Comments by "Comm0ut" (@Comm0ut) on "Sandboxx" channel.

Learning in combat in small wars is MUCH cheaper than surprise sinkings in major wars.
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@trollmastermike52845 Hydra are older than dirt and when used in combat it's rightly presumed the enemy will snag a few which malfunction. Not everything is exotic.
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@TurboNFRStwoK That makes sense. Could be the brake rider wasn't covering the charge handle, couldn't move their hand to it in time, and was distracted by events. I notice Navy wheel chocks are polyurethane with a (good idea) sliding bar but most polyurethane is a bit slippery. My F-16 unit tried plastic chocks (no bar, just conventional) on land and mere rain on the concrete ramp (let alone snow and ice in winter) was enough that they could slip dangerously. OTOH woods ability to conform to thus grab ramp surfaces made it much more reliable chock material. (That's also why placing wood between forklift tines and load reduces load slippage when moving steel, machine tools etc.) Given the short distance between main gear and the deep blue sea how long (guesstimated seconds) in your opinion does a brake rider have to react then apply the brakes? I've ridden brakes many times on other aircraft, mostly F-16 and just accepted I'd headbutt the HUD in an emergency stop but my hands stayed where they should be because there is so little reaction time if chit goes bad. Of course I inspected the tow bar before entering the cockpit no matter who else looked at it first.
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Drag chutes work superbly. They educe brake and tire wear (both important to mission readiness because fighter wheels are small and heavily loaded) and of course landing distance. It would be interesting to fit modern RATO bottles to F-35 hardpoints to learn how much those could slash takeoff distance. You'd lose a couple of hardpoints but Alert birds could launch much faster.
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Most Warthog kills in DS were Hellfire shots and they still got perforated by enemy SHORAD. Their ABDR troops were next door to me at KKMC and did a magnificent job but it was obvious even then A-10 were best used in counterinsurgency not nation state wars. Gun pods were previously tried on Phantom with similar results. Heavy aerial cannon other than in COIN are long obsolete and getting close for CAD/BAS against opponents with modern defensive systems is begging to get shot down. Fortunately modern controllers can use anything that carries ordnance for battlefield air support including strategic bombers.
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Attack helos exist to put warheads on foreheads, but the warheads are getting good at that on their own. Meatbags in attack rotorcraft are becoming obsolete because rotorcraft are FORCE-LOSS MULTIPLIERS. Keep the meatbags in the rear with the gear and you don't lose their years of training, skill and experience to a MANPAD or RPG or small arms fire or missiles or drones.
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Junk consumer drones are not all drones and all navigation is not by GPS and GLONASS.
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Why do you assume all drones are effectively "jammable"?
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Manned ground attack birds do not need to exist because their sustainment costs are absurdly high, even your beloved A-10 (it's OK to like things because they're cool but don't pretend otherwise) giving poor bang for big bucks. Meat in the seat requires much larger squadron manning, stunningly expensive aircrew in an era of pilot shortages, and CSAR (because every now and then the US fights people who can and do shoot back). A-10 has low loiter time and a large deployment footprint. The REAL considerations of combat air power are too boring to add to video games. SHORAD is now so dangerous neither side in Ukraine can attain air dominance, merely local air superiority. A-10 was designed in the early innings of the Cold War where high losses were rightly expected. Aircrew are not expendable in 2025. A-10 took frequent damage as far back as Desert Storm (where I worked F-16s on the same ramp at KKMC next to the impressively talented CLSS troops who kept most damaged A-10s flying) and 2025 is far more dangerous then the ancient 1990s.
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Keeping Russia from respawning the USSR is why NATO exists. BTW consider using an online translator if English is not your first language.
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@MrWizardjr9 Because EVERY precaution that can be taken to avoid getting hit must be taken and a mere aircraft is an acceptable loss. Why do you assume they were "overwhelmed"?
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@Inkling777 How many years personal experience do you have in military aviation and if none why do you permit yourself an opinion? Aviation operations are not mountain climbing, they're a complex technical ballet even on land where an enormous number of things done by a large number of people and machines can go wrong. Carriers are immensely powerful and complex. In emergency necessary operational risks are taken. The loss of an aircraft impresses spectators but losing a few is the nature of the business. Be glad 1970s and '80s Class A mishap rates are not the norm. For example the Air Force safety folks reliably predicted Class A (which aren't just total loss of airframe but include that) causes and outcomes, but that's not the same as predicting WHICH of a given airframe will buy the proverbial farm. In those days (I worked on Phantom, Bronco and F-16s '81 to '07) losing well over a squadron's worth of fighter/attack airframes per year was not unusual but taking that risk was a necessity so it was acceptable.
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Why? They're only machines and you don't fly one.
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@Skinflaps_Meatslapper You definitely have an aircraft maintainer nick. Kudos.
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@SandboxxApp Hypersonic is the buzzword du jour for tech-illiterates.
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Combined arms work fine when employed by non-idiots....The Russian Federation is a clown show compared to the USSR and it sucks by leadership CHOICE. The Russian government shows no evidence of a professional military ethos which is a very GOOD thing since competent evil is dangerous. Fortunately Russians enjoy using their AFV as mine detectors and a mobility kill is as good as a K-kill when the vehicle cannot be recovered.
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Wanting manned systems is an enormous self-inflicted production bottleneck but pilots like to fly and they run the Air Force. At least modern designs can interoperate with meatless situationally expendable airframes but one day sticking meat in the seat will be as laughable as the Japanese Ohka where disposable pilots substituted for expensive guidance systems.
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Bugsmashers are for use against opponents without an air force. Cute toy aeroplane but it still requires horrendously dangerous CSAR because it has meat in the seat. See "Bat 21" for what happens to manned missions gone wrong and their rescuers taking heavy losses, then remember that era is now ancient but MANPADS etc are a far greater threat than they were then. The same format could operate remote-manned in distant locales far less expensively at no risk to those flying it. The aircraft is essentially a sensor platform with weapons (like a drone) and is too small/light to mount an ejection seat, in impressively bad oversight but bodies are worst enemy trade bait than live aircrew. Comparison to drones like Preds misses the mark because not all aircraft are the same. I get that this channel is about EXCITING STUFF but this isn't exciting or innovative, it's just buying an odd duck to get around other services horning in on the missions (which greatly affects funding). Operating at low level with no ejection seat WILL cost lives so the mission had better be worth the blood price. That problem was solved with the highly successful OV-10 Bronco which does (in civilian hands) much more, can take off and land on primitive surfaces and often did, and had the fastest ejection seat in the Air Force thanks to the canopy breaker on top of each seat. When one had an engine failure on takeoff (at that height recovery wasn't an option) those fast seats saved a USAF Bronco crew out of Sembach AB (RIP, it was a very cool duty station) one of whom got but a single swing when his chute deployed. Both lived but had they been in a contemporary O-2 they'd have been paste.
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Most dangerous? B-61 says hi.
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Nuclear warfare cannot possibly "end the world" but may cleanse it of its human infestation. I expect future sentient C-130 to preserve select supporting entities and reward their loving maintainers so it's all good. Adeptus Onethirticus will thrive. In the future, there is only Lockmart.
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He's desperate to be relevant and it's easy to see why he didn't make General. Ukraine is not a war between modern nation-states, it's like the Iran-Iraq war of two less-developed nation-states who have some individual modern systems and piles of legacy equipment. The Marine mission was never to be another Army but leadership began doing Army jobs to keep funded. That of course isn't their orginal mission so going back to small unit deployments in the Pacific makes much more sense.
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Keep in mind it is also long obsolete and that the general public has zero legitimate interest in knowing what any black program successor can do. That's a good thing from the only POV that matters, military superiority in a permanently hostile world.
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