I disagree about Ukraine but at this point, if this is what it takes to put a proper military opposite ISIS, I can’t object.

But but but then the F-35 wouldn’t have it until years down the road! :\/

Well, China can’t build a good jet engine to save its life, and no one else would be nearly as ambitious on the level of stealth and the fantastically high-end sensor, avionic & EW suites F-35 is going for.

What’s infuriating is a lot of people know better — we have 2 engines for the F-16 fleet and a competition there helped that program and the F-15. People suggested it but a 2nd engine competition never came through cause the cost was already so high.

Just goes to show how complex modern fighters are. Superficially they’re all very similar, but each plane is on average about 1/3 unique, and only shares 1/3 of it’s components with either of the other 2 variants.

In all seriousness, the vision that was the F-35 program simply proved unrealistic, and it is essentially 3 concurrent fighter programs which collectively share an ever-shrinking number of common components — so economies of scale won’t bring down cost across the board to the extent hoped for.

Show it from the rear so I can squint and wonder if it’s a Porsche.

I dismissed it for the most prosaic and obvious of reasons: if this attachment finds use in police arsenals, they’ll get training on it, too.

I was gonna type this, and that, and they should be kicked out, but fuck it, it’s LA.

“If you trained that the pistol is sometimes non-lethal, what happens if in the heat of a situation you default to that, while forgetting the attachment isn’t on.”

Hyperbole much?

If even for the wrong reasons, Putin propping up Asad, countering ISIS and restoring a semblance of normality to an entire region would be a good thing.

This.

I would like to meet these so-called F-35 fanboys.

^ this

Don’t be cheap with terms you use: if it’s a FOB, there’s at least 100 guys in it. There’s no battle where three-digits of Americans were wiped out wholesale (KIA or capture) in either Afghanistan or Iraq.

I don’t doubt the inventive means of avoiding detection one bit (the Vietnamese had tactics and procedures just as wily) but “penetrate F.O.B forward operating bases and wipe out everybody inside” ? The use of the American-term FOB implies an American base was wiped out with everyone inside it. And yet, I cannot…

This is an awesome reply.
Also, 350 Kornets in a day? That’s unreal...