davidalman.bsky.social
Airman + consultant + aero engineer interested in national strategy, domestic policy, environmentalism, good food, and all things aviation. Views = mine alone. #airpower
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Fighter pilots, on the other hand, generally know what the other fighter pilots want to hear. They then think that the AWACS is useless if it can't provide the appropriate picture comm.
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The classic example is calling, "Darkstar, picture" to which you get some mouth breathing on the radio as the situation rapidly deteriorates. Many ABMs (air battle managers) are awesome, but some are not, and the anecdote based fighter pilot community only recalls the bad times.
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AWACS then use that greater situational awareness to provide warning and control to fighters. This is where fighter pilots typically get themselves in trouble, because sometimes AWACS - due to a variety of reasons - don't do as good of a job at controlling as fighter pilots do.
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They, first and foremost, provide greater situational awareness with their large radars. While technology can shrink radars, bigger is generally better. Governed by r^4 in the denominator, you quite simply need more power if you want to see farther. AWACS have radars you can't have on a fighter.
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It's wild considering how many of the folks who disparage Pax Americana studied history / law / political science...but we literally created Pax Americana out of the ashes of WW2 to benefit us..... It was built for us. We were benevolent, so everyone accepted it, but it was built for us first.
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Doesn’t matter. Any military leader has an obligation to demonstrate to the American people that the military tries to be non-partisan.
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“We only cite the policy when we disagree” means it is not policy.
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That meme, but all Americans…..
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We need more woke in Taiwan / Guam to get reinforcements there
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My mental image of Marines rolling into LA:
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Here's the menswear guy's post on being undocumented.
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i also frankly think a lot of you would do well to actually talk to anyone who serves in the guard or who is active duty military, because it's clear to me that these people are mostly an abstraction for you
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I mean to be clear fighter pilots don't do PT, we workout at the gym or at the TDY hotel....
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Administrative commander - their face is on the wall as part of the chain of command
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100% agree - I don’t think working out on Omaha beach is appropriate but was just commenting on the wearing of apparel bit
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False binary. It’s not an either/or. A good SECDEF does both.
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SECAF wearing our fighter squadron’s shirt at a workout? Heck yeah.
Now, whether or not that workout should be on sacred ground (if there even is such a thing) is another question…..
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but it is the start of carrying briefcases on your way to the top!
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they're not taking any? wild, bad for the aspiring grad student in me...
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Unclear? Obviously tons of macro factors that you’d have to tease out but we had pretty high growth while the draft existed.
My slant is I think it generally doesn’t matter who doesn’t enter industry from a productivity standpoint - no subset of America has a monopoly on competence
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Certainly, no faster way (other than airborne or odst) to move infantry around.
As long as infantry is relevant (always) then so will ways to move them around at various levels of risk
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The story here isn't ermahgod drones changed everything. The story is that despite access to everything from drones to AI to hypersonic missiles, the dominant weapon system on the battlefield after 4,000 years of warfare is still infantry. Just a person with a shovel, gun, and motivation.
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Is it truly DIFFERENT? Or is it just that seeing it is different?
Never been in infantry combat, but you read about dudes getting shelled in WW1 giving up, going outside, etc. But no youtube.
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I wouldn’t disagree, I just want to understand what is happening and dislike hyperbole.
The key with arty is a single gun crew can pump a ton of shells downrange with a lot of explosive weight vs having to have an individual manually steer each drone.
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Are drones 80% this year because they had some drone innovation that gave them a temporary edge, is it because a lack of artillery has driven them to use drones?
Is it drones combined with artillery?
If a fighter flies into the ground, we give credit to the pursuer, not the ground.
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Yeah but why?
It’d be like saying (probably false but as example), “Most mass murder attempts in Europe have knives”
Is it because knives are the most deadly? Or because they don’t have ready access to guns?
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The UK’s defense review, quoted in here, makes two wild wild claims.
“Drones now kill more people than traditional artillery in the war in Ukraine, and whoever gets new technology into the hands of their Armed Forces the quickest will win.”
The first is wild if true, the second is undeniably false
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“This is more than an isolated incident — it’s a glimpse into the character of future conflict, where war won’t be confined to neatly drawn front lines,”
Have you heard of the airplane? Or rockets? The Paris Gun was hitting Paris in WW1…Zeppelins over London…
www.nytimes.com/2025/06/04/w...
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It's going to be so sick how it benefits the military none while also simultaneously creating zero actual industry
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Look we just have people who want to take drugs and win quick victories, too
the long term strategic stuff is lame