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Seems to me he is getting attention because he predicted turbulence in 2020 and it happened. But he strikes me more as just one of those academics who happened to get lucky, like the libertarians always claiming we're on the verge of a massive meltdown or inflation and then it happens. I am...

These are legitimate points and I agree on the issue of Ukraine, but I am talking about the defense budget. You could use the example of his threatening huge tariffs on Canada and Mexico.

Congress (both parties). Certain progressives might like it, but even they will not be very inclined to do anything to support Trump, even if it means supporting the military-industrial complex for four years.

I actually suspect this is just some type of negotiating tactic. Pete Hegseth has made his name as an advocate for veterans and both he and I believe Trump have advocated for a bigger military. I know one thing, rightly or wrongly, they are taking aim at is the "woke" stuff in the military.

Oh fuck you.

Personally I think Trump is a vindictive jerk and supreme a-hole. The reason I mostly support him is a few-fold: 1) Plenty of the other politicos are the same, just they keep quiet about it 2) If the justice system went after people like Biden, Hillary, Pelosi, McConnell, etc...I am sure...

🤨Change of heart? I remember back in September in the "Europe under Extreme Duress" thread in discussing about Israel and their killing terrorism leaders, you said that their doing such was bad policy, that it would only strengthen the terrorists' will to fight. I disagreed and argued if...

Isn't that kind of what we tried to do? Establishing a government in a country like that though with a constitution is very difficult given the tribalism and corruption. IMO, some actual old-fashioned colonialism would really be the only way to fix that place, but it would probably have to stay...

The prior administration also sought to ignore the Constitution in multiple ways. Not saying that justifies Trump doing it but this is nothing new.

Is this a failure though or more just the fact that it is very difficult to maintain a wartime industrial production capability if there isn't a war going on? I mean we could make the same argument for ships, aircraft, tanks, etc...to feed a serious war takes a lot of stuff, that is why for...

I would say many conservative/GOP leaders at the time recognized he would only respond to force. I remember talk about Putin among the GOP during the 2008 race and during the 2012 race, Mitt Romney had a hard line view on Russia.

I think he oversimplifies the issue and also misleads. Part of the reason the pro-Russian government got toppled in Ukraine was because it engaged in violence against the Ukrainian people who were protesting it. The way he makes it sound, you'd think it was a peaceful government that just...

It often seems that way to people today, but it is important to remember that our past was not one of wonderful statesmanship either. The Founding Fathers got into it with each other, such as John Adams vs Thomas Jefferson in the first presidential election---they were at each other's throats...

Stumbled across this on Amazon: Questioning the Carrier: Opportunities in Fleet Design for the U.S. Navy

But they aren't irrelevant if people on this board didn't complain about them when they were done. Maybe they did, I don't know. But if they didn't, then it seems wrong to nitpick the one side.

One huge weakness for the U.S. was lack of artillery, which actually is something I remember an artillery officer had pointed out in an article some years back, saying it could be a major weakness for the U.S. if Russia ever attacked (and this was of course if the Russians demonstrated real...

Curious, but why would they need to open fire against what was a mostly unarmed mob? If the rioters were armed with rifles and shotguns and started shooting at the Guardsmen, that is different, but otherwise, wouldn't the Guard have more peaceful ways to try to deal with such? No different from...

So Trump is seeking to end the lowly penny. Will definitely mean change. Does it make cents? I couldn't make heads or tails of it at first, but apparently many have been calling for this for decades. So I guess this decision will be right on the money.

Musk is most definitely a visionary. But being highly intelligent in certain areas != intelligence in other areas.

Boeing's spacecraft would have been able to, but it would have been a roll of the dice regarding the lives of the astronauts. Musk does have a hard science understanding. He graduated with a degree in physics remember (and economics). It was he himself who figured out how to make a viable...

Some of you folk here seem very aloof as to just why Trump got the support he did. Trump will make the government dysfunctional? Responses to that from MANY Americans range from "GOOD!" to "Who cares?" and in particular because of all the other things that were going on that the government was...

Yes how dare I have a different opinion.

Said system can be flawed though. That's a whole other can of worms.

What is fake about it? It's a public square and a very influential one. And while people do not have a right to speech on it, entities like that should adhere to the spirit of free speech IMO, and in particular when they reach the point of becoming a sort of utility. As for Musk, I do not see...

I am no fan of Blago, just fourteen years for trying to sell a Senate seat seemed excessive to me. Now if he'd been caught trying to sell national security secrets to the Iranians or something, that would be different.

I'd have to see his specific crimes. Blagojevich did eight years before getting his sentence commuted.

Fair point. Just seems overly severe. But you'd probably have to lock up half of Congress if you really looked into them. And Blagojevich is not a partisan thing for me. I'd have been fine if Obama had say commuted his sentence.

"I" am not saying the FBI is corrupt, just that there are many who'd make that argument. I don't know enough myself on the issue, but can be open to such. Sorry, I got the word "pardon" mixed up with when he had his sentence commuted by Trump. I don't know if he should have literally been given...

I don't know about Canada and Switzerland, but I've read one reason why the Finns chose the F-18 is because being a carrier plane, it has stronger landing gear, and part of Finland's defense planning incorporates being able to set up makeshift air fields.

Not everyone who thinks the FBI has issues with corruption thinks they did things like plot J6. Blagojevich deserved prison time, but IMO not the length of sentence he got.

I support what he did to Twitter. He ended the absurd censorship it was engaging in.

Perhaps number of government regulations has massively increased. I didn't say the whole thing operates like that. And that is just not true. Both the FBI and CIA were extraordinarily corrupt until the Congress reigned them in. The Department of Education is extremely corrupt, the. EPA has had...

I am sure they could do such conversions, the issue is how easy/difficult, costly, and how much capability do you get?

Agree to disagree (and again I am not explicitly saying that about the FBI, just that that is an opinion many have).

Noooo....I am not one of those kind. The alphabet soup of government agencies should be self-explanatory: the whole ocean of three and four letter government agencies. " Unelected bureaucrats" refers to the sheer number of such who operate the whole alphabet soup. As you point out, obviously you...

Nothing weasel about it. I do not " know" for sure regarding the SecDef but that is the impression I have. And there is nothing BS about the idea of the "deep state" or the massive alphabet soup's worth of government agencies we have and their huge number of unelected bureaucrats constituting a...

Well they are designed that way for their specific purpose but not necessarily if you start using them for a different purpose. Aircraft carriers are designed to handle the specific amount of weight on top.

I don't think it is that simple though. Taking a non-Navy ship and trying to convert it into something like a carrier or battleship you run into problems like weight distribution and speed. Purpose-built carriers are designed with the center of gravity very low so as to prevent the ship from...

I doubt Secretary of Defense Hegseth will be supportive of anything that really reduces the military's capabilities or harms the veterans. Maybe, maybe not. If he was attacking the federal bureaucracy, which many (rightly or wrongly) view as an unelected fourth branch of government, there might...

A little hagiographic, but the basic message is still very important:

Saw this video and thought the part 13:35 - 16:00 was really funny:)

She was the female soldier who escorted Ralph Lauren for his Presidential Medal of Freedom. I remember her from that, had no idea she was the one in this crash.

So I was over at another forum and a guy posted this for potential ideas for Navy ship names:) The Pier Pressure The Rest a Shore The Skipper’s Girl Overboard The Skipper’s Boi What’s Up Dock? Feeling Nauti 5 O’Clock Somewhere The Starfish The Wrinkled Starfish Vitamin Sea The Dreamboat The Luv...

Is that some type of institutional or cultural issue?

I am picturing like a Looney Tunes cartoon a swarm of these things out on patrol for enemy activity. While swarming along, they notice something suspicious nearby, so they form into a ? shape and swarm over to investigate. Upon investigating, they find it is a column of enemy armor moving down a...

That could definitely be possible.

I actually had meant to address that. Personally, I don't think this war undoes the importance of the tank, it just shows tactics and technology will have to adapt again. But also, a lot of the losses both sides have experienced are because their tanks are having to operate without the full...

Not any expert, but if you watch some videos and read some stuff that's publicly available, aircraft carrier defense (and attacking of such) gets enormously complicated. It isn't just an issue of having a hypersonic missile to fire at the carrier, there's lot more to it. Also while the weapons...

After the Soviets launched Sputnik and the U.S. was in a rush to catch up, when the first rocket attempt failed and exploded, the media were calling it "Flopnik," "Kaputnik," etc...

So I am intrigued, what is it about Army aviation's management/procurement that is so moronic?