Comments by "TheThirdMan" (@thethirdman225) on "Vox" channel.

  1. Look out, Syria just pulled up.
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  2. @Mickey Rana They had no vision for peace. You can't win the war if there's no incentive for the local people to want to be involved. That's why "the world's most powerful military" was defeated by a handful of farmers with AK-47s and exploding rubbish bins.
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  3. Eduardo Most of that had nothing to do with America.
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  4.  @opticalreticle  It’s worked everywhere it’s been tried. There’s nothing in the second amendment that says you can or can’t own AR-15s. Ergo, banning them is not against the second amendment.
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  5. Dark of the knight Go on then. Tell us how it should have been done.
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  6.  @i_like_chomp6382  69% of murders in the United States are committed with firearms. How many are committed with cars? Not that many. Yet to drive a car, you need licensing and registration. Who complains about that? Also, I can't remember the last time someone held up a convenience store with a car...
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  7. +SGTCrash Those figures are almost meaningless. They are for people who lack any understanding beyond technicalities. Nobody has yet provided a context, much less explained any tactical procedures. Without that information, you can draw no valid conclusions. To show how ridiculous this is, the F-15 has a real-life ratio of about 105:0 so the F-35 has a long way to go. Secondly, this year's Red Flag was set up for the sole purpose, not of integrating the F-35 but validating it. Believe me, it's happened before. So unless someone can come up with some specifics - i.e.: the tactical scenarios - then these spectacular figures are nothing more than fairy dust. I don't care how "brutal" you claim it is, you're right: it means nothing.
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  8. Tell me something: what will it be used for?
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  9.  @arroldterrace4553  That simply isn’t true.
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  10.  @i_like_chomp6382  "69% includes guns and accidental shootings to yourself or others. Wealthy places like the Uk, france, and Italy for example have extremely high knife crime and pickpocketing." Now you're guessing. No. Let's give an example which I can quote off the top of my head without having to look it up. In 2010 there were 16,256 murders in the United States. 11,078 were committed with guns. 68.15% That's just murders. If you want to include all gun deaths, the number is over 30,000. Look it up at the CDC website. The current gun stats at the CDC are 6.0/100K for all murders and 4.5/100K for gun murders. As for your claim that the UK, France and Italy have "extremely high knife crime and pickpocketing", I'm going to ask for a reference for that claim. And don't bother linking to some gun-humper page. Extremely high in relation to where? Show me the rates. You know, numbers per 100,000 people, as I showed you before. "Also Texas may have the highest rate of "gun" violence but its extremely well off compared to so many other states when it comes to general crime and thats the stat that matters not yours." Jesus. We're talking about gun crime. Texas has the highest rate of gun crime in the United States, which makes a complete mockery of your earlier claim that crime was low there because of "good guys with guns". The stats that matter are the ones that come from credible bodies that collect them, like the CDC. You haven't provided any stats, much less any backup, so you're in no position to says whose stats matter. Mine matter because I got them from a credible and relevant authority, not from gossip on the interwebs. When you can find an institution like the CDC that proves your claim I might start taking you seriously.
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  11. +TheReal Lifehacks "Which is why it has a great ability to maneuver due to Block 3i, giving it the ability to effectively counter the small and nimble F16" Nope. The F-35 bleeds too much energy: https://defenseissues.net/2015/07/16/f-35-reality-check/ To be fair to the F-35, it was never meant to be a dogfighter but it's really only got one good turn in it and it's done. That body lift is optimised for cruising with a payload and not for manoeuvre. The F-16s body lift is meant to destabilise, i.e.: increase manoeuvrability.
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  12. +imax digital "This video didn't even get into what the plane is actually capable of doing. Go look it up yourselves. it's not hard, and it's almost  science fiction-like." Yes: "fiction" being the operative word. The problem is that those with vested interests have saturated the internet with "information" passed off as fact. Anything from the air force or Lockheed-Martin should be regarded as not impartial. The only high threat air forces you might possibly face are also nuclear countries. Nobody is going to get into a high intensity conflict with them because it would end with an exchange of nuclear missiles and the F-35 would be irrelevant.
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  13. And two teachers. And the right’s response? Blame teachers and immigrants.
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  14.  @eljerc5894  Do you understand how the black market works?
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  15. Midnight club Los Angeles is dead Oh, okay.
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  16. +molnibalage83 Thus far, nobody who comments about such things on YouTube has shown any sign at all that they understand tactics.
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  17. +TheReal Lifehacks The software doesn't make any difference. Do you understand induced drag? The amount of energy it loses isn't related to how many G it puts but to its angle of attack. The article points out that the AoA tends to favour the F-35 because it has better post stall characteristics than the F-16. The trouble is that at high AoA, the F-35 pulls an awful lot of induced drag - definitely more than the F-16. That's a big problem because the F-35 airframe is big and fat and draggy already so its acceleration is marginal. The F-35s body lift is optimised for load carrying rather than manoeuvre. The F-16 is the other way. Like motorsport or sailing, it isn't how many G you pull or how many degrees per second you can pull. It matters how fast you come out of the manoeuvre. It's definitely not a software issue.
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  18. +TheReal Lifehacks I doubt that has anything to do with that software update. I agree, the early version would have left it in a disadvantageous position but if you read the test pilot's report, you will find it couldn't even get past 6G. Don't believe me though: look it up for yourself. The F-16 used in that mock combat was fitted with two fuel tanks, which was a neat way of nobbling its aerodynamic performance and simultaneously limiting its G potential. But the real issue is that in most dogfights - should it get that far - the longer it goes on, the slower it gets. The F-35 is already setting a pretty high bar at 370 KIAS for its corner speed. The corner speed for an F-16 will be between 330 and 440 KIAS. An F/A-18 will be at between 270 and 340 KIAS. Sounds to me like the max potential turn rate envelope for the F-35 is very small, so as soon as it goes outside that small range, it's losing. But again, a software fix isn't going to do anything to fix the amount of energy it bleeds. That is 100% an aerodynamic issue.
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  19. +Pagani Zonda No worse than people like you. At least he quoted an independent US government source. You want to ban people you don't agree with? So much for freedom of speech (ya know, that pesky First Amendment thing). You might as well be living in a communist state with an attitude like that. As far as Russian trolls are concerned, yeah, there are a few around but I come across many, many times more American trolls because there are so many more Americans on the internet.
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  20. +joshua manero  "we dominate them from air conditioned rooms with drones." Who's we? You don't dominate anyone. The US and its allies have been in Afghanistan for 14 years with very little progress to show for it. The "tech" you worship makes no difference.
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  21. +Tyler Douglas "Sure its over budget and late, but its the most sophisticated fighter ever! Its designed to takes down areal threats from hundreds of miles away without even being detected." Is this a capability anyone even needs in a fighter? Very impressive to tech heads but not very useful when what the Air Force needs is a competent SEAD and CAS aircraft.
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  22. Yeah and I know someone whose grandmother is the chief test pilot.
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  23. Have you thought about that? Because the black market doesn’t sell at the same price shops do. The black market isn’t like a gun show where you go and get a nice deal. It’s run by criminals and they offset their risks much with higher prices. An AR-15 costs $1,100-1,200 in the US, where it’s legal and $35,000 in Australia, where it is illegal. That’s going to cut a lot of low grade crims out of the market.
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  24.  @kap1526  Just saying "Ukraine" doesn't answer anything. Now will you kindly put this into context and stop wasting my time.
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  25.  @seinifaith9512  Good grief. You’re an American and America suits you. I’m not an American and, having been there, I can say it’s a nice place to visit but I think my country is better. We’re not here to debate whose country is better, so spare us the old, “Go live in Afghanistan if you think it’s so great” (which is not actually what that person said). Afghans are not Americans. America failed in Afghanistan because they did not listen to the locals. Their priorities are not your priorities. As one of your own military commanders said, their first priority is their family. Their second priority is their local tribe. Their third priority is Islam and their fourth priority (a very distant one) is Afghanistan. A political or economic system doesn’t even enter into it, much less one that is being forced on them by an invader. They may not like the Taliban but at least they speak the same language, socially, culturally and literally.
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  26. +Holy land. Not necessarily. You will find it is almost certainly a multi-fuel engine. Most Diesels can run on kerosene. Many jets can run on Diesel. As a concession to the realities of supply in warfare, it would be insane if it were not multi-fuel. I believe the T-80 was a turbine engine.
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  27.  @therealdestructicus  How would you know if you don’t do a background check and how are you going to do that with a private sale? You can’t.
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  28. +TheReal Lifehacks "Nope pilots reported the F22's weren't in the same areas as the F35" Source please. "The F35 win to loss ratio is for all of the F-35's not just one, that's not how a win to loss ratio works for an aircraft type" I'm pretty sure you don't have the slightest idea how W/L ratio works "for an aircraft type" (whatever that means). "Pretty sure people had the same argument for the F15 minus the stealth" Source please. "And you say it isn't good because the F117 was a hanger queen, the F117 was an early Gen stealth aircraft, of course it was a hanger queen it was the first of it's kind, but I'm pretty sure people called the F15 and the F22 hanger queens at first" Source please.
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  29.  Windy Calyx 7  Then why is there still such a level of support for the Taliban that they have an office in Kabul and the US is now forced to negotiate with them? And don't tell me it's all under pain of death either. American assumptions about Afghans and Afghanistan have been at the core of the Coalition failure in that war. Those same assumptions about the aftermath are likely to lead to further foreign policy failures. Do a search for an article called "TALKING TO THE TALIBAN WITH THE WRONG ASSUMPTIONS: THE CONUNDRUM OF AFGHAN PEACE" (their capitals, not mine). This lays out the difficulties of dealing with an extremist, inflexible group with does not conform to American presumptions.
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  30.  @unknownunknown7882  Wow. Scared to even talk about the carnage guns cause!
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  31. Midnight club Los Angeles is dead What?
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  32. +That Guy Very good point. Yes: it would have been worth including.
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  33. +Izno Iznogoud "Actually, F-22 was initially created as multirole as F/A-22 but soon was limited to air superiority due to sky-rocketing costs" No. The F-22 came from the ATF proposal which was originally conceived around a Cold War mission scenario where the US would be attacked by Soviet bomber and attack jets like the Su-24. After the Cold War ended the mission basically no longer existed but the USAF pushed ahead with the plan, despite the questions from government budgetary circles about the need for it. The F/A-22 and the tailless FB-22 were proposals by Lockheed-Martin to build at least the same total of air frames, which was originally to have been around 750. The F/A-22 and FB-22 were both cancelled and the number of air frames was continually reduced until it stopped at 187. It was this reduction which pushed up the air frame costs on a unit basis because the R&D costs were no longer being spread across a large fleet. "BTW, F-22 isn't even great at dogfight : it had its butt kicked by Rafale first, the T-38 Talon, Typhoon, Mirage-2000, F-16 and I'm ready to bet Flanker also beats it in dogfight since Indian Su-30MKI had serious edge over Typhoons, F-15 and F-16..." Source? I know there were some German pilots who engaged it in their Typhoons a few years ago but they said afterwards that none of them expected to get that close in the first place. It depends entirely on who controls the electronic spectrum. "As nowadays, everybody knows how to defeat US' 1st gen passive stealth, well, if US still can maintain air superiority, it's only by swarming effect, but surely not on technology..." What is "swarming effect"? Air forces don't operate that way due to the possibility of fratricide and targets are usually designated by C3 types before they are in range anyway. Technology probably wouldn't be a factor as long as the C3 types remain on station.
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  34. +S.A. B "The F35 is not needed because it is more advanced than Russian or Chinese jets? lol: that means it is useful." Are you planning on fighting the Russians or the Chinese?
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  35. +joshua manero "if you think tech makes NO difference, then there is no point discussing the topic with you." No difference as in making no difference to the end result. You're not winning. It's a stalemate. This war will be almost endless. "Tech" is only useful if it can be brought to bear on your opponent and if your opponent plays the same game. They don't.
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  36. +ZapCannon5 There are too many missions the F-22 can't do. Besides, it has limited data sharing by comparison with the F-35. Most importantly, it costs around $65,000/hour to run and can only operate from first class facilities. The F-22 is good at what it was designed to do but in a lot of other ways, it's a bit of a millstone around the neck of defence planners.
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  37. +TheReal Lifehacks I think you need to start referencing your claims about this. What do you mean "already managed to win against the F16"? When? Under what circumstances?
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  38. Bozhe moi! What you call "outdated" seems only to relate to which version of software is being used, which is a nice way of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. As I have repeatedly said, most of the critics of the F-16 combat test claim the F-35 would have done better with new software but that cannot address T/W or aerodynamic issues at all and those were the biggest areas of concern. So while the new software might clear the jet to 9G at some point in the flight envelope, that doesn't mean it will always be able to pull 9G. The test pilot's report is very honest about this and if you haven't read it in full by now - it's only five pages - you should do so before you proceed any further because all that information is still valid, except where he says it's being addressed. https://medium.com/war-is-boring/read-for-yourself-the-f-35-s-damning-dogfighting-report-719a4e66f3eb But in answer to your question, I would have to say that the only data I trust comes from the DOT&E. But if you hang around fan sites like f-16.net, you will find dingbats over there calling the DOT&E reports "biased" because they don't conform to their personal prejudices. :face palm:
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  39. It's a failure because it is a jet designed for the wrong war: http://www.airuniversity.af.mil/Portals/10/ASPJ/journals/Volume-28_Issue-3/F-Pietrucha.pdf http://www.airuniversity.af.mil/Portals/10/ASPJ/journals/Volume-31_Issue-3/F-Wilkinson.pdf
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  40. +jeffery exposito "24 to 1 kill ratio. Enough said." Simplistic nonsense for the truly gullible. You.
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  41. +solus48 "So all criticism is real, no matter how old it is and new software and fixes can't have possibly fixed any of these problems," Software fixes won't solve the fact that it can't do CAS. Software fixes won't solve the fact that the results of its tests were deliberately doctored. "and all reports of the aircraft doing well are doctored and for PR only."  We don't know what parts of this program are doing well and what are not. If you know anything at all about the world's armed forces, you'd know that you do what you're told. Those pilot reports never address the majority of the problems because pilots stick to what they know: flying. And most people are dumb enough to believe that's all that matters. "This premise seems illogical, when the F-16 was being developed it had far more severe problems than the F-35 ever has had. The F-15 was ridiculed as being a inefficient flying computer and having too much junk in it, "the F-4 is plenty good enough" they said." I'm calling bullshit on that. People claim this all the time but nobody has ever shown any examples of a program so flawed and protracted as the F-35. The F-16 was developed in about 6 years, the F-15 slightly longer. The F-35 has been going for 25 years and still isn't combat ready. "The reality is that jets are complicated and even more so when other expensive developing systems are tied to the program but the payoff is worth it." Now, speaking of things illogical... by that measure the worse the jet's problems , the better it is. I think you'd have a hard time selling that to the DOT&E.
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  42.  @kap1526  Please elaborate.
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  43. Will the DOT&E report do?
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  44. +C R I P P L I N G D E P R E S S I O N All that is entirely theoretical. Do you know how modern air combat works?
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  45.  @deltafrost4876  "the right to bare arms means own a fire arm" No, it means the right to walk around without covering up your arms.🤣🤣🤣
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  46.  @HumbleLifts  in other words, there is a gun show loophole.
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  47. +raceandcrime "many of these killers are stoic with poker faces, no anger, no love, no hatred, just killing!" Dylann Roof did. Most others are very disturbed people. They sure aren't the cold, calculating killers you see in movies or that the gun lobby wants you to think they are (see the FBI's Active Shooter profile).
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  48. Yeah, one gun show…
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  49.  @Nanofuture87  That’s very true. There are militant gun owners but not many militant gun control advocates.
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  50. "The problem with gun violence in the US is mostly the blackmarket sales of firearms that are the result of poor control of existing firearms." There are many, many problems. But in the United States, the gun culture promotes a kind of tolerance that doesn't exist anywhere else and manufacturers market things like AR-15s to the "tactical" crowd, who are often angry, disaffected young men.
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  51.  @tompowers8495  "so very very uninformed. The European has nothing to tell the American about freedom and Liberty, you have not known such for centuries" So patronising. Freedom and liberty are just trademarks. If you think it's because you own guns then I've got a bridge to sell you. Do you own a passport? I'll guarantee you I'm better informed on this subject than you are. I've spent ten years reading about it and virtually all my sources are American.
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  52.  @adamuhaddadi5332  I don’t think so. Not that things aren’t getting better but it’s a long process.
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  53.  @G-Lew  None of those countries bombed “us”.
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  54.  @gwatts2745  Nobody is arguing for confiscation.
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  55.  @killertruth186  In America, yes. Everywhere else it works. But then, few other comparable jurisdictions have gun ownership listed as a right, few other comparable jurisdictions have such an activist gun lobby and few other comparable jurisdictions would allow politicians to accept the kinds of bribery we see in the US.
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  56. +TheReal Lifehacks "Plus, apparently the Indian Airforce wasn't pleased by the performance if the SU-57" You wouldn't know.
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  57. +Jacob Damocles "Su-57 is a 4++ with RAM slapped on. It's using shittier engines, shittier ram, shittier avionics, and is designed for WVR, which is quickly losing relevance." The whole "Fifth Gen" thing is really unclear. In fact, it seems to apply only to American aircraft. It has stealth, it has networking and it has sensor fusion. 90% of stealth is in the shaping. From the views I have seen, I don't think the Su-57 has any RAM coatings at all. I wouldn't say it was designed for WVR any more than any other but given the missile types it is designed to carry, BVR seems to be its primary mission. "They're also only buying about 12 from now until 2027, when they might put them on the budget." This is all unclear at the moment. Last report I heard was LRIP to a total of about 60. The first 20 will have the older engine. After that production will depend on the availability of the next generation engine. The problem is that the program is well behind schedule. This same situation plagued initial Flanker production when their radars were not ready and dozens of them sat idle, waiting for their radars to be fitted. "China's are a bit better, but Chinese engines are garbage." The Chinese have real problems with their engines. None of their new engines have survived very long. They're a hell of a long way from first flight. But one thing the Chinese are not short of is engineers and in time, I believe they will solve it. Their problem is how long it will take. They actually know how to build an engine. They were quite successful with the Rolls Royce Spey and the Lyulka AL-31F but they can't seem to get their own designs to work.
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  58. +Jacob Damocles Well the Su-57 has some interesting stuff in it that the West might end up copying. They have a pair of L-band radars in the cheeks, either side of the cockpit and also in the wing leading edges. These will be able to see stealth aircraft but their wavelength is too long for targeting. Their electro-optical sensor appears to be better than Western types too. Their new ROFAR radar will be a significant addition and the West currently has no equivalent. Manoeuvre will still be relevant in the long run but probably not for the reason most people think. As long as F-Pole is the most common tactic, manoeuvre will be necessary.
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  59. +Jacob Damocles "ROFAR seems interesting, but I'm not sure it'll be as useful as an AESA radar, because it's different enough all the neat tricks you can do with an AESA aren't going to be available, such as active jamming on ground radars, and I'm not sure about how fast it'll be able to scan at this point." I'm not sure myself but it's an important development. Not only should it be able to detect stealth aircraft at BVR ranges, the fact that it uses laser beams should make it pretty much undetectable with current sensors. That's not to say that a warning system won't be developed but it definitely has the potential to close the capability gap. That's it as I understand it (which is not to say that I know much about it). They are different systems, designed to do much the same thing but in a very different way. The biggest advantage of AESA is the scan rate. With no moving parts and beam steering capability, it can home in very quickly on a target and with a much higher scan rate than passive systems, can get a good picture very quickly. I don't know how this will be accomplished with ROFAR. The point is that if it increases the radar capability without changing the pilot's operating procedures, it will be well worth the effort. Is it a game changer? Probably not but the Russians expect to have it in service in 2022. It's about half the weight of current systems - Russian radars are notoriously heavy and run very hot - and should be more efficient. As long as it's reliable, there's no reason not to go for it. And it's only a matter of time before the lessons learnt from the radar find their way into other programs, like missile seeker heads.
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  60. +Jacob Damocles "There were a few articles about how the Indian MOD was considering pulling out, but it was more a "the plane won't actually be built in numbers for another decade," and management issues, rather than any performance issues." I mentioned on another thread that India have been playing the fishwife in this since they first signed up for it. I have read that the Russians are getting fed up with the constant whingeing. One of the things the Indians don't want is the new engine. Kind of ironic really. At the heart, they're trying to shift as much of the development costs as they can to Russia.
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  61. I'll take a bet the F-35s service life will be shorter than the time it took to develop it.
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  62. +Jacob Damocles "If we kept buying they would have gotten cheaper, and later variants would have had the benefit of everything learned from the F-35." This is the kind of inverted logic that only makes things harder to understand. The unit price may have been lower but the total program cost would have been much higher. Besides, the biggest problem with the F-22 is the running costs. At about $65,000/hour it's just too expensive to have too many of them in the fleet. Besides, that kind of strategy assumes that you will always have good facilities to work out of.
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  63. +Izno Iznogoud "French Rafale is nicer than F-22 for about $75M" More combat proven too. It's a good jet.
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  64. +John Hall That's what America does but you can't assume the rest of the world is going to follow suit.
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  65. +joshua manero By the way; those war torn countries you talk about. They're war torn mostly because the United States and its allies invaded them, Syria being the exception.
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  66. +joshua manero Yes, you want to minimise allied casualties but you don't want to play the "11 goalies" game. At some point you need to advance and that is always risky. That kind of technology only protects pilots. It doesn't necessarily protect people on the ground: http://www.airuniversity.af.mil/Portals/10/ASPJ/journals/Volume-31_Issue-3/F-Wilkinson.pdf
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  67. +gambet0007 Be careful with that. America has an appalling history of selling weapons to the wrong people.
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  68. https://defenseissues.net/2015/07/16/f-35-reality-check/ http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/7488/lets-talk-about-those-f-35-kill-ratio-reports-from-red-flag
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  69. Which is exactly what I'mm saying. Of course, the hardest thing to find out is how these scenarios were set up. All the internet experts can come up with is weasel words about how tough Red Flag is. Reality is that we don't know much about it and with the levels of secrecy, the vested interests and the complexity, as well as the controlled drip feed of little gold nuggets, it's going to be very hard to get the whole picture.
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  70. Yes and crowd fund your fighter program.
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  71. This aircraft has reached IOC in name only. It will not be combat ready for a long time. A lot of the tests were fudged (and in some cases, not ever performed) to pass the aircraft. And before anyone says, "Hey moron, the F-35 scored 20:1 at Red Flag", don't bother. Those figures are meaningless without context.
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  72. Too fat.
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  73. +Northern Pursuit Propaganda straight from the MIC. Your "statistics" are meaningless without a context and that's exactly what the US defence forces and Lockheed Martin want you to believe. It's just a grab bag of easy-to-digest drivel for gullible consumers. BTW; do you have a shovel because I'd like to show you what the word "literally" means.
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  74. I suppose it would be if it worked.
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  75. +flamencoMensch I know.
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  76. +TheReal Lifehacks "During the Red Flag exercises the F35 managed to achieve a 20:1 win to loss ratio" Yes, I thought that might come up. Do you have any idea what scenarios they were using? Do you know how many times they engaged in actual dogfights? What was the F-16s ratio? What about the F-22? The F-15? What about the Typhoon? Were these close in dogfights or were they set up shots managed by AEW&C and escort jammers? Who held the tactical initiative? The point is that those rather nebulous figures are completely meaningless and they were distributed so that others can spread the good word. The plain fact is that we don't know. So, in fact, there is almost nothing to conclude about the F-35s dogfighting ability from those numbers, especially when they keep changing.
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  77. +TheReal Lifehacks "To be fair we can't dismiss the F35 as a “bad dogfighter" when it hasn't been fully proven in an actual realistic dogfight scenerio" But that's just the point: You've been saying it has. Now, if I understand you correctly, you're saying it hasn't. "Why would they combine all of the assists into the win to loss ratio? Because if it involved legacy fighters shouldn't the loss ratio have been higher?" We don't know what any of the conditions were so there's no point even talking about win/loss ratios.
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  78. I don't know. One minute you're saying the F-35 has proved itself. The next minute you're saying it hasn't. If what you are saying is the case then the world's air forces don't need to teach BFM anymore. But I think you're wrong and whatever they say, their actions suggest they think you're wrong too.
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  79. TheReal Lifehacks I'm sorry but you keep talking about this as though you've got some kind of pipeline into what's going on. We have very little information, other than the gold nuggets dropped from the Air Force and Lockheed-Martin and the silly rumours of the internet. Unless you can provide some decent background information - like what the setups were, you can't make any such claims about the F-35 proving itself against anything.
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  80. +TheReal Lifehacks By the way, you should pay special attention to the article by Col Jon Wilkinson. He knows shitloads more about the game than you do with your pathetic ramblings about software versions. Here's his bio: "Col Jon C. Wilkinson, USAF Colonel Wilkinson (BS, Utah State University; MS, Troy State University; Master of Stra- tegic Studies, US Army War College) is a faculty instructor and director of theater air operations at the US Army War College. He is responsible for instructing theater strategy and campaigning, as well as the Joint War Fighting Advanced Studies Program.  The colonel’s most recent operational assignment was in 2014–15 as the 455th Expeditionary Operations Group commander at Bagram Air Base, Afghanistan, where he commanded more than 1,100 military and civilian personnel, executing A-10, F-16, MC-12, HH-60, EC-130, C-130J, and airfield management combat operations. A command pilot with more than 3,600  flying hours in the F-16, KC-135, C-130, C-27, and HH-60, Colonel Wilkinson conducted  flying operations in Central and South America, Japan, South Korea, Singapore,  Thailand, Egypt, Iraq, and Afghanistan. He previously served as the C-27 and C-130 current operations airlift coordinator, F-16 director of operations, operations support squadron commander, Seventh Air Force A3/A5 deputy director, and the US Pacific Command J54 Northeast Asia strategic plans branch chief."
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  81. +TheReal Lifehacks I love the way you discount ALL information from articles which aren't about the latest firmware. You want to see manipulated data? What about all those tests that were FAKED? Yes: FAKED: "The F-35 failed 11 out of 12 Weapons Delivery Accuracy (WDA) tests with no fixes, only work arounds in the immediate future" - From the 2015 DOT&E report. Don't tell me it's old. We're talking about doctoring results, son. You haven't got a clue about CAS. You're just following the Lockheed-Martin PR line on this the same way you did last time you got smacked down. If anything CAS needs to go lower and slower than the A-10. But to even vaguely understand that you have to understand CAS, which you don't: https://warontherocks.com/2016/05/its-not-about-the-airplane-envisioning-the-a-x2/ Read about it from people who have been field commanders in wars instead of PR hookers at L-M: http://www.airuniversity.af.mil/Portals/10/ASPJ/journals/Volume-31_Issue-3/F-Wilkinson.pdf And don't bring up Red Flag results. They're useless without context and the only people they fool are those who are up for it: http://www.thedrive.com/the-war-zone/7488/lets-talk-about-those-f-35-kill-ratio-reports-from-red-flag The only people talking this jet up are doing so entirely for political purposes. Don't bother with the pilots singing its praises. That stuff is doctored to within an inch of its life. There are so many PR hacks hanging around the world's ari forces these days, they look like Soviet era political officers and their scope is about the same. In the services, you do what you're told and you don't bite the hand that feeds you.
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  82. zaqangabar Yeah well maybe it’s time to call the gun lobby to account for the propaganda it’s been spreading for so long.
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  83.  @GlistenTristan  How many crims do you reckon have access or the smarts to roll their own? Probably not that many. And how many average crims do you reckon have access to the kind of network you’d need to get guns from Afghanistan? Probably even fewer. Do you people think about this before you post?
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  84. The gun lobby, led by the NRA, uses very carefully scripted debating tactics. They give you simplistic black and white scenarios that rarely exist in real life, ignore the most common problems and force the argument into their own terms of reference. The NRA lies as naturally as it breathes. In particular, this includes claims about countries banning guns and crime rates skyrocketing. No country in the world has a 100% gun ban, not even North Korea. They rely on very few people having enough information or motivation to root out this disinformation and show it up for what it is. They try to herd you into the idea that either everyone is allowed to own guns or that nobody is allowed to have guns. They do this to shut down any debate on reasonable gun laws.
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  85. You must be a product of “No child left behind”.
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  86.  @unknownunknown7882  "what do you mean scared to talk about gun carnage, you can have Carnage with anything it's just i want people to understand it's not about the type of gun if causes damage it's gonna cause damage" Maybe not but there's one thing that's consistent about all gun massacres. Guns.
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  87.  @larryn1929  Yes, it was but American participation in Afghanistan led directly to the creation of the Taliban, who are just a modern version of the Cold War era Mujahideen.
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  88.  @vihailevagi  Re-read what I said.
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  89.  @belluh-1huey102  What? Did I say something about education?
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  90.  @belluh-1huey102  By the way, if you actually go to Europe, you’ll find they don’t rely on America for much at all.
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  91.  @belluh-1huey102  The F-16 was practically designed with NATO in mind. The Europeans have built plenty of their own aircraft, including fighters. But a quick look at when and how NATO was set up will reveal that it was always intended that countries like the Netherlands or Norway would be buying their equipment from the military industrial complex. And since American military leaders set it up, American systems would be used to ensure interoperability. There have been occasions when Europe has looked at building its own fighters but, to keep the production line open, companies like General Dynamics would offer the F-16 virtually at cost. Then there’s France.
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  92.  @belluh-1huey102  ”dude, I clearly see them running the F16 and F35 to defend themselves.” While they’re developing their own 6th generation types. Dude.
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  93.  @belluh-1huey102  Not you.
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  94. All that money for capability it will never use.
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  95. You hope...
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  96. Who said it was "bad"?
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  97. Yeah, I know but I'll bet they were both multi-fuel engines.
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  98.  @infantjones  Where do you want me to start?
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  99.  @infantjones  Take a look at any modern wealthy neo-liberal democracy, from the UK, Western Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand.
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  100.  @erickim1739  The Australian gun buyback - which only applied to around 20% of the total number of guns in Australia - was entirely successful. The lower your figure goes, the harder it is to reduce it any further. But Australia went from a murder rate of 1.9 per 100k in 1996, when the NFA was instituted, to below 1.0 per 100k now. And we did that without any increase in murder by other methods. While the normal murder rate declined steadily, the gun murder rate dropped further and there were no gun massacres for 22 years. You have them every day. And before you say “bUt AmErIcA iS lIkE a HuNdReD TiMeS bIgGeR tHaN AuStRaLIA” it’s only about 15 times the size. Guns are not nearly as big a problem in Australia as they are in the United States and continually carping that it’s everything except guns has only led to a massive increase in gun murders and gun violence. You can’t ignore it any longer. You have to start some federal gun control initiatives unless you want this to continue to get worse and there’s every evidence that it will get worse. Your gun murder toll has gone up by around 75% in just eight years, without a significant increase in murder by other methods. And blaming gangs and mental health is nonsense. We have those too. And stop talking about “bAnNiNg alL gUnS” because nobody is proposing to do that. Australia didn’t do it either. The only people talking about total gun bans are the gun lobby and it’s nothing more than scare tactics for the childishly naive and low intelligence owners.
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  101.  @timothyjones3410  What are you talking about? Any country can amend their constitution. They amended theirs. You didn’t have guns in your constitution until you amended yours. Japan is not a gun culture and they don’t have mass shootings as a result.
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  102.  @erickim1739  Nobody is talking about “banning guns”. Just certain types of guns. The only people who are talking about banning guns are the gun lobby.
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  103.  @troubledcat  "hence why the countries where it happened have considerably less freedoms than America or are established authoritarian systems." Ha! You've never er been outside America, have you? You've never read any other constitution than your own, have you? You haven't considered what happens when armed gangs overthrow governments, have you? Do you really think places like Western Europe, the UK, Australia, Japan and New Zealand are authoritarian? Really? Look again. And if you want to make it about rights, what about the rights of those who have been deprived of their lives by people who were enabled by the gun lobby in the name of gun rights? This claim that guns stop a country from the rise of another Hitler or Stalin is just disingenuous nonsense. Gun gangs make for the worst administrations on the planet.
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  104.  @troubledcat  "Yes, Australia where people were detained in concentration camps " Really? Where? Oh and by the way, the US has FEMA camps too. And it's a bit of a stretch linking that with gun laws. "New Zealand where a country goes into full lockdown over a case of Winnie-The-Flu." Haha! See, the trouble with that is that I have to believe not one but two conspiracies, which is asking rather a lot. "All the places you mentioned, aside from Japan, have massive issues when it comes to authoritarianism because they opposes people's rights to freedom, liberty, etc over nonsensical reasons." You can't prove any of that, much less that it's related to gun ownership. Excessively generalised claims like that are really difficult to argue rationally so if you're expecting me to counter it, don't bother. "Also, I'm from South Africa and we have gun control here that leads to applicants waiting months to a year, yet we have 67 murders daily. I even know of someone that took their son out to a restaurant for his birthday. As they were leaving a shootout brokeout as criminals decided to rob the place and if it wasn't for a armed citizen being at the restaurant things would've been worse." Sounds like yet another spectacular leap of faith. One of my ex-girlfriends was South African and she kept a gun under her pillow when she lived in Jo'burg. But take Oscar Pistorius as an example. Rich White guy gets sentenced to just five years for the (gun) murder of Reeva Steenkamp. After a year, he was released to serve his sentence at home. On appeal, his sentenced was further increased to six years and then 15 years. I'd say you've got a lot more problems than guns and gun control. "Ultimately, you want to deny people their freedoms because rather than treating the cause of the mass shootings you want to tackle the symptom." Life is a freedom that greatly exceeds the presumed freedom to wave guns around. "And that's a waste of time and effort that I really can't afford to entertain." Hasn't stopped you running some elaborate and generalised conspiracies and expecting me to take them as some sort of evidence to support gun ownership. "Another thing, governments being overthrown by armed gangs tend to happen in countries with high gun control and high crime, so it would seem your position on the matter creates the problems I supposedly haven't thought about." For example? You're really trying it on, aren't you? There's no connection between gun control and armed gangs overthrowing governments. If it was ever true then it happens in countries where the rule of law is marginal and corruption is high. Unless you can make a case that this applies in places like the United States - which is what this is about, regardless - then you're making yet another gigantic leap of faith.
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  105.  @troubledcat  "yes, because claims you can prove are conspiracy theories, though I can't be surprised people with your position tend to believe themselves as matters of authority on every subject to be debated" For example? "Though thanks for the interaction, it gave me some great material for my video on gun control. So thank you, Chicken Licken." LOL!! "One of these days..." Haha!! Yeah, well, there's no requirement for accuracy on YouTube.
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  106.  @LoanwordEggcorn  That’s not decided by gun ownership.
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  107.  @LoanwordEggcorn  Being a serf is a mindset. In reality, the only difference you see is that you’re a gun owner. As far as you’re concerned, we’re all serfs but you own a gun and you think this means that you can rise up against the government (an American fantasy). You don’t engage with the political process, so you are politically naive and instead of using the electoral power the constitution gives you, the first thing you want to do is actually the last thing you should do. I don’t own a gun and neither do 96% of my fellow country folk but we just threw out a corrupt and incompetent government using our electoral system (which is better than yours). That’s what makes me a free man, not gun ownership. That’s for serfs.
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  108.  @egillis214  We have freedom from nut jobs with military grade guns shooting up a school or a supermarket. And we like it much better.
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  109.  @LoanwordEggcorn  Where did I say I had no right to self-defense? Where did I say that? Where did I say that nobody else had the right to self-defense? Where? A person who thinks in terms of guns being the only defense against serfdom is already a serf. I too, am involved in politics and have been, both directly and indirectly, for most of that last 35 years. If you can’t or won’t take advantage of the constitutional tools you are given and you think guns are the only thing that protects you then you’re probably already committed to a life of serfdom. That’s your choice. Me, I’ll take democracy over rule-by-gun every time. You may note that the second amendment was ratified in spite of the writings of a couple of federalists, not because of them. The Republicans wanted it because they didn’t want to have a standing national army. But in any case, your comments are so generalised that there’s little point in me addressing them, especially since it has been shown already that the gun lobby has consistently prostituted anything the founding fathers said but never talk about the first five words of the second amendment. But I’m not really interested in gun lobby interpretations of what the founding fathers meant. They didn’t envisage AR-15s or red dot scopes or silencers or any of the other heat people seem to think they need to be packing today. Things were, needless to say, very different 250 years ago than what they are today. One naturally assumes that your involvement in elections concerns the 2020 election in particular…😂😂😂
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  110.  @hindu_1188  A total ban would not work anywhere. In fact, no country on the planet has a total gun ban, not even North Korea.
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  111.  @infantjones  Gun murders in Australia declined at a greater rate than did murder by other methods. The total murder rate declined by 45% over 20 years, while the gun murder rate declined by more than 65% over the same time. Australia is not a gun culture and never has been. But any criticism from the American gun lobby has to be taken with a major dose of salt. The Australian murder rate is currently 1.13 per 100,000 (up from the more normal 0.9) while yours is a whopping 7.5 and your gun murder rate is a staggering 5.9 per 100,000. In 2010 there were 16,256 murders in the United States, with 11,078 by gun. In 2020 there were 24,576 people murdered, with 19,384 by gun. A brief calculation shows that the difference between the gun murder figures is 8,306 while the difference in murder by other methods is just 14. That catastrophic rise is 100% driven by guns. Liberalisation of concealed carry, open carry and ‘stand your ground’ laws, not to mention the hysterical language used by the gun lobby are totally to blame for this. So I won’t be taking dictation on how to run social policy from American gun owners, thanks.
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  112.  @infantjones  We both know that when the American gun lobby talks about banning guns, it means all guns.
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  113. @Roger You mean like they do with car licences? LOL!! Only the gun lobby could think of something like this as an excuse not to do it. It’s in their authoritarian nature.
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  114.  @mohamedkamara7701  What?
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  115.  @bayoujohn03  Exactly. Private sales don’t require a background check.
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  116.  @bayoujohn03  Yes but who does that?
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  117. I saw examples of this in Banda Aceh after the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami.
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  118.  @1911dawg  Yeah, that assumption doesn't take into account that the risk to a criminal is greater with a knife than with a gun. Furthermore, between 68 and 70% of murders in the United States are committed with guns. So, in fact, guns are more deadly than knives on two counts, the first one being that they can be used at greater range, giving the user a much better chance and a better likelihood of a lethal outcome and secondly they are simply used more often.
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  119. What about private sales at gun shows?
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  120. +raceandcrime "The authors suggest that impairments in neurological circuits controlling behavior may underlie impulsive, violent behavior, as a result of cannabis altering the normal neural functioning in the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex."" That situation exists in pretty much every Western society - drugs, mental health issues, violent video games... the rest of us have all got those problems but we have much lower rates of gun ownership and much lower rates of gun violence.
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  121. Who cares about violating your precious second amendment when 21 people had their right to live violated in Texas this week?
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  122.  @senderoverland  Not if you buy privately through something like Facebook Marketplace.
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  123.  @senderoverland  So what? I’m pointing out that private purchases can be made without background checks or cooling off periods.
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  124.  @dannydraco2458  That is never going to happen. Thank God. As if things aren’t bad enough already.
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  125.  @senderoverland  Because not every sale at a gun show is commercial.
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  126.  @dannydraco2458  Most people who find themselves on the end of a murder charge are law abiding citizens. That’s the problem. Gun training is just a smokescreen.
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  127.  @dannydraco2458  Former shooter and gun owner. Shot everything from black powder to a Bren LMG.
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  128.  @dannydraco2458  Prove it.
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  129.  @dannydraco2458  What is “highly unlikely”?
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  130.  @dannydraco2458  I am no longer allowed to post links on YouTube because gun lobby sooks keep reporting them as spam. It’s axiomatic around the world that more than half of murders are committed by people with no criminal record. However, if you care to look, you will find that there was a survey a few years ago of about 150 mass shootings which found that three quarters of them were committed with legally-owned firearms. While it was true that some of those people should not have had access to guns due to things like psychosis or substance abuse, few had any criminal history.
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  131.  @dannydraco2458  The claim that “law-abiding citizens have no reason to use a gun illegally” doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen. Ask Ted Wafer some time.
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  132.  @Albinowolf64   "We won in the Korean War, where the objective was to preserve the independence of South Korea." The Korean War ended in a stalemate. In fact, it never ended and is currently under ceasefire. "We won in the Gulf War, where the objective was to liberate Kuwait." That looked like a win but it was, in fact, a catastrophic loss. The 6 week campaign of 1991 did nothing more than destabilise the region which resulted in a reduction in US influence in the area. The problem with that was that it has cost America far more than anyone budgeted for and for no result. "We won in the intervention against Serbia in the late 90's and early 2000's, we still have troops stationed in Kosovo for protection." That is not a win, for the same reason Korea was not a win. The fact that you still have troops stationed there should tell you that. America's problem is that it knows how to fight large scale wars against early delineated enemies but has no idea how to tackle insurgencies. That is not a fighting problem. It's a vision problem. and America can never articulate what peace should look like. Defeating your enemy is only the first step. So often I hear "America has the most powerful "military" in history. Period." as if that is the only thing that matters. Every strategic argument comes down to "the You Ess Militerry" without any consideration for what is in it for everyone else. You always lose the peace. That is why little Afghanistan is the only country in the world to have defeated not one but two superpowers. One was there for nine years, the other for 17. Unfortunately, this means we will be back exactly where we were 17 years ago: a repugnant government (the Taliban) and a hostile state in that region. The other problem is, of course, that the United States always assumes that everyone wants what America wants: freedom, capitalism and democracy. The fact is that in tribal, theocratic states like Afghanistan, most people couldn't give a fig for those things. They care about family, tribe, religion and state in that order, with state a very distant fourth. The American sponsored government in Kabul will be gone by this time next year.
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  133.  @cheesusfarley3959  You need to stop believing Republican electoral material from the 1990s.
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  134.  @luthfurrahman7890  Nobody wins nuclear wars.
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  135.  @TheDoorspook11c  Fought to a standstill in Korea. Lost Vietnam. Won a tactical victory in 1991 but lost that peace. Lost in Afghanistan. Objectives achieved: nil.
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  136.  @luthfurrahman7890  What?
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  137.  @luthfurrahman7890  I said nobody wins nuclear wars. Slight difference... And Japan had no hope of defeating the (mainly) US forces, especially after the defeat at Midway.
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  138.  @Albinowolf64  It's very much a current issue as the negotiations for the US withdrawal are taking place as we speak.
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  139.  @Albinowolf64  Who's Kanye?
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  140.  @luthfurrahman7890  You'd do better to look up a definition of nuclear war. Then read about the war in the Pacific.
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  141. TechWorld 007 WWII was not a nuclear war. It was a war in which nuclear weapons were used by one side. A nuclear war - where nuclear weapons are used by both/all sides is not winnable by anyone. The cost is too great.
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  142.  @get_downed_boi6270  I take it this is irony...
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  143.  @scottythedawg  The gun homicide rate in the United States is 6.3/100,000 (CDC stats).
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  144.  @Nanofuture87  So anyone and everyone should be allowed to own a gun, then?
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  145.  @MacMcIntire  I agree about seatbelts but the reasoning behind that was to reduce the number of people killed in accidents.
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  146.  @robert-joshuamcfaddin7041  Ah ha! Finally someone separates self defence from guns. Yes, you have an inalienable right to defend yourself but that does not mean you have an inalienable right to carry a gun. Yes guns theoretically make it easier. In practice it doesn’t work very well as the number of people murdered with guns far outweighs the number of people who successfully defend themselves with guns.
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  147.  @orac4734  Gun control doesn’t work that way. Gun control uses basic capitalism to reduce gun violence. Gun control doesn’t simply attempt to remove certain guns from a society. It also includes heavy penalties, including extensive jail terms, for trafficking and possession. An AR-15 in the US costs about $1,200. That same gun in Australia, where it is banned, costs $35,000. It’s perfectly simple: as the risk to the seller goes up, so does the price and that is going to put a lot of people out of the market.
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  148.  @scottythedawg  I don’t know the figure for gun homicides in the UK but their total murder rate is under 1.0/100k. That is true of pretty much every comparable neo-liberal democracy. So your proportion is probably right but the actual figure seems off to me. The US murder rate has skyrocketed since the 2008 Supreme Court decisions in ’Heller v DC’, and ’McDonald v Chicago’. In 2010, the total murder rate in the US was 4.7 but in 2021 it was 7.8 and all of that increase was driven by guns. No other comparable country (Western Europe, UK, Japan, Australia, New Zealand) has ever seen anything like it.
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  149.  @Memerboi-zd3me  Exactly. Just another gun lobby trope.
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  150. Of course there was but the people didn’t want you.
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  151.  @michaeldanielespinoza5033  No, those are your words.
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  152.  @prd4959  Nonsense. Gun control has lowered firearm violence in every peer nation where it’s been tried. And you know it. That’s why you gun nuts have become more and more radicalised.
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  153.  @MarcinP2  Do you know how the black market works?
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  154. @Danny Timms A lot of Americans care very much about it, Danny. Is this some kind of justification for a murder rate that is at least seven times that of Western Europe? You could learn a lot from Europe.
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  155. Epic 7000 Nothing whatever to do with “the left”.
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  156. Toxic Waste Radioactive And the worst way to win a war.
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  157. @Demery James Not in the United States it doesn't.
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  158. @Demery James On what grounds? Court order? Criminal record? Mental health?
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  159. @Demery James That doesn’t actually prove anything.
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  160. @Demery James What an amazing observation you have made. There is still violence everywhere on the planet. But get this: the average for murder in all wealthy neo-liberal democracies (western Europe, the UK, Japan, Australia and New Zealand) is 1/100,000. For the United States it is 6/100,000. That is a disgrace. And since 69% of murders in the U S are committed with guns, it sounds like you have a gun problem.
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  161. @Demery James Fairy stories to make gun nuts feel good about themselves every time there’s a massacre.
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  162. @Demery James It doesn’t take a lot of research to find out that Texas has the highest rate of gun violence. Look it up for yourself.
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  163.  @henrykwieniawski7233  CDC website. Bud.
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  164.  @henrykwieniawski7233  I can’t post links. YouTube blocks them.
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  165.  @henrykwieniawski7233  What for? You’ll just say it’s wrong and we both know you don’t have to even go to the site, much less read it, to do that.
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  166.  @henrykwieniawski7233  Be specific: which ‘study’ are you even looking for? Bud.
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  167.  @baronbrummbar8691  Phrasing?
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  168.  @baronbrummbar8691  ”murder but not kills in the us 5 times as many people get killed by knives then guns” With no punctuation and presuming you meant “than”, rather than “then”, I’ll try. Wrong. In 2018, there were 24,576 murders in the United States, with 19,384 of them by gun (CDC figures). That means 79% of murders in the United States were committed with guns. Your murder rate is 7.4 per 100,000 and your gun murder rate is 5.9 per 100,000. In 2010 there were 16,276 murders and 11,076 were by gun. Back then the percentage was still 69%. Your murder rate was 4.8 per 100,000 and your gun murder rate was 2.83 per 100,000. That was 69%. So in the space of just eight years, your total murder rate has gone up by 50% but your gun murder rate has gone up by about 80%. So gun murders are not only much higher than any other form, they also drive the total murder rate. That’s what getting rid of gun laws has brought you.
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  169.  @baronbrummbar8691  So much for your “5 times as many”…
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  170. You’re not Australian
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  171. Yeah? What about for private sales?
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  172.  @globallyfamouse6609  And you think what? That American involvement made it any better?
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  173.  @stefan4159  Yeah, that’s the official version.
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  174.  @linnenowl8031  That wouldn’t help anyone.
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  175.  @linnenowl8031  Nevertheless, destroying America is not really in anyone's best interests.
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  176.  @Infiltrator_  ...which the US is materially involved in.
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  177. This largely ignores the issue of private sales. This is why you also need registration. Licensing and registration together makes a lot more sense than just one or the other.
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  178.  @stopthephilosophicalzombie9017  If guns were the answer, America would be the safest country on the planet.
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  179.  @davidedwards1914  How would privately owned guns have solved the George Floyd case?
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  180.  @robert-joshuamcfaddin7041  What’s an illegal gun?
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  181.  @robert-joshuamcfaddin7041  Yes but that is an incredibly broad topic and because the US doesn’t have gun registration, it would be almost impossible to determine. So, in truth, it would be perfectly simple for a licensed gun dealer to be selling an illegal gun without knowing it.
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  182.  @jhh600  Do you think it cool to be evil? You're actually condoning murder - in this case, children. You're either a bot or devoid of any human decency. Do you think you will look back on this moment in five years and be proud of yourself?
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  183.  @jhh600  Oh, I get it. You're joking. Yes, that is exactly the gun lobby attitude and that of the majority of the Republican Party.
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  184. The conflict has a much longer history than the. It goes back hundreds of years. At various times, Ukraine has been part of both Poland and Sweden.. The enmity between Ukrainians and Russians also has a lot to do with a resentment of Moscow. This has been consistent throughout (although it was a different target when St Petersburg was the capital). Western interpretations of this are invariably oblivious of the, although Vox has done a pretty good job with this report. Crimea was simply let go. It was a part of Russia before it was a part of the Ukraine anyway but the territory has changed hands several times. The Donbass (or Donbas) is a very important region in terms of industry and resources, so it is important to both. But as one quote rightly points out, many of the people there are ethnically Russian anyway and this is art o the problem. It is also part of the reason why the Russian separatists get blamed for the majority of breaches of the ceasefire - simply because they are there. The West has little experience of these things. Most of Western Europe and places like the United States are largely homogenous societies which have no internal conflict or ethnic tensions worth mentioning. Eastern Europe is a totally different ball game. Have a look at an ethnic distribution map of the Soviet Union - there's one on the net from 1974 - and you can see what a patchwork quilt it is and why ethnicity is a leading cause of conflict as historical territorial claims and nationalism - practically the national sport in that part of the world - dominate the region.
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  185. America has no vision for peace. They support anything that might give them a toe hold in a region but it invariably works against them because it only creates misery for the locals. Assuming everyone wants Freedom™, Democracy® and Capitalism© without ever bothering to find out. You end up with trouble but no vision for the future and no solutions. Remember the old bumper sticker, "Be nice to America or we'll bring democracy to your country"?
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  186.  @gwatts2745  Oh so it’s cultural Marxism and replacement theory, is it? LOL!!
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  187.  @killertruth186  What?
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  188.  @killertruth186  I don’t understand what you’re saying.
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  189.  @killertruth186  Well, I don’t get any of my detailed information from the media or politicians. That’s a bit of a straw man argument. Having 20,000 laws, as the gun lobby has claimed in the past, doesn’t answer the questions people are asking. The fact is that all those laws have been made with the gun lobby riding shotgun and throwing in technical details that rob any laws of a reasonable level of effectiveness. The Assault Weapons Ban of the Clinton era is a perfect example. Shot full of holes by things like grandfathering and exemptions for American made weapons, it was designed to fail. That, of course, gave a triumphant gun lobby grounds for claiming that gun control doesn’t work. So it’s pretty disingenuous when pro-gun people claim that there are all these laws that don’t work when they themselves did everything they could to make sure they wouldn’t.
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  190.  @killertruth186  Then look at how it has worked in other comparable countries. None has a murder rate above 1.0 per 100,000, compared to the US murder rate of 7.5 per 100,000 and 5.9 per 100,000 for gun murders. And they don't have school shootings or active shooter drills or armed guards or metal detectors either. But, as they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating and Australia's gun laws, for example, enjoy 85-90% community support.
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  191.  @garymortenson6452  More guns isn’t working.
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  192. +Jacob Damocles Here's some stuff about ROFAR. It's a pretty interesting innovation and has no equivalent in the West: https://electrical-greece.blogspot.sg/2016/12/analysis-based-on-pakfa-new-kret-radar.html http://fullafterburner.weebly.com/next-gen-weapons/radio-optic-phased-array-radar-a-comprehensive-study
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  193. +Jacob Damocles I suspect the clue is in the first two letters of the name.
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  194. +nat han Stealth also severely limits operational parameters, like payload and range. An F-15, for example, carries a 70% larger payload further than the F-35.
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  195. Oil pipeline.
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  196. sully596 Well, they won so you will have to deal with them now whether you like it or not.
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  197.  @belluh-1huey102  Did I say they didn’t? The had them when they rolled into Saigon.
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  198.  @belluh-1huey102 That’s nice.
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  199.  @belluh-1huey102  That’s nice.
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  200.  @belluh-1huey102  What’s that got to do with Afghanistan?
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  201.  @belluh-1huey102  Appearances can be deceptive. Does anyone really think that's the end of the matter in Iraq? Because it probably is in Afghanistan.
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  202.  @belluh-1huey102  I asked you a question: do you really think it's going to stay the way things are? In the middle of the Middle East? Really? And I hardly think it's the bed of roses you paint it as.
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  203.  @belluh-1huey102  What?
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  204.  @belluh-1huey102  I did. There are plenty of articles about at War on the Rocks. They don’t echo your views.
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  205.  @Alex_Aramayo  KMA troll.
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