Ol Paint

Civil asset forfeiture doesn't need oversight, it needs abolition. Doug

What Is Going on With Shipping's analysis of the preliminary report. Doug

Art Deco Aeroplanes Northrop Gamma Curtis XP-40 Bell XFL-1 Curtis AT-9 Beech 18 Douglas B-23 Lockheed XF-90 Gilbert XF-120 (Okay, it's a Martin XB-51) Convair XB-46 Doug

And on the UNREP game: Departing a bit from the ship focus, VERTREP with the CH-46 was cool: Doug

Van's RV-7 on floats. An article on the build, but with very little performance information: https://understandingairplanes.com/RV7floats.pdf Doug

Plethora of low-pass moments: https://aviationhumor.net/bomber-aircraft-low-passes/ Others, including Canberras, Vulcans, and Tu-22s at the link, above. I'd have loved to have seen and heard a B-36 low pass. There's a great one on YouTube: Doug

The Phantom was always a brutalist aircraft with form following function. From the wingtip dihedral, anhedral tailplanes, and massive intakes, it fit right in with the muscle car era. Ironically, I would've put the P-47 in the same category as the F-4 Phantom, when compared to the P-51 and Spitfire. Particularly considering one P-47 put the "ground" in ground attack, flying 150mi back to base after CFIT: Doug

Unpopular opinion, but the I think the Draken may be decent-looking, but the square cut inlets and relationship to the nose make it look like they forgot about 5' of fuselage. It's like they stuck the poor jet in the pencil sharpener a few too many times... Not in the same aesthetic class as the contemporaneous B-58 Hustler or F-106. Also, this thread is worthless without pictures. Oddly, it seems difficult to come by a picture of the F-106 and B-58 in formation, so I'll settle for each one escorting another aesthetically pleasing aircraft. Doug

Spain apparently denied docking to the US-flagged Maersk Denver. Doug

Edit: Moved post to a slightly more relevant thread. Doug

Thanks for the information. I guess I assumed the M109 would've been much heavier with the fully armored chassis and turret, compared to the practically unarmored chassis, limited traverse, and open mount of the M107/110 chassis. Looking into it a little more, I guess there was a T245 155mm variant proposed, according to David Doyle's "M107/M110 Family of Self-Propelled Artillery 1956-1991." https://x.com/Ninja998998/status/1133721424185647106 Doug

For some reason, looking at the thread on the new Swiss 10x10 SPH got me thinking about the M110 family. Mainly thinking about the size and bulk of the Swiss beast. The M107 175mm, M110 8-inch, and M578 light recovery vehicle were supposed to support air-transportability. So why wasn't there a version mounting a 155mm howitzer? Doug

Learn to read and comprehend. I'm done with your idiocy. Doug

The 9/11 attacks that caused the US to invoke Article 5 occurred in New York City, just outside Cooperstown, PA, and Washington, DC. Last I checked, all three locations are in North America. "The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or North America..." "For the purpose of Article 5, an armed attack on one or more of the Parties is deemed to include an armed attack: on the territory of any of the Parties in Europe or North America..." Show me where Article 5/6 doesn't apply. The spending is an agreement between all of the NATO nations--which is each nation's commitment to the requirements of Article 3. NATO isn't a pact for the US to carry the burden of a bunch of freeloaders, it's supposed to be a mutual aid alliance. If you want a list of countries that did not meet the 2% GDP level, the following nations fell below that in every year from 2014 to 2024: Belgium, Canada, Croatia, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Slovenia, and Spain. If we exclude 2024, then Albania, Bulgaria, Czechia, Germany, Montenegro, Netherlands, North Macedonia, Norway, Slovak Republic, Sweden, and Turkey all get added to the list of delinquents.* I've cited NATO and even provided you the links. There are none so blind as those who will not see. Doug *On the flip side, Estonia met or exceeded 2% every year except 2014, where it missed by 0.07%. Latvia has met the goal since 2018, Lithuania since 2019, Poland only missed 2014 (1.88%), 2017 (1.89%), and 2019 (1.99%). And credit to the UK and Greece for meeting it every year over that period.

Ukraine agreed to give up the third-largest nuclear arsenal in exchange for security guarantees from Russia, US, and UK based on the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. China and France also concurred in separate documents. Instead of full support of the agreement, the US administration in 2014 attempted to "manage" the conflict. We repeated this mistake after the 2022 invasion, playing dial-a-war. Doug