[NationalInterest] The Air Force today would struggle to execute another Desert Storm, much less take on a peer adversary like China.
In September, the United States Air Force celebrated another birthday. At age 76, it is in bad shape.
Despite lowering qualification standards, it cannot attract enough recruits to fill its ranks. The size and serviceability of its combat aircraft are at all-time lows. Truncated training has weakened pilot readiness.
In sum, the Air Force today would struggle to execute another Desert Storm, much less take on a peer adversary like China. Even more distressing, the service’s leaders show no interest in pulling out of that downward spiral. Let’s start with a few facts.
U.S. AIR FORCE RECRUITING
The active duty Air Force missed its FY 2023 recruiting goals by 11 percent. Its Air Reserve component fell short by 30 percent. The chief of Air Force recruiting said the numbers would have been much worse had the service not changed its policies regarding drug use, body composition, age, and the like. While some deny that equates to lower standards, it most certainly brings them into question.
STANDARDS
From its founding in 1947 through the end of the Cold War, the Air Force placed a premium on building and sustaining a cadre of the most exceptional aviators in the world. Selection for flight school was based on performance during the accessions process and previous flight experience—criteria that sent those with the highest potential to excel to flight school. Screening for excellence continued through every phase of training beyond.
Washout rates for flight schools exceeded 20 percent in the 1980s, and the bar was high for every successive school beyond. But the drive for efficiencies in the 1990s and the initiative to improve racial diversity in the 2020s has made a mockery of the screening process. In 2021, just 0.27 percent of flight school candidates were eliminated because of performance. Screening beyond flight school is effectively non-existent, even for promotions.
Every Air Force captain without legal or ethical issues has been promoted to Major since 2017, which means even poor performers graduate and advance. Accessions, training, and promotion standards are at all-time lows, which places the big picture—the service’s ability to execute its wartime mission—into jeopardy.
U.S. AIR FORCE CAPACITY AND READINESS
At the height of the Cold War, the Air Force had 4,468 fighter and 331 bomber aircraft in its total force inventory. Roughly eight out of ten were mission-capable. Today, it has just 1,932 fighter and 140 bomber aircraft. On any given day, only six of every ten are fit to fly combat missions. In a war with China, the Air Force could generate just 32 percent of the fighter and bomber capacity it could in 1987. Unfortunately, unit and individual pilot readiness levels have also fallen to unprecedented levels.
At the height of the Cold War, the average fighter pilot flew more than 160 sorties/200 hours a year. In 2022, Air Force fighter pilots averaged just seventy-four sorties/129 hours a year. They also averaged less than two of the three mission simulator sorties they are supposedly required to receive each month. By the service’s own definition, there isn’t a squadron in the Air Force that could be considered mission-ready.
One reason the Air Force became a separate service 76 years ago was that the U.S. Army seemed disinterested in sustaining the health of its air arm. Following a 1923 study known as the Lassiter Report, which documented the sorry state of military aviation, Gen. “Billy” Mitchell began a campaign designed to alert the public to the dangers of this neglect.
History appears to be repeating—only now it’s not the Army, but the service charged with dominating the skies that seems to have lost interest in air supremacy.
#7
BOGOTA, Dec 7 (Reuters) - The United States on Thursday said it would conduct flight operations within Guyana that build on its routine engagement as Britain and Brazil expressed concerns about growing border tensions between Guyana and Venezuela.
The long-running spat over the oil-rich Esequibo region, which is being heard by the International Court of Justice (ICJ), escalated over the weekend when voters in Venezuela rejected the ICJ's jurisdiction and backed creation of a new Venezuelan state.
Guyana has questioned the vote's legitimacy, put its armed forces on high alert, and said Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro is disregarding ICJ orders about taking no action to change the status quo in Esequibo.
#10
Sucks for Guyana, but it’s not going to help Maduro in the long term. Once they eat the zebras out of the zoo and steal some oil, they will just have spread their same suck over more square miles. Everybody in Guyana with any capability well end up in Miami. I assume there is still plenty of room there based on the Marlin’s attendance average.
Posted by: Super Hose ||
12/09/2023 10:24 Comments ||
Top||
#12
My sense is the Venezuelan troops might be sketchy, but not the Cubans who run their intel and special ops, and provide internal security services.
#13
Guyana, looking from the map, looks like one of those places modern armies go to die. Jungle, rugged terrain and no roads ...what's not to like? The SW Pacific Theater in WW2 had roughly seven (7!) times the logistic needs of the ETO (we are talking about places like Papua New Guinea).
Venezuela has a 'Regime Protection Force' type army ...but then the Japanese were crazy enough to invade India from Burma in WW2 across similar terrain. So, who knows?
#15
Oh, we're gearing up for war against Venezuela again?
I thought we gave that up after that tool Guaido was rejected and rejected hard. I guess the deep state just doesn't give up. Look how long they knew they were failing in Afghanistan and *still* kept that war going for another decade.
[ARCHIVE.PH] Alas the film is in Spanish without subtitles or English dubbing. You should have a basic working knowledge of Spanish language to follow event depicted in the film.
The film is based on the 2004 massacre of a Wayuu Indian village on the Caribbean Sea coast, which killed between 12 and 40 unarmed villagers, and scattered and wounded the rest.
The star of the film is a 10 year old girl who flees the attack, winding up in a border town without money or resources.
After befriending a woman on a bus, she is sold as a sex slave, but subsequently escapes after her captor gets into an argument with another, slightly older girl,
The two, her newfound friend and her, after a time and some personal problems become friends. They witness one of the drug gang Bad Guys murder her aunt.
Eventually, she makes it back to her village only to find it deserted.
The Bahía Portete massacre (Spanish: Masacre de Bahia Portete) was a massacre in the Colombian town of Bahía Portete (municipality of Uribia), in the Department of La Guajira on April 16, 2004. It was perpetrated by paramilitary groups of the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (AUC) Wayuu Counter-Insurgency Bloc led by alias "Jorge 40" killing 12 people and the disappearance of one. Some 600 people were displaced against their will and took refuge in neighboring Venezuela.[1]
Jorge 40's men, alias "Pablo" and "Chema Bola" shot the indigenous group in Bahia Portete after receiving reports that these were "kidnapping and robbing" in the region. Five member of the Fince-Epinayú family were assassinated, accused of kidnapping a Lebanese immigrant.[1]
The Spanish newspaper El Mundo reported in 2004 that the motives were rivalries, aroused between paramilitary factions between "Jorge 40" and another paramilitary commander known as "Chema Balas" for the control of the port of Bahía Portete. Calculated the death of 30 members of the Wayuu executed, 60 disappeared and some 250 forcibly displaced into Venezuela.[2] Paramilitaries pertaining to the AUC demobilized in 2006, but new drug trafficking organizations arose, such as the Aguilas Negras. Between 2000 and 2005 the FARC and the AUC perpetrated two massacres each while the ELN perpetrated one in the Department of La Guajira.[3]
[Money Wise] Markets are sensitive to geopolitical conflicts. With crises in Ukraine and the Middle East, investors are grappling with increased uncertainty. This may lead some to question whether it’s time to take a different approach to asset allocation.
For billionaire investor Ron Baron, stocks remain a staple.
In a recent interview with CNBC, he was asked whether he’s still buying stocks given the conflicts going on around the world.
"Everyday," he replied. "I’m amazingly bullish."
The founder and CEO of Baron Capital highlighted inflation as a key factor in his preference for equities.
"Whenever you have a war, you have a pandemic, you have to have inflation.The government has to pay for it," he explained. "Then when you come out of it, they have to pay it back. The way they pay it back is not by paying down any debt, they pay it back by making your money worth less."
This has profound implications if you want to protect the purchasing power of your money.
#2
I expect Ron Baron is the owner of a great many US dollars, even though they are daily being made worth less by the US gubmint. Headline is screwed up.
[USAWatchdog] Award-winning journalist Alex Newman, author of the popular book "Deep State," says there is a not-so-secret plan to destroy everything in America and everything it stands for. Newman contends it is the only way for evil globalists to have the tyrannical New World Order they dream of. The evil destroyers of freedom and liberty around the world will be talking about the demise of America at the globalist COP28 conference in Dubai, UAE next week. Newman explains, "This is all part of the agenda.
What we are watching now is the deliberate destruction of the American middle-class and the deliberate destruction of the American economy. Ultimately, if these evil doers get their way, it will result in the deliberate destruction of the United States of America. We are talking about the controlled demolition of our economy, our military might and everything we hold dear. This has been known at the highest levels of government for a long time. . . . During the Trump Administration, they had Rich Higgens on the National Security Counsel, and he put together the ’Higgens Memo.’ People should read this.
He talked about the global alliance of globalists, communists, socialists and Islamists who are all working in unison for the goal of destroying the United States of America. This is not just as a nation, says Higgens, but even as an ideal. They want to shift global power over to China and over to the United Nations to gradually and then suddenly destroy the United States. They don’t just want to destroy this country, they also want to destroy the ideas and principles it is founded upon because it is simply not compatible with this one world system they want. George Soros told us what the New World Order was going to look like 10 years ago. He told the Financial Times that China needed to own the New World Order in the same way the United States owns the current one."
Newman says Donald Trump is not part of the New World Order, and he dismantled much of it during his Presidency. Newman says, "Donald Trump is the first President in a century who did not go to this weird club of elitists such as Bohemian Grove. He never went to Bilderberg. He was never involved with the Council on Foreign Relations. Trump did not participate in the Trilateral Commission. He was not recruited in the ’Scull and Bones’ at Yale like John Kerry, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. He was just not part of the club. . . . Trump was not controlled by these people. They were able to manipulate him on some key things like the CV19 shots and the MCA, but ultimately, they did not feel like they could control him. He was an outsider. This is why they are absolutely petrified of him coming back now."
The news is not all bad as Newman says he is seeing a huge backlash from all sectors to the New World Order agenda. Newman explains, "There is an enormous backlash building. Just go out and talk to regular people. Turn off the boob tube, and this is not even propaganda, it is psychological terrorism. Turn it off and talk to real people. . . . What you will find is normal people who can’t tell you about the Bohemian Grove, the Council on Foreign Relations or the climate scam, but they can tell you ’we are being lied to.’ Life is getting increasingly difficult. My spouse and I are both working with two jobs, and we still can’t make ends meet. We can’t pay the mortgage. Food costs are going up. They know that this is not normal. They know that we have a uniparty with Kevin McCarthy who showed up at the Bohemian Grove just before he was ousted as Speaker of the House. You have an incredible awareness from people that we are being looted, robbed, deceived and that our country is being betrayed. You don’t have to watch the fake media to be aware of all those things. I am encouraged by the awareness of people and the polling data that virtually nobody believes the media."
Herr Maaßen said that European politicians are actively allowing mass immigration because, according to him, "our politicians want a different population. The political left follows the course of the anti-German ideology. The more heterogeneous a population, the less able it is to articulate itself and have a democratic say. The more politics accepts immigrants from other countries as they see fit and grants them citizenship, the more politics selects the people of the state and influences the election results. These migrants then vote differently than the locals."
[FoxBusiness] Hunter Biden was indicted in California on Thursday on nine tax charges
All right, folks, from what I can gather, conservatives are rejoicing over the nine charges filed in the 56-page grand jury indictment against the president's son, Hunter Biden, filed by federal prosecutor David Weiss and it's a pretty seamy indictment, as Jonathan [Hunt] just said. I'm not sure Hunter's not too happy about this, and I'm sure his father is not thrilled about it either.
Okay. I get that. But speaking as a non-lawyer, really just as a poor, impoverished news host, I'm not so sure about this alleged Christmas present, because now Hunter is going to use this as an excuse to avoid any private deposition under oath before any the congressional oversight or judicial or Ways and Means committees or worst case, he'll take the fifth if he has to go up there. But what he will not be forced to do is to reveal all the details of the alleged influence peddling and bribery crimes that might just happen to come up in a discussion about his failure to register as a foreign agent.
May I italicize that foreign agent part? Because the Weiss indictment didn't include that for some reason, maybe an oversight. The whole world knows that Poppa Biden was involved with his son's business. That is way too easy now, but the world doesn't yet know precisely how he was involved and Hunter ain't going to talk about that because he's already been busted for not paying his taxes, right. Since, if he just got busted for three felonies and six misdemeanors, and yes he could go to jail for 17-years, and no, Hunter, he's not going to have any fun in jail, but he won't go to Capitol Hill either.
And my non-legal suspicion is that this whole series of events actually brings GOP oversight investigators further away from Joe Biden, because Hunter's going to be untouchable for quite some time. And if I were really a cynic, I would say that special counsel David Weiss, who has zero credibility, decided to put Hunter on ice for exactly this reason.
I mean, I can just imagine the phone calls between Weiss and Attorney General Merrick Garland: Look, we've got to do something here because these IRS whistleblowers made such a strong case and Judge Noriega in Wilmington blew up the first phony deal beyond repair, so let's protect their ultimate boss, Joe, by throwing Hunter under the bus just for a little while, put him on ice for the rest of the election period.
#5
We are now at farce levels in assessing the "lawfare" stalls and protections of the Pampered Prince-ling in the guise of DoJ's Special Counsel, whose own appointment violates DoJ guidelines against government employee's holding that position.
The real crime here is the ongoing subversion of law to protect a sitting "President" by a hyper-partisan Justice Department and the obsequious Attorney General.
[FoxNews] Quotes from Vivek Ramaswamy, Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Former Republican Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, Chris Christie, Democrat candidate and author Marianne Williamson.
No comments from Independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Democrat Minnesota Rep. Dean Phillips, Green Party candidate Dr. Jill Stein, independent candidate Cornel West, President Joe Biden, Donald Trump.
[NYP] Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently issued the following warning to Israel:
"You know, I learned a thing or two about urban warfare from my time fighting in Iraq and leading the campaign to defeat ISIS. Like Hamas, ISIS was deeply embedded in urban areas."
"And the international coalition against ISIS worked hard to protect civilians and create humanitarian corridors, even during the toughest battles."
"So the lesson is not that you can win in an urban warfare by protecting civilians. The lesson is that you can only win in urban warfare by protecting civilians."
"You see, in this kind of a fight, the center of gravity is the civilian population. And if you drive them into the arms of the enemy, you replace a tactical victory with a strategic defeat."
That ill-advised admonition reflects a basic misunderstanding of the relationship between Hamas and most Gazans. Recent polls show overwhelming support by Gazans not only for Hamas but also for its barbarities of Oct. 7.
The sad reality is that the civilian population of Gaza is already in the "arms of the enemy."
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[USAWatchdog] Award-winning journalist Alex Newman, author of the popular book "Deep State," says there is a not-so-secret plan to destroy everything in America and everything it stands for. Newman contends it is the only way for evil globalists to have the tyrannical New World Order they dream of. The evil destroyers of freedom and liberty around the world will be talking about the demise of America at the globalist COP28 conference in Dubai, UAE next week. Newman explains, "This is all part of the agenda. 
