I think a lot of folks are skimming the top of this and missing the really interesting parts.
Their focus doesn’t seem to be providing adversaries against pilots, but adversaries against weapons systems.
He’s essentially selling organic data to train JTACs against.
The goal here isn’t as much great avionics, but great combinations of sensors and sensor jamming.
The military focuses on having a combat ready fleet, while he focuses on a fleet that can provide lowest cost options to provide appropriate training data.
A lot of that fleet is made up of trainers fit with electronics packages and Cessnas similarly Frankensteined. Then the military and manufacturers rent it out vs maintaining their own limited-use fleet.
The hornets are great, not just because they’re sweet jets, but because of the electronics packages and maintainability.
...and then he has a paramilitary nut/Bond villain vibe that keeps the story less dry and probably appeals to the intended audience.
I read it all and while it's great that he has a legitimate reason to own these, it doesn't change the fact that he owns a private air force, heavy weapons and state-of-the-art countermeasures. It's a terrifying legal precedent and he's opened the door for a new market niche that less savory people can sneak into.
The US already has ludicrously expansive personal rights to weapons ownership for any reason. We have a guy buying up a private air force. We have several guys building space vehicles. If Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos wanted a nuclear-armed ICBM could we actually stop them? Or, maybe more likely, some QAnon nutjob getting his hands on an armored vehicle and driving it through a shopping mall in Atlanta?
You do realize that there's a ton of precedent for privately-owned heavy weaponry in the US, right? As the 2nd Amendment folks would point out, there used to be US citizens who owned warships.
F/A-18s without guided weaponry aren't really that much of a change. (they've got cannons, but afact no JDAMs, JSOWs, AMRAAMs or even dumb bombs)
> Or, maybe more likely, some QAnon nutjob getting his hands on an armored vehicle and driving it through a shopping mall in Atlanta?
Well, you can literally buy WW2 era tanks. And it doesn't take all that much to make them street-legal. This isn't new. And yet, we DON'T see nutjobs abusing it.
Well there was the killdozer guy, who did just that with what was basically a homemade tank. Which in a way proves that a sufficiently motivated individual isn't going to be stopped by silly laws against owning this stuff.
Laws are for making certian undesirable strategies/behavior uneconomical and therefore less enticing to those who would otherwise commit them by making the resulting situation less attractive.
For example right now there is nothing stopping you from just grabbing a paring knife and stabbing/killing a random person on the street but you sure as hell aren't going put yourself in a better situation having done so.
I know. There's a document out there somewhere with John Adams signature telling a merchant captain it's fine to put cannons on his vessel. Privateers were even recruited to fight the British in 1812. That's what the 2nd amendment was actually written for. And the last time it was relevant.
And I think just saying it hasn't happened yet is like saying we haven't had a giant pandemic yet in 2019. I'd rather not wait for a catastrophe to decide we should do something about it.
The thing is, the WORST case for an asshole with a tank is a few dozen deaths. Tanks are designed to be operated by more than one person, and so a loner operating a tank gets at best the driver's seat and a machine gun. And when it comes to a few hundred deaths, Timothy McVeigh [0] says hi.
Point being, a tank like that isn't really worse than a large ANFO truck bomb.
"Do something about it" like what? The 2nd amendment specifically says the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. If some nutjob wants to hurt people, he can figure out a way to do it with some household chemicals and gasoline. And if we're truly worried about that, shouldn't we be addressing the mental health problems that would cause somebody to drive a tank through a mall? I know it's a cliche, but guns don't kill people... people do.
Have you ever killed someone without a gun? Not trying to be metal, but I was in a self defense situation many years ago and and something terrible happened.
Shooting a gun vs using "household chemicals and gasoline" to attack someone, to say nothing of knives or bare hands, are so apart from each other that I know for a fact that you have no experience with violence or how much easier it is to do violence with a gun vs other methods. You are just parroting teenager-level philosophy.
Besides all that, we have huge amounts of data over more than 100 years. Turns out, and this will shock you, when you have more guns you are more likely to shoot people and kill overall.
I don't want people to die because Bubba finds it badass to own an AR-15 they will never use except maybe to kill themselves or a family member (statistically, these are the no1 and no2 most likely people an American is to kill with their gun). Do as you will I guess but almost nobody needs to own a gun privately.
And I don't want people to die because a tyrannical government decides it needs to occupy the population. It's acceptable to me that some people will die as a result of gun violence, if it means the citizenry keeps its right to bear arms. Every homicide is a tragedy, but the weapons are not the problem nor the cause.
If you want to restrict the rights afforded by the 2nd amendment, would you like to restrict some others too? After all, the "freedom of the press" was designed at a time when newspapers were literally printed on a printing press. The founders couldn't have imagined the internet, so do people really need access to such a powerful way of disseminating information?
I would like to restrict only the second amendment. I don't see how a slippery slope argument is remotely relevant. There are dozens of liberal democracies in the world that have robust personal freedom and no right to bear arms. In fact, our right to bear arms is a direct descendent of the British Common Law version that existed for centuries and has been almost completely removed in the 20th century with no loss of free speech or press and no descent into tyranny. The country whose tyranny the founders were worried about.
That’s probably the worse example to use for your argument. Britain is a place where cops will come to your door to investigate over non-death threat tier posts on Twitter.
> I would like to restrict only the second amendment.
At least you admit it.
There are ways to do this. You can get a supermajority in congress to agree with you, or you can get 34 state legislatures to agree to call a convention of states. Then, and only then, you can change the constitution.
Barring that, no law or executive order can restrict the second amendment and be constitutional. Fortunately our current president has appointed justices who will ensure this remains true.
You completely misunderstand reality. When the F-35 comes to liquefy your house, I’m sure your gun will do a lot to defend yourself.
You don’t have the smallest chance of defending yourself from the government, the only thing gun ownership does is let people shoot each other for no good reason. This is an incontrovertible fact proven by statistics of gun ownership countries a.k.a. the US versus others.
Gun ownership is, in aggregate, about as dangerous to the US population as car ownership.
Millions of lightly armed people have stood up well to the US military. What you're talking about isn't a fact at all -- it is a myth, that overwhelming technology can decisively determine the outcome of wars. It is certainly a factor but there is no way F-35s would be sent to bomb houses (for example): the cost, relative scarcity and long periods of maintenance for advanced weapons systems like that are all factors that limit their deployment. In limited war -- which is what all insurrections are -- application of advanced weapons is difficult.
If you truly believe this, I would urge you to take a look at the insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan and the decades long occupations thereof by the US. I'd also recommend reading The Seventh Sense: Power, Fortune, and Survival in the Age of Networks by Josh Ramo, which examines this phenomenon in depth.
"If you want to restrict the rights afforded by the 2nd amendment, would you like to restrict some others too? After all, the "freedom of the press" was designed at a time when newspapers were literally printed on a printing press. The founders couldn't have imagined the internet, so do people really need access to such a powerful way of disseminating information?"
Slippery slope. Keep talking about how you're fine with some people killing other people but not different people killing other people, it's a philosophical point and has something resembling a legs and not a total logical fallacy.
"I was in a self defence situation and needed to kill someone" and "almost nobody needs to own a gun privately" seem to be incompatible statements to me.
As for the difficulty of killing large numbers of people, I'd stand by the assertion that it's easier with chemicals (explosives or incindiaries) than it is with guns.
They aren't incompatible statements. Certainly the parent's experience, devoid of context could easily be seen as evidence in favor of permitting the possession of firearms. But just because they may have benefitted from, or could have benefited from the owning a firearm at one point doesn't mean that they accept the broader societal trade-offs that ubiquitous gun ownership entails.
I hold a number of political convictions at odds with my personal interest, or which could/will hurt me as an individual in the future, as do many around me. But I stand by them because they would bring us closer to nation in-which I'd be happy to live.
I'm firmly on the side of gun ownership. I'd like the NFA to be revised or repealed so as to make it more coherent, and less restrictive.
Nevertheless, I can respect the parent's position, because their experience doesn't make them hypocritical or subtract from their point (though it can be used to) so much as it's a sign of social conscientiousness, and a willingness to potentially put what they believe to be the needs of the whole before the needs of the self.
The reality is that many large terrorist attacks have been conducted with explosives, toxic gas and other methods.
Treating every gun as though it were a clear, present danger, is no more reasonable than treating every car that way. There are ~75 million gun owners in the USA; they are overwhelmingly harmless. Targeted policy is how you address something that is occasionally misused; and targeted policy seems to be the one thing that people keen on gun control do not want to think about.
I don't want people to die because Bubba finds it badass to own an AR-15 they will never use except maybe to kill themselves or a family member (statistically, these are the no1 and no2 most likely people an American is to kill with their gun).
It's true that most people who die from firearms are people ending their own lives; but the next largest group are criminals shooting one another, not "family members". The average American, not otherwise inclined to end their own life, is very unlikely to be shot with a gun.
The way you are defining "use" in your statement is just wrong. People who don't shoot other people still "use" their guns, just for sport or for hunting. It's like you're saying the only people who "use" guns are killers. What if we applied the same concept to another area? "I don't want people to die because Bubba finds it badass to own a Cessna they will never use except maybe to crash and kill themselves or a family member...". It seems absurd. There is a diminishing returns element to policy and you just can't write them in a such a way that it perfects safety.
Repeal or at least disincorporate the 2nd amendment. It's kinda ludicrous that conservative justices claim to be strict constructionists yet decided states and municipalities can't make their own rules. And yes, we should be addressing mental health regardless.
And if guns don't kill people, what vital purpose do they serve? Defend your home with a bow and arrow because it's exactly as effective as an AR-15 with 100-round clip according your reductive assertion.
What exactly are nutjobs going to do with any of these weapons?
We've had cases of nutjobs getting their hands on tanks, or building their own armored bulldozers, and going on rampages. It's a pain, but it's not a complete disaster. These vehicles aren't invincible. They generally get stuck somewhere, and then the police break open the hatch and shoot the nutjob. Tanks really can't do much by themselves besides drive around and run into some things (or over them, but again, you have to be careful or it can get stuck, break a tread, etc.). Tanks armed with 120mm cannon rounds, of course, can do some serious damage, but private individuals aren't allowed to own that kind of weaponry at all.
It's the same with an older fighter jet. What are you going to do with it? Fly it into a building? Sure, that'll be worse than flying a Cessna into a building, but still, it's not like a WMD. Even if you could fully load the 20mm cannon, you're not going to do that much damage; they don't hold that much ammo anyway (only enough for something like 5-10 seconds of sustained fire I think). Yeah, being able to drop a bunch of 500lb bombs would be a disaster, but again, you can't get that stuff.
Yes, if Elon or Jeff wanted a nuclear-armed ICBM, the government would certainly stop them. Building a rocket is one thing, building a nuclear warhead is something else entirely, and is not something trivial that just anyone can do. Iran (an actual nation-state) has been trying for some time and still hasn't succeeded as far as we know. It takes a lot of facilities and special materials to build something like that.
I guess there are two sides, it took just ten nutjobs to get the forever wars going. On the other hand they didn't need more sophisticated weapons than knives.
Though I don't know why a nutjob couldn't do just as bad with something heavier.
I don't think so. I have no legal training but I think there is a difference between a firearm and a nuclear weapon on grounds that the interpretation of the second amendment is at a personal/militia level rather than some kind of national threat that would warrant use of nuclear weapons.
No, since no one has ever put up the money to buy one and been turned down or sought access to an appropriate test range and been turned away. The common law is like that: it doesn't solve problems we don't have.
It doesn't set a legal precedent of much significance, because in the USA there are people who own tanks, artillery and helicopter gunships.
It doesn't make sense to be so alarmed by it. People who own heavy weapons overwhelmingly use them for lawful purposes. This is true of people who own guns, as well. We can't treat every potentially dangerous thing as if it is a clear, present danger: that is like treating all drivers as "potential drunk drivers". You can't write policy around that.
No it actually is to train pilots, but that training is not about 'flying' so much as 'flying while fighting', understanding the engagement envelope of red vs blue weapons, jammers and sensors.
Basically you need to have something tough to go against the JSF or it is a cakewalk and no training is achieved. These Hornets are an excellent 4th gen platform because they have had excellent maintenance and relatively gentle operation. They have all had the HUG 2.2 upgrade and are incredibly capable -- more so than many aircraft operated by the Air National Guard -- but they are too long in the tooth to be going up against modern competitors and be survivable.
JTAC training doesn't need high fast flyers, so just like the article says, using them is pointlessly expensive. Hawks and propeller aircraft are more useful. Fast jet flyers often have type certifcation on them from initial training, perfectly adequate for practicing 9 line briefs.
You mean these jets aren't demilitarized? I've read about civilians buying surplus military aircraft but they lacked radar and weapons at the very least.
Their focus doesn’t seem to be providing adversaries against pilots, but adversaries against weapons systems.
He’s essentially selling organic data to train JTACs against.
The goal here isn’t as much great avionics, but great combinations of sensors and sensor jamming.
The military focuses on having a combat ready fleet, while he focuses on a fleet that can provide lowest cost options to provide appropriate training data.
A lot of that fleet is made up of trainers fit with electronics packages and Cessnas similarly Frankensteined. Then the military and manufacturers rent it out vs maintaining their own limited-use fleet.
The hornets are great, not just because they’re sweet jets, but because of the electronics packages and maintainability.
...and then he has a paramilitary nut/Bond villain vibe that keeps the story less dry and probably appeals to the intended audience.