USAF putting the brakes on F-35 ramp up.

via Aviation Week

The U.S. Air Force has decided to buy Lockheed Martin’s F-35 more slowly than planned because the program still has not completed several critical milestones and the service is concerned about snowballing retrofit costs, 

The rest is behind a paywall.

So there you have it.  The USAF basically admitted that EVERY JET THEY'VE BOUGHT will need to be retrofit and they're on the hook to do it.

So to save costs they're buying fewer.

Which is why our allies are buying slowly.  They don't want to rush things and get stuck with expensive jets that need to be redone either.

The only question I have is WHAT THE HELL IS NELLER AND THE USMC THINKING!!!!

They're not saving a dime and are putting jets that aren't capable in the field now.  To get them up to speed means an expensive retrofit in the future.  That does NOT sound like the fiscally responsible service that I was taught the Marine Corps claimed to be!  It's hardly the bargain for the country that every Commandant from Conway back always said it was!

As we've discussed they have two years of fat budgets and then the chances of things going back to sequestration increase.  Which means that these mistake jets might end up being parts bins in the future (assuming its found that upgrading them isn't cost effective).

The F-35. The HIV of the combat aviation world.  It's gonna make you sick, you just hope it does turn into full blown AIDS and kills ya.

Public Service Announcement. This is the true face of MS-13.

via Washington Post.

Carlos Otero Henriquez told a friend he was a member of the 18th Street gang. On Facebook, he posted photos of himself flashing his gang’s signs. When members of the rival MS-13 gang noticed, the 18-year-old from Leesburg, Va., was targeted for murder.

“We’re always patrolling the area to make sure it’s clean of enemies,” Wilmar Javier Viera Gonzalez, a top Virginia MS-13 leader recently testified in Alexandria federal court. He showed jurors a notebook he kept full of MS-13 codes, nicknames and rules. Among the gang’s policies: To move up, “you must kill a rival.”

-----------

 In court last week, Viera Gonzalez, who formerly held the title “first word” of the VLS, calmly admitted he ordered members of his gang to stab Henriquez to death in May 2016 so they could rise up in the ranks.

“He had no idea that night would be his last,” Assistant U.S. attorney Patricia Giles said of Henriquez in her opening statement. “He had no idea of the horrible death he would suffer.”

----------

 It was an MS-13 hanger-on named Andres Velasquez Guevara who alerted the gang members to the rival, according to court documents. He had become friends with Henriquez early in 2016. Early on, Velasquez Guevara later told police, he asked his new friend if he was in a gang.

Henriquez said yes: 18th Street.

“Here you don’t go around saying things like that,” Velasquez Guevara told police he responded. “Dangerous.”

When he became friends with Henriquez on Facebook in April, he saw the teenager had posted photos of himself making 18th Street gang signs. He passed those photos on to Miguel Gomez, an MS-13 member, according to court documents, who alerted gang leaders in El Salvador.

The message came back to kill Henriquez, Viera Gonzalez said.

----------

 The victim was brought to a van, where MS-13 members waited.

“He was told that we were going to a party . . . where there were girls,” testified Manuel Antonio Centeno, who has also pleaded guilty.

As they drove, Viera Gonzalez said he turned the music up and discussed with the driver where they might kill Henriquez undetected.

They decided on the isolated mountains of West Virginia. On the way there, Viera Gonzalez passed around Heinekens and asked Henriquez questions: Where he was from, how long he had been in the country and whether he was in a gang.

Henriquez said he was in the 18th Street gang. He asked Viera Gonzalez the same questions, noting his tattoos and that he was from San Miguel, a city in El Salvador dominated by MS-13.
No one in this van is in a gang, the MS-13 leader said he responded.

Story here...discuss this amongst yourselves...I'm curious to whether my readers are as outraged as I am. 

Syrian forces enter Afrin. Russian diplomacy will be tested...

via Bloomberg

Syrian pro-government fighters entered the border town of Afrin to help Kurdish forces battle a Turkish incursion, state-run media reported, raising the risk of a direct conflict between the two countries.

With Syrian flags plastered on their armored vehicles, the paramilitary forces set out for Afrin to “defend our people against the Turkish aggression,” state-run Syrian television reported. Turkish troops entered Syria on Jan. 20 to expel Kurdish YPG fighters from the border area, viewing them as an extension of the Kurdish PKK separatist group that Turkey has fought for decades.

Story here. 

Defend our people against Turkish aggression.

Drink that in.

They're using paramilitary forces too.  That means something but I can't put my finger on it.

Doesn't really matter.  It's a chaotic battlefield.  Only by some miracle have we avoided clashes between US/Russian/Turkish forces.  When you have semi-pros involved the chances of mistakes happening increase substantially.

I would bet body parts I highly value that these paramilitary forces will take a shot or two at the Turks.  How they respond will tell us whether this thing turns even messier than it already is.

Now this is a holdout pistol!

Yeah it only fires one shot but what a shot!  7.62x39?  Center mass at 3 feet will get the job done!

What the hell is "Ghouta"??? & The EU is tired of the Ukraine drama...

via Reuters

Pro-government forces pounded the rebel-held district of eastern Ghouta outside the Syrian capital Damascus on Tuesday, in a surge of violence that a war monitor said had killed at least 250 people since Sunday night.

Story here. 

Ghouta first.

I had some readers talking about Ghouta in the comments section and didn't know what the fuss was about.  My reaction was "what the hell is Ghouta".  I didn't dig into it and now we have Reuters all over it.

Seems like the drama in Syria will continue.

This is disturbing.

 I thought we had one policy goal (yep, I'm repeating myself).  Kill ISIS.  The reason?  To stabalize Iraq and to end the massive flow of refugees into Europe.  An added side benefit would be to cut off the flow of terrorists and funding to that group.

That objective has been realized yet we're still playing in that quagmire.  We're doing this to ourselves.  World Wide Game Of Thrones is not a game we appear to play well.  Time to punch out.


via Reuters.

The European Union is shutting down a border checkpoint scheme with Ukraine, deepening doubts about Kiev’s ability to deliver reforms in return for billions in European aid.

The project to upgrade six Ukrainian checkpoints on the EU’s eastern frontier was launched in 2014, after Europe backed Kiev’s pro-Western leaders during the Crimean crisis.

The scheme aimed to help integrate Ukraine’s economy with those of its EU neighbors by building or modernizing checkpoints at crossings with Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and Romania. According to the EU, the projects were designed to cut border crossing times and improve customs procedures.

They foundered after a series of delays, missteps and cost overruns involving local officials and contractors, according to internal Ukrainian government correspondence, and correspondence between the European Commission and the Kiev authorities provided by a source at a government body.

Story here. 

Another mistake by the Clinton State Dept that we're paying for today.  Why anyone would want to be saddled with a country that is full of Nazis, corrupt beyond belief and a general basket case is beyond me but it appears that they wanted Ukraine in the EU.

Seriously?  Someone was smoking crack.

This is another McCain, Graham, Neo-Con, globalist folly.  I'll never understand the bipartisan love affair with our intervention in Ukraine but Russia slicing off Crimea is not worth our continued investment in that cesspool.

Again.

It's time to punch out.

The Household Division on the Onion Range, Falklands

17-year-old Lepa Radic before her execution in 1943.

17-year-old Lepa Radic before her execution in 1943. When offered her life in exchange for information about her partisan unit, Radic responded with “my comrades will reveal themselves when they avenge my death”.

I here people talking about being brave because "they embrace their real selves" and that they "talk truth to power".

Poppycock.

This is real bravery that is awe inspiring.  This was a brave woman.

Challenger 2 main battle tank of the Queen's Royal Hussars prepares for live firing in Germany.

Open Comment Post. Feb 21, 2018

Brazil's Lower House Approves Military Intervention in Rio...Are American cities next?

via Voice of America.

Brazil's lower house approved a decree to put the military in charge of Rio de Janeiro's security forces early Tuesday as soldiers and police spread out throughout in the city to combat rising crime.

The military took over Rio's police on Friday, but the presidential decree still needs congressional approval. The Chamber of Deputies has sent the measure to the Senate, which was scheduled to debate it later in the day.

Overnight, the armed forces and police spread out in in Rio in the first major operation since the change in command. They took up positions on major roads that connect Rio with the rest of the country in an effort to prevent drugs, illegal arms and stolen goods from entering the city, said Col. Roberto Itamar, a military spokesman. Around 3,000 members of the armed forces were involved.

Armored vehicles rolled through the streets of one neighborhood on Guanabara Bay on Tuesday, while boats patrolled the waters. Soldiers and police set up checkpoints and searched everyone leaving or entering during the morning commute.

Story here. 

We're having a "police" debate on my gun control posts today (make no mistake about it...I'M TOTALLY AGAINST IT...I WAS BORN FREE!) and police shootings are being discussed too.

Well ya know what?

My views on militarized police have evolved.  I was against it.  Now?  Well with a bit of info I've come across I'll give them what they need to get the job done.

Why?

Two reasons.

1.  Reports of the Cartel operating in Houston, Los Angeles and a few other cities has hit my inbox.  Old news to you?  New to me.  If they've been operating in our country for awhile now then I'm amazed they've been able to keep things as under control as they have.  But make no mistake about it.  If they're in those cities we will eventually see the same type violence here as we see in Mexico.

2.  You don't want an American city to have to deal with the Rio situation.  The last thing the American people need is to have a Marine Corps Infantry Battalion rolling down its streets doing police work.  You want to see mean and nasty?  That will be mean and nasty.  They will do their best to moderate, to be friendly and to not alienate people, but they're not trained for police work even if the COIN mafia wants you to think so.

Give the police Abrams M1's if that's what they think they need but we do NOT need to wake up to an America city going thru what's going on in Brazil.