It's not often that *quality and *skillful police work is also entertaining rather than infuriating.
*promote
Also, reminder to self....when taking hostages in Vietnam, be sure to be on at least the 5th floor.

@Fairbs
i agree that trump is dangerous.i am reading david cay johnstons "the making of donald trump"...and boy oh boy...

i viewed trump as a used car salesman,a circus barker but he is worse..far worse.

as for obama acting on russian interference,and the fact that nobody is pointing out the obvious...is just depressing to me.

the ability for a president to do that never existed until GW and his merry band of neo-cons.

but thanks to addington and woo,the president has the power to do,what previously took approval from congress.

as i told newt,IF the russians DID hack and therefore influence our elections,then this would equate to two things:
1.this is an act of war.
2.the election would be considered compromised,and trumps presidency would be illegitimate.

i am confident that there was cyber-spying going on.all nations engage in this tactic,and as dore points out,we even spy on our allies.we can safely assume that along with the spying,there was hacking,again...all nation states participate in this tactic.

but as of now there is NO evidence that putin directed russian intelligence to hack the 2017 election in order to put in his muppet trump.

so until such time as they provide such evidence.
i will remain skeptical.
would not be the first time intelligence reports have been manipulated to politicize a cause.

see:iraq
see:vietnam
see:korean war
see:panama

shall i continue?

No, I don't deny that intelligence reports have been misused repeatedly by dems and reps historically, and horrifically.

No sir...the Bush administration edited multiple reports to lie about what the intelligence community had reported.

I know little about the lies about Vietnam, but would not be surprised to find the same MO by different parties. Please keep in mind that the appointed leaders of these organizations are often at odds with the politically diverse communities they oversee, and often rewrite official reports to reflect their bias...which I gather is what is being implied with this report without seeing the full classified version that allegedly contains the missing proof. It's a bit odd to make that conclusion, though, considering how firmly right wing the head of the FBI has proven himself to be, you would think he would not sign off if it weren't undeniable.

Well, the public report was compiled from 17 different agencies without dissent, and made clear that there is classified evidence to back up their assertions. That sure sounds like "multiple intelligence sources".

What does "actively hacked our election" mean? Only hacking voting machines and counting machines? It seems they tried, but failed or decided against it. If hacking the DNC and Clinton counts, it's not certain beyond doubt, but is certain beyond reasonable doubt with zero evidence to the contrary, imo.

Yes, but have we seen such public statements from so many agencies combined without dissent? Governments lie, intelligence reports lie, news lies, pundits lie, but usually not en masse with such consistency.

jimmy dore is from the young turks.

while you may disagree with his delivery,you cannot deny that historically the intelligence community has been used as a battering ram to perpetrate some fucked up,and sometimes,illegal shit.

multiple intelligence agencies also swore that saddam hussein had WMD's and was collaborating with al qeada.

multiple intelligence agencies swore that the conflict in vietnam needed to be expanded,and use sect of defense robert mcnamara to sell it to president johnson.

mcnamara later recanted and displayed deep regret for the lies he sold not only the president,but the american people.colin powell ended up doing the very same thing,for the EXACT same reasons.

in my opinion,CNN has slowly become a propaganda arm for the state.so it is NO surprise that they reference these "multiple intelligence sources" as a means to increase tensions between US and russia.

and while i am positive that russia,along with the US and pretty much every advanced nation on this planet engages in cyber spying,until i see actual PROOF that putin directed russian intelligence to actively hack our elections in order to put trump in power...i am going to remain skeptical.

because i have seen "multiple intelligence sources' as an excuse to engage in some pretty despicable activities by my government.

i live by a very simple axiom:
governments lie.

*ban
cuibap vietnam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg7XZOP0-v0


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soloco: @oritteropo
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@soloco, is this your video and account on YouTube?

cuibap vietnam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg7XZOP0-v0

@soloco, is this your video and account on YouTube?

cuibap vietnam
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lg7XZOP0-v0

Muhammad Ali refuses to go to Vietnam. Powerful stuff has been added as a related post - related requested by bareboards2 on that post.

Muhammad Ali refuses to go to Vietnam. Powerful stuff has been added as a related post - related requested by bareboards2 on that post.

@bareboards2

I've been operational in a war-zone. Shot at twice, and in a Mexican standoff once, but I never fired my own weapon.

Fact is, other developed nations manage just fine (for the most part) when it comes to things like this. It doesn't help that the US has never and probably will never allow any member of the forces to be prosecuted internationally for war crimes.

I know someone who was in Italy many years ago when a US plane decided to buzz underneath the wires of a gondola (the mountain kind, not the Venice kind, obviously). The tail of the plane caught on the wire and 12 people died, including a few children. There was no criminal prosecution for the pilot, crew, or commanding officers. I mean, just look at all the Wikileaks files on war crimes committed by US soldiers, barely any of them received any kind of judicial review (if any at all did, I never heard of them) including indiscriminate killing of random civilians.

Like it or not, that's a part of the US military culture and they worked hard to make things that way. In Vietnam it was estimated that one in a million shots fired from small arms actually HIT an enemy combatant. They learned it was because fewer than one in ten soldiers even TRIED to hit.

On top of that, the pay is so terrible, it's mostly those desperate to lift themselves and their family out of abject poverty that apply for enlisted positions. They are not well-educated and they are certainly not (for the most part) intelligent, hard-working individuals. The US chooses to spend the vast bulk of military spending on technology, rather than people (after all, it's easier to give kickbacks to your political donors that way).

Well, this is the result. A military with no fear of repercussions unless you're one of the poor scapegoats at Abu Ghraib (and if you think they represent even one tenth of the total personnel involved, you're out to lunch) and you're dumb enough to take pictures of yourself, there's pretty much nothing you can do to the 'enemy' that will get you in serious trouble.

Why do you think the Brits insisted on their own zones of Iraq for the second gulf war? In the first one they fought alongside Americans and suffered more casualties from American fire than they did from Iraqi fire. I talked to a Brit armored officer who was in the first gulf war. He went to introduce himself to the colonel of the American unit next to them, the Colonel stared in amazement at the Scorpion light tank and said, "What the hell kind of Bradley is that?" I can guarantee you, every soldier, from Private to the Colonel of my regiment could have identified every armored vehicle on the battlefield.

"We need to find out how many vets are willing to do war crimes. Jesus."

You don't really follow current events, do you?

Since the Vietnam war, American soldiers have been rigorously trained to act instead of think. It's been very successful. So successful that the US is now the best country at the world when it comes to killing your own and accidentally targeting civilians. In the first gulf war, 12 Bradley AFVs were destroyed, NINE of them were by US troops. I saw a video during that war of a spotter for an A-10. Even on the poor-quality video we could see it was a Bradley (this was while I was working with an Armored regiment). The A-10 obliterates the Bradley and all the on board were certainly dead, he calls back over the radio, "I believe that was a friendly, over." To which the spotter says, "Oh shit, I was afraid of that."

Your soldiers kill eachother without fear of repercussions. Why the hell would they worry about war crimes against other people?

I think you will find that most veterans, and currently serving men and women, simply want a clear objective that allows them to win the conflict and return home. Unfortunately the nature of terrorism means that while we follow long held rules that prevent collateral damage, or seek to limit it, the enemy we are fighting do not.

Just as we learned to our sorrow in Vietnam, as the British learned in fighting the IRA, the Russians in fighting the Mujaheddin, and we are learning again in our current battles, terrorists do not feel the need to adhere to the laws of warfare. They use civilians to support them, protect targets, or provide them escape methods. They attack civilians gleefully, knowing we cannot respond in kind.

While I do not support Trump, I do think we seriously need to have a new Geneva Convention to clarify how to treat terrorists and their civilian supporters. I think that is what the ex-Seal meant at the heart of his argument, that fighting terrorists using the old "Wink, wink, nudge, nudge, we have rules here" is an absolute losing proposition. Even Obama found that we needed to work outside the rules sometimes to be successful, hence his invasion into a sovereign allied nation to kill or capture Bin Laden, and his current extremely heavy use of drone attacks on suspected targets.

As far as the second veteran, I feel it is absolutely valid to question his integrity. He could have claimed CO status prior to going to conflict or simply not joined the military in the first place. Instead, he decided to claim it after experiencing combat, something my friends who have served noticed happening in the first gulf war. You really don't want a recap of some of the things they called people who left the service after seeing combat.

Yes, you did. You said repeatedly that dogfighting capabilities are not needed at all because this fighter won't ever see dogfighting because it never happens since WW1, and all engagement happens at long range and stealth will protect it 100%.
You must have not read, the articles I linked were about air to air engagements, not bombing, and included up to the gulf war.
Again, the F-15 and F-4 as deployed today is not inferior to Russian planes. Only if you compare the original incarnation of the F-15 with the top of the line Russian planes of today, sometimes it comes out on top, sometimes it's specs are worse.
There's no such thing as a real F-35 pilot, only test pilots have ever flown it, and never in real life situations, only pre conceived situations where it still fails the test designed for it to pass.
The F-35 can't dogfight, and it's not even in the US arsenal. Jesus Christ!
The article I listed before cracked was the one with data, the cracked one was simply to show dogfights using guns have happened repeatedly since WW1, in fact at least up through Vietnam including one completely insane example of using the rotor wash of a helicopter and an AK-47 to take out a pair of fighters (which, agreed, sounded made up it was so insane), contrary to your repeated assertion that it hasn't happened at all and never will again. I notice you don't dispute their facts though.


Oh well. Here I thought perhaps reason and facts had finally permeated the fan boy shell. I guess I was wrong. I give up. If you're going to stick with ridiculous positions like 'there's been no dogfights since WW1', and 'the F-35 will out dogfight the F-4' after being proven wrong time and again with real data and test results, there's no logic or fact that will break the shell, so I quit. Don't feel bad, you're in good company with all of congress (but of course, they all got PAID to hold their positions). Enjoy your $2 trillion fleet of useless planes, since no amount of failure or expense can kill the project.

I have not agreed that my position is wrong on the performance and capability designs of the F-35 and modern air combat. Please read the rest of my post above.... I'm still saying that dogfights have ended with WW1. I've never said we don't need ANY dog fighting capabilities. I'm saying that it's never the primary design idea of a modern fighter jet. You still have a cannon for back up. Just like soldiers have a side arm and a knife. Just in case you do get caught with your pants down or the main weapon fails at a critical moment.

I have agreed on the waste of money aspect of course. I'll also agree that if test goals are being downsized to accommodate flaws, then that's just terrible. If it's not able to perform to it's design then it's useless.

The F-4 != F-35. I can see why people draw parallels. But that only works if you ignore that absolutely everything on the planes is different, the adversaries are different, and stealth is requirement for survivability. You don't use stealth planes in the way you use an non stealth plane. Have you ever heard of a sniper wearing a ghillie suit run across the open battlefield with a sword or pistol? There were so many tactical mistakes in Vietnam as well. The conditions in which that article talks about are also different. Those planes were flying low and slow for a bombing run. Because they didn't have laser, gps guided bombs, infrared fire and forget air to ground missiles or cruise missiles back in those days. You don't get fog at 40,000 feet. They had to fly that low to get a visual identification of their bombing target. That does not happen anymore either. You scream past at mach 1 above the clouds and the bomb hits where it was programmed to hit. Also the phantoms missiles were unrelaiable. That hasn't been the case since the 80s. And their training was poor. None of that is true these days, and has not been true since the 80s either. That's why every single fighter plane apart from the F-16 (which is made mostly as an export product anyway) has been created to fight at long range primarily. The F-15 which is the main air superiority fighter for the US, is heavy and has a worse maneuverability than any Russian plane. But it's still the most feared plane, with no loses in combat. The article you linked even says that. So it's basically contradicting itself. At the start it says, F-4's lost because they couldn't maneuver, and ends with therefore the US made the F-15 which has worse maneuverability than the Russian planes lol.



Edit: Cracked.com doesn't count as a reputable source for anything, including basic sentences, spelling and punctuation.

Edit2: Here is an article from an actual F-35 pilot that says the F-35 dog fights better than a F-16 since they keep tuning the fly-by-wire parameters. http://theaviationist.com/2016/03/01/heres-what-ive-learned-so-far-dogfighting-in-the-f-35-a-jsf-pilot-first-hand-account/

So even if it came to a dogfighting encounter, the F-35 is still the best plane in the US arsenal for dogfighting.

Dog fighting does not exist, and has not existed since WW1.

Even in WW2, planes attacked in passes. They start up high, fly down to pick up speed, attack and keep flying so that the enemy cannot catch them.

As that is happening, another pair of planes is already on it's way to make another pass.

Planes do not chase each other dodging around like X-wings and Tie Fighters. Because as soon as you do that their wingman shoots you down.

TopGun trains pilots in BFM and team work skills, not so much dog fighting. While one v one dog-fighting is part of learning good team work skills and becoming familiar with different scenarios, it isn't the focus.

In Vietnam, the missiles and radars were unreliable and missile had to be fired from a fairly close range. That hasn't been the case for some 30 years now, with missiles getting better all of the time with some insane ranges upwards of 80 miles. The plane is becoming more of a launch platform for missiles than anything else. That's why every fighter plane after the F-4 was designed that way primarily. The worlds best fighter is still the F-15 which has a massive radar and the best missiles. And less maneuverability than the F-16. Because they know dog fighting does not happen.



The scenario you mentioned where the planes are flying close together is not realistic - close in air to air combat is 100 miles.

Especially if the enemy plane has better maneuverability(which all Russian planes do already do anyway, apart from the F-16 if lightly loaded).
Pilots know very well the strengths of their planes, they would never put them in a position like that. They would be pinging each other to make their presence known (if a show of force was the desired effect) from over 100 miles away.


None of this makes the F-35 a good plane by any means. But I just don't agree with the reasoning in the comments here and in the media.

For example people keep mentioning the "Jack of all trades" issue. But they ignore the fact that ALL fighter planes built over the last 40 years have been turned into jack of all trades through necessity. Yet nobody criticizes them for it.

I mostly fly the same simulators as the US national guard does. So I'm hoping that it's accurate. But more than that I read a lot of books written by pilots about air to air and air to ground engagements. Which makes me more knowledgeable than 99.99% of the journalists reporting on the F-35. You'll notice that most aviation specific sites don't tend to bag out the F-35 because have a much better idea of how air combat works than the regular media sites.

EDIT: I was not aware they were ignoring failed tests. That's pretty worrying. Do you have more info on it I can read about?