Dude - I promise you, I am not on the left.. Read ALL my other posts and you will see that.

Wow, never even heard of that.. Sounds like something that needs a writeup!

Great Idea - Lets taunt them with Nuclear war, thats a great idea.

Our Military is only doing what our political leadership tells them to do. Dont throw the military under the bus for mistakes that our elected politicians make.

Even the A-10 is overkill in this environment.. Was thinking something along the line of the A-1.

Sorry - Meant in Iraq/Afghanistan. Would love to pull Sandy out of retirement.

Sorry - Meant in Iraq/Afghanistan. Would love to pull Sandy out of retirement.

You bring up a interesting point. Did the USAF, Army, or Marines ever consider using a prop based plane, based locally in-country? Certainly the Ground to Air risk is relatively small, so, a perfect use case..

Sounds about right. I remember it being a issue, but didn’t remember the details. Thanks!

I think you may not know the meaning of the word theoretical. :)

I think NATO is taken very seriously by Russia. One of the reasons for them moving into Georgia and the Ukraine is to make sure they DONT join NATO. They know they cant attack a NATO country, that is a red line which we will not let them go past.

Well, their is only so much you can do in the Black Sea legally as well. Keep that in mind. International treaty limits the ships we can put in there. Even if we wanted to we couldn’t sail a carrier strike group into the area.

What would you have the U.S. and UK do? Arm them? Send in Troops? Nuke Moscow?

The USS Ross was more then likely to close to Russian waters. Or atleast close enough that if it was a Russian ship in the Gulf of Mexico, it would be shadowed by half a dozen coast guard and navy ships, and buzzed every few minutes by the USAF.

True.. But mistakes happen, I think I would still be nervous if I was on either side, but more so on the fighter side.

You know, I continually hear this from the trolls on the Gawker sites. Why do you think we in the U.S. dont know whats going on in the rest of the world? I really honestly want to understand that, because it drives me nuts. Do some people in the U.S. not understand/give a shit/care about international politics? Of…

My guess is that pilot was more scared then anyone on that ship. He was probably being tracked by Aegis way the hell further out then his radar could even see USS Ross, and knew it. Can you imagine that conversation?

Dont know about a Guided Railgun round, I think we are still many years off from that. I believe the best you are going to get from a Railgun in the next 20 years will probably be un-guided, which quite honestly, is probably fine for what we would use it for.

I dont disagree it’s the best tool we have for the job. It still doesnt mean that job should be done. It’s one thing to ‘accept’ losses, its quite another to send someone on a suicide mission. Thats what the pilot of a A-10 will face in the face of a modern military, at best being shot down, at worst, dead.

I dont know - I wish I did, as i’m sure the AF did as well.