The main problem is the brits would make lederhosen jokes, talk about that one time they were in Toyko, and try to speak some italian
Every service member, including enlisted, are trained on the laws of war. There isn’t a navy veteran in the last 150 years that didn’t know that deliberately killing a shipwrecked enemy is a war crime. We need to stop coddling those we empower to kill in our name.
I'm of the opinion that spending money on developing new fighters is a waste of time and money and is only done because of the institutional inertia of the military. You aren't going to find any fighter pilots working in capability development or program offices who are going to say "Fighter Aircraft are an anachronism. We'd be better off investing in unmanned systems like drones and cruise missiles."
Dassault -not France- wants to do it itself. There's a conflict between Dassault and Airbus (whose CEO is French, btw). Dassault wants to do everything itself while Airbus wants its share.
The Rwanda/Congo Cambodia/Thailand "peace" agreements both broke down in the last week or so and Thailand is contemplating blockading Cambodia. The administration is all about celebrating shit but nothing about follow-up.
Based on the Lawfare discussion, I think this is not the right phrasing. In the UCMJ, it explicitly says that front line soldiers must follow their superior commissioned officers. It is not voluntary. But the catch here is that if there is a clearly illegal order, on which they are supposed to be trained, then they have the obligation to refuse. But there are two differences here: 1 - The immediate combat decisions, often called "the fog of war;" 2 - The assumption that the JAG officers have provided legal justification for the action. As the Lawfare discussion states, JAG officers are the ones giving the "yes" orders in line with the Trump administration, but the orders are coming from civilian command and not military. And that raised all kinds of issues. Additionally, the Navy has not been involved in policing drug trafficking before (other than a very, very, very limited basis) in the Caribbean. So the training they might have gotten for any legal justification is unknown as this was a change in mission. I encourage you to listen to the Lawfare pod I linked as it was based on more up to date info and is a bit more wonky. Nobody is disputing that. And everybody I have heard discuss this points to the literal wording in the UCMJ. The problem, as was pointed out in the Lawfare discussion, was the order given. This is why I think it is very significant that organization the guys on Lawfare run has experienced a significant uptick in requests for legal advice since September (that time is even more significant).
In this specific instance, yeah. But in a bigger picture, we need to work to remove, or at least reduce, the fawning over the military and the more greater acceptance of violence. Not just in action, but in everyday language and discussion.
I think there is a lot of tech that is like the battleships of WWII. And I think a lot of people know it too. But there's so much grift involved and since all out conflict hasn't really happened in so long people just get away with it.
Some of it is also the projection of power, and meant to scare opposition, who has the historical visuals of things like aircraft doing "cool" and dangerous things.
Trump does love to publicize his critics. Until now I had heard nothing confirming that Reiner was a Trump critic.
That’s actually where I’m at. The collective guilt we have for the shitty way we treated far to many Vietnam war draftees when they returned from Vietnam has lead to a forced lionization in our society that makes it so criticism of our military is near impossible. And this is the near end game of that….nobody in our media or our political universe wants to say the quiet part out loud….namely….that Adm Bradley (plus the entire chain of command) committed a clear and unambiguous war crime and he (and they) need to be held accountable. I don’t care that a drunk ********ing dweeb civilian gave the initial order. I expect better from our professional military. We should all be demanding the same. That’s why I found milquetoast discussing on that pod so infuriating. The fear should not be that the president or his secdef would issue an illegal order. The fear should be that the military carries it out. Yet…here we are….what 3 weeks later…and yet again I don’t think any politician outside of Rand Paul has intimated that Bradley is a was criminal. I don’t see demands for accountability. Even Those that exist clearly target Hegseth…and are silent on the active duty part because rah rah rah respect our troops for keeping us safe by blowing up brown people over there so…well…so we don’t have to round up brown people here…err…or something
https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5649316-rob-reiner-homicide-trump-derangement/ I'm not surprised. This guy is not ok.
I don't think airpower is like battleships. The issue in Ukraine is that Russia has been too pathetic to get air superiority. NATO would not fight that way.
You need a man in the loop because even if you go full A.I. everything, eventually it will be jammed Even if the pilot is simply sitting twidling his thumbs the next gen jets will have pilots Airbus/France puts 33% of the money but wants 66% of the development money There were no trenches dug by Americans in Iraq x2 and Afghanistan Iran Iraq just a few year earlier was a trenches war.