ID # off your CAC for TSA pre-check as opposed to SSN)
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Jan 17, 2015 09:32
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Dead Reckoning posted:The perfect copy of the devotional music they always use is really what makes it. Equine Don posted:lol @ the nasheed That really is the icing on the cake
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Jan 19, 2015 04:43
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It's completely dependent on the specifics of what they stole.
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Jan 19, 2015 06:00
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Zeris posted:State attorney general showboating with a nonprofit and selling b-grade action flick quotes to mormon news rags reeks of insincere motivations. Yup. Dude didn't want to do good, dude wanted to get re-elected (or elected to higher office, whatever). The doing good is just a side effect. Also yeah, there's an alternate universe where a Mormon non-profit and a state AG/his campaign advisors freelancing it with a bunch of drug cartels doesn't end in a bunch of sex slaves being freed, it ends in a bunch of dead children. Dead Reckoning posted:To elaborate, the canopy frame is probably full of explosives to shatter it during the ejection sequence. They would prefer crash rescue not cut into a detonator trying to get the pilot out. Or rescue for "the canopy won't open because of a LockMart software bug"' Wait that's just the F-22. Bolow posted:Looks like poo poo is getting real loving bad in Yemen right now I wish the govt would just get out of the way so the Houthis and AQAP can have a knock-down drag-out. So we can make sure the action keeps going we can start lobbing Hellfires at whoever looks like they're winning.
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Jan 19, 2015 07:39
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Bolow posted:I'm looking forward to seeing the Saudi's squirm at a Shia state cropping up next to them personally. They'll just built another Great Wall of Arabia like they're doing on their northern border. Kung Fu Fist gently caress posted:too bad he wasnt there to fire two shotgun blasts from the balconey into the air to scare em off This was my first thought priznat posted:He'd tear off after them in his Trans Am And this was my second. He'll stop to grab some ice cream after he's caught them. CMD598 posted:That's why line rats carry speed handles. That and how else do you open it when the battery dies? Well this was a thing that happened so 
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Jan 19, 2015 11:40
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Nostalgia4Infinity posted:The manual backup on an F-22 is a speed handle and a poo poo ton of cranking. Some screws came loose in just the right fashion to physically prevent the canopy from being able to open. The best part is that the sequence of events started with a red ball for canopy unlock indication...so after cycling it several times and being unable to get it to clear, after the last cycle is got stuck in the down and locked position (i.e., the cycling caused the last bit of movement for the screws to finish working themselves loose into the position needed to physically prevent the canopy from opening.)
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Jan 19, 2015 20:34
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psydude posted:I wonder what the campaign ribbon for our non-war in Iraq is. GWOTEM? I was going to ask if we'd officially closed off the Iraq Campaign Medal, since that kept getting awarded after we transitioned from OIF to OND, but turns out we stopped awarding it officially after we "ended" the war in 2011. Since operation "Kill ISIS" now has a name dudes participating in it get GWOT-Expeditionary...apparently prior to that people weren't eligible for anything because it wasn't an official named operation. Zeris posted:We are "in" Yemen permanently and under-the-radar, and enjoy droning US citizens there under secret drone There was a pretty funny article from a freelancer in Yemen about all the US mil/gov dudes wearing 5.11 pants and oakleys running around in Suburbans with tinted windows (I'm too lazy to go dig it up) The thrust of the article was basically "guys, setting aside the fact that I disagree with US foreign policy and think your presence here is counterproductive towards increasing Yemen's security, you are literally the only white guys with beards, too-tight polos, and khakis running around Sana'a. You basically have a uniform that clearly marks you as OGA/JSOC/etc...could you at least try to make the smallest effort to blend in?" Speaking of Sana'a, the Houthis are apparently not loving around.
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Jan 20, 2015 07:36
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Zeroisanumber posted:What Bush promised we'd find in Iraq is an ongoing, clandestine operation to create WMDs, and possibly big hidden stockpiles of the same. We didn't find anything like that at all. We did, however, subsequently cover up and obfuscate the details on what little bit we did find so the dudes that stumbled across it later ended up getting completely hosed from unprotected exposure to chemical agents. joat mon posted:It was the geopolitics equivalent of the cops getting their poo poo pushed in by a cartel, so they go wreck the guy that babbles about sticking it to the man while he sits in his empty head shop that the cops ran out of business a decade before. This is the best analogy Full Battle Rattle posted:I really don't understand what he means. We're already using force against ISIS. lol tonight I call on Congress to for once not abdicate their responsibility and authorize the conflict 6 months after it's already started but no big deal if they don't, not like I'm going to stop either way. Did I mention I used to teach Constitutional law? Nothing in the SOTU has any basis in reality. Just take whatever a President says in it (any President) and replace it with "and I hereby promise unicorns and rainbows to everyone," because that will have about as much a chance of happening as whatever they spouted off about. e: Well wait, I'm pretty sure Dubya said some poo poo in 2003 about invading Iraq so maybe that's the exception that proves the rule, since I'm assuming it went something along the lines of "we're going to invade and then we'll be welcomed as liberators and the Iraqis will love us and this whole thing will be over in 2, maybe 3 months, tops." iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 06:38 on Jan 21, 2015 |
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Jan 21, 2015 06:35
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That video clip got 1000x funnier after someone did a drive-by on Biden's house. Also lol, I didn't realize Bill was being potentially implicated in that whole Epstein thing. That's pretty funny. \/ Google "Bill Clinton Jeffrey Epstein"...same scandal that Prince Andrew got caught up in. The Clinton piece is new to me, so far the only "reputable" news source I've seen it in is Fox (others include Daily Mail, Russia Today, and Gawker), but it sounds like there's at least evidence that Clinton made regular use of Epstein's plane, which really shouldn't surprise anyone since Epstein was a pretty notable Dem donor. And that's really what's at issue here with most of the people involved...it's not that they were loving 15 year olds, it's that they were close enough to Epstein that it's entirely possible they knew he was loving 15 year olds and that they subsequently chose to not do anything about it. \/ iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Jan 25, 2015 |
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Jan 25, 2015 07:25
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Godholio posted:No, he's just Fred Savage in disguise. IYAAYAS explained it pretty well. It gets regular mention out here since the lead guy in the investigation is a local. Wait, that Mormon Utah AG who went undercover with a bunch of drug cartel dudes to help free sex slaves because he at least spoke passable Spanish or something is involved with the investigation?? loving lol this keeps getting better and better
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Jan 25, 2015 10:15
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GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:tbf to the US it would seem hypocritical if they didn't let someone else get away with shooting down a civilian airliner just one time Russia's on like...at least airliner # 3 or #4, maybe more depending on how you define airliner and how far back you go, also if you count taking a shot at a 707 but only killing a couple people because the pilot was able to put it down on a frozen lake. We just had that one time where the Vincennes Dead Reckoning posted:The world doesn't need any more Palins. lol
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Jan 27, 2015 06:27
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RonMexicosPitbull posted:It has and is. Chinas got a huge pollution problem from its factories which is in the long term perfectly reversible. The biosphere will be just fine. Climate change has been overblown and all the models predicting death and destruction, flooding out, have been dead wrong and climate scientists dont believe it anymore. (still an issue but not a mass die off issue). lol ok Exceptionally minor changes in climate have significant impacts in parts of the world where the line between having enough food and famine is really narrow. Unsurprisingly those parts of the world also tend to already be rather unstable for various reasons, so I'm sure adding in food and/or water shortages will make things 1000% better. "not going to be the literal end of the human race" isn't really that comforting when the follow on is "but will still cause even more unrest and conflict in the developing world, because there's not enough there already."
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Jan 27, 2015 07:27
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Zeroisanumber posted:White House Drone Crash Is Tied to Drunken Spy Agency Employee lol my drones crash enough on their own for no reason at all, don't need drunken operators. that said kamikazeeing a quad-copter on the WH lawn while I"m hammered seems like a pretty legit way to spend a Sunday night.
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Jan 28, 2015 09:43
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Nostalgia4ColdWar posted:Right up until some dirty hippie lights up a joint. Ain't gonna be no "old" Preds, at the rate we're crashing those things we're just going to fly them until there aren't any more left and then we'll move on to Reapers. Seriously, that's basically the plan. Also yeah, ISIS has been completely getting their poo poo kicked in over the past several months. There's valid concerns over the long-term efficacy of our current strategy as well as concerns as whether it's been worth the cost, but if there's one thing the US military has gotten really good at over the past several years, it's using airstrikes to blow up Arab males running around with AK-47s and technicals. This is doubly true when they are considerate enough to mass in large numbers.
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Feb 1, 2015 10:28
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Shooting Blanks posted:Is there any reason we shouldn't use them until we have so few that it's no longer viable to keep using them, and then decommission/demo them entirely? Maybe not crash every single one, obviously, but the US seems to have a problem maintaining legacy systems long after they've been replaced - that's an expensive habit, especially when you're talking about an organization as large as DoD. They're incredibly less capable compared to Reapers, so in a perfect world we'd have replaced them with Reapers a long time ago. Unfortunately the demand for CAPs and the amount of Reapers in the inventory means an all-Reaper fleet is still a little ways off...I was being halfway sarcastic with the "crash them all" comment but not really because the Pred retirement date keeps getting pushed back as the demand for CAPs remains high and the Reaper continues to have production-related challenges. Keeping aircraft in storage is less for "let's keep them just in case" reasons and more for "let's keep them for spare parts" reasons. In addition to the obvious examples of older models of aircraft that are still in active service (KC-135, F-16, F-15, B-1, etc), aircraft in the boneyard that are fully out of service still have components on them that can be used on other planes. AMARG plays a critical role in the supply chain as a supplier of parts...it typically "saves" the military around $450M-$500M in part costs annually, which compared to what it costs to operate is a pretty significant bargain.
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Feb 1, 2015 11:05
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Shooting Blanks posted:Raptor has been out of production for quite awhile now, though IIRC the tooling was mothballed - not that it wouldn't cost a shitload to restart the line, it would, but it could be done if necessary. For all practical purposes though, we're highly unlikely to see more of those than we have now. The tooling was kept for the purposes of a SLEP, there's no way the line could or would be restarted (it would be prohibitively expensive and besides, you'd be restarting a production line to build a 15+ year old design). And it's true we never intended to produce them in mass-numbers...but we always intended to produce more than 187 (381 was the bare minimum). Fortunately Bob Gates, airpower genius, knew better than us and said there wasn't any reason to buy this dumb plane since it wasn't dropping bombs on goat-fuckers running around the desert with AKs, since that's obviously what you build hundred-million dollar stealth fighters for. This would also be why we kept the tooling for a SLEP, because those 187 (actually less since a significant portion of them have a hardware incompatibility that makes them incapable of being upgraded to current spec, which means they aren't combat coded) are quite literally it for air superiority in the US military for at least another several decades. When we discover wing cracks in the fleet in 20 years we're sure as hell not going to retire any of them, each one has to stay in service as long as it is physically in one piece. GENDERWEIRD GREEDO posted:Does anybody have some insight into why the A-10 pissing match between congress and the AF is still going on? Congress wants to keep it around, the AF want to ditch it because they say the money needs to go somewhere else, and meanwhile the plane continues to see heavy use with no clear alternative in sight so the debate doesn't even make sense. The money is programmed to go to the F-35. As it continues to exit the strictly test world and begins to enter the operational side of things (i.e., the FTU for the moment along with OT&E tactics development), it needs more resources...more bodies (mostly maintainers), more money for developing TOs and conducting training courses, more money for building facilities, etc. The generals aren't bluffing, the service is literally at a point where it either needs more money or something has to go. Which is why the pissing match is still going on, because Congress is basically saying "you're not getting any more money but don't cut anything, especially not the A-10" and the generals are saying "I can't do that unless you're cool with me overdrafting my account by a couple hundred million dollars." It's at the point where once it became clear that Congress wasn't going to let us retire the A-10, ACC went on the warpath in the mx community and basically said "we need several hundred bodies for the F-35. We intended this to come from A-10 sunsetting, but since that isn't happening we're getting it from raiding across the mx enterprise. Justify your manning and prepare for it to get slashed." Now I'm not going to sit here and say that the reason this is a problem in the first place isn't because of the F-35 cost overruns turning it into the plane that ate the budget, because that's basically true...but the fact of the matter still remains, there isn't enough money to go around, and the idea that we can just shitcan the entire F-35 program is ludicrous unless you want to be flying around in 50+ year old fighters that are quite literally falling apart 20 years from now. Oh, and that all assumes sequestration doesn't hit next year...if that's the case expect to see a whole bunch of platforms get sent to the boneyard in their entirety, with zilch for replacements (so far I think the list is the entire KC-10 fleet, U-2, Global Chicken Block 40, and a significant portion of the Viper fleet, plus a reduction of 10 Pred/Reaper CAPs.) All that said, I think it's a bit disingenuous to say the plane continues to see "heavy use with no clear alternative in sight"...if it was regularly conducting danger-close CAS in the fight against ISIS then that would be a legitimate point, but everything I've seen indicates it's just performing BAI type missions. Given that is something that can (and is) being conducted by a wide variety of platforms (some much more effectively than the A-10), it seems that it was deployed less for its CAS specialty and more just because it was yet another platform that could drop bombs.
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Feb 1, 2015 18:37
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scaevola posted:Do you have a link for that? Curious, since some talk about it like it's the best isr idea in recent times. The Global Chicken is a piece of garbage. It's a cool idea but the tech just isn't there at the moment. I'll dig up some links later if no one else beats me to it.
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Feb 1, 2015 19:43
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Dead Reckoning posted:The main congressional opposition to retiring the A-10 is John McCain, who just happens to represent a state where a large number of A-10s are based. Also Kelly Ayotte, whose husband is an A-10 driver, and Martha McSally, who is also a former A-10 pilot and represents a district with a significant A-10 presence. But yeah, they have no personal or political interests and are only concerned with making sure ARE TROOPS have the most bestest air support aircraft around. Dead Reckoning posted:Actually, the Global Hawk apparently got the A-10 style "you have to retire the U-2 or the RQ-4, and it can't be the RQ-4." I suspect there was some serious "re-evaluation of accounting metrics" in order to get to "no, really the cost-per-flight hour is 25% less than last year." Dead Reckoning posted:It appears the plan is to ensure the Global Chicken is the only game in town, so that we're forced to spend money to fix it. Seems familiar somehow... Basically. The U-2 beats the GC in every major performance category except for range/endurance. The U-2 can fly higher (a big deal for an ISR platform that often flies right outside a country's airspace and looks in from high altitude), fly in a wider range of conditions (GC is extremely weather sensitive), carry a heavier payload, has a wider variety of payloads that it can carry simultaneously, and has higher performing payloads already integrated on it...payloads that are going to have to now be integrated on the GC, at significant cost to the taxpayer. The tl;dr with the GC's issues is that it has existed in this weird in-between space in the acquisitions process, where it's never really gotten past its original concept as a tech demonstrator. It's been pushed to the field as a result of urgent operational requirements (i.e., help kill terrorists after 9/11), but it was fielded in an incomplete configuration and a lot of the normal acquisition benchmarks have been shortchanged or ignored because it's been this bastardized program. It's not a straight up tech demonstrator, because it's been fielded, but it's also not really a "normal" operational system because it's constantly being put through developmental and operational testing at the same time as when it is being flown in combat operationally. I mean, with the Block 40 you're talking about a system that hasn't hit Milestone C (i.e., is still in Engineering Manufacturing Development) and doesn't have an approved CPD (i.e., doesn't have an official document stating what capabilities it is supposed to have), yet is being flown operationally. That's more or less breaking every acquisition rule in the book. It's basically the poster-child for why programs should be "fly-fix-buy," not "buy-fly-fix." Here's a decent article that runs down the issue. If you want more detail you should look at the DOT&E reports and/or the Selected Acquisition Reports for the RQ-4 for the last couple of fiscal years.
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Feb 1, 2015 23:25
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SperginMcBadposter posted:I had heard they were cancelling global cock when I was about to seperate, sucks that they changed their minds. They ran the comm side by grabbing a bunch of us satcom people and basically not allowing us to do any actual work on it because there weren't TO procedures for most things, we didn't know how most of the cobbled together setup worked, and we were under the more strict aircraft maintenance rules instead of comm. So we had contractors there all the time doing most of the interesting poo poo. It would be great if they shut it down, nobody in the comm side liked that loving job. Global Chicken is the RPA program that makes Predator and Reaper look like well run acquisition programs by comparison.
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Feb 2, 2015 03:51
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Risket posted:Can you elaborate on the hardware incompatibility, as well as the combat coding? Does this mean that some of the Raptors cannot fly combat missions, and can only fly training missions or airshows or something? The hardware incompatibility is basically a processor issue...the first several dozen aircraft off the line (the number is around 40) were built in such a way that their processor hardware is prohibitively expensive to upgrade to enable the current Block upgrades. Basically these aircraft were Block 10s that were capable of being upgraded to Block 20, but not being upgraded beyond that. Later aircraft were built as Block 20s off the production line with the capability to be upgraded beyond that. The current combat standard is Block 30+, so these aircraft that are only Block 20s are no longer at the current combat standard. "Combat coded" is what the aircraft are tasked to do; in other words, what the mission is of the unit they are assigned to. The aircraft in question are assigned to test/training units...so the FTU (Formal Training Unit) at Tyndall as well as T&E (Test and Evaluation) birds at places like Edwards and Nellis. So with around 40 of the aircraft falling into the "not combat coded" category, the real number of combat coded jets (assigned to actual operational units who regularly deploy, at places like Elmendorf/Langley/etc) is closer to 140. The aircraft in question that aren't combat coded aren't completely helpless (they still have a radar, can carry weapons, have LO, etc), it's just that they lack the various upgrades (software, sensors, weapons, etc) that the later Block 30+ configured aircraft have.
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Feb 2, 2015 07:45
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Risket posted:I have no idea what I'm talking about, but it seems as if they could go "hey lets install the new poo poo in the older birds so they'll all the same". I used to work on CH-46's and CH-53's, and a lot of those had little things about them that were singular to that aircraft, but they had been in service for years and years (some supposedly since Vietnam). It seems crazy to do that right off the production line... Spiral development. As jets are coming off the production line they are making incremental changes to the design to add additional capabilities that they didn't have the funding for and/or that wasn't mature technology when the first jets were being built. They also are making improvements based on experience in the field. Those jets that are already fielded then have to get those additional capabilities added in after the fact...but in some cases it is cost prohibitive to get those upgrades made to portions of the fleet due to significant changes in design between the first jets off the line and the later manufactured ones. It's not as bad as it used to be with the Raptor, there were previously something like 6 different configs across the fleet, now they've all been standardized on 3 (or maybe even two, I dunno if they've gotten all the non-Block 20 jets up to the Increment 3.1 standard). The reason spiral development is a thing is because the sticker-price on jet fighters is significant...and it gets even more significant if you add in all the bells and whistles that a fighter will eventually be fielded with right up front. Putting everything in on the front end also seriously compounds the timeline for fielding...the development timeline for the Raptor would have been even more protracted if they had (for example) shoe horned SDB and ground mapping capability into the first OFP build as opposed to pushing it out to Increment 3.1 (several years after initial fielding). I have mixed feelings about spiral development, because taken to its logical extreme it results in some serious stupidity...but the idea of less capable jets rolling off the production line first and then being upgraded later is unfortunately a fact of life in modern procurement programs. By no means is it limited to the Raptor or even to advanced fighters (for example, the Osprey, the replacement to the Phrog, had spiral development built in to its acquisition program.) This problem is even worse with the F-35, because in addition to spiral development being built in to the program even if everything goes right, the F-35 has concurrency, where they are building significant numbers of production aircraft well before they are anywhere near completion of testing. This means that unless your modeling and simulation prior to beginning production has been perfect, you are going to discover issues in testing of actual hardware (that didn't crop in in M&S). Which in turn means that the aircraft rolling off the production line will have to be retrofitted after fielding to fix these issues, as opposed to doing things in the right order where you test then fix then build/buy. I'll give you one guess as to whether or not the F-35's modeling and simulations were perfect. (Concurrency was and is loving stupid)
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Feb 3, 2015 04:57
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holocaust bloopers posted:The inner ADIZ is what matters. Breaking the outer ADIZ provokes an interception. Penetrating the inner one is weapons free type poo poo. The inner one (12 miles) isn't technically an ADIZ, it's the internationally recognized limit of a country's no-poo poo airspace. Hence why busting it generates a..."more aggressive" response than flying a Bear a couple hundred miles off the Aleutians.
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Feb 3, 2015 06:42
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Red Crown posted:These are some of the same people who have been fighting and getting killed since like 2004. ISIS is literally AQI + time + Syrian civil war. We killed them for a while, the Iraqis killed them for a while, the Syrians killed them for a while, and even the local loving al-Qaeda franchise kills them when it gets the chance and they're still the energizer bunnies of transnational terror. So yeah, we're going to need to kill literally every last one before we call it good. Because that entity has posed such a big threat to US interests outside the Levant over that time. But sure, let's sign ourselves up to forever war because our "allies" in the region are too loving lazy (or lack the resources, or have internal constraints...or all of the above) to engage in serious military action against them. You can be fully on-board with ISIS being a bunch of gently caress-heads and also acknowledge that maybe the situation isn't 99.9999% our problem to deal with, which is approximately the current breakdown of US military action/money vs everyone else.
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Feb 5, 2015 07:04
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gfanikf posted:They actually have AC-130s iirc. Not AC-130s but they do have gunship kits for a couple of their C-235s and are in the process of getting some gunship kits for their larger C-295s. e;fb Stultus Maximus posted:I had actual friends of mine saying that the celebrations of Bin Laden's lead poisoning were "tasteless." To be fair, most of those "celebrations" were a bunch of drunken frat boys partying about killing some muslim who blew something up or whatever a few years ago who cares he was brown and let's get drunk gently caress it, so in all seriousness yeah I rolled my eyes pretty hard at all that poo poo. RonMexicosPitbull posted:Its because those things happened 100s of years ago and nobody alive thinks they were awesome things. So he looks like a deflecting apologist. A huge tool thing to say when horrific atrocities are happening literally this second and comparing it to things that happened 100s of years ago no one alive thinks is cool just to go "neener neener we do it too maybe were the real monsters" horseshit. Hes the most embarassing president in living memory and Bush was a two termer. He also made mention of the fact that Christianity was used to justify Jim Crow, which is a thing that didn't happen hundreds of years ago, in fact it's arguably still going on today. It is, in fact, possible to acknowledge that the US (and others) have done some really lovely things in the name of religion while also acknowledging that ISIS is a still a bunch of gently caress-heads. But yeah keep ranting about how that Obummer is terrible and a loving dictator, but man that unelected King of Jordan is awesome also kill all muslims gently caress browns iyaayas01 fucked around with this message at 06:58 on Feb 7, 2015 |
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Feb 7, 2015 06:55
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Tremblay posted:Aren't we looking to remove them from ours when we re configure them? Thought I read that here actually. Yeah because it's not nearly as capable as being able to put a couple Viper Strikes or Griffins on the target. Modular PGM kits are the future with gunships. RonMexicosPitbull posted:The only people using Obummer and Obongo in this thread is you. Seen it from plenty of others who express views basically identical to yours Tell me how awesome Jordan's unelected king is compared to that evil fascist dictator we have in the White House
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Feb 7, 2015 07:01
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RonMexicosPitbull posted:What the gently caress are you talking about. The fact that lots of people with views very similar to yours have been jerking themselves raw over the fact that Jordan's (unelected, dictatorial) king did some tough talk on ISIS including quoting Clint Eastwood*, which means that clearly he's an ideal leader vs that (elected) traitor in the WH * According to a singular GOP Congressman source, as reported by noted news sources Washington Examiner and the Daily Mail
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Feb 7, 2015 07:06
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RonMexicosPitbull posted:You really need to take a break from comments sections or wherever and get a grip dude. Well it was happening in this thread a couple of pages back but okay lightpole posted:For the region, Jordans king is a source of reason, moderation and stability. While an unelected dynasty, government could easily be much worse. A democracy with a freely elected government does not ensure good government. Conversely, a monarchy does not ensure bad government. Yes, compared to ISIS, al-Assad, or the Saudis, Jordan's monarchy isn't that bad. Talking about damning with faint praise. MassivelyBuckNegro posted:lol did you spend the night in quiet introspection or something? Nah I just went "cool, rear end in a top hat is dead...glad we completely wasted all those lives and money over the last decade+."
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Feb 7, 2015 07:43
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