G.I. Joe

It was the whole system. It had gotten very good, especially when Harris got distracted enough to let it be, rather than just sticking to "Hulk smash!"

What are the stakes? A good six pack of hazy IPA work? Because it's at worst a 70/30 that a deal is made.

omfg  a parking garage grog... I should have expected that on this forum.

And in true fashion for this forum I have to chime in…I own a parking company and I am a paid expert. That technology is essentially 120 year old hydraulics and not new at all. 

This is true. Almost everything that Reagan is credited with the so-called Reagan military buildup, was started in the Carter administration, a lot of it under the direction of Bill Perry who was then UnderSecDef for R&D. He realized the US needed quality over quantity, and Carter realized the military needed a drastic rebuilding after being wrung out by Vietnam. As a young officer then I appreciated the 2 huge pay raises that Carter gave us. In 6 months I got something like a 13% and then an 8% pay raise, plus I went over 2, and got promoted to 1LT. Man, I was rich suddenly after having lived on $600/mo for 2 years!
Reagan had the good sense to continue all those programs and buy them.
As a sidelight, if you want some good reading, William Perry's book "My Journey at the Nuclear Brink" details a good bit of this and also his later time as SecDef and even later, and current, efforts at nuclear disarmament/arms reduction. It's interesting reading and if you can find any videos of interviews with him, he's great in person. Soft spoken, brilliant, and by all accounts a really nice guy. He and former Sen. Sam Nunn on a panel discussion together is a treat (seen in person). Two men who do not need a single note card to hold forth at length and detail about anything to do with defense, nuclear weapons, deterrence, and arms control treaties and actions. 
Quick search and there are several interviews here:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=william+perry+secretary+of+defense
Dave

Well we know that we were not going to invade but I am not sure they did.  If the west was irrelevant then the USSR likely would not have worked so hard or spent so much on threat based capability development.  The Cold War within militaries is a narratives of continual, and very expensive, one-upmanship.  Just take a look at tank development.  If the USSR really did not see western military capability as a threat and was largely a propaganda device, why spend billions on development arcs in the T-72, T-80 and T-90 series?  A whole bunch of cheap T-62s could keep the locals in line and a bazillion of them would make the average insular population convinced they were safe.  This was a template applied across military forces, from aircraft to ships, to nuclear deterrence.
The R&D and development efforts were not going through the motions on either side, they were highly competitive and drove everything from doctrine to intelligence priorities.  I am allergic to the “Soviets sucked and would have collapsed if we did nothing” argument because it is not supported by the facts.  The Soviet empire was a pretty powerful but flawed beast.  The Cold War was not an easy day in history, it took a lot of effort and sacrifice to win.  A lesson we should definitely keep in mind for whatever this is in front of us.

I think this position likely decouples too far.  This suggests that if the US had dramatically decreased spending the USSR would have stayed “flat” and collapsed anyway.  I do not think this is true.  Western and Soviet defence spending were linked, however were a component in a larger competition.  If one decouples US defence spending from the argument then it is too easy to insert revisionist agendas on current defence spending - eg “well it had nothing to do with the outcome of the Cold War, why are we doing it again with China?”
The Soviet system was brittle and flawed from the get go.  By forcing it onto an unsustainable trajectory by creating a decades long arms race the West did successfully create pressures that led to an eventual collapse of the system.  It took a lot of pressures of which military was a central component.  If the West had tapped out and relieved the pressure the Soviet system could have also reduced spending and perhaps survived much longer.  The effect of Western defence spending was much larger and longer than any single decade of the Cold War.

"But in addition to African countries, white markers are also on...New Zealand's Chatham Island."
I smell a troll. There are maybe 800 people there, though it's possible he wants to own the time zone and be the first to know what is happening tomorrow.

I did 7 1/2 months without ever having committed nor been charged with a crime.  Then again I was on the left.  They don't seem to use those detention powers on the right.  Our rights are in the constitution, that does not however mean the state can't and hasn't denied folks that right... repeatedly.
Your point however is correct.  One of my favorite political movie lines by Michael Douglas said in The American President 
 

are you saying auto correct is not a fascist?  I dunno sometimes it really feels oppressive.  

I have to say...and this is coming from the center left...that a lot of the antifa folks in DC were completely obnoxious. The BLM folks were what we would call around here 'good protesters'. They did their thing, acted coherently and didn't randomly attack whatever for the thrill of it...the burning of the lobby of the AFL-CIO being a particularly egregious example of the tendency to burn for the fun of it tendency of some of the Antifa folks. A lot of them looked like teenagers burning off covid isolation.
But...neither one had anything like the sheer nastiness of the radical right wingers. Patches like RWDS (that stands for "Right Wing Death Squad") and Confederate flags were routine and far more common than outright Nazi regalia. People telling my neighbors with a pride flag at their house that they "will come back for you later". Or the 100 or so Proud Boys that charged a police line my kid and I were behind because they were trying to get at BLM folks on the plaza on 16th Street behind us. Oh...and did I mention the guys with the long guns that got arrested at one of my places of business?
We got to see the monster with it's mask off...because they were sure that they were going to get a pardon sooner or later as they would tell DC MPD who had to deal with them...and I would strongly suggest you all take it seriously. Out of patriotism if nothing else. Nobody benefits more from it than Vladimir Putin.

Multiple expliosions reportedly on Kursk airfield - homebase of 14th fighter aviation regiment (Su-30SM)
Sound of shooting in Sudzha district of Kursk oblast. Likely next RDK raid, but no info for now
 
 

This is absolutely the reason. The Army LOVES the Hog (there’s nothing like a good”Brrrrrrt” for close air support, except USMC F/A-18 Super hornets), and the Air Force “Fighter Mafia” has been trying to get it cancelled and later obsoleted so they can use that funding for more “glamorous” and dazzling fighters. It has been a very public, bitter, and long running fight. The Hog does have some every strong Air Force, Army, and Congressional supporters though.

We know for a fact that some od the Dutch F-16s have been undergoing additional maintenance/ upgrades since late 2022. It might very well be that Uncle Sam could send something really really modern (just keeping the F-16 myth alive would be worth it). If some airframes would come with the SABRs, the overall picture would change dramatically, and not to VVS advantage.
 

The F-16s being retired by European F-35 operators are old A models, but they have received a very comprehensive Mid Life Upgrade program. They are still a very capable platform...

The F-16s being retired by European F-35 operators are old A models, but they have received a very comprehensive Mid Life Upgrade program. They are still a very capable platform...

I don’t think the age or capabilities of the platforms are deterministic. They need to hook into the Ukrainian C4ISR and carry the AIM 120, as such they are a threat the RuAF cannot discount.  This will reinforce the air denial situation which is about as good as it gets in this war with respect to AirPower.  There is already a lot of noise on dogfight capability but in reality Ukraine just needs a missile carrier that can move quickly and go where the ISR network tells it to.  This, along with other capability stacks up and keeps Russian air power at stand off, which will be critical in a ground offensive.  The F16 is a capable module in a much broader air denial system, so it is good news.

Yes, you’re absolutely correct. Whenever Sailors would tell us that Marines were part of the Navy and needed the Navy to take them where they needed to go, we’d simply reply, “Yup, everyone needs their taxi service.” That said though, the Navy and Marines have always supported and complemented each other’s missions. Unlike two of the other branches who are constantly trying to “one-up”each other and steal the others funding while still constantly arguing over whether the Army is violating the 1949 Key West Accords that created the Air Force by arming helicopters.

It really depends on the version of the aircraft and weapons that will come with it, but few things that come to mind::
- way better radars when compared to MiGs and Sukhois
- Link16 giving them networking capability, so no need to emit all the time. Probably it will allow automatic exchange of information with ground based radars too, and firing missiles without turning radars on at all.
- availability of various electronic warfare equipment, depending on what we are willing to send it can be very modern
- ability to use targeting pods to acquire targets and launch PGMs independently, not only at pre-programmed targets
- ability to do CAS with said PGMs against time sensitive targets
- hugely improved SEAD abilities due to integrated EW pods and anti-radar missiles
- ability to carry out anti-shipping missions with Harpoons 
- depending on AIM-120 version they can have quite a reach. In general later C versions should have range as good or better than R-77, and D would be vastly superior to it.
- no matter the AMRAAM version they get, it will be the first time UA Air Force will have medium range fire and forget missiles at it's disposal, making defence against cruise missiles way way easier, and offering hugely increased possibilities in A2A.
 

It took a week from Britain's "we will start training UA pilots on trainer aircraft in the summer" to "UA pilots are already flying F-16s in Poland".  There will be zero surprise on my end if it turns out that UA pilots are so talented that they manage to finish their training in a month or two from now, just in time to participate in offensive against the Russian land bridge.
 

It would also be no surprise to me if UA pilots had started training months ago and it was only announced because some indication got out that it was happening.

Yup, that's what I was hinting at. There were so many little leaks and rumours about it during past year that it is hard no to treat the developments from last week as some kind of a theatre. What's interesting is that there were also explicit mentions of not only F-16s, but also "other aircraft" that Ukrainians are training for. Mirage 2000 seem like an obvious choice, but I still keep my fingers crossed for these Tranche1 Eurofighters from the UK. There are interesting times ahead of us.

Cherry on top: Su-35 was almost certainly flying SEAD for tonight’s round of cruise missiles.