They already have that: the A-10s original mission profile is obsolete. It was designed in an era before effective MANPADS. It is not survivable when they are present.

In a word? Strawman.

Ironic does not mean what you appear to think it means.

F-22 and F-35 have APUs, as do most earlier US aircraft.

You’re a bad person.

Did you really just use “Obummer” without a shred of irony?

$100 plans are for people on AT&T or Verizon, who are better if you spend a lot of time traveling in rural areas. Everyone else is markedly cheaper. I,personally, pay $60 a month, but I use 10-20GBs of data per month because I hate dealing with free wifi (and am slightly paranoid about how secure those access points…

I could promise to build you a Rome in a day, but that doesn’t mean I can.

Umm...those numbers aren’t remotely correct. I think you’re trying to compare procurement cost of the F-22 program to total lifetime cost of the F-35 program. Apples and oranges, guy. You don’t even factor in how there will be 10x the number of F-35s as there will be F-22s.

Yes...the ATF program started in the early 80s, the ATB started some years before that. Not sure what your point is, as none of it contradicts what I said. Also, be more specific about your numbers. You don’t say what they're referring to, nor what year the dollars are from. Inflation has to be accounted for if the…

Ehh...technically true, but not by much. The B-2 and F-22, the last two clean sheet designs, took 8 years from first flight to service introduction. That suggests the F-35 (first flight in December 2006) should have entered IOC late last year or early this year instead of a month or so ago (for B model only). So it’s…

Lolwut? You complain about a “long list of deficiencies” yet don’t know they’ve been flying for more than half a decade?

Because the RAH-66 was so over weight that it was physically unable to take off at Afghanistan-like altitudes.

Not even close to comparable. Chechnya wasn’t a bombing campaign. It was a full-on invasion. More importantly, the Russians never left and never intend to. Big difference.

Indeed. All of this intervention is really just delaying the inevitable unwinding of the artificial colonial states which were designed SPECIFICALLY so that no single ethnic group had enough power to challenge the British on their own.

I think you give him too much credit. Russia can’t bomb away an insurgency any more than we can. If such a thing was even possible Daesh would be gone and Iraq and Afghanistan would look a lot different.

Right, because flight instructors are the same thing as aerospace enginineers. Because being able to fly a plane is TOTALLY the same thing as designing them.

Europe can afford the refugees. In fact, they kind of need the population boost.

Russia is tottering and they have NO better way of sorting out Syria than anyone else does. They cannot restore Assad oror make Syria whole again. They cannot bomb Daesh out of existence any better than the vastly superior wetern-allied countries can. There is no victory possible here.

Those don’t seem like problems. Letting the Mideast sort out its own problems (for ONCE) seems like a far better idea than perpetually playing referee-by-force. That heavy handedness has NOT worked.