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    Sam wrote:
    Originally posted by Hot Pepsi
    Why don't we ever try to blow-up the HQ of evil tyrants? Would it kill too many civilians or is it just regarded as unsporting?
    I can't see what blowing up the White House would achieve.
    Free up some prime real estate for something better?

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      The way that creep was banging on about the suffering of the children of 'gad' made me want to puke. His slow delivery and the fact that his own attack also killed some children of gad is completely lost on him.

      Here's hoping he gets a bullet in the face sometime soon.

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        Sam wrote:
        Originally posted by Hot Pepsi
        Why don't we ever try to blow-up the HQ of evil tyrants? Would it kill too many civilians or is it just regarded as unsporting?
        I can't see what blowing up the White House would achieve.
        Sam: that was the pitch of "Independence Day", to the audience.

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          Tax reform could be every bit as tricky as healthcare reform

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            Since when do Republicans care about tax cuts causing national debt to rise? That's just their way to make noise when they are not in power.

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              Well, they have to care if they want to do it under budget reconciliation.

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                I seem to remember PJ O'Rourke being blasé on debt and deficits in some 80s thing of his. Now those Cato types are full on deficit hawks. And they dont give a long term fuck about debt, seeing as they wish to structurally alter what govt is to the point its barely there. In their clean lines happy world, they'll just eliminate half the Govt, the deficit shrinks and long term we can pay down the debt. Magical thinking.

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                  Yes, as GY notes, the important thing here is that the GOP will need sixty votes in the Senate for any "tax reform" plan that increases the deficit.

                  It is going to be very difficult for them to find them, even if they do manage to buy off the couple of dozen "deficit hawks" in the House.

                  This is why Ryan wanted to kill Obamacare first. He was going to hand those "cost savings" to his plutocrat patrons.

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                    I think it comes back to the same problem they had with their healthcare. Their party is made up of groups that are ideologically incompatible on a whole variety of topics. It's the downside of building a coalition of the insane.

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                      Meanwhile Down in alabama, it's cute when senior citizens try to use modern technology

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                        Muukalainen wrote:
                        Originally posted by ursus arctos
                        The runways are operational, as they were used for sorties today.

                        Some US sources claiming that they were never targeted, ...
                        I'm inclined to think that the Tomahawk does not even carry a warhead that is effective against runways. The Russians won't be slow in getting their latest defensive hardware in place in Syria. If Trump's not careful he'll be giving them free testing of their capability against front line American weaponry while a third party is the target.

                        EDIT: For the avoidance of doubt, I'm referring to their capability against cruise missiles, not anything that might risk American lives.
                        It seems that Tomahawk strikes are the standard Nato response to attacking airfields. The aim usually is to wipe out the aircraft and infrastructure, but not to do a huge amount of damage to the airfield, which you're usually going to seize. It turns out that the US airforce has never really been that interested in attacking enemy airfields in a major or coherent way. The only people in nato who developed anti-runway bombs were the French, who invented a bomb that would accelerate into the runway, bury down and blow up the slab of concrete it hit, while shifting the adjacent ones, which is vastly more difficult to repair than just a big hole.

                        the other approach is the one used by the english which is to get a tornado to fly down the length of the runway, dropping a load of clusterbomblets along the length of runway. This blows up the runway in a very serious way, and litters the holes with mines, to discourage repair. Unfortunately this sort of bomb is now illegal, and also this approach is deeply vulnerable to people parking anti-aircraft guns at the end of the runway. The RAF lost a bunch of tornados doing this in the gulf war, and doing something similar now even if they had such a weapon would run the risk of losing a lot of pilots.

                        So the US has no really good way to obliterate an airfield. It can however create a great video of lots of tomahawks dispensing justice from a distance.

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                          So the US has no really good way to obliterate an airfield. It can however create a great video of lots of tomahawks dispensing justice from a distance.
                          The US has plenty of ways to do this, as one would expect from a country that outspends much of the rest of the world on "defense".

                          What it doesn't have is a really effective way to achieve this result without putting US troops no closer than 1,600 km to the target.

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                            What about those stealth bombers that look like the Grim Reaper's private jet?

                            Or are they not very stealthy anymore?

                            Would it help if there was a Chinese embassy on the runway?

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                              Trump seems to be getting cosy with the Chinese right now, probably getting them onside before he drops one on Pyongyang.

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                                Well the one that looks particularly angular and pointy, the f-117 has been retired already. but that would have been more useful for going after the buildings than the runway. The Huge Bat-wing B-2 is definitely still on the go, and probably will be forever. That would be very useful for making a single massive hole in the runway, and no videos, and this is mostly about the videos.

                                There's the f-22 which would be very useful if you wanted to shoot down six airplanes simultaneously, but it's a bit less useful when the planes are on the ground, and there's the f-35 which will be coming to take part in wars near you sometime in the next two decades. Who knows what that will be able to do, if it's ever finished. It's more likely to wind up financially crippling the DOD than anything else.

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                                  ursus arctos wrote:
                                  So the US has no really good way to obliterate an airfield. It can however create a great video of lots of tomahawks dispensing justice from a distance.
                                  The US has plenty of ways to do this, as one would expect from a country that outspends much of the rest of the world on "defense".

                                  What it doesn't have is a really effective way to achieve this result without putting US troops no closer than 1,600 km to the target.
                                  Believe me, I was very surprised to discover that the Airforce can't really do this. Their plan is to demolish everything that isn't the runway from a safe distance, because that's where the planes usually are, and fortified hangars take a long time to rebuild. but they have no real way to damage runways that can't be fixed with a digger and an afternoon. It is after all just tarmac on flat ground.

                                  The military failure here isn't that the planes are taking off from the runway, it's that there are planes left to fly. Just how much of a warning did they give the Russians?

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                                    The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote: Well the one that looks particularly angular and pointy, the f-117 has been retired already. but that would have been more useful for going after the buildings than the runway. The Huge Bat-wing B-2 is definitely still on the go, and probably will be forever. That would be very useful for making a single massive hole in the runway, and no videos, and this is mostly about the videos.

                                    There's the f-22 which would be very useful if you wanted to shoot down six airplanes simultaneously, but it's a bit less useful when the planes are on the ground, and there's the f-35 which will be coming to take part in wars near you sometime in the next two decades. Who knows what that will be able to do, if it's ever finished. It's more likely to wind up financially crippling the DOD than anything else.

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                                      Hahahaha!

                                      Bet Berba could catch a monkey.

                                      There was me thinking his area of expertise was amortisation

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                                        In, I think, summer of 1988, I worked for a company that did road repair on contracts. Mainly grinding out large cracks in the blacktop and filling them before another company came in and did the nice, new repaving. One of the contracts was for the runways at the air force base in Trenton. We were budgeted for five days, but it pissed down rain every day, so it took us closer to three weeks. We'd grind out a twenty foot crack (five inches wide by six deep) and it would fill with water before we could refill it, so we had to blow it out with compressed air. Then the rain would cool the asphalt too fast. It was a horrible, Sisyphean ordeal. Imagine looking down at this little patch you were working along, and then pan up to see that you have another 4000 feet of runways ahead of you, and you're soaked to the bone and haven't seen a friendly face in 5, 10, 15 days now and you're sleeping in a motel with three grizzled old guys from Newfoundland eating take out diner food. Finally a couple of guys just quit and left, and pretty much everyone else promised to. Next thing you know, we just left and I think I remember we got a bit of bonus money. God, that was horrible.

                                        Anyway, runways. Yeah.

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                                          The Awesome Berbaslug!!! wrote:
                                          Originally posted by ursus arctos
                                          So the US has no really good way to obliterate an airfield. It can however create a great video of lots of tomahawks dispensing justice from a distance.
                                          The US has plenty of ways to do this, as one would expect from a country that outspends much of the rest of the world on "defense".

                                          What it doesn't have is a really effective way to achieve this result without putting US troops no closer than 1,600 km to the target.
                                          Believe me, I was very surprised to discover that the Airforce can't really do this. Their plan is to demolish everything that isn't the runway from a safe distance, because that's where the planes usually are, and fortified hangars take a long time to rebuild. but they have no real way to damage runways that can't be fixed with a digger and an afternoon. It is after all just tarmac on flat ground.

                                          The military failure here isn't that the planes are taking off from the runway, it's that there are planes left to fly. Just how much of a warning did they give the Russians?
                                          Things may've changed slightly but this was why the RAF had higher losses than the USAAF in Gulf War I (the original), as the Tornado GR1 with the JP233 Runway denial submunition was the only really effective way of taking out airfields.

                                          It involved Tornados having to fly fairly low and slowly over the runways, which, as you can imagine, when lots of people are shooting bullets, shells and missiles at you, is a pretty hazardous thing to do.

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                                            Just realised that I've effectively echo'd The Awesome Berbaslug's post from the previous page.

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                                              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAGmDqH4c-8

                                              Contains runway bombs going bang, but nothing gory as far as I can tell. Anyway, the note explains that not only would the JP233 turn a runway into a series of craters, it also scattered mines all over it.

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                                                Yeah, the B-2 was the plane I was thinking of.



                                                It looks like death from the sky more than any other thing in the world.

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                                                  What the actual fuck is Spicer on? He seems to be trying to make an extremely nuanced point where he believes Assad is worse than Hitler, yet seems to keep getting stuck on "even Hitler use chemical weapons on his people" cos, you know, Hitler was discriminate and dropping bombs isn't.

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                                                    In keeping with the rest of the Administration, he doesn't prepare and therefore has no texts to fall back on.

                                                    And he freaks out when challenged.

                                                    I also have to conclude that he's under strict orders from Bannon/45 NOT to say certain things about the Nazis (or the Jews) and that he can't remember the exact taboo phrases in the heat of the moment.

                                                    And it is the first full day of Passover. If you wrote this script, no one would believe you.

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