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  • Air Force Basic Training is Brutal AF

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  • NBC: Some Gay Voters Say It’s ‘Dangerous’ to Come Out for Trump

    Because….  TOLERANCE!  (URR here.) The bigoted, hateful, violent fascist tendencies of the Far Left show themselves once again, to the surprise of nobody who is paying attention.

    A number of gay men who have decided to throw their support behind Trump told NBC OUT it has not been an easy road. Juan Hernandez, a gay and Latino member of the Log Cabin Republicans, said his support led to physical violence by anti-Trump protesters at a rally in San Jose. Images of the attack and his bloodied clothes went viral.

    Hernandez, who switched to the GOP after realizing his views outside of LGBTQ issues were more conservative, said he was a target even before the rally in San Jose. Other members of the LGBTQ and Latino communities, he said, have singled him out for his Trump support. "They'll email me or send me messages. They say that I'm a sellout," he explained.

    Eric, a 25-year-old gay Marine Corps veteran, was a Trump supporter before the Orlando shooting, but he said the attack – and the dangers he believes "radical Islam" poses to the gay community – has reinforced his support.

    "Donald Trump has taken charge," he said." I'm gonna go for his stance on immigration and rebuilding the military."

    But while Eric is a vocal Trump supporter, he declined to provide his last name due to fear of violence or "doxxing," the malicious publication of a private citizen's personal information online.

    Which goes some toward explaining the Pink Pistols.  Hooray for them.   For standing up for themselves against the bullying.  A good deal of which is coming from über-"liberal" LGBT groups, far more than any gun owning conservatives.   

  • On this day in 1815, the Battle of Waterloo

    Via VAViper.

  • Journalist who fired AR-15 bazooka awarded National Defense Service Medal

  • 37mm AT Gun Live Fire

    Want!

  • Mama, Don’t Take My Kodachrome, 1940-43 Edition

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    They give you the nice, bright colors, they give you the greens of summer, they make you think all the world's a sunny day.  (URR here.)

    A remarkable set of Kodachrome large format images made for the Office of War Information, beginning in 1940.  From the Russian website of Pavel Kosenko, who is considerate enough to have an English language version.  At the time, these Kodachrome images could only be processed in Rochester NY, at the Kodak facility there.  

    Incredibly clear, vivid images.  And lovely, lovely lasses.  Without whom the warplanes so vital to winning the war would have been impossible to build.   

    Enjoy!

    H/T

    TomH

     

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  • Bernie Sanders is Right….

    …and he ain't right about much. But, as the Washington Free Beacon tells us, the FIX WAS IN.  (URR again.)

    The memo, posted by “Guccifer 2.0,” said the DNC should “use specific hits to muddy the waters around ethics, transparency and campaign finance attacks on HRC” as part of its strategy to draw contrast with the GOP presidential contenders, the New York Postreported.

    HRC is shorthand for Hillary Rodham Clinton.

    The document was dated May 26, 2015—one month after Bernie Sanders announced his candidacy and nearly nine months before primary voting began.

    It detailed the DNC’s goals for the months leading up to the primaries, stressing the need “to frame the Republican field and the eventual nominee early and to provide a contrast between the GOP field and HRC.”

    Party rules require the DNC to remain neutral in presidential primaries so that all candidates are given a fair shot.

    Sanders accused the Democratic party of rigging the national convention against his candidacy throughout his campaign, repeatedly calling for the resignation of DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

    This, on top of the 30,000 e-mails the Russkies purloined that HRC had on her unauthorized server when she was conducting highly classified business as Secretary of State.

    Bernie Sanders is an abrasive, loudmouthed, ignorant communist jackass who was an open admirer of the Soviet Union.  And I hope decides to contest Hillary's coronation at the Democratic Convention.

     

  • Hundreds Die in Mass Shooting, Several Americans Among the Victims

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    (URR here.) Thing is, the shooting isn't over yet, and these uncounted hundreds continue to grow daily.  And the guns being used were bought and paid for by the American taxpayer.   They were allowed to be brought into Mexico, in violation of Federal law, by the Obama Justice Department.  Where they predictably came into the possession of violent criminals.  Why? To further the Obama Administration efforts on restricting the gun rights of law-abiding Americans.  

    Those guns ended up in the hands of Mexican drug cartels south of the border, who used them to murder innocent civilians, and Mexican law enforcement, and government officials.   A number of Americans in the US Southwest, including a Border Patrol Agent, have also been killed with those guns.   For his part, Eric Holder perjured himself when questioned by investigators.  (Much the same as Hillary Clinton has done on several occasions.)

    So when Obama goes before the cameras with his crocodile tears and faux rage about guns after another act of muhammedan terrorism, and when he pushes yet again to disarm the law-abiding, remember how many people Obama's Justice Department is responsible for killing.  And when the spittle-flecked tantrums of the leftist fellow-travelers begin regarding Trump's "racism" for calling a Mexican judge, well, Mexican, ask the speaker how many people south of the border were killed by guns sent there by Trump.  

    And when some Democratic Congressman or Senator wants to filibuster in the halls of Congress to vote on gun control, ask your liberal friends where the filibuster was regarding Fast and Furious, the criminal conduct of the Justice Department, perjury by the Attorney General, and the slaughter of innocent civilians south of the "border".  

    Those who refuse to see the hypocrisy of this Administration, and its systematic efforts to completely disarm the American people, are the useful idiots of their generation.   While they consider themselves compassionate and intelligent because of their "outrage" and their "reasoned" attitudes toward eroding the rights of the law-abiding, they are neither.   

    Otherwise, they would ask how Barack Hussein Obama could stand in front of the cameras and weep and shake and vow to keep guns out of the hands of violent people, and fail to mention that he is directly responsible for the leader of the deadliest drug cartel in Mexico having an American-bought, US Government-supplied sniper rifle in his possession.  

  • GBU-15

    As far as I know, the planar version was never operationally fielded, but the cruciform wing version is still in the inventory (though with a different, simpler set of fins). Later, the Air Force strapped a big old rocket motor underneath it, and presto! turned it into the AGM-130. The GBU-15 itself was a follow on to the GBU-8 HOBOS (Homing Bomb System) which saw limited use in Vietnam. The GBU-8 had trouble staying locked on to low contrast targets, but the idea clearly had potential. Add an improved seeker, and a few other tweaks, and the GBU-15 was born.

  • The Continuing Folly of the Littoral Combat Ship Program

    Of course, CDR Salamander has been preaching against the awful LCS program for well over a decade now. And pretty much every issue he’s had with it has been mocked and scorned by the program’s supporters. And after much mockery and scorn, those same supporters get slapped in the face with the reality that ‘Phib was right, and they were wrong.

    The LCS was designed to be minimally manned with rotating crews to keep the ships forward and underway as much as possible. The 3-2-1 concept: three crews would be assigned to two ships. Typically, a crew would be deployed, a second crew would be training to deploy on a ship based out of the U.S. and the third crew would be restarting their training ashore and getting downtime after their deployment.

    That set-up is likely to change, say two sources familiar with the Navy’s deliberations. The review ordered by Chief of Naval Operations Adm. John Richardson will likely include recommendations to shift to a Blue and Gold crew structure, a set-up used on ballistic missile and guided missile submarines where two crews swap custody of a single hull to maximize deployed time. The Navy has been moving away from rotational crew models other than the Blue and Gold out of concern that maintenance issues may slip through the cracks for crews serving only temporarily aboard any ship.

    The review will also recommend changing some of the signature modularity of the program — the concept that ships at sea could readily swap out sensors and weapons packages to meet emergent missions.

    Instead of three mission modules being available to switch out on deployment, the Navy is looking at moving to a “one ship, one mission” approach, where each LCS will be designated as surface, anti-submarine or mine countermeasures ships with the ability to switch out if needed.

    Let’s start with the crewing concept. A huge part of the sales pitch for the LCS was minimal manning. The “base” crew was only supposed to be 40 people, with something like a 25 man aviation detachment, and a handful more for whatever embarked mission modules were used. It was only after a few years of experience that the Navy learned such a small crew simply couldn’t keep up with the routine day to day maintenance required to run a warship. They then rolled out the 3-2-1 concept, when they realized people were simply ground to dust after six months of trying to run the ship and keep it operational. But that plan has ownership issues. Not to mention, it still wore out the crews. And so now, they’re looking at going to a Blue/Gold crew concept. So we’ve effectively doubled the manpower required for LCS crewing. Which, a decade ago, CDR Salamander (and your humble host) were already arguing that you’d need at least twice as many people to crew the ship. Worse, now you have twice as many bodies tied up in the program, but only half of them are ever available to work on the ship or stand watch. It’s the worst of both worlds. It’s one thing to have Blue/Gold crews for Fleet Ballistic Missile submarines, which receive more care and attention to their maintenance than any other ships in the fleet.  It’s an entirely different matter for what is essentially just a big corvette.

    As to the mission modules, again, CDR Salamander was spot on. Not because he’s unusually bright, but because it was so bloody obvious. The concept of being able to quickly plug and play large equipment modules aboard a warship is a pleasing one (and, in fact a goal we should continue to pursue). But the entire LCS program took the approach backwards. They designed the ships, and left room for the modules. The modules were simply vaporware at the time. The right approach is to design modules to perform a mission, test them out, and then design a ship to carry them.

    And once you’ve installed a mission module on a ship, there are practical operational reasons to simply leave it there. Let’s indulge a fantasy, and pretend that a counter-mine mission module existed and worked. Mine Warfare is such a specialized mission, you need considerable training, not just for the module operators, but for the entire ship, to become proficient at it. The plan to routinely swap out mission modules on a whim would also see the tribal knowledge of each specific mission area erode away with every swap.

    The F-35 probably gets more bad press than any other defense program today. But in the end, we’re going to have a pretty decent light strike fighter. The LCS, however, was a fundamentally flawed conception, poorly procured, and will never yield the fruits its proponents promised us, and instead, is simply a lemon that will sour the surface fleet for decades to come.