G.I. Joe

Agreed. I certainly had no intention of casting stones, which is precisely why I used the issues Canada had with the Airborne Regiment as an example in my original post yesterday. I also did not mean to imply that NATO and allied armed services don't still have a lot of room for improvement on screening out extremism within the ranks, as both your examples demonstrate, just that it is a goal worth striving for...

+1 Oh, how I wish we could like your posts right now...

All fair points. I certainly agree that an army in an existential conflict cannot afford to be as picky as its peacetime counterpart. We can probably largely reconcile the two viewpoints by saying that in wartime the goalposts don't go away, but they may be moved quite a bit. I wouldn't set those concerns aside completely, but the bar for "as long as they don't cause trouble within the ranks" might look a bit different for the duration. To draw a non-political comparison / example: Flight safety doesn't go out the window in wartime, it is as important as ever, but operating minima and procedures have to be adjusted for operational necessity. Much of the extreme low flying by the Ukrainian Air Force we've seen videos of in this thread would be unacceptable in peacetime even on an approved low level practice route. Down the side of a highway with oncoming civilian vehicle traffic, it would be a court martial waiting to happen. But right now it's presumably preventing more losses from enemy fire than it's causing from controlled flight into terrain, so the tradeoff is acceptable.

Not sure I can really agree with that...now feels like a good time to make a callback to @sburke's comment about extremism and reason. If I were running a unit in a professional armed service of a democratic nation, I wouldn't want to try to integrate a bunch of personnel who might have serious issues serving alongside and taking orders from men and women who might be of a different ethnic origin, follow a different religion (or no religion), be LGBT, etc. Far too much potential for disruption of good order and discipline. Canada had some very unfortunate experiences back in the Eighties and Nineties after our Airborne Regiment became a "dumping ground" for personnel (often with far right tendencies) who had caused disciplinary issues elsewhere...

It probably would be technically feasible to catapult launch an A-22 at maximum takeoff weight without overstressing the airframe, but my guess is they didn't feel it was worth the extra effort to rig up such a system. The equipment that could be stripped out during the drone conversion (seats, harnesses, radios, instruments, control columns, rudder pedals, etc.) probably already weighed more than the undercarriage. Having a look at the POH (downloaded from here), a stock A-22LS already has room for 200 kg / 440 lbs of payload, the drone conversion would probably already get that to around 225 kg / 500 lbs without major airframe modifications.

I don't have a source handy to cite at the moment, but I recall reports some years back of U.S. SOF acting as forward air controllers for Iranian fighter-bombers conducting strikes against ISIL...

Having worked in pest control for over half a year, I'll go out on a limb and guess a lot...

Agreed. Losing power from one engine on a four engine aircraft generally shouldn't be too serious an emergency. Even the weight shift and asymmetric drag from having it fall off would probably not be too hugely significant (the engine would likely be close to the C of G in that position), but the fire and whatever else may have caused it to fall off hints at other systems and structural damage...

Shades of the Battle of Hampton Roads.

You also watch the news. That's enough to make anyone touchy these days.

"A whale is a shark built to Admiralty specifications." -Old Royal Navy saying.

Or tail warning radar...maybe a rear-facing camera.

I stand corrected...thank you. I must admit to being rather unfamiliar with New Zealand Army operations in World War II. From my usual airpower-centric lens, I'm familiar with how active the RNZAF were in the PTO, but am not at all surprised if Bomber Command operations in Europe took up the bulk of the RNZAF's personnel commitments.

Secondary as far as the democracies as a whole were concerned, but I think it's fair to say the PTO was the de facto primary theater for the US Navy and Marines (as well as Australia and New Zealand, of course).

Thomas Newdick on The War Zone: Russia's "New" Jet Trainer Design is a 1990s Throwback This seems to support two themes that have been hinted at a lot in this thread since the early days: 1) the Russian Air Force already had a severe pilot shortage before February 24, 2022; and 2) their training system is a bit of a bleepshow... (Also a good case in point of sanctions working with the singular lack of support from Czechia for the V-VS' L-39 fleet...)

"More harm has been done by people panicked over societal decline than societal decline ever did." -Randall Munroe (xkcd)

This post and the preceding one it was in response to by @paxromana got me thinking of one of the best World War II documentaries I have ever seen: the 1993 PBS series A Fighter Pilot's Story, featuring Captain Quentin Aanenson, a P-47 pilot who served in the ETO. I was 13 when I saw that documentary and I think it did more to give me a grown-up understanding of war than anything else. One thing that really stuck in my mind was Aanenson talking about how difficult it was to deal with the fact that he would sometimes have the power of life or death over an individual enemy soldier. If he saw someone running in the open, he could put in a little aileron or just nudge the rudder and strafe him. He usually did, because that German soldier might kill two or three Americans the next day if he didn't...but he never felt good about it. Immediately after the war, shooting a pair of gophers that had been digging up his garden was too much for Aanenson after everything he'd seen and been through, and afterwards he put the gun back on his wall and never shot again. To be sure, every line of work attracts a range of personalities, but I think Aanenson was far more typical than gung-ho movie stereotypes and reminiscences told with bravado to put on a brave face and avoid difficult memories would suggest. He was definitely not having fun up there, and was all too aware of the reality of what he was doing. Aanenson will always have my respect not just for his wartime service, but for pulling zero punches in his documentary.

That is an incredibly powerful image, sometimes one picture can convey raw courage better than words ever can. Personally, I get "Last of the Breed" by Dos Gringos stuck in my head when I see this. ---- (PSA regarding Dos Gringos... fighter pilot bands can be an acquired taste, and that is one of the few of their songs that does not contain NSFW lyrics...)

I don't know...anything that makes war harder to romanticize has to be a positive on some level in my books. I guess I have to count that as a silver lining to the possible looming obsolescence of fighter aircraft.

Agreed, I think you're probably right in that whichever type arrives first (presumably Gripen at this point) is likely to be the only one used before the shooting stops. But I fully expect the F-16 deliveries and possibly one or more of the other types we've seen discussed as well to continue on the back burner to facilitate as rapid a phase-out of Ukraine's legacy Soviet types as possible.

That's definitely a stumbling block and it may prevent both types from serving together in the short term. But in the long term it has to be addressed either way because 8 pilots is really too small a cadre even for one type and English proficiency is going to be required with NATO integration regardless of equipment choice. My guess is they will probably end up both entering service eventually.

I don't see why not, many countries have frontline combat aircraft supplied by multiple other countries. Malaysia has F/A-18s, MiG-29s, Su-30s and Hawk 200s, for example.

I have the distinct feeling that compiling Unmanned Aircraft Systems of the Russo-Ukrainian War could become a fairly monumental undertaking for some ambitious aviation historian in the not too distant future.

Mulroney and Chrétien were made of sterner stuff than Justin...

Grand Admiral Zaarin's coup attempt against Emperor Palpatine, maybe? (And yes, I know that's old school Legends timeline material...)