201–210 of 213 posts
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I'm always surprised about this line of thinking. Surely an active duty pilot is going to keep his mouth shut, whereas as we see, as a retired one he's happy to talk to the papers.
On top of that, the person I want flying more of the same plane is one who’s experienced piloting it during major failure conditions. Instead they retire the experienced guy and put some other fresh hotshot in the seat.
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That's a fantasy, unless you think Germany is occupied by the USA. But that's not the case. Occupation ended in 1954, since then the USA military is stationed in Germany (and Italy) due to contracts. This so called deployment contracts have been confirmed in 1990, when Germany became a sovereign nation again. I know, the current USA is not big on "rule of law" anymore, but even a bad deal maker should understand that…
> I find it refreshing, however, that the "we are the evil empire now" idea is getting out of the closet. Call a spade a spade. “Good” and “evil” are moral constructs that haven’t played a meaningful role in documented geopolitics since at least the 4th century BC. There’s a well-known quote often attributed to Hastings Ismay that captures NATO’s original purpose. I won’t paste it here as it might come off as a bit h…
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> My feeling is that the F-35 is "too big to fail" Allies cancelling orders may force Washington’s hand: the cost of additional jets, parts, et cerera skyrocket if spread over fewer planes.
A common misconception - often echoed on this site - is that NATO allies and the U.S. operate on equal terms. They don’t. If the U.S. wants to sell 100 F-35s to European nations, it will happen. Even today, with all this talk around NATO, there’s a massive U.S. military presence at NATO bases across Europe. These forces are, in effect, under U.S. control, stationed in countries like Germany and Italy. And if Germany…
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Your comment reminded me, an excellent showcase of institutional shenanigans is the Chernobyl miniseries on Netflix. Denial, blame, coverups, accountability. It's a very well made series in a grim Soviet setting.
Just please don't take it as a documentary. It's a disservice to the people that actually worked at the plant that day and portrays them as arrogant fools, which none of them actually were. That Chernobyl Guy on YouTube did great breakdowns.
Most of the major events depicted in the show are things I recall having been reported previously.
I thought many of the workers in the plant, the first responders, etc were portrayed as heroes and most at least quite sympathetically.
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Personally I think the risk he exposed others to gets too little attention. That jet could have come down anywhere. I can understand it’s a nerve wrecking situation and that ejecting is a likely outcome in any event, so “sooner rather than later” might feel like the better option. But sending the jet off as a cruise missile could have been avoided.
If you don't see anything, staying in the aircraft doesn't make it any less of a missile. If he didn't eject, he could have still crashed into houses exactly like it could have after ejecting.
It was obviously possible to get the plane into a climb, because that’s how it ended up after he ejected. Once you are there is time to think and plan. Bad visibility doesn’t stretch infinity in the upward direction.
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If you don't see anything, staying in the aircraft doesn't make it any less of a missile. If he didn't eject, he could have still crashed into houses exactly like it could have after ejecting.
In the extreme, sure. And I’m not saying I know he was in the wrong. I’m just saying it’s something I think gets too little attention. It was obviously possible to get the plane into a climb, because that’s how it ended up after he ejected. Once you are there is time to think and plan. Bad visibility doesn’t stretch infinity in the upward direction.
If you still have a working attitude indicator you can trust, you obviously shouldn’t eject, but it sounds like he wasn’t sure if he could still rely on that. You don’t feel the direction the plane is going without instruments.
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Even serious discussion of Chinese soldiers in Canada or Mexico is clear casus belli and surefire way for those countries to be occupied. Chinese soldiers on the border is existential to US and when dealing with existential risks countries tend to put funny concepts such as UN charter or human rights aside. Canada is absolutely indefensible with no strategic depth or ability to get new supplies. Mexico is harder to o…
> Even serious discussion of Chinese soldiers in Canada or Mexico is clear casus belli and surefire way for those countries to be occupied Which is why military alliance discussions aren’t conducted in public. The series of announcements would be e.g. Xi visiting Ottawa for trade talks and then announcing that Canada is under its nuclear umbrella. > Canada is absolutely indefensible with no strategic depth or ability…
Problem is, China might be happy to see the US invade Canada, because then they can finally take Taiwan. And that's the real danger of Trump's foolish aggression: by weakening American's alliances, he's giving China more space to assert itself and take what they want.
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That's a fantasy, unless you think Germany is occupied by the USA. But that's not the case. Occupation ended in 1954, since then the USA military is stationed in Germany (and Italy) due to contracts. This so called deployment contracts have been confirmed in 1990, when Germany became a sovereign nation again. I know, the current USA is not big on "rule of law" anymore, but even a bad deal maker should understand that…
> I find it refreshing, however, that the "we are the evil empire now" idea is getting out of the closet. Call a spade a spade. “Good” and “evil” are moral constructs that haven’t played a meaningful role in documented geopolitics since at least the 4th century BC. There’s a well-known quote often attributed to Hastings Ismay that captures NATO’s original purpose. I won’t paste it here as it might come off as a bit h…
I'm showing my age here, sorry. It is a play on something Ronald Reagan said about another empire.
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Even if he would have trusted the alternative controls the jet has, he was in clouds over a densely populated area going 350mph just 750 feet above the ground, far below the 6000 feet the article quotes from the manual. "In fact, the F-35B’s flight manual said, “the aircraft is considered to be in out of controlled flight (OCF) when it fails to respond properly to pilot inputs,” adding, “if out of control below 6,000…
Well, that's the crux of the issue: apparently the aircraft still did respond properly to pilot inputs. Of course, it's totally understandable to get spooked by all the electronics failing and decide to rather bail out than bet on the plane still being flyable, but if you go by the book, he shouldn't have ejected...
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I disagree, this is true, but the failure was complex and worth understanding some extra nuances: * The design of the reactors made them unsafe in a scenario where you needed to quickly insert the control rods. Doing so should reduce power output, but due to their graphite tips, it led to a sudden surge of power output. * Leadership repeatedly didn't listen to or believe what they were hearing from boots on the groun…
I mean it's a cool sequence of events and definitely if engineering interests you it's worth studying. Although I ultimately find the question of if the USSR knew about the graphite tip problem beforehand the most interesting part of the story (the HBO series taking the side of they knew). With the scandal not being the explosion but that the state was blind to problems it was causing. But the common person just real…
The HBO series has a beautiful way to phrase it: It's the cost of lies.