Comments by "Titanium Rain" (@ChucksSEADnDEAD) on "Real Engineering" channel.

  1. ​ @milosdenkovic1984  You can't unbomb Belgrade.
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  2. The wings contract with Boeing cost 2 billion. It's not cheap to keep such an old aircraft airborne.
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  3.  @Lt.Dan_23  When the cost to change the wings for the entire fleet is greater than just getting replacements, it's time to send them to the boneyard.
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  4.  @TransistorBased  The training wasn't terrible, the training was adequate for the 737 versions. And in fact Boeing concealed the fact that the MCAS system prevented pitch-up due to the structural changes made. After the first crash Boeing still did not come clean and tried to fix the issue in secret. The second crash happened because Boeing lied.
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  5. Correction. Two attempts was doctrine. Then the radar had to be shut down and relocated. They knew there was no SEAD in the air so they broke doctrine and attempted a third lock.
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  6.  @Nixontheman  What does NPR have to do with anything? What made the 737 max attractive was not requiring a new certification.
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  7. ​ @RealRedeemer  >"can't use nuclear it's unsafe" >burns coal and gas >"okay let's switch to nuclear because of CO2" >"we can't because the climate changed" I am beyond livid.
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  8.  @autohmae  so I need to whip out my NSA spying device, turn on the app that I had to consent to selling my data, and feed it my bank account details to even get anywhere. I'd rather just drive an 1980s car.
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  9.  @TransistorBased  Holy shit dude. Boeing knew MCAS was responsible for the first crash and issued a revised checklist rather than admitting the problem so they could try and fix it before anyone knew. Boeing did owe an explanation - the aircraft had to be grounded until the fix was done. They just didn't want to admit fault so they deflected while trying to secretly fix the issue.
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  10.  @Nixontheman  It's virtually impossible to achieve, yet Boeing settled for 2.5 bil. If Boeing was not at fault, tell me in what universe is it rational to settle for over to billion. I don't understand what you're referring to with the woke BS. Boeing tried to cover up, people died as a result, they settled. This isn't MSM, this isn't woke BS, this is real life. If Boeing was in the right, winning the lawsuit would have been cheaper than settling.
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  11. ​ @pyropulseIXXI  Basing temp scale around water is extremely useful considering how much stuff in real life is based around either the freezing or boiling point of water.
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  12. @Jacob Del Bene It's already been replaced. Most CAS is handled by F-16s and Strike Eagles.
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  13. ​ @theherk  Well, a rifled barrel has to start with an undersized bore so that it can engage into the driving bands. So the process has to be inherently different.
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  14. Funny how those bases "surrounding" countries are in countries in danger of invasion. The criminal whines about homeowners installing locks on their doors.
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  15. But the corporate sector would love to make bucks off nuclear. You say capitalism when you just mean scarcity.
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  16.  @autohmae  Again, this is the all-or-nothing approach. Previous mistakes do not justify committing to going down this path. I do own a house that's paid for, a car that's paid for, and even the goddamn appliances are paid for. You're talking about what should be a narrow period of your life where you need to make a deal to get on your feet and pretending this justifies even more control over your life. No shit I only own the media. That's what actually matters. I didn't pay for the copyright, I didn't want it.
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  17.  @Nixontheman  *Your What's inaccurate? What's anti-corporate about demanding accountability?
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  18.  @autohmae  My point is that we're running out of options, we're not fully trapped in the belly of the machine - yet. This scenario might seem cool and high tech, but I'd rather the car start even if there's a faulty sensor.
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  19. ITT: flagrant targeting of innocent civilians is excused by people who dismiss war crimes due to "context".
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  20. Underrated comment.
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  21.  @verdigo1482  "An A-10 can take hits from SAMs and keep on trucking the F-35 cannot" - maybe you're thinking of MANPADS. Typically when people talk about SAMs they're talking about something bigger. You ain't shrugging off a SAM hit.
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  22.  @spacecadet35  "the other side is not sitting still" - oh, so the other side is breaking the laws of physics now? The way radar emissions work have not changed in the last 15 billion years let alone the last 27. "they have radars specifically designed to detect and shoot down aircraft like the F35" - by that logic we should stop flying airplanes because if they can out F-35s, then every single aircraft in existence needs to be grounded due to the danger "Considering how much they have sacrificed for their stealth" - tell the rest of the class, what did they sacrifice?
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  23.  @VexingRaven  the toxicity of the heavy metal is the problem, not the radioactivity
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  24.  @Yaotzin86  No, you don't get to define markets. Everything is a market even if you don't want it to be. Trying to plead for a special definition is just a fallacy. ""Real money" is defined by the government" - Not really, it's defined by the central bank. In some cases the central bank is owned by the government. There's no actual reason a private bank cannot issue currency. In fact, things like bitcoin are validated by cryptography and do not require a central bank to be validated. ""Fraud" is defined by the government" - No, it isn't. It's theft by deception. "There is no such thing as legally owned property without government" - This is Marxist BS. Everyone except the most unreasonable people recognize that property exists independently of government. Only the deranged who buy nonsensical political ideologies actually try and argue that property is something we get from the government. Even animals mark their territory. Even animals can comprehend the notion of what is theirs.
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  25. They have a coastline
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  26.  @TransistorBased  You have no argument so you go straight for personal insults. Boeing settled. If they were so innocent as you claim they'd have won the lawsuit.
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  27.  @havoc3742  you do realize that the F-35 does have specially designed exhausts to cool the ejected gasses, right? This has already been done in the B-2, F-117 and F-22.
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  28. Horváth Benedek HEAT rounds do not burn through, they use superplasticity of materials under high pressure.
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  29. +Horváth Benedek it doesn't melt through, just like a high pressure water jet cutting metal doesn't melt it. The effect is mechanical, not thermal. Look at how casings are made, the metal is pressed into shape through swaging, where it behaves like a fluid without melting. The explosion is like an hydraulic press, forcing the metal cone into a shape and forming a stream that punches through armor. It doesn't melt it.
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  30. @Jacob Del Bene A-10 does 11% of CAS (chuckle)
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  31. Many airplanes have multiple variants.
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  32. ​ @weekiely1233  Most sub accidents are human error because bad designs were rejected during certification. Just like the bombers that didn't come back were shot in critical areas, the subs that would fail at sea failed the certification process.
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  33.  @haliax8149  "why does it matter if the enemy is exposed to the dust? " - because your own troops will be exposed to it
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  34. Hold up, did you just say that Ukraine being a sovereign nation is an incorrect fact?
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  35.  @HakanKoseoglu  "A-10 works and will continue working" - Since 2014 that the A-10 only performs 11% of CAS missions, having been replaced by the Strike Eagle, F/A-18, F-16, B1, etc. It won't continue working. "after an F-35 or F-16 runs out of fuel or falls off the sky full of holes" - You do realize that in 1991 the A-10 had to be pulled out of missions against the Iraqi Republican Guard because of the loss of 7 aircraft and many more receiving battle damage, right? The A-10 got shot full of holes against what was at the time a near-peer adversary. The F-111 ironically scored more tank kills during Desert Storm than the A-10.
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  36. The Soviet Union also lost Afghanistan.
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  37. For the split second in which impact occurs, the diesel is as flammable as water. Within containment, there's not enough oxygen to sustain a fire. The containment has to be breached or the fuel spilled. Diesel's flash point is generally above 52°C. So the fuel has to be heated. Since tanks have fire suppression built into them, surviving the hit is the most important thing. Once survived, you have time to deal with a possible fire. But until the conditions for fire to occur are met the fuel isn't going to be a problem. Do diesel fires occur? Yes, quite often. But what is the issue? A ruptured fuel line spilling into a hot surface? Electrical faults? A small fire that heats the fuel which causes it to become combustible?
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  38. They haven't been "bombing Donbas", they have been fighting Russia's hybrid war. Their own supposed people, lead by Russian operatives and armed by Russia's stockpiles. Compare the pictures of Donbas after "8 years of bombing" and cities like Mariupol after two months of Russian invasion.
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  39.  @daviddewald4540  the mistakes of the F-4? Please stop listening to History Channel boomer-tier propaganda. The Navy didn't need guns on their F-4s and they did fine. Even the F-4E only scored 5-6 kills with the gun, while in total the USAF scored over 100 kills.
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  40.  @Phrancis5  to be fair, I'd rather risk my life on the road than live in a world where the autonomous driving can be hacked or turned off by the car manufacturer because I said the n-word in 2010 or something.
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  41. Is this related to space flight?
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  42. ​ @brentwilbur  They started the fight. First, they have since the Russian empire tried to take over Ukraine. Before NATO. Second, the eastern thing was about GERMANY. And Ukraine was going to join EU, not NATO.
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  43. He changed his story multiple times. The fact is that the S-125 was in a site location presumed empty so planners put an egress route there. The F-117 basically nearly entered the S-125 minimum engagement distance. Point blank shot. There were no fancy tactics or trickery involved. Just physics. Stealth works with the inverse square law. Take out the distance, stealth aircraft become detectable.
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  44. They did redesign the swept wing on the me262 for a 35°, but it was never adopted.
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  45. Davi Lu Yes, the work of Adolf Busemann.
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  46. If they control the entire supply chain why did they allow politicians to use it as a jobs program? They could keep more money to themselves but there's hundreds of subcontractors involved.
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  47.  @THESLlCK  Okay, but my problem isn't the wings. It's the fact that in the Congress's infinite wisdom it's better to keep an ageing aircraft in the air than just get a dedicated COIN aircraft and let the USAF used the rest of the budget to modernize. If there was a reason to keep the A-10, something like the wing upgrade would be balanced by a complete upgrade package like the mid-life upgrades aircraft like the F-16 get. Many nations send their F-16s to go through the life extension program which through parts replacements and reinforcement of old ones can extend the life of the airframe from 8,000 to 12,000 hours along with give it more capabilities and better performance. If you just go and buy newly manufactured F-16 wings, you're going to pay a disproportionate amount for such a custom job. The issue is that not only the A-10 wings did not address any other performance issues with the A-10, it was also a program that went to an aircraft that will not be necessary in the future.
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  48.  @roseanneroseannadanna9651  For loiter time, drones are even more efficient. Fluid battlefield? The A-10 is very limited. What's the psychological cost of seeing A-10s crashing into the ground?
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  49.  @roseanneroseannadanna9651  The entire fleet is not getting the upgrade. And no, it's not a life time expense. It's a single expense, the Boeing contract. Cost per hour of a dedicated COIN aircraft is 1k. The A-10 it outrageously expensive for the job it does. It's a bad deal to toss good money after bad. Those aircraft are losing missions to multiroles and now Afghanistan is over. Those A-10s will not see much more combat and will be dead weight that the USAF is forced to carry until finally Congress wises up. The B-52 is much more upgradeable than the A-10. It's not the same type of aircraft. That's children's logic. The A-10 is extremely limited. Strong and durable airframe? Except for 1984 production A-10s, all of them had structural flaws from the factory and required expensive upgrades.
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  50. ​ @henreator  A newer generation reactor would still get the critical generators and switchboards flooded. The old design wasn't the source of failure.
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  51.  @Steam_VR  Yeah. And an older gen reactor also wouldn't have a problem if the generators and switchboards were uphill.
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  52.  @theseekerofancienttruth3873  "A-10s can usually dodge AAA fairly easily" - Someone remind the Iraqis. "are supported by Helicopters that can hit the AAA without being hit" - Wait, what? How is a helicopter less of a target than the A-10? "The Apache/Apache Longbow and Cobra can hit the AAA with Hellfire/TOW Missiles without being hit," - And the A-10 can hit AAA with Maverick missiles. The point is, the A-10 can defend itself against AAA, but the AAA is still a threat. Which is why the losses and battle damage suffered in 1991 proved that the A-10 was simply not capable enough to deal with near-peer enemies. "US Combined Tactics are incredibly hard to counter" - And yet the A-10 suffered the bloody nose it did, and had to be pulled back to prevent more embarrassing losses. It's amazing. People come up with this tall tale of the A-10 never being against the ropes because the US has perfect hard-counters to every threat, but in real life the A-10 was pushed against the ropes. Combined tactics may be hard to counter, but A-10s are easy to shoot down. "SPA is more than capable of taking the AAA down from well behind the Front Lines" - Might as well save the jet fuel and just have the SPA bombard the intended target in the first place, then.
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  53.  @Goz86  understandable, have a nice day
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  54.  @DavidRichardson153  "Only the F-35 was having its fleet built as it was being tested" - the F-22, F-14, F-15, F-16, F/A-18, C-17, T-45 and B-1B also had concurrency, aka they entered low rate initial production before initial operational testing and evaluation. "but every general and admiral in the DOD has connections - often close and sometimes personal - to defense contractors and weapons manufacturers" - you're preaching to the choir. This is external to the F-35 design. Even getting a freaking road built involves government connections to the private sector. "they aren't marketed as all-purpose fighters" - whaaaaat? "the Eurofighter and Typhoon planes are not designed or sold as long-range fighters/attackers but as quick response defense craft" - I really don't understand what's being implied here, just like the F-16 was the "low" to the F-15's "high" the F-22 and F-35 are a "high-low" combo. "Also, citing the F-14D doesn't help you." - good thing I didn't, because I said F-16D. My comment remains unedited if you want to look.
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  55.  @dragonsystems5973  yes, the blatant targeting of civilians was unecessary. Especially in Europe, since the Reich fought to the bitter end, making all the civilian deaths useless.
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  56.  Mycel  if you are riding a car that doesn't crumple, you are in a lot more danger. The other car crumpling can't compensate for yours not doing it.
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  57. Hello there, Pierre Sprey.
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  58.  @Yaotzin86  "markets can't exist without regulations" - I'll sell you my bike I don't need anymore. You give me money. Bam. No government involvement.
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  59.  @Yaotzin86  It's not pedantry to point out that the vast majority of human interactions are anarchist and do not involve government at all. I don't need laws against legal tender. I made a trade for real money and you resorted to fraud. Your problem isn't that you manufactured fake money. Your problem is that you stole from me. And I will be made whole one way or another.
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  60.  @Sharklops  "Any residue left behind from a depleted uranium round would hardly pose a health risk even if you swallowed it." - It's an extremely toxic heavy metal. You might as well be breathing lead dust.
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  61. I'll have to agree with the poster above me. The space force is kind of a meme, but in the speech Mike Pence made he did point out something - mankind is going to travel to new frontiers and not all of our "fellow men" respect our values or beliefs. So if you're thinking of space travel, start thinking who writes the laws, who enforces the laws, who runs the courts out there. We can't solve our problems here on Earth and you think it's going to get better once we go to space?
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  62.  @Athaeus  the classified report was about a testing airframe running on a software that was too conservative in letting the pilot maneuver and this hesistation caused the airplane to bleed energy too fast. The report was written to help the software development team correct the flight director limitations. People blew this shit out of proportion but didn't even bother to understand the context.
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  63.  @user-gu1hl2kx2k  according to other comments the Bolivian lithium would not be cost effective to use... Care to address that? Because as an observer I'm more inclined to agree with them.
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  64.  @user-gu1hl2kx2k  This is only a surface level quick rundown of the situation, it doesn't actually explain how Tesla needs Bolivia's lithium. Other companies might want it, but that doesn't address what other people are arguing. They're providing critical information, and I don't have any information that contradicts what they're saying, so I believe Tesla is not involved in the Bolivia debacle even if Musk is a megalomaniac.
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  65. They don't have money to outnumber the F-35 by 20. Also, expendable pilots are dead pilots. Poorer training standards lead to what we already know - most pilots shot down were unaware they were being targeted.
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  66. It is the broken window fallacy. But unfortunately we live in a world of people who believe in Keynesian economics.
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  67. The A-10 was designed because the Air Force's best CAS aircraft was too fast to escort helicopters and the Army wanted the USAF to do it. It was politics from the start.
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  68. Okay but Russia is fielding T-62M Obr 2022. We've seen the video of the Ukrainian tank assaulting trenches and literally grinding Russians with the tracks.
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  69. ​ @KrunoslavStifter  Air support isn't needed if the enemy can't provide it either. What do you mean Bakhmut 2.0? It's gonna be Kharkiv 2.0.
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  70. Blaming the victim for resisting. Explain how you believe that Putin dropping nukes makes him the good guy and doesn't actually justify the West's stance.
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  71. That's not feasible as winds push water back under the aircraft, which is moving fast enough to not leave an empty column under itselfm. Plus weather radar spectrum is terrible for accuracy.
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  72. ​ @oh0stv  Nuclear storage isn't a disaster, people want it to be a disaster. Gabon has a natural nuclear reactor that has been "shut down" for a gajillion years and the waste has barely moved or been disturbed by ground water.
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  73. The Soviet Union was also driven out of Afghanistan.
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  74. The hydrogen peroxide gave the frogs frosted tips, hence turning them gay
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  75. Fuck that's an added oxygen everyone ignore my dumb comment.
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  76.  @xpusostomos  The level of vacuum is absolutely necessary to deal with the skin friction heating on the launching mechansism. Once the payload is climbing through the atmosphere, the gravity losses outweigh the drag losses.
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  77. ​ @someone1949  you're literally using whataboutism right now
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  78.  @aayushpaliwal3450  not really, world hunger is not a matter of throwing money at the problem. Natural disasters and conflict cut off populations from access to food, even though its available. Buying more food doesn't solve the fact that there's external causes to why people can't access it.
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  79. @Gmail X the F35 is actually amazing. The only problem with the F35 is that it's a government jobs program spread out through contractors and suppliers across several US states and NATO countries.
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  80. Why do you claim it's not survivable or not capable of CAS?
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  81.  @spicketspaghet7773  dude if a mission is too risky for a F-35 you won't send in an A-10 either. Even with a lower plane cost, losing the pilot is actually worse. A factory can pump out these mechanical animals. But training a capable pilot is hard.
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  82.  @brentwilbur  What selective ignorance? The negotiations (which were not signed agreements) happened prior to the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Why would the US negotiate on behalf of nations that Moscow controlled?
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  83.  @enlighteneddoggo5803  I'm a metric shill and you're right. People are ganging up on you and being completely unreasonable.
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  84. Live in a pod. Eat the bugs. Drink the poo water. Own nothing and be happy.
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  85.  @jipy1419  this "disappointment" wipes the floor with everything else in the air. 17:1 at Red Flag.
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  86. Peasants don't have radars.
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  87. If you're emitting long wavelength radar at the US you'll get a cruise missile thrown at your radar installation before any aircraft takes off. Long wavelength radars are huge, difficult to move and vulnerable meaning they'll be one of the first priority targets.
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  88. No. DU is very mildly radioactive. The real danger is that it's a heavy metal. Which is highly toxic. There was a proposition to replace DU with tungsten in munitions. Turns out that the toxicity was the same.
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  89. Yes. Most of CAS is done by precision bombing, not gun runs.
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  90. "Proper, accurate, and effective CAS cannot be done at jet fighter speed" - And yet, it is. The majority of CAS missions are performed by F-16s, F/A-18s, Strike Eagles, B-1s, etc. From 2006 to 2013, the A-10 only got 19% of CAS missions in Afghanistan. By 2014, it was only flying 11% of CAS missions. Seems to me that jet speed has nothing to do with performance. "You can’t always count on smart or laser guided weapons" - But we can, and we do. "We can make 1000 of these for the price of how many F-35’s" - You can't because Fairchild went out of business. Can't make new ones.
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  91. The bomb bay explanation makes no sense. It would have to be stuck open as the aircraft was on egress route. The fact is that stealth works through inverse square law, so if you reduce distance stealth stops working. The F-117 almost flew into the S-125 minimum engagement distance. It was a near point blank shot. Physics itself mandates that a stealth aircraft is detectable at extremely short ranges.
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  92. You people just read from a script.
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  93.  @bicben  Why would I be using a script? I'm not the one who can only say "NATO" and "[country]" and "muh whatabout". These people will hear about Russians forcing Ukrainian children to take school classes in Russian language, and these people will complain about NATO doing the same in Afghanistan even though it makes no sense.
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  94. The production render (with the tail) looks like a stealth A-7.
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  95.  @verdigo1482  but multirole aircraft are better at CAS than the A-10. And the F-35 isn't supposed to hover to stick around, it's strictly a way to land on short carriers like the Marines have. The A-10 barely gets any CAS missions issued to it since 2014, so how can you claim it will still be useful when it's job had been taken by the F-16, F-18, F-15 strike eagle, etc?
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  96.  @verdigo1482  "simulated fight the F-35 did against F-15s and F-18s and lost" - and yet it beat the shit out of everyone at Red Flag
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  97. The Immelmann you wouldn't want to perform near stall, though. Modern monoplanes designed for civilian operations can be made to be almost impossible to stall. Look at civilian STOL competitions, the planes take off with barely any speed. Plus with more modern technology like blown flaps you get a sink rate that won't quit, but not a stall.
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  98. Pierre Sprey's knowledge on aviation stops about in the 1970's. Low frequency radars cannot achieve a firing solution so you're stuck with something that tells you stealth aircraft are up there, but you can't actually target them. At most you could use ground controllers to guide interceptors but you'd be sending them in "blind" while the stealth fighters would be aware of their interception and just fire missiles with inertial/GPS course correction that only turn on the active radar homing for the last dozen miles. The interceptor's RWR would only start screaming mere seconds before turning into a ball of fire. Not to mention that a big ass WW2 radar would make an extremely juicy target for anti-radiation missiles.
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  99. Yeah, through electro-optical means, not by radar. Which is the only thing stealth is meant to protect against.
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  100. Buddy aircraft have limits.
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  101.  @joshuabower61  You think it's cheaper to maintain older aircraft? Billions? There isn't a single production fighter aircraft that costs a billion. Even the F-22 at its highest price was around 300 million.
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  102.  @joshuabower61  The problem is that you frame the A-10 replacement in a way that doesn't actually make sense. The A-10 only performed 20% of CAS since the early 2000s, and 11% since 2014. This means that the vast majority of CAS is already performed by other airframes, and thus the A-10 replacement already commenced. Aircraft already in inventory can replace the A-10 with no added cost. The A-10 "replacement" is just A-10 retirement in the end of the day.
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  103.  @roseanneroseannadanna9651  Not true. There was a 900 million contract for around ~100 aircraft, and another 1.1 billion contract for another 100-something. And that's just for wings. That's a TERRIBLE deal. It's not also 282 aircraft that are getting them. It's around 200 plus spares.
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  104. ​ @roseanneroseannadanna9651  The A-10 won't survive the first pass.
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  105.  @johngalt3969  No. It's not sturdy in a world where a single hit shreds aircraft to pieces. The updates do nothing to make it survivable or cheaper.
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  106.  @GarysBBQSupplies  It's expensive to keep in service due to age, it was proven ineffective in Desert Storm, it cannot operate on the level of austerity an actual COIN aircraft can.
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  107.  @credit__devin  It's not flawed because you're also not considering the costs beyond manufacturing. Old aircraft also require billions to keep them in flying condition. Stop blaming the USAF and puppets. Name any other country that's still building A-10 style aircraft. There's no successor to the hog because nobody in the world is interested in one. Otherwise they'd be making it.
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  108.  @pescatoralpursuit1726  That's funny, but doesn't make the A-10 any better.
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  109.  @joebenson528  But its "longevity" is built entirely on a 700+ fleet being reduced to around 200-something of them. And when parts ran out, new ones had to be made at a great cost. By your own logic you could have longevity in your PSA by simply replacing the parts that are giving you trouble. Even if you take a $500 PSA and spend $500 to keep it running longer, you'd still have saved $700. I don't even know what this comparison was meant to prove, because the A-10 is a $500 PSA that cost $1,700 to keep running, because you're too cheap to get a $1,200 AR. That's the best analogy for the A-10.
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  110. Do not google "Slobodan Milosevic at the ICTY"
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  111. There's a ram air turbine that can pop out and generate energy. Probably won't power everything, but if you're about to land you already stopped the pressurization a long time ago.
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  112. The Duran was started by Peter Lavelle, former Russia Insider and a RT contributor.
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  113. Please link that study. Because designing three different aircraft is extremely costly.
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  114. Twice as many A-10s were shot down in 1991 compared to F-16s yet F-16s flew more CAS missions.
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  115. The VTOL was not a design compromise. The size and shape of the plane is determined by the internal bays, not the lift fan. It's also not minimal usefulness. The Harrier needs replacement and the Marines aren't gonna get longer aircraft carriers with steam catapults. The short take off and vertical landing is critical.
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  116. "The F16 and F35 are not well suited to this role" - The F-16 is the bespoke close air support aircraft of many nations. Aircraft like the Eurofighter, Rafale, etc are the same. "The A10 is the aircraft for the role." - Maybe in the 1970s but 1991 showed that they're too vulnerable.
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  117. There's no new or updated versions. It's just the same aircraft with the electronics changed.
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  118.  @fwiffo  By becoming fail-safe rather than fail-deadly. Old gen reactors will go out of control if you stop cooling them because the reactor will continue heating up. Newer gen reactors have the core stop working as it overheats. No matter how much greed and mismanagement you throw at it, overheating a new gen reactor is like cutting the fuel line on a gas engine. It chokes and stops working.
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  119.  @fwiffo  I didn't say next gen. I said "newer" gen. The Fukushima reactors are pretty much ancient technology compared to reactors we have now. In fact, we're already decommissioning reactors newer than the Fukushima ones were.
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  120. Literally everything said on this video is publicly available.
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  121.  @talideon  NASA flew classified missions for the DoD with the space shuttle.
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  122. The F-16, F-15 and F-18 already largely replaced the A-10. Only 11 percent of CAS missions since 2014 have been attributed to the A-10.
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  123. Already been. Most CAS missions are given to F-16s, F-15s, F-18s, B1s, etc.
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  124. You can't even launch amateur rockets over a certain size without FAA authorization. Airspace will be cleared for launch.
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  125. ​ @StrataVision  We've attempted to resolve issues multiple times and they just bite our hand and spit in our face.
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  126. No F-117 were shot down after that incident. If stealth got exposed then why didn't they shoot down more?
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  127. DU is a heavy metal. Every country uses either DU or tungsten alloys for penetrators. DU will kill from heavy metal poisoning before cancer can appear. So, fake news.
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  128. Every country uses tungsten penetrators in munitions, which is just as toxic.
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  129. AESA radar encrypts the emissions so that it looks like normal radio communications. RWR detects radar by sensing the specific characteristics of known radar emitters and understanding that the aircraft is being painted by radar. If the emissions keep changing, the RWR cannot know what is radar and what is TV or radio boradcasts.
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  130. Because Congress simply refuses to authorize retirement. Meanwhile most of the world has consolidated their forces around multiroles, and multiroles have proven themselves many times over.
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  131. The F-35 also has stealth development since the F-117.
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  132.  @natthaphonhongcharoen  "You probably want to be in visual range to support ground unit in time rather than staying 50 miles away and wait to use missile, both bomb and missile are slower than bullet!!" - What? Visual range is useless compared to targeting pods, and speed comparisons are nonsensical.
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  133.  @jonboyd9186  "Once it was fielded real world guess what was retrofitted on..." - And how many gun kills did it get? Oh right, the USAF got like 12 gun kills versus 100 missile kills. Big whoop. USN F-4s did not need guns to perform well.
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  134.  @theseekerofancienttruth3873  "Infantry will also make sure to hit the SAM Sites First, as part of Standard Tactics." - you don't need a "SAM site" to bring down an A-10. A self-propelled AAA or a shoulder launched missile can be a threat to A-10s, without it being necessary to have a "site" dedicated to those. If your plan is sending infantry against SAM threats, but your plan is also have the A-10 to protect infantry... seems like something's got to give.
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  135.  @Allan_aka_RocKITEman  " F-4 Phantoms did NOT require guns...until #Vietnam. " - They didn't. US Navy didn't get guns for their F-4s and their pilots were deadly in the air.
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  136. @Pilot16H "There is no need to replace the A-10." - Already has been. Since 2014 that most CAS missions are given to F-16s, Strike Eagles, F/A-18, B-1s, etc. "Though it can certainly be upgraded and/or an improved design created." - Costs as much as a new plane.
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  137.  @Goz86  Why? Multirole fighters are better than the A-10 at it's own job. It was considered outdated by the 1980s and took a beating in 1991.
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  138. Ukraine wasn't rich.
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  139. To be fair, the alternative is tungsten and the tungsten powder is just as bad. Every country uses tungsten carbide, the US has a ton of DU because it's essentially a byproduct of the nuclear power industry. They've stopped using DU on A-10s some years ago, though.
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  140. DU is only mildly radioactive. The fact that it's a heavy metal is much more dangerous to humans. There was a proposal to replace DU penetrators in munitions with tungsten, turns out that on impact the tungsten turns to dust and it's as cancerogenic as DU.
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  141.  @NACAM42  considering how Boeing decided to risk millions of passenger's lives with their 737 MAX stunt and their hiring of 9 dollars per hour engineers, a sarcastic quip about Boeing not thinking about things is actually pretty dark humor
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  142. it's not, considering the A-10 had largely been replaced by multirole fighters already
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  143. Old radars cannot give you a missile lock. All they'll be able to do is watch the planes bombing their country with impunity. Plus, if you're emitting radar a missile that locks into your emissions can be launched. Don't sign up to man those radars, because you'll be the first to die.
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  144. She was right and McCain was embarrassingly wrong. You think it's the only time you enjoyed McCain. Well, I guess you should have never actually enjoyed him, to rest assured that he was a bad guy all his life. It's actually pathetic to see an old man so wrong, so out of touch he can't understand why he's wrong, try to "verbally spank" someone. Absolutely embarrassing to nobody except the bully laughing at the people who think 2+2=4 because he thinks it's 5.
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  145. Multirole aircraft have become the masters of the skies for decades.
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  146.  @weekiely1233  Most are human error because we minimized hardware faults first. Neglecting the hardware because human error is the main cause is how you start having non-human caused accidents because the hardware was faulty. So yes, you're looking at a selected pool of data and ignoring the data that was culled. Choice of materials or poor assembly is also a hardware error. A sub pilot dying because his sub was poorly constructed isn't a sub pilot error. A sub pilot crashing a perfectly good sub into the Titanic and damaging it is.
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  147. If you start handing out money for healthcare and college prices will increase to accommodate the free money. The same problems that cause airplanes to become more expensive than they should be when a government is buying them, also apply to other markets.
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  148.  @DavidRichardson153  you're wrong about CAS. Not only did the F-16 provide more CAS than the A-10 in Desert Storm, there's footage of F-16s and FA-1/8s providing CAS in combat here on youtube. CAS doesn't mean you have to take ground fire. It just means that you're dropping ordnance close to your troops. Not that the plane is close to the ground. The 30mm cannon is a relic of the old days, it hasn't been able to punch through MBT armor since the mid 70's meaning that any 20mm or 25mm cannon in service can do the same job. The F-35 isn't the exception either, as the Harrier and the AC-130 have the GAU-12 25mm cannon. The F35's GAU-22 is a modern revision of it.
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  149.  @DavidRichardson153  that doesn't really "explain" anything away. If there's USAF A-10s available, why are carrier borne aircraft being called in? On the other hand, even if the Navy lacks other attack aircraft it still doesn't undermine the fact that the F/A-18 is taking A-10 missions. It proves it is capable. The Harrier was showing its age by Desert Storm? The A-10 was showing its age by Desert Storm! 6 of them got brought down. Almost 30 years ago we realized that the A-10 was treading dangerous waters. "In urban areas, the F-16 needs more room to maneuver around to line up its weapons" - what? "the F-16 usually uses missiles, rockets, or bombs, which also have explosive radii - not good for collateral damage control" - the A-10's payload is essentially bombs, missiles and rockets. It's main weapon in 1991 was the AGM-62 Maverick. "The A-10 has a much smaller turning radius" - the F-35 can turn very tight https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaHlWow6Yc4 "something no supersonic fighter can do." - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELo1NRMHuR8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5amEQpxHSSc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoVGz9xai1M https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beNOyZHVjEg at this point I'm gonna have to ask, who the hell has been telling you these things that are demonstrably false? "only the A-10's cannon actually fires one of the (currently) best anti-armor shell: a depleted-uranium core." - which is not used due to the bad optics in spreading an aerosol of depleted uranium dust. Amazing how you bring up collateral damage and then ignore the massive heavy metal poisoning of civilians that lead to the discontinuation of the DU round. It leads to birth defects. "The A-10 is not going away anytime soon" - it's already receiving less and less CAS missions. The USAF will begrudgingly keep it in inventory, but is not going to ask it to do much. "their radar systems' signals can give them away to SEAD" - my dude, what do you think allows AAA to track and accurately hit fast moving jets? Radar. "but once their radars are switched on, they might as well light a flare above them." - same as AAA "Replacing the A-10 with the F-35, though, is incredibly foolish." - it's like you're not willing to listen, it's already been replaced for the most part. What you're saying is foolish already happened 5 years ago.
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  150.  @DavidRichardson153  "Has the F-35 already been doing what the A-10 can do?" - not even the A-10 has been doing what the A-10 can do. Comparable multirole fighters have taken over the A-10's job. It only stands to reason an even better multirole fighter is gonna do it even better. "Do you not know that the F-35 was promised to be in full service by 2010" - most operational milestones were achieved by 2013. Compared to the clusterfuck that is military aircraft development that was pretty acceptable. "it couldn't even fly in adverse weather because its avionics would shut down and restart as lightning and thunder went around it?" - do you keep track of how often other aircraft have to be grounded because of issues? Just this year 75% of C-130s had to be grounded. The B-1B also had to be grounded due to parachute issues. T-6 trainers were grounded due to hypoxia and the same happened to 28 A-10s. In 2014 86 F-16Ds had to be grounded. Not to point fingers at others, but Germany can't even maintain the minimum training standards because most of the Eurofighters are grounded. "Its entire development process has been a scam" - every government program is a scam. That has fuck-all to do with the aircraft design. "The DOD would have to pay Lockheed for every single one of these fixes." - lol that's the government for you. "Name another plane that has had a development process like this" - considering that aircraft development used to straight up KILL pilots in the old days, and that a lot of the problems of the F-35 stem from the fact that it's inherently more complex, I'd say the F-105 and F-111 were proportionally just as bad as the F-35. Mind that the Eurofighter has also been in a politically-generated boondoggle as well. "they're even looking to just expand the F-22 into the attack role as well" - who's "they"? The F-22 isn't as good as air to ground and nobody is going to rebuild the manufacturing line. It's gonna be a 220 million per plane job to reactivate the F-22 program. You can expand it into the attack role but that doesn't mitigate the fact that the US eventually will need to replace the aging F-15 and F-16 and there's not enough F-22s for the job. "The F-35 just screams of being a massive scam" - if any other aircraft procurement was put under the microscope like the F-35 it would sound like a scam. Not only are we living in the information age which means you can't get as much details on the issues other older planes had, we're also living in a world of clickbait and deliberate propaganda. Let's not forget that some of the F-35's biggest critics are tabloids and outlets like Russia Today. "Sounds good in theory for building trust between allies, but it allowed Lockheed to use other nations' economies to pressure the US to keep the contract going." - Again, mind that the Eurofighter Typhoon did the same thing - fuselage is built in Germany, one wing is built in Britain and the other in Italy. I wouldn't say it allowed Lockheed to use other nations to pressure the US, because the US got the most subcontractors working on the F-35. It's simply a jobs program so that on a multinational project one nation doesn't get all the money. "I am not going to see the F-35 as anything other than a scam, so if it's going to be serving on the frontlines, it better be a miracle plane," - everyone who flew it says that it is. Who says that it isn't? Russian state-ran media, lunatics like Pierre Sprey, """journalists""" (which as we all know are extremely reliable) and people who never flew it.
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  151. The Boeing contract for the new A-10 wings was 2 billion.
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  152.  @TheSkunkyMonk  Not really, when they were built the cost was for the entire aircraft, and more than 700 of them. Now there's only 200-something.
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  153.  @jonbbaca5580  "Did we ever see those jet fighters used again in that war?" - Yes, they were. "We just don't need a huge fleet of super high tech, supersonic fighter jets anymore" - Because the needs of future defense hinge on the Iraq war?
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  154.  @jonbbaca5580  It's more expensive to keep old aircraft flying than developing new ones. Not only you have physical limits on the improvements because you're strapping things to an aircraft it was never designed to carry, the airframes themselves have a limit on flight hours/flight cycles. Every time you pull on the stick, there's bending and torsion moments applied. Every landing stresses the components that the landing gear is bolted on, and even the wings get stressed because of inertia. If you go past the limit you risk the aircraft snapping mid-air.
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  155.  @jonbbaca5580  "But we have several very successful jet fighter designs we could keep manufacturing" - It's more expensive. A new F-16 contract is upwards of 100 million per plane because of all the bells and whistles you have to buy just to keep it a strong "4.5 gen" aircraft. If you don't buy all the avionics upgrades and pods you're limited. "I just still haven't seen the need or payoff" - It murders everything in the air, rookie pilots wiped out experienced F-15 and F-16 pilots at Red Flag. They can't see it until it's too late. The pilot has unprecedented situational awareness. And it will do the job of multiple aircraft. The need? Retiring older aircraft. The payoff? Having the privilege of enjoying near total air superiority until something better comes along. And I'm not holding my breath for the Su-57. "wouldn't it have been smarter to spread that money around and develop several cheaper, purpose built designs" - No. Everyone's multirole now. It makes very little sense to deal with the logistical nightmares of the past. For example, the F-117 that got shot down by Serbians only had missiles fired at it because there was no EW or SEAD support. It took at least 3 types of planes to do a job. Only one went in, so the SAM crews felt confident in firing missiles without reprisal. In the Package Q Strike during Desert Storm this was also apparent, as by the time the F-15Cs and F-16s approached the target the F-4s had to leave due to low fuel, leaving the attack aircraft and escorts with no SEAD support. When the attack was finished and the F-16s were turning back, they had MiG-29s coming for them. At that point the F-16s had no F-15C cover. Fortunately the Iraqi MiGs fled once they met resistance from the F-16s, but this shows the problem. You have three different aircraft with different fuel tanks, different fuel consumption rates and different weapons load and you have to coordinate their flights to make sure they're all on target for the entire duration of the attack. If instead of multirole F-16s, single-role attack aircraft were carrying the bombs, they might have been unable to face the MiGs head on and got shot down. "Just seems like a money pit at this point" - Every government program is a money pit. When it comes to aircraft I just turn off my brain and enjoy. I can't be mad at everything.
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  156.  @jonbbaca5580  It actually hasn't been a failure. It does what a conventional airplane can't do, and it does what most helicopters can't do. The Harrier is loved despite all those killed in initial service. The Osprey has had a much better safety record than initially.
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  157. That was Serbia.
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  158. Yet the F-16 is the master of all trades, so your quote is wrong. The F/A-18 also already proved itself by shooting down enemy aircraft and bombing their target in the same mission.
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  159.  @spacecadet35  "The F117 was more stealthy than the F35" - source on that please
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  160. This is about storing energy. Renewables can't be throttled up and down to match demand.
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  161. There's no actual logic behind the invasion. Any reason you could put forward has been undermined by the fact that the international response actually put Russia in a worse position. I will belittle the motives because as usual the Russian state's own paranoia just created self-fulfilling prophecies.
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  162.  @mikef7707  So the ruin of a country is more important than actual strategic goals?
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  163. Yes. The A-10 has largely been replaced by multirole fighters and the B-1. It's outdated and other platforms perform more CAS missions.
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  164.  @jeffnelson2197  And in 2018 the USAF only sent 12 A-10s to Afghanistan. What do you mean by taking a hit? A F-16 has landed with half a wing missing after a mid-air collision, and an Israeli F-15 lost almost an entire wing in a collision too and managed to land. This is due to body lift. The F-35 has even more body lift. It also has each main control surface working on their own independent hydraulic system, meaning it can't be bled out of hydraulics. Meanwhile A-10s were splashed pretty good in 1991. The F-35 doesn't get hit in the first place. The A-10 has a titanium bathtub so that the pilot can survive long enough to eject when the rest gets shredded by 23mm/30mm AA guns. "It just isn’t “sexy” and the Air Force wants new sexy planes not flying tanks" - This is reformist nonsense. You're parroting a lie made up of whole cloth decades ago to sell books. You can stop now. Those books aren't selling. "show the world what “new multi roll modern aircraft” can do" - Most of the world uses multiroles for close air support. Almost no country runs A-10 style aircraft. Only Russia has the Su-25, and they won't even dare using it close to Ukrainian forces. The world uses F-16s, Rafales, etc for CAS when they're wealthy, light attack aircraft when they're not as wealthy.
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  165. The fighting in Donbass started because Russia sent operatives and weapons to Ukraine. Remember MH17? The Buk launcher numbered 332 belonging to the 53rd anti air missile brigade stationed in Kursk was used in separatist territory to murder 298 innocent people. Ukraine would be peaceful if Russia didn't cause war.
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  166. That's false. The Yak-141 used smaller jet engines instead of the lift fan. The three-bearing swivel nozzle is also from the Convair Model 200.
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  167. The anti-separatist war aka anti-Putin's proxy forces wars. The Russian invasion started in 2014. They even killed 298 people who were flying on MH17.
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  168. Imagine being proud of turning Ukraine into rubble. Nutters, all of you.
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  169. And now Europe will try to reduce Russian imports, effectively doing the same thing.
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  170.  @rovethewolf9717  It's not a matter of superiority. Congress simply refuses to authorize the USAF to retire it. There's no "bet". The USAF sends F-16s and F-15Es to do CAS. Even B-1s and B-52s.
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  171.  @rovethewolf9717  A F-15E is not focused on air superiority considering it was designed to replace the F-4s and F-111s in service. Neither are the F-16s, and they're do-everything workhorses that spent the last 20 years delivering bombs. Even if they were, it still doesn't change the fact that they do more CAS than the A-10. Yes, B-1Bs and B-52s do perform Close Air Support. Funny that you call the B-1 a high altitude bomber when one of it's most important design requirements was high subsonic low altitude speed. Yes, of course Congress controls the budget. My point is that the A-10 isn't kept in service because of superiority. It's kept in service because Congress refuses to retire it.
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  172.  @EarthChampion_TophBeifong  the government spies on everyone. This was proven by Snowden and WikiLeaks.
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  173. How many mines in Iraq?
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  174. the US has been at war on-and-off during the 90's and non-stop since 2001.
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  175. US drones have been hacked. Seems like keeping a human in the loop still has its advantages.
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  176. "I would say that they could need a stronger engine (preferably are 2)" - then you misunderstand the F-35. The F-15 and F-16 are the high-low pair. The F-15 is the twin engine air superiority fighter, while the F-16 is the single engine multirole. The F-22 and F-35 are also a high-low pair. F-22 is the twin engine high, the F-35 is the single engine low.
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  177. DU shells are not in use anymore and have been replaced by high explosive. The 30mm DU round can't punch through tanks since the late 1970s so using it against foot soldiers and light-skinned vehicles makes no sense.
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  178. ​ @Crabman_87  The F-15 has split throttles. You can set different power levels, in afterburner too.
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  179.  @jonathanedwardgibson  do me a favor and post the number of civilian casualties from the Donbass region from 2016-2021.
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  180.  @sisyphusvasilias3943  Russia started the Donbass conflict. Remember when a Russian Buk launcher took down MH17? Russia armed and supported the separatist movement to carve out territory from Ukraine.
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  181.  @9godspeed  Venezuela is already known as one of Russia's allies.
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  182.  @jjjiljjjj  It's pretty different. Look at satellite photos of Baghdad in April 2003 and most of it is intact. Meanwhile Russia just spams rocket artillery aka "grid square removers".
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  183.  @awddfg  We didn't ignore. In fact regarding Georgia the VP Dick Cheney wanted Bush to intervene but he refused because it would be extremely damaging to start a war, plus he was close to ending his second term.
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  184.  @ibrahimmekonnen8259  In Vietnam the US was providing aid to the nation of South Vietnam, while North Vietnam was being backed by the USSR. South Vietnam could not stand on its own so the US had to get involved. Why would the US get sanctioned? They weren't trying to capture North Vietnam for themselves.
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  185.  @ibrahimmekonnen8259  The My Lai massacre was stopped by an American Army pilot. He told his crew to open fire on the American soldiers if they did not stop killing civilians. Has Putin told his soldiers to stop killing?
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  186. It wasn't even meant to supercruise. It's also not an air superiority fighter.
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  187.  Groove Crusader  Nothing he said was a falsehood but okay.
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  188.  @SeaJay_Oceans  Would cost as much as a new plane.
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  189. ​ @TomDrez  You're surprised newer systems work better? Really?
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  190.  @InservioLetum  came here to post that, funniest line in the movie
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  191. There's already a Harrier II.
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  192. You literally have H&K in your name. You know which nation the engineers who started H&K worked for, right? Here's a clue, they worked for Mauser during WWII.
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  193. Except that most of the capabilities of the F-35 were already present in planes like the F-16. They just got updated sensors, a stealth shape, and three different airframes were designed to essentially allow the same plane to serve under three different branches.
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  194. fuck the US government, but the old saying says if you want peace prepare for war
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  195. ​ @WillDa713  If you want peace, prepare for war.
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  196.  @Hobypyrocom  14,000 people died on BOTH sides.
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  197.  @Hobypyrocom  I've checked the data. Only 3,404 civilians died (most of them in 2014-2015). The 14k deaths includes almost 5,000 dead Ukrainian military and 6,000 separatist fighters. Stop lying.
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  198.  @Hobypyrocom  I'm sorry, where did you find your data? Russian telegram channels? You want documents from others but won't provide yours. You made the claim first, the burden of proof is on you.
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  199. The F-4 Phantom did most kills by missile. Over 100 kills and only 12 by gun.
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  200.  @That_Montage_Nerd  Yes it did, the F-4E variant introduced the 20mm cannon.
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  201.  @That_Montage_Nerd  also "tango" isn't even used in aviation
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  202.  @That_Montage_Nerd  "there were major complaints from pilots that used the early variants of the F-4 for its lack of cannon" - there's a channel here on youtube that has the Fighter Pilot Podcast. Go to the episode about the F-4 Phantom. The pilots said that although the gun could be useful, unfortunately the necessity to fit the gun forced the newer models to have a smaller radar and the extra weight negatively affected the handling of the plane. And in the end the kills achieved by the gun were a minority as roughly 90% of the kills were by missile.
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  203. The roof of the turret has thin armor. The thick armor is on the front.
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  204. Because you can't just take a performance metric and decide it's the main area of focus. Modern armor uses a ceramic strike face that acts as a sacrificial layer by being hard enough to deform a bullet and the cracking of the ceramic itself absorbing large portion of the energy. Then the backing face captures the fragments.
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  205.  @aaronbest747  Because the carbon fiber is better at stiffness, while Kevlar is better at deforming to absorb impact.
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  206.  @aaronbest747  Most rifle rated plates are not steel. Most steel plate manufacturers don't bother with NIJ rating. They're rifle target companies who rebranded as armor companies to make money. Steel plates are sadly a scam. Carbon fiber not being flexible isn't a pro. The bullet and ceramic fragments would punch holes in the carbon fiber. The CF plate would remain stiff, but we don't mind the plate being forced to deform. NIJ rated plates do not allow internal bleeding or broken bones. They are tested on clay to measure backface deformation.
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  207.  @aaronbest747  No, you do your research. M193 rounds can punch through AR500 steel. They don't get NIJ rating. They just sell target plates as armor.
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  208.  @aaronbest747  There's no AR500 steel plate with NIJ level 3 rating, to my knowledge. AR500 companies don't bother getting NIJ ratings.
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  209.  @aaronbest747  How have I been proven wrong? There's lists of NIJ rated plates. You cannot find an AR500 NIJ rated plate.
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  210. "When we were on the ground in Iraq hearing an A-10 overhead was a wonderful feeling" - Exactly. It's not about facts and logic. It's about feelings. The A-10 should have been retired in the 90s, no matter how many got their feelings hurt.
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  211.  @rooh5825  Exactly, no argument.
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  212. Which is why the A-29 Super Tucano was supposed to be adopted for low threat environment but the A-10 was not canceled soon enough.
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  213. ​ @Jake12220  "muh both sides" the people of Ukraine overwhelmingly answer polls with the intent to remove the invader from their land. Whoever is in power is irrelevant.
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  214. ​ @sanskar9679  Bucha was the most reported but mass graves and torture sites were found in other towns and cities.
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  215. Russia demolishes entire cities. Meanwhile overhead pictures of Baghdad show the US left most of the city intact during the invasion.
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  216.  @sanskar9679  A UN investigation of what?
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  217.  @sanskar9679  Pretty sure the UN can't enter Russian occupied towns.
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  218. Russia was pushed into defending itself? Delusional.
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  219. @Jim Richards not really. They all share so much between them it's just different variants of the same plane.
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  220. F-35s carrying external weapons are less detectable than normal aircraft carrying external weapons.
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  221. But multirole aircraft have already proven themselves to be masters of all trades. It's not a superiority fighter. Fancy electronic garbage is useless, and yet the main tank killing weapon on the A-10 is the AGM-65 Maverick. Two engine reliability doesn't mean much because if one engine goes out, typically it takes out the second engine too. The Air Force is trying to retire the A-10 for years.
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  222. Tell that to the F-16
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  223. Light aircraft aren't carrying 2000lbs bombs.
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  224. I was just looking up videos on VT fuzes yesterday. What a coincidence.
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  225. If they can drive into cover they stay. If they're immobilized they get out and run to cover.
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  226. Radar cannot break physics. If radar is absorbed and deflected away from you, you cannot sense reflections that your receiver never gets back.
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  227.  @jcottrill1691  the F-35 flies with radar reflectors during peacetime for two reasons: the first being safety, you want to advertise your presence to the ground controllers, the second being secrecy. Precisely because there will always be people trying to obtain information, even if for benign reasons, the F-35 is flown with artificially increased RCS to prevent anyone from knowing it's true RCS and establishing a pattern that allows tactics to be developed. Plus, the guys who allegedly tracked the F-35 knew it's flight path because of it's appearance at an air show. Big whoop. Not exactly the conditions a SAM operator will face in combat. "no invisible airplanes" - it's not invisible. It just uses the laws of physics to prevent radar from bouncing back to the receiver.
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  228. The US spends more on welfare in 2-3 years than the entire F-35 program will cost until 2070.
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  229. It's very maneuverable. You were told it isn't by barely literate bloggers who can't read a report.
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  230. You do realize that stealth was essentially developed from a publicly published paper that the USSR officials didn't think was important enough to keep top secret, right? The way it works can't be kept a secret. They just need to hide the secret sauce.
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  231. Sadly the A-10 can't outsmart bullet either, which is why most tank kills were scored with Maverick missiles and they couldn't get close to armored columns without getting shot up.
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  232. As much as I hate journalists the Ukraine war is documented by non-journalists with a good track record and expertise.
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  233.  @john_hunter_  I never mentioned news sources.
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  234.  @john_hunter_  Not how it works. If you publish on the internet, the internet is the medium. But you're not media. If you post information, you're not news. News is often described as the 5 Ws, who, what, when, where, why. Sometimes the "how". And it deals in current events. Some information has to be published after long term analysis.
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  235.  @KrunoslavStifter  Still seething at a rumor started by a gamer a year later.
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  236. most of the government's budget goes towards benefits
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  237. Already been. Most CAS missions are given to F-16s, F-15s, F-18s, B1s, etc.
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  238. "The mere fact that serbs shot F117" - in a freak situation that could never be replicated again...
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  239. AgentJayZ here on youtube
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  240. Bro Gen X is too old for tik tok.
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  241. And yet multirole aircraft are extremely successful.
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  242. "the more general the requirements the more compromises have to be made, so you end up with something that does not do anything well" - the F-16 is a multirole that has done everything from deep ground strikes against nuclear power plants to being so maneuverable the US uses them as surrogates for the MiG-29 in training. The F-16 does everything well. The F-35 is an F-16 on steroids.
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  243. And anyone who wants to keep it is brainless. (re-working of the Putin quote about USSR)
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  244.  @johnalogue9832  "I can't imagine anyone would prefer to have 3 F-35s supporting them to 6 A-10s." - Anyone who understands the topic would. The F-35 is gonna get to me faster and have an easier time getting a good picture of the battlespace.
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  245. Vehicles in direct contact with and ocean's supply of water can deal with meltdowns much better than air-cooled ones. Also a ships can malfunction in the middle of the ocean and still be rescued. An airplane that dies mid-air will splatter the nuclear reactor into the ground.
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  246.  @happydemon3038  that's why i said "malfunction" and not "lose power" because losing power is one thing and losing authority over the plane is another. "landing in bodies of water" - can still lead to the plane breaking apart, and planes often fly over land "with a ruptured hull." - a sunk ship would have a dead man switch that triggered a core shutdown, or the crew's last actions before drowning could be ensuring the core will not enter a meltdown in case of the damage prevents cooling. An airplane falling out of the sky will drive the core into the ground and break through the shielding.
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  247. "sacrifices being the master of one thing" - How so? "If you look at the F-14D, the F-15E, the Su-30MK" - All of those are "high" in the high-low mix (If we consider the F-14 to be the "high" to the legacy Hornet's "low"). The F-35 is equivalent to the low aircraft, such as the F-16.
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  248. "Ukraine on Fire" was directed by Oliver Stone, an occasional RT guest, friend of the late Hugo Chavez, and has interviewed Putin personally.
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  249. By flying like a madman, popping out to fire a Maverick and dive back down before you start to see tracers.
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  250. "swarm of drones scanning the sky with IR cameras" - and which country has this swarm surveillance capability and how long can the drones stay in the air until the batteries/fuel are drained?
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  251. Not the enemy. Innocent civilians.
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  252.  @Flashblade  that's a fucking lie. It was a deliberate choice that made no actual difference in the outcome in the war.
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  253. Let me get this straight. So small warheads in RPG-22s can penetrate Russian tanks, but two tandem warheads, one of which being 120mm, can't? Let me laugh. Scott Ritter is a child diddler. He spent two years in prison. Nice that you get your information from a ped0phile. Patrick Lancaster is a long time grifter selling footage to RT.
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  254. Jolez _ the nuclear energy doesn't go straight to the wheels - it's converted into electric and sent to motors, which can be throttled.
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  255. Samir Shrestha the hydrogen car will need to use electric motors at the wheels too. We don't call them electrics either.
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  256.  @CharlesUrban  It isn't.
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  257.  @philperry4699  Blatantly false. If anything, the USAF killed it's own baby for the sake of introducing the A-10 into inventory. The A-7 was the superior CAS aircraft with excellent survivability in Vietnam, but was pushed aside and denied an upgraded variant so that the USAF could get embarrassed by the Iraqis in 1991.
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  258. Sprey is an oldhead stuck in the 1950s and who hasn't been near the aviation industry for decades. Next time I want someone's opinion on jazz records I'll ask him.
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  259. North Vietnam invaded South Vietnam. North Korea invaded South Korea.
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  260. "This machine is my argument against those who believe owning guns will protect them from the US government" - The Taliban is my argument against those who believe million dollar weapons win wars. "An assault rifle isn't going to hack it." - It will against jack booted thugs. You don't win wars of oppression by flattening cities. You win by kicking and beating people in the streets. You win by preventing protests. You win by making sure people can't have secret meetings. You win wars of oppression by sending men made of meat and bone to enforce your will. Why does China send Han Chinese to take over Tibet, Mongolia or Uyghur land? China could slaughter them with nuclear fire and carpet bombing. But they send men and arrest the opposition. Not machines. "It's a lot easier and cheaper to vote." - Voting doesn't change anything. Remember when people voted for Obama to reverse the Bush policies? Then doubled-down on them? Voting is useless.
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  261.  Pete is never wrong  Turban clad wannabes took on the US government. Black pajama clad wannabes took on the US government.
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  262. Not really. In 1991 they were pulled back from the Iraqi Republican Guard due to losses and F-16s were sent in its place. The only reason it's not retired is because congress won't allow it.
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  263.  @rooh5825  False. It is not retired because Congress won't allow it. Forget the F-35, the F-16 and F-15 Strike Eagle already do the A-10s job. I don't see how green camo in a desert backing made it any easier for FLIR or ground radar. The A-10 scored most of its armor kills by slinging missiles from far away. Without the Maverick, A-10 losses would have been riddiculous.
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  264.  @rooh5825  "The A-10 is not retired because the Army and Marines both fight the Air Force at the highest levels" - And so they recruited Congressmen to do the job. It would be more honorable to hire actual hitmen. "perfectly functional platform" - It's not perfectly functional when it has to fly on entirely new wings. It would be falling apart if it wasn't being kept in life support. "a lower cost" - Just the wings cost more than replacing it with Super Tucanos. "this is the real thing, actual combat" - The thing the A-10 barely sees?
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  265. It has lower ground pressure than some IFVs. More weight but wider and longer tracks.
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  266. "Being seen last and shooting first in the sky doesn't mean so much when you're pinned down in a firefight under a boulder." - it matters if the airplanes supposed to cover you out of that boulder are dancing around in the sky because they're too busy dodging SAMs. The fact is that the A-10 only did 11 percent of CAS since 2014. It's already been replaced for the most part.
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  267. It's an alpha emitter which is dangerous if you breathe/ingest the dust. Problem is, it's a heavy metal like lead and mercury. The poisoning will get you before radiation does. Same goes for tungsten in armor.
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  268.  @viceralman8450  Wrong. It's both a heavy metal and a carcinogen. Metal augmented charges used in low collateral bombs use tungsten dust and are controversial because if a person near the blast survives they get the heavy metal embedded into their body.
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  269.  @richardarceo6167  "If you think that the A10 is obsolete then that would include all attack helicopters also?" - Attack helicopters use terrain masking because they can hover in and out of cover. Aircraft like the Apache have sensors above the rotor so that they can target, pop out, fire, duck back into cover. The A-10 has to expose itself during the entire attack. You can't take a beating these days. A missile will cut the aircraft in half. An aircraft that can take that beating has to be extremely heavy.
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  270. F-16s and F-15Es provide close air support, though.
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  271.  @SaInTDEmYSe  Assuming that there's an average of 3 people per family, giving us a number of 106 million families, a single F-35A worth 85 million dollars would give each American family a whopping... 80 cents.
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  272.  @SaInTDEmYSe  That's not the point. The entire F-35 fleet will be built up over decades, not in a single year. For every F-35 that the US gave up, only 80 cents would be awarded to each family. Total defense spending doesn't go towards the F-35. The US spends more on its people per year than the entire F-35 program during it's entire life. Check out the 2019 federal budget and do the math, Socrates.
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  273.  @SaInTDEmYSe  There's plenty of hospitals. The US spends 600 bil on Medicare and 400 bil on Medicaid. Or the other way around, can't remember which is which. You came to a video you know you were not interested in and started complaining about how money is being spent on things you don't like. Imagine being this mad.
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  274.  @SaInTDEmYSe  imagine clicking a video you know you'll disagree with, cry in the comments, get told, and then somehow try to recover by claiming others are crying. Go burn down your local Target or something.
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  275.  @SaInTDEmYSe  I don't need to hoard, I have the knowledge in my brain.
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  276. Problem isn't the fuel, it's how complex the first stage has to be to launch heavy payloads.
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  277. 14,000 killed on both sides. Russia invaded in 2014.
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  278. The A-10 cannon hasn't been able to penetrate tanks since the 1970's.
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  279.  @planpitz4190  it's not used anymore in A-10 rounds, it turns into dust and the heavy metal inhalation causes birth defects on civilians. They use high explosive rounds now. Also, even the DU rounds couldn't punch through. Tanks got too thick in terms of armor.
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  280. Bullshit. Apparently Margaret Thatcher didn't lead Britain into a fight with the Argies, Boudica never fought the Romans, etc.
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  281. Literally every plane has many moving parts.
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  282. And yet, the F-16 is one of the world's most successful aircraft despite being a multirole. The one-size-fits-all model is proven in the combat aviation world. They split it into three variants due to different requirements. The Navy needs a heavy duty steam catapult-ready landing gear while USAF and USMC don't, and they also need folding wings the Air Force has no use for. The Marines need short take offs and vertical landing due to their short carriers, neither the Air Force or the Navy need it. You're confusing different operational requirements that are external to he abilities of the aircraft. The USMC, USAF and USN F-35s will all do the same things. They weren't split because the aircraft can't do everything. Just because the Air Force uses runways, the Marines short carriers and the Navy longer carriers with steam catapults.
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  283.  @laredobenjamin7438  But you need to manufacture and maintain a facility. Meanwhile a warehouse full of batteries only needs the appropriate connections to the grid and maintenance is a breeze by disconnecting sectors and replacing the faulty racks without having to take the whole thing out of comission.
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  284. That's a very dismissive way of looking at the argument. It's not about "making a bunch of money". If something is unprofitable, it's not done at a commercial scale because it requires the input of more value than it can generate. It's like trying to live off a caloric deficit forever. At one point the organism can't take it anymore, you can't tell it "problems are always solved". You need to get that man a sandwich, pronto.
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  285.  @gripp9k  Okay. But the problem is that they're in the business of making money not helping the environment. If they're not making money, it's preferable to go out of business. Everyone says they're cool with things costing more, but as costs increase people just do things less. That's natural. If ticket sales decline, they'll either close down or get massive bailouts from the government. The point being, if you care about the environment you should cut to the chase and say you want them out of business. At least that's a more respectable position, because I know damned well they're going to get a massive bailout. It is dismissive. You're trying to remove profit out of the equation by trying to pretend that you can run a system at a deficit. You can't. Who lied and who said what is totally irrelevant, that's a whole different discussion. We're not talking about who's bad or good here, we're talking about running a company that can't make money. That is being dismissive. If it's really killing us, nip it in the bud instead of settling for a point something percent dilution of renewable fuels. This is ridiculous. If something is killing you then you demand for it to stop. Not to take miniscule baby steps. Like I said, it would actually be more respectable if you were calling for the entire industry to be over.
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  286.  @gripp9k  You are dismissing the reality of running a business. You're just saying "I don't care about money, just solve it" and okay, it might not matter to you but it matters as a way of measuring how useful a human activity is. Those days have not passed. Do you run your household budget at a deficit? I hope not. Okay, you've been lied to. So what? You're still not going anywhere if you go bankrupt. Oh tech becomes cheaper? Seems like you're defeating your own argument. You seem to just be pissed off at the world. By all means be pissed off, but don't go on thinking silly catchphrases and political activism can change reality. Even now you're trying to walk back and say things will become profitable later, after trying to convince me profit doesn't matter. Okay bud.
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  287.  @gripp9k  Not really. I actually suggest you look into the history of taxes before going around claiming that they're meant to pay for pet projects. Because that was never the intent behind taxes and if that's what they're for now, they should be abolished for straying too far from the original goal.
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  288.  @gripp9k  Yeah, you do need to understand the history of taxes. The reason you don't understand history is precisely why you think taxes are for corporations to make bank off silly projects that don't work.
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  289.  @gripp9k  This isn't stopping climate change. Want to reduce CO2 emissions? Then use the taxes for nuclear. "Oh no nuclear is unprofitable, nuclear gets subsidies" and so do all your alternatives, except nuclear actually works and an abundance of energy means you actually make the silly projects cheaper to run. Forestry Service takes care of the land that belongs to the nation. Plenty of tax money is already used for environmental and energy research. Governments are very concerned with energy.
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  290.  @gripp9k  Yeah. Want the alternatives? They come with an energy cost because they're inefficient to produce. So in the end the alternatives are just energy storage for excess nuclear.
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  291.  @gripp9k  Everything is incredibly expensive but you want to use tax money for it. Nuclear provides plentiful energy and your complaint is... too expensive. Buddy. That's true for all your alternatives. You can't "use both" without a source of disposable energy that makes up for inefficiencies. Tidal would mean construction all over shorelines. Wind is terrible. Geothermic is nuclear... what do you think keeps the mantle hot? Nuclear decay. Solar is fine but it only works half the day and requires a lot more area than a power plant. No, they won't all become "more efficient and cheaper". Solar is starting to hit the limits of physics in lab grade PV cells. We can double the amount of wind farms we have right now, but past that number efficiency will actually start to decrease as we rob too much energy from the moving air. Geothermic and tidal are still just ways to spin turbines. Any efficiency gains you get on those, will also net efficiency gains on the turbines spun by nuclear generated steam. So most of these pie in the sky "alternatives" are just scams that will damage the environment and give us shitty energy. "But sleeping on everything else is how we're here in the first place" - But that's false. We didn't "sleep" on anything. The technology just wasn't possible. It's like the electric car and the story about how the big oil magnates bought the patents and buried it. Even today we needed massive improvements to make EVs viable, and they still kinda suck in certain aspects. So no, we couldn't have Teslas in the 1970s and we couldn't have 2021 solar PV cells in the 1990s. The only reason there's a concern with catastrophic failures on nuclear plants is how they have a fail-deadly design where leaving them alone will cause a meltdown. Modern designs are fail-safe and literally cannot melt down. The vacating the area for a thousand years is also somewhat misleading. While not all areas around Fukushima are 100% safe to return due to readings above 15 mSv (max allowable exposure for nuclear plant workers is 20 mSv), many areas are now safe 10 years later.
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  292.  @whogavehimafork  "If the Air Force expected enemies in the air during a ground attack operation they would send fighters alongside the A-10s to defend them" - You do realize how many ground attack operations are carried out by fighters, right?
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  293.  @robertg.2111  Most tank kills performed by A-10s were done through Maverick missiles and bombs, not the gun. So any aircraft that can use missiles and bombs can perform the same role.
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  294. The F-35 is too expensive - even though it costs less than many 4th gen fighters at 85 million - but the US should have produced more 150 million dollar F-22s. Logic.
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  295.  @jonathanmatthews4774  the Sidewinder weighs in at 85 kg, I was to see this absolute unit of a lad who's tasked with carrying the Sidewinder on his shoulder. You want to keep things real? Anything dangerous to the F-35 is LETHAL versus anything else. If MANPADS are a threat to the F-35, then a non-stealthy exhaust aircraft is doomed.
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  296. Yak 141 does not have lift fan and the three bearing swivel nozzle was inspired by the Convair Model 200 anyway.
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  297. tell that to the F-16
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  298. Actually they hate it, and that's why they run so much propaganda begging Americans to stop trusting it. They're completely afraid.
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  299. Most weapons sent to Ukraine are old stock.
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  300. They can't fly forever, stress their airframe for too many years and they'll break apart mid air.
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  301. That's a fabrication. Wing loading cannot be calculated on the F-35 because the fuselage is shaped to generate body lift. The whole body of the plane is a wing. I don't think there's published statistics on the body lift of the F-35 so you can't calculate wing loading.
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  302. Because you still share systems, many parts, it simplifies the training of pilots and ground crews etc
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  303. Scott Ritter is a kid diddler. Does he list his two year stint in prison along with his USMC and UN credentials?
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  304. Lmao they'd be empty husks at that point. They'd put a self-destruct system if that was the case. Incredible.
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  305.  @puirYorick  "The brass prefer sexy supersonic air dominance platforms" - yeah which is why the brass killed the B-52, C-130, C-5, etc. lol "you need to do your OWN critical thinking" - this is rich considering how most people in this argument hinge on BRRRT memes and emotional arguments about the A-10 without actually thinking about the subject. Multirole aircraft don't exist, F-35 bad. Low and slow, F-35 bad. Stealth doesn't work, F-35 bad. Everyone is a Lockheed shill, F-35 bad. Even though the facts show that multirole aircraft are more capable at CAS, people insist on the A-10 meme because of a prolonged requirement to operate in a counter-insurgence theater.
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  306.  @johnnyregs2378  "its much safer and usually more effective to let the 30mm sing than to drop a bomb." - tell that to the Brits who had an A-10 do a gun run on them lol
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  307.  @musman9853  exactly, it is widely known that the F-16 did CAS better than the A-10 in 1991 but people refuse to accept it.
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  308.  @urbanmusicchannel  the F-16 proved itself better at CAS than the A-10 in 1991. Despite being a multirole.
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  309.  @dumdumbinks274  sorry, tagged you by mistake
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  310. @The Legacy "the F-4 was designed without an internal gun, as it was thought that subsonic dogfighting would be impossible" - No. The F-4 Phantom was designed for fleet defense. The way to do it is to go FAST, meet the threat head on and fire missiles at beyond visual range. If you had to come around and circle for a guns solution, you've already allowed the enemy to fire anti-ship missiles. Against the carrier you needed to land back on. The gun was dead weight for this purpose. "basically had the helpless F-4's dead-to-rights" - Because due to gaps in radar coverage, F-4s accompanying strike packages were vulnerable to MiGs coming around the border and doing high speed passes in ambushes that could not be reversed because the F-4s were flying slower to keep up with the strike aircraft. F-4s that participated in MIGCAP missions and went around looking for enemies had a satisfactory kill ratio. The Navy F-4s, which were not in a position to get ambushed and had radar coverage provided by the ships behind them, also had no issue going toe to toe with the MiGs. "at extreme risk of the F-35's weaknesses in dogfighting" - Pilots compare it to the F/A-18. There's footage of a pilot fighting Su-30s with the Hornet in training exercises and he did well. "the F-35 will be a flying target, forcing the F-15 (and the vastly superior F-22 [...] to take over" - This makes no sense. The F-15 and F-22 are air superiority platforms. They're the expensive, overpowered, premier air to air platform. The F-35 is the cheap companion multirole that fills the gap left by the fact that there's not enough F-15s or F-22s to handle everything else. "ever since the F-22 was adapted to carry air-to-ground weapons, there is really no reason why the F-35 is needed at all" - This is completely incorrect. The F-22 has very limited ground attack capabilities. The F-35 is needed to fill all the gaps.
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  311. ​ @flyingcucumber  I've argued with Germans online and they're just like everyone else.
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  312. ​ @ja_u  the only renewable without "roadblocks" is solar. Both geothermal and hydro are limited by geography.
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  313.  @ja_u  Wind turbines are just sucky compared to solar. Huge spinning bullshit versus panels that just sit around. Plus there is a limit to how many can be built. You're taking energy from the wind. Put a panel next to another, they won't affect each other unless you build one tall enough to cast a shadow. Wind turbines by necessity "rob" power from turbines built "downwind".
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  314. it's a government program so it escapes the logic of econ 101 nobody is willing to pay, because the money was taken from taxpayers - this balloons costs governments want more and more money to be spent so that the money goes to the factories on their state
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  315.  @mokhtar_One_u_Key  The Stinger wasn't ultra-sophisticated. It was a really mediocre weapon that Russians defeated by installing diverting plates on the turbine exhaust nozzles of their helicopters.
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  316.  @baronvonlimbourgh1716  do you really want to bring up that argument? How old is wind energy? Sails. Windmills. Hell, wind powered cooling in desert regions.
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  317. The material in the cone liner does not melt. The HEAT jet remains solid through the entire process, which is why it penetrates instead of just splashing.
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  318. The A-10 has already been largely replaced by the F-16, F-18 and F-15 strike eagle.
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  319.  @billhanna8838  so you're claiming the aircraft was flying stealth and endangering civil flight by hiding themselves from air traffic controller? It is well known that F-35s wear reflectors in peacetime to prevent enemies from trying to sense their real cross section.
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  320.  @StoutProper  holy shit I want some of that anti-mold bread
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  321.  @edgerrr  "I'm just a jarhead but my opinion is that the A-10 will be a viable platform until an unmanned version is in production" - It wasn't a viable platform in 1991 when it was pulled out of action due to all the losses it suffered against the Iraqi Republican Guard. It isn't a viable platform now that it only performs roughly 10% of CAS missions.
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  322. A-10 Warthog: "No I'm not." Armed forces: "Okay boomer" - gives majority of CAS missions to F-16s, F/A-18s and Strike Eagles
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  323.  @seantaggart7382  Already been defeated. Only 11 percent of CAS missions as of 2014.
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  324.  @seantaggart7382  firing before the target is spotted, that's the A-10 alright. Probably killed friendlies, too.
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  325. Second place after the first did it on 1969 gets you no points, bub.
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  326. The gun wasn't a factor in Vietnam. Most issues with the Phantom were due to them being attacked in hit-and-run passes while escorting bombers and having poor radar coverage from ground bases. USAF Phantoms scored 89 kills by missile, only a dozen with guns. The Navy Phantoms scored 40 kills, no guns in their F-4s. Even the Navy's "last gunslinger", the F-8, scored most kills with the Sidewinder.
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  327. Then some funnyman starts running attacks by taking advantage of the traffic sign reader abilities to inject code into the autonomous driving.
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  328.  @DavidVercettiMovies  so planes lever land or crash?
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  329. The current unit price of the F-35A is cheaper than many 4th gen fighters.
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  330. The cost goes to the pockets of the workers building them, who then use their money to stimulate the economy. We all rise out of poverty as a result. Donations don't end poverty - economic growth does. Give a man a fish...
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  331. Mf'ers be playing Command & Conquer the way they be saying "CHINA WILL GROW LARGER" on youtube comments
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  332.  @Asbjoern  that's wrong. It would have cost a whole lot more to develop 3 different aircraft.
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  333.  @TheManelich  the F-4 Phantom was multi-branch. So what?
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  334.  @jamesdunn9609  "It was not a failure of the A-10's design" - Yes, it was. The USAF had a great CAS aircraft in the A-7, which suffered low losses from AA despite being (if I remember correctly) ranked third for the aircraft that dropped the most ordnance in Hanoi. The problem was that it was too fast for the army, which wanted an escort for helicopters. We know CAS is a risk. If you know the risk is there, you don't send an aircraft with a purpose-built flaw: being slow.
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  335. The "genocide" that killed less people per year than driving accidents in Russia. Please stop parroting Putin's shoddy excuses.
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  336. They're commercially available in the sense that countries can place orders unlike the F22. Joint adoption would mean that all the countries involved in the project would get them, but doesn't imply any more would be sold to anyone else.
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  337. The US didn't start the war, Russia did. It wasn't a lost election. The president at the time, Yanukovych, was pressured by Russia to drop the EU deal. So people protested. Yanukovych's response was to have police and paid thugs beat down protesters. This lead to people who weren't involved in the protest to join. Yanukovych passed laws suppressing speech and freedom of the press. People joined the large protests because now it was about freedom. Police started shooting steel slugs meant to disable vehicles into crowds. That's when the violence spiraled out of control. Yanukovych fled to Russia because he feared prosecution for the deaths carried out on his orders to curb the protests. Russia already has NATO on its borders. The Baltic states. Their excuses don't even make sense. They were not pushed into a corner. They subjugated several countries for decades, now they're mad that other nations are afraid of them and want protection?
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  338.  @phillipbradshaw4006  Victoria Nuland did not pick presidents. So it's NATO's fault that Russia's own geography dealt it a bad hand? Why are you lecturing me on warm water ports? The US didn't "start putting in troops". Almost every country has a military force, that doesn't mean they intend to do harm. There were no "NATO troops" in Ukraine. So Russia's home turf extends beyond its borders? Why isn't Russia in Finland and Ukraine's home turf? Why isn't Russia in Japan's home turf? You really want other countries to start acting like Russia? All bets are off? Is Russia such an insecure country it will end the world simply because it can't handle losing at geopolitics?
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  339. @Angry Justinian thorium reactors burn nuclear waste.
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  340.  @Gunni1972  the A-10 has already largely been replaced by the F-16, F-18, F-15, B1, etc. Since 1991 that we know that the F-16 is better at the A-10's job than the A-10 itself and it's been getting less and less missions. By 2014 only 11% of CAS missions went to the A-10.
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  341.  @jnonya7743  you're comparing the 1.5 trillion of the entire cost of the program until 2070 or whatever, to the unit cost of a SINGLE unit. The super carrier project had to be designed, it will have to be maintained, etc.
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  342. @Gmail X "It can't do all the "amazing" things that were promised" - yeah, it can. It absolutely wipes the floor with 4th gen aircraft in exercises. "You just can't see the difference between the sales/PR hype and the delivery." - 17:1 kill ratio at Red Flag and loved by the people who actually fly them. Hated by internet experts and known lunatic Pierre Sprey. Hmmm I wonder who has more credibility...
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  343. @Gmail X lmao where are your objective measures? Post proof. I eagerly await. Go back to your Putin-funded propaganda YouTube channels.
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  344. Not really. The A variant is already cheaper than 4th gen.
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  345. Military acquisitions require a lot of legalese stipulations in regards to materials, sources/suppliers, testing standards, etc. For example magnets in one F-35 part were found to come from China, and the mamufacturer has to change suppliers. So you can't just go down to the store and get some bushings. You have to pay for a factory to custom make you bushings that obey the standards (which often involve inspecting 100% of units, rather than using a statistical model to make entire batches pass QC).
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  346. -Todd Howard
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  347. They weren't paying it when Milosevic tapped out. When you get your arm taken and twisted to the point you scream for it to stop, you can't chant victory.
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  348.  @godfroi10991  what ammunition development? Also, I cannot find a single source for A-10 mounted Hellfires. You're conflating different concepts. You can't do an Osprey's job with the A-10. You're not gonna send an Osprey to do the A-10's job.
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  349. @H. Honkler but that's not the end of it. The Air Force was most times going in blind while North Vietnam was aware of USAF flights way before they entered Vietnamese air space. The North Vietnamese interceptors simply went around the USAF and came in from behind at high speed. Obviously the poorer training standards were an issue but the F-4s were escorting slower attack aircraft and could not get up to speed to chase the hit-and-run interceptions. Even if they started the war with better training or the internal gun, the USAF was swimming upstream.
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  350.  @godfroi10991  but again, the Osprey is understood to be a platform that will always require escort due to it's vulnerability to threats from both air and ground so it can be excused for "faults" that aren't really faults. If the A-10 requires escort to deal with air threats, but also is more vulnerable to ground defenses than its own escort, and the escort planes can do the exact same mission as the A-10... what exactly is the A-10 doing in the picture?
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  351.  @godfroi10991  but the same aircraft model can perform dedicated fighter and dedicated a2g. We've already seen F-18s shoot down aircraft and bomb targets in the same missions. Loitering time can be extended through air refueling and loitering time means nothing when the A-10 is not as survivable.
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  352.  @francesconicoletti2547  more like, Ford trucks are designed to safety standards that end up becoming Red Herrings when pitted against smaller cars, Tesla didn't give a fuck about safety standards in the first place.
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  353.  @nirfz  Smart cars deform less because their vulnerability required the use of a frame that wouldn't allow the car to deform so much it would crush people inside. Most cars don't have a similar design feature.
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  354. I'm glad everyone becomes weary of Keynesian economics on the topic of the F-35. I hope you guys don't forget that lesson on literally every other topic.
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  355. Raptors have never been exported. Australia didn't spend a red cent on Raptors.
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  356. Same place where all the rockets land.
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  357. They didn't seem to do shit when Israel flew near them.
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  358.  @hyouzanren1846  don't worry, the MIC made a killing with the billion dollar contracts going to Boeing to keep the A-10 flying past its due date.
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  359.  @brentwilbur  "A commitment by the people of NATO-aligned nations to the people of all Soviet Socialist Republics remains" - What does that even mean? Nobody under the age of 50 today had anything to do with any such commitments. And if you look at the actual commitment, it was respected. To this day, there are no international bases in Germany in the territory of the former DDR. NATO bases only exist in the former West German republic, not the East. "The formation of any legal document is an ultimately irrelevant and pompous gesture." - No. Getting stuff in writing is the basis of modern law. Otherwise I'll take you to court and say you owe me a million dollars. Why? You committed to it. The proof? You said it was irrelevant and pompous. Hand over the million dollars. "There was an agreement not to spread east." - Into East Germany. The agreement was not made after the split of the Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact. It was made during German reunification. So the agreement can only include Germany. At no point would the Soviet Union ask NATO to not accept the SOVIET UNION into NATO. The Soviets controlled the Soviet Union. It's in the name. Why would Moscow say "please, we are so weak, do not make us join NATO"??? That makes no sense! Think a little! Meanwhile, East Germany was former Warsaw Pact and it would be assimilated to a NATO nation. "This is a conflict 30+ years in the making." - Then why has Russia ignored the Baltics and Finland? This is only about Ukraine. It was never about NATO. "NATO started the war by abandoning its agreements" - The Soviet Union also agreed to use Lend Lease and they never paid back while the British did pay their debt. They abandoned their agreement. "NATO is the aggressor" - NATO didn't lay a finger on Russia. Typical Russian crybully behavior.
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  360. The A-7 was almost as rugged and was much faster. But the Army demanded an aircraft slow enough to escort rotary wing aircraft.
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  361. Which Russian airplane used it?
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  362. Jellied gas was used in flamethrowers prior to Vietnam.
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  363. That would go incredibly wrong.
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  364. No, it's slightly off center because the barrel that fires is on the "side" rather than the top or bottom. So the recoil aligns with the plane centerline. The forward landing gear is actually off center to allow for the gun to be in this position.
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  365. Palestine had been British-owned when Israel was created, it wasn't sovereign. Russia's presence in Syria was in support of the Assad government, not an invasion.
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  366.  @محمد-م5ث1ش  Who cares about Britain? The point is that in 1948 the creation of Israel wasn't an offense like the Ukrainian invasion. If you want to talk about unjust it was, that's a topic for another conversation. Not really relevant in Ukraine's case. The US didn't steal anything. Putin getting his land back? It was never his. Ukraine fought against the Bolsheviks for independence, and when the Soviet Union was formed it received status as an independent SSR rather than be part of Russia. Ukraine also asked to leave the USSR before it collapsed. I never said Assad was a good guy.
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  367.  @محمد-م5ث1ش  No, I didn't want to talk about Palestine, and no I didn't want to make the invasion legal. You're the one who brought it up. Well, the world had just come off a world war. Europe was destroyed, taking with it a large amount of industrial production capabilities. Palestine was British territory at the time. You really think people in Europe wanted to start a war over Israel? It's not the same situation as Ukraine. Ukraine is Ukraine. Palestine was Britain. Ukraine was invaded militarily. Britain ceded territory for the UN to create Israel. You're reaching here. I didn't support Assad. My point is that Assad asked Russia for support. How are we helping Assad? If anything, the attempt to topple Assad made things worse. The West armed and trained the FSA and "moderate rebels". The moderate rebels turned out to be ISIS. The West created a massive terror organization trying to topple Assad. That's how poorly things went. The Soviet Union was not a single country. It was an alliance of countries. You know the European Union? Also a union. That doesn't mean that France belongs to Germany. The UK voted to leave. Yes, I'm not denying that Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union, but that doesn't mean that they couldn't ask to leave. And they did. The Soviet Union did not own Ukraine, so Ukraine doesn't belong to Putin, and Putin isn't the Soviet Union. It's over. It's been 30 years. The peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine only said that Ukraine would give up its nukes and if invaded, Russia pledged to use the UN security council to help. Well, Russia invaded Ukraine and has veto power in the UN security council. Ukraine didn't break any rules. Russia did. Stop trying to invent rules after the fact.
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  368. Why is it a serious blooper? F-15 twin engine air superiority, F-16 single engine multirole. F-22 twin engine air superiority, F-35 single engine multirole.
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  369.  @einarabelc5  Wasn't a one time event. Also happened to F-16s as well.
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  370. It was estimated that the entire A-10 force would be shot down within weeks if in 1980 the Cold War started at the Fulda Gap. You think 2020 China wouldn't handle the A-10 better than 1980 Russians? Even the 1991 Iraqi Republican Guard got the USAF to ground the A-10 due to 7 shootdowns and 13 battle damage losses.
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  371.  @MFPRego  "but reality tells us a diferent story!" - reality says that the F-35 wipes the floor with anything else in inventory.
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  372. ​ @leamon_3  Patrict Lancaster has been caught faking scenarios and hanging out with the boxcutter genitalia thief. He's a war criminal, at this point.
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  373. ​ @Simon-fm8yc  Russia destroyed all equipment and stockpiles, yet it can't get past Donetsk city suburbs since 2014. Damn, Ukrainians are holding Russia back with sharp sticks and strong language?
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  374.  @MarloSoBalJr  "it's slow (which is a good thing)" - yeah because taking too long traveling to where you're needed is such a positive "Speed is not always the solution which is why the A-10 has lasted this long" - Literally the opposite. In the air, speed is life. The USAF had an excellent CAS aircraft in the A-7 but the Army requested a slower aircraft that could escort helicopters. Some politics and corruption later, the USAF passed up an upgraded A-7 variant for the A-10.
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  375.  @petertimmins6657  "This is indeed the correct hammer for CAS, not some fast mover that can’t loiter near as long" - But the A-7 is a fast mover compared tom the A-10 and it had an excellent track record in Vietnam. "nor carry the same types and quantity of ordinance guys like me need" - But many planes can carry the same ordnance as the A-10, and more of it. "F-16 and F-15 are great planes, when you place them in the role they were specifically designed for." - The F-16 was designed for everything. It's a great fighter and a great bomber. The F-16 and Strike Eagle get more CAS action than the A-10 itself.
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  376.  @elmgful  John McCain's brain tumor deserves the Nobel Peace Prize. There's multiple compelling reasons to retire the A-10, such as the fact that it was outdated in 1991 when it had to be grounded due to all the losses it suffered against the Iraqi Republican Guard.
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  377.  @einarabelc5  "no other plane has a gun like the A-10s" - Why is the gun needed? It hasn't been able to punch through tanks since the 80s, and against thin skinned vehicles and foot soldiers it doesn't do anything that 20mm or 25mm already won't do.
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  378.  @bartfoster1311  "the F-16 and the F-35 are less capable aircraft for close air support especially in mountainous areas like Afghanistan" - And yet the A-10 gets a minority of CAS missions, most being given to F-16s, Strike Eagles, F/A-18s and B-1s. So much for the mountainous areas of Afghanistan being a problem, seems like the fast jets are doing fine while the A-10 struggles.
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  379. The arms dealer Boeing made 2 billion from just making new wings for the A-10. Yeah, Boeing does a ton of military stuff, it's not just 767s.
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  380. You wish Lockheed Martin was cutting costs. It's a jobs program, so don't worry because this fucker was subcontracted to hell and back. California has 277 suppliers, Texas 79, Florida 94, Connecticut 80, even fucking Australia has 27 contractors working on the project. I don't know how many people each subcontractor is employing but there sure is a ton of them. The only states not supplying F-35 parts are Wyoming, Alaska, Hawaii and Nebraska. So don't worry, the taxpayer's money is funding a hell of a lot of jobs. I mean, that money would fund even more jobs if it wasn't robbed through taxes but since when does government care about the hidden costs of their programs?
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  381. WMDs were found. Journalists uncovered it in 2014, locations of WMDs were kept secret because of fears that Al Qaeda would try to recover them.
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  382. ​​ @Bramble20322  Accusing people of being Americans because they speak English or sound Western... you anti-Americans are something else.
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  383. They haven't been produced since 1984.
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  384. ​ @Tank50us  But... the point is that we need to mine those minerals to stop polluting. We have a choice between leaving an Earth that will need cleanup, and an Earth increasingly hostile to human prosperity.
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  385.  @Tank50us  Neutron bombardment can transmutate elements and turn non-radioactive objects into radioactive ones. For example it's safe to eat food that was x-rayed because the x-ray radiation just goes through. Neutrons actually can hit an atom and turn it into an isotope.
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  386.  grahambennett8151  But one nuclear plant generates ao much power it's worth it.
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  387. ​ @seanbrockest3888  can't make money selling if everyone pledged to stop buying.
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  388. It worked amazingly well. The F-4 Phantom is known as the world's largest distributor of MiG parts.
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  389. Literally all modern fighters are fly by wire. They're unstable by design, if the computers get damaged the aircraft cannot be flown by hand.
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  390. Zelensky was elected in 2019. How did he fight a war for 8 years when he was still an actor on TV? The Minsk II agreement was broken by DPR forces assaulting Debaltseve the day after it was signed. Some people are smart enough to not fall for your lies. Such as claiming that Zelensky fought for 8 years since 2019.
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  391.  @asdf3568  Hold on. Russia claims they're not a party to Minsk so they can arm the separatists all they want. You say the separatist forces aren't a signatory party to Minsk. So what's the point of the treaty? Ukraine has to negotiate with someone, and if that someone doesn't want the war to end they can't negotiate.
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  392.  @asdf3568  And the war continued because the DPR claimed Debaltseve through force.
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  393.  @asdf3568  The peace agreement could not be implemented when one side initiates military assaults. What does negotiation lead to when the rebels just keep on attacking? Yes, it's an anti-terrorist operation. Don't like it? Don't have nutters like Igor Girkin conduct their operations. It's "angels". Angles is when two lines aren't parallel.
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  394.  @asdf3568  There's violation of ceasefire and there's conquest. If you want to call it quits but keep taking land for yourself, you're begging for return fire and the end of negotiations. You complain about bias, but you're the one arguing that separatists can do whatever they want, but then cry foul when Ukraine treats them like they deserve.
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  395.  @asdf3568  No country is democratic or peaceful by those standards. Democracy doesn't exist, we pretend it does, and the sky isn't falling. No country would be "peaceful" to any organization that insisted on kicking its teeth in at every chance it got but then cried foul when said nation struck back. I am an extremely peaceful person. And I am willing to keep the peace by force if necessary. I didn't change the subject.
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  396.  @asdf3568  You try and start a civil war inside your country and see if you're not arrested. The "coup" was the then president fleeing the country because he feared being prosecuted for the deaths of protesters. I didn't change the subject, I told you that Ukraine is peaceful and had a war brought to their doorstep. So if you kill in self-defense, you are a murderer?
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  397.  @asdf3568  Ukraine was democratic and defending itself from Russian-backed separatists. The people who trespassed into the capitol weren't trying to start a civil war. I'm asking you to take foreign weapons, foreign pay, even foreign leaders, and try and fight your own government (not just walk around a building). Just as an experiment. Let's see how democratic your country is. Yes, it was a revolution because the parliament voted to relieve the coward from his duties. Cowards in suits who pay cops and thugs to beat down and kill protesters don't deserve your sympathy, so you can stop simping for them.
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  398.  @asdf3568  Seizing control of a building doesn't give a crowd magic powers. How would they have reinstated Trump? This is borderline delusional. They weren't under threat, or they would have fled like Yanukovych. They voted like that because the coward left after people died at the hands of his goons and the politicians in the parliament owed no allegiance to him. Or his laws restricting freedom of assembly and free speech. You know, like a democracy should have. Very democratic of Yanukovych.
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  399.  @asdf3568  They didn't. Yanukovych's coalition collapsed in the parliament, and with 233 votes the disbandment of the anti-riot forces got passed. After he fled, the parliament decided he had relieved his duties. In the elections after Maidan, neither Right Sector or Svoboda got into parliament. Weird way for a bunch of Nazis and Nationalists to seize power, have the parliament vote against the president and then fail at the elections. The direct cause of the civil war was the Russian armament and support for separatist forces. Remember the MH17 shot down? The launcher used was the Buk numbered 332 belonging to the 53rd anti air missile battalion stationed at Kursk. Now, what was a Russian military vehicle meant to be at Kursk doing in Ukrainian separatist territory? Putin wanted the war. Donbas was just another South Ossetia, Abkhazia or Transnistria. What Zelensky did? Such as adopting the stance that a bad ceasefire is better than a good war?
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  400.  @asdf3568  Funny, so Yanukovych can use politicized persecution of his opposition, stifle free speech, etc. but as soon as the tide turns he can't handle the heat of politics in a corrupt Eastern country. The man could have personally shot someone at the square and you people would still simp for him. The subject was not changed. Russian aggression is Russian aggression. Oh, radars. Oh, manipulated audio. I guess that undoes the criminal culpability? You might now know, but that's because you're willfully ignorant. The West didn't have to do anything, the cover-up was just sloppy enough that the timeline of events could be pieced back together, and separatists posted on social media that they had shot down a plane that day. Was that also manipulated by the SBU? The airspace was not closed because as usual, airline companies thought that flying over 30k feet would be safe as military aircraft typically do not use that space. Airliners flew over wars before this. Russian backed separatists (or even Russian troops on "vacation") shoot a missile at a civilian airliner, and you still put the blame on Ukraine. You people will literally blame Ukraine for everything. It just doesn't stop, it's just bias. And the sooner you recognize it, the better.
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  401.  @asdf3568  Then why the hell are you complaining? I'm sick of people pretending he was a victim. Oh, he didn't ban opposition parties, he just arrested members of the opposition, conducted voter intimidation and ballot stuffing. Thanks bro, makes it so much better. Oh, yes they did. Igor Girkin posted about it and deleted it. You criticize both sides - while making excuses for one, blaming the other for things they didn't do, and grasping at straws to deflect from the real evidence. Really fair and balanced. Other countries have not closed down airspace. Airliners were warned to avoid it but wanted to fly over the area to save on fuel. Yes, flight control and the airline company themselves deserve the civil liability. But we're talking about who pulled the trigger. You want to talk about the civil liability of allowing a flight to fly over but this is about the Russian-sanctioned murder of civilians. The blame is on the killer. You're out here claiming a person with gun in hand who pulls the trigger is not to blame. Russia also shot down a civilian airliner that got lost on its way to Korea. You really want to bring up history?
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  402.  @asdf3568  The US admitted they did it. Russia denies it was them. You are defending the man, because people can criticize Zelensky but as soon as heat comes Yanukovych's way, the poor baby did nothing wrong and he needs to be coddled. He flees, you call it a coup. That's defending the man. Again, no country is a true democracy so this is all moot.
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  403.  @asdf3568  Where did I blame the Iranians? He feared being killed after his actions lead to the deaths of people? Oh no, I feel so bad for him! How about you define coup? Because impeachment or issuing a vote of no confidence is not inherently a coup. A president fleeing and being relieved of his duties is not a coup. You're defending democracy, but your defense hinges on an anti-democratic president being removed from office after calling it quits. Waiting for the next election? So just let bad politics run rampant? You're defending democracy by removing the right to free speech and the right to protest, just vote harder next time. It wouldn't have prevented the civil war because if pro-EU parties won, Russia would have armed separatists anyway.
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  404.  @asdf3568  Voting intimidation happened in the 2004 election where Yanukovych "won". The punishment is deserved because of the denial. If they had come forward and admitted a mistake that would be one thing because mistakes happen in war. The problem is, they probably didn't want to admit Russian military fired the missile. So they instead started sharing conspiracy theories about a Su-25 shooting it down.
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  405. ​ @asdf3568  The rebels themselves claimed they couldn't have fired the missile because they're not trained for it. Could be just an excuse and they actually did it. Doesn't matter, what matters is that according to the people being fingered by Russia, they couldn't have done it so the ball is back on Russia's court. I'm not claiming anything. You're the one saying Ukraine is responsible for something they didn't do. We could talk about civil liability after you admit the criminal culpability. The CIA didn't oust him in a coup. His own party disowned him. That's what's evidence. The fraudulent vote thing is a Yanukovych play. You're only further proving that Maidan removed an undemocratic president.
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  406.  @asdf3568  And airliners had a responsibility to avoid the airspace. Again, several things went wrong, the fact of the matter is that Russia/separatists like to obfuscate and deny. Giving Russians autonomy has always been the Russian playbook. Wherever they are, Russians get to carve land for themselves simply because they're Russian. Imagine the United States if every ethnic group demanded an autonomous state. Special military operation? It's war. Don't be a coward, call things by their real name.
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  407.  @asdf3568  Uh, no. Busy? It's passenger's lives were're talking about. They do keep themselves informed about everything including weather patterns, and organizations like the ICAO issue warnings about flying over conflict zones. You seem to think the world is a lot more simple than it actually is. You know how much red tape there is in getting an aircraft into the air?
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  408.  @asdf3568  The hell does that mean? Independently of where they got the information, ICAO issued a warning regarding Southeastern Ukraine. So whatever you're trying to get at, rest assured you are wrong and ICAO ws provided the right information. Of course the red tape is not "done" by the airlines. They abide by it. That's what I meant, there's a ton of independent agencies working together to ensure safety. You really want to bring up the 737 MAX? Okay, let's do the analogy correctly. The airliner was warned about the MCAS (ICAO warning of SAM threat). After the crash, you want to blame whoever is in charge of the airspace for not prohibiting the flight even though the airliner was the one that decided to go ahead ignore the warnings. It's not their job to reverse engineer whatever blackbox stuff Boeing did to hide their corner cutting, but it's their job to listen to warnings. Airliners do not have to gauge SAM threat by themselves, but if they are warned of a SAM threat they should take it at least as seriously as a bad weather warning.
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  409.  @asdf3568  Russia sent the separatists the missile system that could reach that altitude.
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  410. You have to realize it's a government's job program clusterfuck. They intentionally dispersed the workload over hundreds of different subcontractors to create jobs in their respective states. The money goes back into the economy not through Lockheed Martin, but the fact that there's a dozen dudes laying up carbon fiber for a section of the right wing in Bumfuck, Alabama and another dozen dudes laying up carbon fiber for a section of the left wing in a factory in fucking Burbank, California or something. Add it all up and the plane had like 8 factories in Turkey, 40 in California, a couple in Texas, etc. I don't remember the exact numbers but essentially all countries that pitched in for the Joint Strike Fighter project were "rewarded" with factories in their country getting jobs.
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  411. Not really. Americans didn't have a real wage increase because of increasing supply of labour without a proportional increase in demand. If you want to go back to the 1950's and 1960's, you gotta bomb the shit out of Europe and Asia and slap your wife until she stays home instead of working. Increase the demand for American products by making sure nobody else has factories still standing, reduce the supply of labour in half by forcing women to become housewives. If you don't want this, then get married. Your and your wife's salary combined is your wage increase.
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  412. Because it's an aging aircraft that has largely been replaced by multirole aircraft.
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  413. The company that made it went out of business.
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  414. Should have been retired in 1991.
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  415.  @HingerlAlois  The irony is that T-72s have a low profile (check out the size comparison with an Abrams) and they're adding to the tank height to protect... from RPG-7s or hand/drone-thrown grenades. With NLAWS in play, which can overly embankments and detonate on top of hidden tanks, having a 1/1.5 meter tall structure on top is seriously detrimental.
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  416.  @squidwardo7074  In Iraq the cages actually worked against the most common threat, and they were installed in more places than just the roof. Some vehicles were completely covered, looked like a chicken coop.
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  417. ​ @p_serdiuk  The electronics suite is somewhat of a red herring. The A-10A is stone age technology compared to modern aircraft, but the real issue is deconfliction and ground observers. A JTAC called a JDAM on his own position by mistake, and the B-1B crew made the drop leading to friendly fire. Sadly, the JTAC assumed the crew on the aircraft could see the IR strobes on FLIR pod when they could not. That's the problem with air support. Pilots often are in situations where they cannot compensate for the mistakes of others. Most A-10 friendly fire comes down to pilots being told there are no friendlies on the area and attacking targets at will. It's not that the A-10 is bad because of friendly fire. Just that the "low and slow" tautology doesn't actually help.
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  418.  @p_serdiuk  They were mistakenly told "no friendlies in the area" and POPOV 36 saw what he wanted to see. If a gun run didn't make him realize those were Scimitars, no amount of optics would solve it. Most aircraft can't self-lase without a pod. The GAU-8 isn't imprecise, it's dispersal is almost half of the M61 Vulcan (5 miliradians vs 8 miliradians).
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  419.  @p_serdiuk  A gun run requires the pilot to come around 2700-2500 feet of the target. If he couldn't tell the vehicles were armored rather than trucks with rocket artillery in the back, optics wouldn't solve the issue. Dude wanted to see Iraqi vehicles, so his eyes saw them. Nobody should have never said there were no friendlies in the area.
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  420.  @p_serdiuk  You're just throwing the usual talking points without any concern for how they fit into the picture. I know all of them. I've been using them for the past decade before NCD and LazerPig made the A-10 criticism popular. The bottom hemisphere being obscured is nonsensical because the nature of the HUD on a dive gives you a straight ahead picture of the target. The round count is preserved by a burst limiter, which allows the A-10 to perform multiple passes. Pilots can't hold the trigger for 12 seconds. That's not how it works. The problem is that you fundamentally misunderstand CAS. When close air support is used, the inherent danger of the procedure takes away weapons release authority from the pilot. There has to be a forward air controller qualified man on the ground to direct the pilot. The USAF as a matter of doctrine does not trust the pilot to make IFF decisions alone and puts the final authority on the troops on the ground who risk getting the ordnance dropped on them. It doesn't matter if it's targeting pod or binoculars, there's a man or woman on the ground holding the pilot's hand. No friendlies in the area? Go ham, the pilot is free to do his thing. I'm not arguing anything. What I'm saying is that if Sherman gunners were told "everyone from here forward is an enemy" they're gonna start shooting. Because they clearly received a confirmation that nobody they could shoot at will be a friendly. And there's friendlies ahead... they're gonna get got and the gunners will only be told about it after it's too late.
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  421. tell that to the F-16
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  422. You really can't. It's an ageing aircraft, who would start an entire supply chain, training school, etc just to operate an aircraft that's going to cost so much money to keep around? Plus the Army cannot operate it by the Key West accords and the USMC can't make it take off from short deck carriers. The F-35B can.
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  423. Fake news.
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  424. Congratulations in achieving something done in 1969.
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  425. And yet it has already been replaced by F-16s, F/A-18s, Strike Eagles and B-1s.
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  426. No. Yanukovych faced protests, told the police and thugs to deal with him, people died. So he fled the country with some ministers because he feared prosecution for the murders. Since the country had his president missing, the parliament voted to relieve him of his duties. He gave up his seat by virtue of being a coward who can't handle the consequences. That's not a coup. Zelensky wasn't installed by any coup. He was elected in 2019.
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  427. Almost 1 trillion per year goes to Medicare and Medicaid.
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  428.  @akeffo  And the US spent more on healthcare in a single year (pre-Covid) than the entire F-35 program has for 20 years. So your original comment regarding how the F-35 is taking money from the healthcare system doesn't make any sense considering how much money is thrown at healthcare every single year.
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  429.  @akeffo  Keep twisting my words bud. Doesn't change the fact that you're wrong.
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  430.  @akeffo  Go burn down a Target or something.
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  431. It is safe to handle, just like normal subcritical uranium is safe to handle. You just can't breathe the dust after impacts. Which you can't do either if they were using tungsten instead.
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  432. "Thankfully the A-10 isnt going anywhere" - yeah they're gonna keep them in inventory sucking up money while most missions are given to F-16s and F-18s because of idiots like John McCain.
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  433.  @sultros  Are you gonna send A-10s to do FAC in any zone less permissible than Afghanistan? There is a FAC phase in F-16 WIC. There's just more roles to focus on compared to the A-10 but that is easily mitigated.
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  434. +John Fox the redesign of a legacy aircraft would cost as much as a new plane...
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  435. The F-16 was made with the same multirole philosophy and it's an excellent aircraft, adopted by dozens of countries. It actually excels at air-to-air so the US uses it for their Agressor squadrons to mimic the MiG-29. It also excels at air-to-ground to the point that in 1991 it did more CAS than the A-10 while suffering less losses. While a different design path was taken, the F-4 Phantom was designed as an interceptor, forced into a fighter role, eventually had the air to ground capability exploited by its use as a bomb truck and for suppression of enemy air defenses. Also had Navy carrier-borne and Air Force traditional runway landing variants. Air planes aren't cars.
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  436. Money is given to charities and government programs. Giving them 100 million isn't gonna solve the issue.
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  437. Depleted uranium and tungsten are equally poisonous/carcinogenic heavy metals. Unless everyone agrees to go back to maraging steel, no nation is innocent. Everyone's using tungsten and not a peep, but fingers are pointed at the US for using DU.
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  438. Less than half for a T-72 without upgrades.
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  439. Pretty sure youtubers like Kyle Hill have addressed it. There's a smaller youtuber which I can't remember the name of who also did videos on nuclear myths.
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  440.  @rusher2937  "USAF doesn't like it for a simple reason, it can only do 1 thing, pound ground targets" - that's funny because the USAF flies planes like the B-52, B1, it flew the F-117 which despite the F was a bomber, the F-111, A-4, etc but apparently ONLY hates the A-10. Hell, the USAF must HATE all their transport aircraft and the AC-130.
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  441.  @havoc3742  the F-4 was an interceptor forced into a fighter role an then forced into a multirole with ground attack and SEAD capabilities. Even recon variants were built. The F-14 had ground attack abilities added almost as an afterthought but it only became the Bombcat later in its career. Meanwhile the F-16 was built as a multirole and it beats the A-10 at CAS. Nearly every modern aircrat uses turbofans. DU rounds aren't used. It's typically bad PR to spread heavy metals when you're invading other countries. Both the F-16 and F-15 have had situations where the plane remained flyable after losing an entire wing.
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  442. It's a governmental jobs program. There's hundreds of smaller companies subcontracted across most states to spread the money around.
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