Louie Stasney

Marine Corp, U Me ,we're All here together ❤ 💖 🤪

[Gretchen Smith @codeofvets]

Prayer Request:
“All while getting ready for mass this morning. Dad experienced a large brain bleed discovered on initial CT scan. He was rushed to the hospital where the ER doctor emphasized that rapid arrival was critical—without surgery, he likely would not have survived. A neurosurgeon evaluated him, and he underwent surgery He was intubated, with good oxygen levels; medical teams focused on stabilizing his blood pressure. He has responded to commands on both sides of his body (arms and legs). Second CT scan (late afternoon) was negative for fluid buildup or need for drainage. He opened his eyes and acknowledged Fr. Ray during the Sacrament of the Anointing of the Sick. Prayed rosary with mom. Requesting prays for this ol Navy man.”

Please pray for our brother in arms🙏🏽

[Gary Sinise @GarySinise]

We had such a great time recording Resurrection & Revival: Part 3 that I wanted to share a little behind-the-scenes fun from the studio.

At one point, everyone decided to show up dressed as Lt. Dan. Imagine my surprise when everyone showed up in bandanas, Hawaiian shirts, and some very impressive wigs. Needless to say, there were a lot of laughs that day.

This project has been incredibly special to me. As Mac's dad, it's been an honor to help bring his music to life and share it with all of you. I'm grateful to everyone who poured their hearts into this album and helped celebrate Mac's creativity, talent, and spirit.

Hope you enjoy this glimpse behind the scenes.

Order today at: https://t.co/LoexMgNRak

[Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives @dom_lucre]

🔥🚨DEVELOPING: ChdTheBuilder’s finance was asked what can people do to help him and she said to share his story and get the truth out because he wont be able to share his side of the story online when he gets out.

[Hazel Moore @HazelMoore32]

Please re-post... share... Enough of AOC.

[Lara Logan @laralogan]

I did not wake up filled with confidence in the President’s safety/security. I do not feel charitable towards those calling for his death all the time or those who have lied constantly from the moment he was first elected. I feel angry - that in the United States of America I have to worry that the Pres will be killed collectively by propagandists & political operatives masquerading as journalists who conspire with intel agencies, traitors & foreign nations & promise to come after anyone who has ever supported Trump. That is not freedom. I am sick of it - people live in fear in America that if anything happens to Trump, they’re next. People in govt agencies are afraid to do their jobs or hold people accountable just in case he doesn’t make it - one way or another. These people have stolen from us, they have bullied us - they punish those who tell the truth & reward cowards & liars. They murdered a young woman at Charlottesville & spent years lecturing us with self-righteous hypocrisy. They will kill to get their way. They will look the other was as children are raped, tortured, sold & murdered. They have no moral courage yet they look down on everyone else. They expect the people they despise to pay for their children’s college bills & steal from every hard working American.

Let’s get this straight:

Only an extremist lunatic would promote racism or hatred in any form so let’s put that false white supremacist narrative to bed forever.

Pedophiles are not “minor attracted persons” - they are not more important than their victims and it will never be ok in any way shape or form.

The most reasonable thing on earth is that every one of us has a duty to fight for the protection of every child.

Without freedom, we are a slave nation.

Our closest allies are not other slave nations.

We are being isolated from the countries most like ours in principle - who believe in & support the principles of Judeo Christian civilization that have traditionally afforded women more rights than any other society in the world. That is strategic - & it is by design/intentional.

It is not ok for the media to lie on a colossal scale & never apologise or retract or correct the record, in spite of all the evidence.

It is not ok to be paid to burn down cities because you cannot win at the ballot.

Fraudulent elections hurt everyone. Americans on all sides are sick to death of it. People are not dumb - they know that in the end the ones who win that game are the ones stealing power for their own, personal benefit - not yours.

People elected to serve need to serve. If not, they should get the fuck out of the way & stop subverting the will of the people.

Anyone still wearing a mask is a complete moron or totally & utterly deceived. Neither is ok.

Murdering people during covid is still murder & not holding anyone accountable is not ok.

Anyone who thinks they left the evidence in the Epstein files so it could be used against the guilty is not thinking clearly. That shit was scrubbed long before Trump ever took office the first time.

“Treason & sedition” is not a fantasy or a buzz word - it is the most serious crime ever committed against the American people en masse & the biggest threat they face today. Failure to hold anyone accountable guarantees that we will lose this country.

If you are subverting the government, you belong in jail.

If you are cheering for another country to defeat this one, you do not belong here.

If you think control of the food supply is not about control of populations, you have not given this enough thought.

If you think there is nothing odd about the fact that only non-Muslim, western nations have a mass migration problem from Islamic countries, you literally have no brain.

If you think demonic symbols taking over music, gaming, fashion, pop culture, concerts etc does not mean anything then you have travelled far from God and you may want to do some homework.

Have a great day. And God Bless America.

[Sean Feucht @seanfeucht]

"They seized my baby and sliced him in two with a knife.

My second child woke up ... They split his head with a machete."

THIS IS THE REALITY FOR NIGERIAN CHRISTIANS.

When will the world wake up?!

[AJ Inapi (Allan) @aj_inapi]

This one needs attention.......
Christians being slaughtered in Nigeria.

[Bill Ackman @BillAckman]

I am reaching out to the @X community for advice with the likely risk of sharing TMI. I have been sufficiently upset about the whole matter that I have lost sleep thinking about it and I am hoping that this post will enable me to get this matter off my chest.

By way of background, I started a family office called TABLE about 15 years ago and hired a friend who had previously managed a family office, and years earlier, had been my personal accountant. She is someone that I trusted implicitly and consider to be a good person.

The office started small, but over the last decade, the number of personnel and the cost of the office grew massively. The growth was entirely on the operational side as the investment team has remained tiny. While my investment portfolio grew substantially, the investments I had made were almost entirely passive and TABLE simply needed to account for them and meet capital calls as they came in. While TABLE purchased additional software and other systems that were supposed to improve productivity, the team kept increasing in size at a rapid rate, and the expenses continued to grow even faster.

While I would periodically question the growing expenses and high staff turnover, I stayed uninvolved with the office other than a once-a-year meeting when I briefly reviewed the operations and the financials and determined bonus compensation for the President and the CFO. I spent no time with any of the other employees or the operations. The whole idea behind TABLE was that it would handle everything other than my day job so that I would have more time for my job and my family.

Over the last six years, expenses ballooned even further, employee turnover accelerated, and I became concerned that all was not well at TABLE. It was time for me to take a look at what was going on.

Nearly four years ago, I recruited my nephew who had recently graduated from Harvard and put him to work at Bremont, a British watchmaker, one of my only active personal investments to figure out the issues at the company and ultimately assist in executing a turnaround. He did a superb job.

When he returned from the UK late last year after a few years at Bremont, I asked him to help me figure out what was going on with TABLE. When I explained to TABLE’s president what he would be doing, she became incredibly defensive, which naturally made me more concerned.

My nephew went to work by first meeting with each employee to understand their roles at the company and to learn from them what ideas they had on how things could be improved. He got an earful.

Our first step in helping to turn around TABLE was a reduction in force including the president and about a third of the team, retaining excellent talent that had been desperate for new leadership.

Now here is where I need your advice.

All but one of the employees who were terminated acted professionally and were gracious on the way out (excluding the president who had a notice period in her contract, is currently still being paid, and with whom I have not yet had a discussion).

The highest compensated terminated employee other than the president, an in-house lawyer (let’s call her Ronda), told us that three months of severance was not enough and demanded two years’ severance despite having worked at the company for only two and one half years.

When I learned of Ronda's request for severance, I offered to speak with her to understand what she was thinking, but she refused to do so. A few days ago, we received a threatening letter from a Silicon Valley law firm.

In the letter, Ronda’s counsel suggests that her termination is part of longstanding issues of ‘harassment and gender discrimination’ – an interesting claim in light of the fact that Ronda was in charge of workplace compliance – and that her termination was due to:

“unlawful, retaliatory, and harmful conduct directed towards her. Both [Ronda] and I [Ronda’s lawyer] have spoken with you about [Ronda’s] view of what a reasonable resolution would include given the circumstances. Thus far, TABLE has refused to provide any substantive response. This letter provides the last opportunity to reach a satisfactory agreement. If we cannot do so, [Ronda] will seek all appropriate relief in a court of competent jurisdiction.”

The letter goes on to explain the basis for the “unsafe work environment” claim at TABLE:

“In early 2026, Pershing Square’s founder Bill Ackman installed his nephew in an unidentified role at TABLE, Ackman’s family office. [His nephew]—whose only work experience had been for TABLE where he was seconded abroad for the last four years to a UK watch company held by Ackman—began appearing at TABLE’s offices and conducting interviews of employees without a clear explanation of his role or the purposes of these interviews. During this period, he made a series of inappropriate and genderbased [sic] comments to multiple employees that created an unsafe work environment. Among other things, [his nephew] made remarks about female employees’ ages (“Tell me you are nowhere near 40”), physical appearance (“Your body does not look like you have kids”), as well as intrusive questions about family planning and sexual orientation (“Who carried your son? Who will carry your next child?”). These incidents were reported to senior leadership at TABLE and Pershing Square. Rather than being addressed appropriately, the response from senior management reflected, at best, willful blindness to the inappropriateness of [his nephew]’s remarks and, at worst, tacit endorsement.”

The above allegations about my nephew had previously been brought to my attention by TABLE’s president when they occurred. When I learned of them, I told the president that I would speak to him directly and encouraged her to arrange for him to get workplace sensitivity training. The president assured me that she would do so.

When I spoke to my nephew, he explained what he actually had said and how his actual remarks had been received, not at all as alleged in the legal letter from Ronda’s counsel. I have also spoken to others at the lunch table who confirmed his description of the facts. In any case, he meant no harm, was simply trying to build rapport with other employees, and no one, as far as I understand, was offended.

Ironically, Ronda claims in her legal letter that TABLE didn’t take HR compliance seriously, yet Ronda was in charge of HR compliance at TABLE and the person who gave my nephew his workplace sensitivity training after the alleged incidents. In any case, Ronda, as head of compliance, should have kept a record or raised an alarm if indeed there was pervasive harassment or other such problems at the company, and there is no evidence whatsoever that this is true.

So why does Ronda believe she can get me to pay her nearly $2 million, i.e., two years of severance, nearly one year of severance for each of her years at the company? Well, here is where some more background would be helpful.

Over the last two months, I have been consumed with a major family medical issue – one of my older daughters had a massive brain hemorrhage on February 5th and has since been making progress on her recovery – and I am in the midst of a major transaction for my company which I am executing from a hospital room office next to her . While the latter business matter is publicly known, the details of my daughter’s situation are only known to Ronda because of her role at our family office.

Now, let’s get back to the subject at hand.

Unfortunately, while New York and many other states have employment-at-will, there has emerged an industry of lawyers who make a living from bringing fake gender, race, LGBTQ and other discrimination employment claims in order to extract larger severance payments for terminated employees, and it needs to stop.

The fake claim system succeeds because it costs little to have a lawyer send a threatening letter and nearly all of the lawyers in this field work on contingency so there is no or minimal cash cost to bring a claim. And inevitably, nearly 100% of these claims are settled because the public relations and legal costs of defending them exceed the dollar cost of the settlement. The claims are nearly always settled with a confidentiality agreement where the employee who asserts the fake claims remains anonymous and as a result, there is no reputational cost to bringing false claims.

The consequences of this sleazy system (let’s call it ‘the System’) are the increased costs of doing business which is a tax on the economy and society. There are other more serious problems due to the System. Unfortunately, the existence of an industry of plaintiff firms and terminated employees willing to make these claims makes it riskier for companies to hire employees from a protected class, i.e., LGBTQ, seniors, women, people of color etc. because it is that much more reputationally damaging and expensive to be accused of racism, sexism, and/or intolerance for sexual diversity than for firing a white male as juries generally have less sympathy for white males.

The System therefore increases the risk of discrimination rather than reducing it, and the people bringing these fake claims are thereby causing enormous harm to the other members of these protected classes.

So what happened here?

Ronda was vastly overpaid and overqualified for the job that she did at TABLE. She was paid $1.05 million plus benefits last year for her work which was largely comprised of filling out subscription agreements and overseeing an outside law firm on closing passive investments in funds and in private and venture stage companies, some compliance work, and managing the office move from one office to another. She had a very good gig as she was highly paid, only had to go into the office three days a week, and could work from anywhere during the summer.

Once my nephew showed up and started to investigate what was going on, she likely concluded that there was a reasonable possibility she would be terminated, as her job was in the too-easy-and-to-good-to-be-true category. The problem was that she was not in a protected class due to her race, age or sexual identity so she had to construct the basis for a claim. While she is female and could in theory bring a gender-based discrimination claim, she reported to the president who is female and to whom she is very close, which makes it difficult for her to bring a harassment claim against her former boss.

When my nephew complimented a TABLE employee at lunch about how young she looked – in response to saying she was going to her 40-year-old sister’s birthday party, he said ‘she must be your older sister’ – Ronda immediately reported it to our external HR lawyer. She thereby began building her case.

The other problem for Ronda bringing a claim is that she was terminated alongside 30% of other TABLE employees as part of a restructuring so it is very difficult for her to say that she was targeted in her termination or was retaliated against. TABLE is now hiring an external fractional general counsel as that is all the company needs to process the relatively limited amount of legal work we do internally. In short, Ronda was eminently qualified and capable and did her job. She was just too much horsepower for what is largely an administrative legal role so she had to come up with something else to bring a claim.

Now Ronda knew I was a good target and it was a good time to bring a claim against me. She also knew that I was under a lot of pressure because on March 4th when Ronda was terminated, my daughter had not yet emerged from consciousness, she was not yet breathing on her own, and my daughter and we were fighting for her life. I was and remain deeply engaged in her recovery while at the same time I was working on finishing the closing for the private placement round for my upcoming IPO.

Ronda also knew that publicity about supposed gender discrimination and a “hostile and unsafe work environment” are not things that a CEO of a company about to go public wants to have released into the media. And she may have thought that the nearly $2 million she was asking for would be considered small in the context of the reputational damage a lawsuit could cause, regardless of the fact that two years of severance was an absurd amount for an employee who had only worked at TABLE for 30 months.

She also likely considered that I wouldn’t want to embarrass my nephew by dragging him into the klieg lights when her claims emerged publicly.

So, in summary, game theory would say that I would certainly settle this case, for why would I risk negative publicity at a time when I was preparing our company to go public and also risk embarrassing my nephew.

Notably, she hired a Silicon Valley law firm, rather than a typical NY employment firm. This struck me as interesting as her husband works for one of the most prominent Silicon Valley venture firms whose CEO, I am sure, has no tolerance for these kinds of fake claims that sadly many venture-backed companies also have to deal with. I mention this as I suspect her husband likely has been working with her on the strategy for squeezing me as, in addition to being a computer scientist, he is a game theorist. My only advice for him is to understand more about your opponent before you launch your first move.

All of the above said, gender, race, LGBTQ and other such discrimination is a real thing. Many people have been harmed and deserve compensation for this discrimination, and these companies and individuals should be punished for engaging in such behavior.

Which brings me to the advice I am seeking from the X community.

I am not planning to follow the typical path and settle this ‘claim.’ Rather, I am going to fight this nonsense to the end of the earth in the hope that it inspires other CEOs to do the same so we shut down this despicable behavior that is a large tax on society, employment, and the economy and contributes to workplace discrimination rather than reducing it.

Do you agree or disagree that this is the right approach?

[Maye Musk @mayemusk]

This dishonesty and hatred from the legacy media towards Elon for the past 20 years has been very painful for me, as his mother. In my new book, TIMELESS, that comes out in September, I write about it. Do journalists have no shame? Are they told to lie or they will be fired? Who is paying them? Feel free to vent in your comments.😖😖

[Gina Milan @ginamilan_]

Never thought I’d see Americans rooting for Iranians to capture U.S. soldiers. Fucking sick.

[David Limbaugh @DavidLimbaugh]

Bless this courageous and principled man.

[Eyal Yakoby @EYakoby]

BREAKING: New footage shows the aftermath of the massacre carried out on Palm Sunday by Islamists against Christians in Nigeria.

A mother holds her son for the last time.

[Dom Lucre | Breaker of Narratives @dom_lucre]

🔥🚨BREAKING: Radical Muslims in Nigeria forced a Christian man to wear a mask of Donald Trump as they tortured him. This is why the media is ignoring this what is happening in Nigeria.

The Muslims are targeting Christian Trump supporters, this shouldn’t be partisan this is horrific.

[AndyJnr ° Umaru  @AndyjnrUmaru]

This white Man is currently the most HATED Christian Evangelist in Nigeria by most Muslims.. but why???

They hate him because he is going town to town, village to village where Christians are being massacre by islamist terrorist group and making coverage about it and telling it to the world.

- Is he fabricating the news?? No
- is he one doing the killings?? No
- is he lying?? No.
- Are the killings not done by islamist terrorist groups???

We all know who are doing this killings, it's not even assumption because they are not hiding themselves behind any mask, many times dey have made video with their face on uncovered and specifically identify themselves and their believes or religion.

so why do they hate him?. you can't silence the truth.

[mike bski @BskiMike22802]

A LOVE LETTER TO THE UGLIEST, MOST IMPORTANT AIRPLANE AMERICA EVER BUILT

I am a physics teacher.

I teach my students that when a pattern repeats itself enough times, it stops being coincidence and starts being data. When the data contradicts the conclusion, you do not defend the conclusion. You throw it out and follow the data.

The Air Force has tried to retire the A-10 Warthog approximately seven times.

Seven.

Every single time -- EVERY single time -- a real shooting war starts, the retirement plan quietly vanishes and the Warthog shows back up doing the job no other aircraft on earth does as well. You would think that pattern would eventually produce a different conclusion in the procurement meetings. You would be wrong. But the data does not lie, even when the meetings do.

Right now. Day 26 of Operation Epic Fury. TODAY. A-10 Warthogs are over the Straits of Hormuz turning Iranian fast-attack boats into what I am going to generously call floating scrap. 120-plus Iranian naval vessels sunk or damaged. Missile and drone threat capability reduced by over 90 percent. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Dan Caine, confirmed it publicly: the A-10 is "hunting and killing fast-attack watercraft in the Strait of Hormuz."

The plane they tried to retire seven times.

So I wrote it a love letter. Because somebody should, and the people who keep trying to kill it apparently are not going to.

--- THE THING ABOUT UGLY PLANES ---

The A-10 does not look like a fighter jet. It looks like an engineer was handed a GAU-8 Avenger cannon -- a seven-barreled Gatling gun the SIZE of a Volkswagen Beetle that fires 30mm depleted uranium at 3,900 rounds per minute -- and told to build an airplane around it. Because that is almost exactly what happened.

The engine pods stick out from the tail section like afterthoughts. The landing gear leaves a little bulge hanging down. The nose is blunt. The entire aircraft has the aesthetic of something designed by someone who was given very specific requirements and then ran out of time to make it pretty.

Beautiful aircraft are designed around aerodynamics. Around stealth. Around marketability to congressional appropriators who have never heard a radio call with their own name on it.

The A-10 was designed around one question: how do we keep the pilot alive while he or she puts steel exactly where the guys on the ground need it in the next thirty seconds?

Everything else was secondary. Not unimportant. Secondary.

EVERYTHING flows from that philosophy. The titanium bathtub cockpit that stops 23mm cannon rounds. The redundant hydraulic systems so that one hit does not end the flight. The widely-separated engine pods so that a single strike does not take out both powerplants simultaneously. The foam-filled self-sealing fuel tanks. The manual reversion backup system -- cables, physical mechanical linkages -- so that if ALL hydraulics fail completely, the pilot can still fly the aircraft home using nothing but the original mechanical connection between the stick and the control surfaces and whatever is left in his or her arms.

This is not 1970s technology that forgot to modernize. This is 1970s design philosophy that has never once been proven wrong.

There is a difference. It matters enormously. Pay attention to it.

--- APRIL 7, 2003. BAGHDAD. I NEED YOU TO STAY WITH ME ON THIS ONE. ---

Her name is Kim Campbell. Callsign: Killer Chick.

At the time of this story she was a lieutenant colonel. She was flying an A-10A on a close air support mission over Baghdad on April 7th, 2003. The city was not, to put it mildly, a low-threat environment at that particular moment. The kind of place where you are not surprised by problems. You are only surprised by which specific problem arrives next.

Her aircraft took a direct hit from enemy ground fire. Not a graze. Not a proximity burst. A DIRECT HIT. The hit destroyed both hydraulic systems -- both circuits, completely -- and caused significant structural damage to the airframe throughout.

Modern aircraft are hydraulically controlled. Move the stick, a computer interprets the input, hydraulic actuators move the control surfaces, the aircraft goes where you point it. Lose hydraulics, you lose actuators. Lose actuators, you lose the ability to move the surfaces that make the aircraft fly in any direction you choose.

She switched to manual reversion.

This is the part I need you to actually understand. Manual reversion is not a computer backup. It is not a redundant digital system. It is a set of mechanical cables -- physical metal cables running through pulleys -- that create a direct mechanical link between the control stick and the control surfaces. No hydraulic assistance. No computational amplification. Just the pilot's actual physical strength and the mechanical connection the A-10's designers installed in the 1970s because they assumed -- correctly, as it turned out -- that real combat would produce real damage, and they were not going to let a hydraulic failure kill the pilot if they had any engineering say in the matter.

She flew that aircraft in manual reversion for over an hour. Over hostile territory. Aware that both hydraulic circuits were gone. Not certain what else might be structurally compromised. Not certain what the next problem was going to be. Just flying. Counting on the cables. Counting on the design philosophy of people who thought about this moment before she was born.

She landed it safely.

She was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.

Now I want you to answer a very simple question for me. What is the manual reversion backup system on the F-35?

There is not one. The F-35 is fly-by-wire. All pilot inputs go through flight control computers. If those systems are compromised beyond a specific threshold, you are not flying home on cables. There are no cables. That is not a criticism of the F-35 -- it is a description of a fundamentally different design philosophy that makes different assumptions about what happens when things go wrong.

The A-10's design assumption: IT IS GOING TO GET HIT. Build it to survive that.

The F-35's design assumption: DON'T GET DETECTED. Avoid the hit entirely.

Both assumptions are valid. Both platforms fulfill their design philosophy remarkably well. The problem is that the people arguing we should retire the A-10 and replace it entirely with the F-35 apparently believe that only one of these assumptions ever applies. And the people who have been in the situations where the first assumption turned out to be the relevant one have a different perspective on that.

Killer Chick flew home on cables. That is not mythology. That is the result of someone in 1974 asking "what if both hydraulic systems get destroyed?" and then building the answer into the airframe fifty years before she needed it.

I find that extraordinarily moving. I make no apologies for that.

--- THE PEOPLE WHO KEEP SHOWING UP TO TESTIFY ---

Every time Congress schedules a retirement hearing, something predictable happens.

The Air Force arrives with slides. Acquisition cost comparisons. Sortie generation models. Capability matrices that look rigorous and data-driven from altitude.

Then the Army shows up. The Marine Corps shows up. The Special Operations Forces community shows up. The Joint Terminal Attack Controllers -- the JTACs, the men and women whose specific job is to call in airstrikes from the ground while people are actively shooting at them -- they show up.

And they use words the Air Force slides do not have a column for.

Words like "guardian angel."

That is a direct quote from official congressional testimony. Not my framing. Not an editorial embellishment. An actual operator, in front of an actual congressional committee, on the record, describing the A-10 as a guardian angel. You know what that phrase means when it comes from someone who has been in the situation where they needed it? It does not mean "highly capable integrated fire support asset." It means: I was in a bad place, the radio call went through, that aircraft showed up, and the calculus of whether I was going home changed completely.

The Air Force does not have a metric for that. Because the Air Force is not the one in the bad place. The JTAC is.

I want to talk about the sound too, because it gets dismissed in procurement discussions and it absolutely should not be. The A-10's engine note -- low, grinding, distinctive -- travels in a way nothing else in the inventory replicates. The GAU-8 firing -- that BRRRRT that people describe as either the most beautiful or most terrifying sound they have ever heard depending entirely on which side of it they were on -- is one of the most instantly recognizable sounds in modern combat. The documented effect of that sound on enemy combatants is real. It has been recorded in prisoner debriefs. It disrupts coordinated attacks. It changes behavior before a single round lands.

A fast mover at 20,000 feet that makes a high-speed pass and is gone in four seconds does not produce that effect.

The aircraft that LOITERS -- that circles, that can be seen, that you know is watching, that can stay for hours -- that produces that effect. Psychological disruption of enemy coordination is not a soft metric. It is a force multiplier. It is one of the reasons people who have needed close air support in sustained firefights keep showing up to congressional hearings and using words like guardian angel.

The A-10 loiters at $6,000 a flight hour. The F-35 loiters at $30,000 to $35,000 a flight hour. I have a sixteen-year-old student who ran that ratio in about forty-five seconds. She found the math straightforward. I am not going to complicate it on her behalf.

--- THE FLY-OFF THE AIR FORCE TRIED TO BURY ---

The 2017 National Defense Authorization Act mandated a formal side-by-side comparison. A-10C versus F-35A. Close air support. Airborne forward air control. Combat search and rescue. The Air Force was not enthusiastic about this idea. The Chief of Staff at the time, General Mark Welsh, called it publicly -- on the record, in front of reporters -- a "silly exercise."

A silly exercise.

The tests ran from April 2018 through March 2019. The final report was completed in February 2022. The Air Force then declined to release it. Fought Freedom of Information Act requests. The Project On Government Oversight eventually had to sue them in federal court to obtain it. When it came out -- over a year late, under legal pressure -- it was so heavily redacted that key findings remain hidden from public view to this day.

I want you to think about that sequence. They fought the test. They ran the test anyway. They buried the results for more than a year. They released a redacted version only after being dragged into court. That is not the behavior of an organization confident in what its data showed.

Here is what the report actually found, even through the redactions.

The A-10's typical loadout enabled MORE attacks per sortie than the F-35. Not equal. More. To hit the same number of targets, you need more F-35 sorties. That might be manageable if the F-35 had strong availability. It does not. A 2023 Government Accountability Office report found the full mission capable rate of the entire F-35 fleet was BELOW 50 PERCENT. Below fifty. Half the jets in the fleet are unavailable on any given day. So you need MORE sorties from an aircraft available LESS often. That is not a capability gap. That is a capability crater. And it is going to get someone killed in the next sustained conflict.

The F-35's gun -- the GAU-22, 25mm -- has documented accuracy problems. The report actually contained a specific recommendation that the Air Force "fix the F-35A gun." It carries 181 rounds total. The A-10's GAU-8 carries 1,350 rounds of 30mm. A-10 pilots reported SIGNIFICANTLY LOWER workload than F-35 pilots on the most complex and task-intensive mission sets.

Here is the detail that made me put the report down and sit quietly for a while. As of the testing period, F-35 pilots had ZERO dedicated training requirements for close air support missions. Not reduced requirements. Zero. So the test designers specifically selected former A-10 pilots to fly the F-35 in the comparison, to "minimize the impact" of that training gap. They stacked the F-35 side of the test with pilots who already knew how to do the A-10's job.

The former A-10 pilots, flying the F-35, still did not outperform the A-10 they used to fly.

Let that land for a moment. The testers gave the F-35 the best possible advantage they could construct. Picked the pilots most likely to make it look competitive. And the results still ended up buried in a drawer for a year, released only under court order, and heavily redacted when they finally appeared.

As I tell my students: when the data keeps getting suppressed, you do not actually need to see the data to understand the general direction it points.

--- WHAT I KNOW ABOUT WAITING ---

I was a line medic in Iraq. Combat medic. Actual forward operating base. Actual radio. Actual contact.

I want to explain something about what it feels like to wait for air support from the ground, because I do not think the people making these procurement decisions have spent much time thinking about it from this angle, and I think they should be required to before they vote.

In a near-peer conflict without established air superiority, we were told to plan for 48-hour medical response windows.

Forty-eight hours.

I am also a former civilian paramedic. Cleveland. I know what the golden hour means not as a phrase but as a clinical reality. The window -- roughly sixty minutes -- inside which surgical intervention makes the difference between a soldier walking home and a soldier arriving in a flag-draped box. Tension pneumothorax. Hemorrhagic shock. Traumatic brain injury. All survivable. All survivable if you reach a surgeon within an hour. Not survivable after two days of waiting for a medevac helicopter that cannot fly because there is no air cover to protect it on final approach into the landing zone.

When the A-10 is overhead, the medevac can fly.

Not because the A-10 is magic. Because the A-10 suppresses the ground fire that would shoot the helicopter down. The A-10 keeps the approach corridor clear. The A-10 is the reason the helicopter makes it to the landing zone and the reason the kid bleeding out from a femoral artery wound is still alive when it arrives.

The people calculating sortie generation rates and procurement cost ratios in air-conditioned offices in the Pentagon have not done that specific math. I have. Standing in places where it was not hypothetical. I do not apologize for the fact that those numbers mean something different to me than they do to someone who has only ever seen them on a spreadsheet.

--- WHAT WE ACTUALLY BUILD NEXT ---

I am not arguing we fly forty-year-old airframes forever. Metal fatigue is real. Physics does not negotiate. The youngest A-10 in the current fleet is older than the parents of some of my students. That is not a sustainable maintenance reality and anyone who tells you otherwise is not engaging honestly with the engineering.

What I am arguing is: BUILD A NEW ONE.

An A-10X. Clean-sheet design. Same mission philosophy. Fifty years of technological advancement applied deliberately to the platform rather than pasted onto an aging airframe.

Modern high-bypass turbofan engines. More thrust. 25 to 30 percent better fuel efficiency. Lower infrared signature from better exhaust mixing. And specifically engineered from the start to work WITH the GAU-8 rather than tolerating it. Gun-gas ingestion is a documented issue on the current TF34s -- active flow control systems and modern combustion chamber design can eliminate it. You build the airplane around the gun. You build the ENGINES around the gun. That philosophy has not changed and it should not.

Selective radar-absorbent materials on leading edges and key surfaces. Not stealth. Low-observable. The goal is not invisibility -- it is cutting detection range from 40 kilometers to 15 or 20, which gives the pilot enough time to react and deploy countermeasures. A SAM system that sees the current A-10 at 40 kilometers sees the A-10X at 15. The pilot has 25 extra kilometers of reaction time. That is survivability engineering. Not magic. Not science fiction. Materials that exist today and work today.

A compact AESA radar -- pylon-mounted or conformal, leveraging arrays already in production for F-16 and F/A-18 programs -- under $10 million per aircraft for integration. Ground moving target indication. Synthetic aperture mapping. Self-defense air-to-air tracking for threat awareness. In electronic attack mode, the same array can jam enemy search radars. Software-defined. Redundant. Armored the same way every other critical system on the aircraft is armored.

Updated armor suite -- hybrid titanium-ceramic composite with aerogel thermal insulation. Same or better protection at 20 to 30 percent less weight. The freed-up weight goes to payload. The aerogel also reduces infrared signature at the low altitudes where IR-guided shoulder-fired missiles are the primary threat. This is not experimental technology. It exists in industrial applications right now.

Loyal wingman integration. Control stations for four to six semi-autonomous drones under pilot supervision. They scout ahead. They carry additional munitions. They draw fire away from the manned aircraft. They act as radar decoys. The pilot issues high-level commands and the AI handles tactical execution. One airframe becomes a multi-platform strike package without proportionally increasing what the pilot has to manage in the cockpit.

The GAU-8 stays. Not up for debate. You do not redesign the part that has worked correctly for fifty years. You give it programmable airburst rounds for troops in the open, improved armor-piercing for vehicle targets, and a smarter ballistic computer integrated with AESA ranging data. Same gun. More capable gun. Still pointed at whatever the enemy least wants it pointed at.

Cost per airframe in a production run of 200-plus: $80 to $120 million. Half the price of an F-35. Dramatically lower operating costs. In a 100-sortie operational day the cost difference between the A-10X and the F-35 is roughly $2 million. Per day. In a campaign that runs for weeks or months, someone in a budget meeting should be required to say that number out loud before the vote.

--- THE INSTITUTIONAL KNOWLEDGE PROBLEM ---

The A-10 community is the only one in the United States Air Force that still produces fully qualified Forward Air Controllers Airborne. FAC(A). The skill set that makes combined arms operations actually function -- multiple aircraft, ground coordination, danger-close fires in complex environments, all managed simultaneously by a single aircrew who have spent their entire careers learning this specific mission and nothing else.

That knowledge lives in people. Specifically in A-10 pilots. When those pilots retire, it does not transfer to a file on a shared drive. It goes with them. The techniques, the instincts, the understanding of what a ground controller actually needs versus what he is saying on the radio -- that leaves the Air Force when the pilots who carry it leave the Air Force.

The current plan involves zero dedicated CAS training requirements for F-35 pilots. They are retiring the one community specifically trained for this mission and replacing it with a community that does not train for the mission at all.

I ask my students a version of this problem sometimes. If you eliminate your only chemistry teacher and replace them with a math teacher who has never studied chemistry and has no plans to learn it, what happens to the chemistry program? They always get it right. They are teenagers.

An A-10X program keeps the community alive. Current pilots transition to the new platform. The institutional knowledge stays in the Air Force. The training pipeline continues. The decades of hard-won understanding of how to actually support troops in contact when things go wrong gets passed to the next generation instead of walking out the door with the people who currently hold it.

--- THE CLOSING ARGUMENT ---

The people who keep showing up to testify -- year after year, hearing after hearing, retirement announcement after retirement announcement -- are not defense contractors protecting a revenue stream. They are Army officers and Marine officers and SOF operators and JTACs who have been in the bad place, made the radio call, and watched what happened next. They use the phrase "guardian angel" in official congressional testimony on the official record, and then they go home, and the Air Force prepares another retirement package.

I want us to stop having this conversation every two years. I want someone in the Pentagon to look at the operational results from Day 26 of Operation Epic Fury -- 120-plus vessels, 90-plus percent threat reduction, zero A-10 losses -- look at the fly-off results they tried to suppress, look at twenty years of testimony from ground troops they keep ignoring, and say the thing out loud that the data has been saying for decades: NOT EVERY MISSION REQUIRES A $200 MILLION STEALTH PLATFORM. Some missions require something that flies low and slow and loiters for hours and absorbs a hit and brings the pilot home on cables when everything else has failed.

Build the A-10X. Keep the community. Preserve the institutional knowledge. Let Killer Chick's generation train the next one.

One F-35A took a hit during this campaign. Enemy fire bypassed its stealth. Emergency landing. Pilot with shrapnel wounds. The aircraft returned safely and I am genuinely glad about that. Zero A-10s have been lost. The titanium bathtub. The redundant systems. The design philosophy of people who assumed the aircraft would get hit and built the answer in before anyone who flies it was born.

That philosophy is worth preserving.

That philosophy is worth building again.

The Warthog does not need your respect.

It just needs your enemy to look up.

Now -- should we build the A-10X, or do we retire the close air support mission entirely and hope the F-35 figures it out in the next shooting war? I genuinely want to hear from people who have been on the ground. Reply below. I will be here.

But what do I know -- I am only a physics teacher and former Army combat medic who stood in a combat zone in Iraq and learned firsthand what it feels like to wait for that radio call to go through, who was a civilian paramedic in Cleveland and understands the golden hour as something other than a phrase, who wrote the textbook currently being used to teach the next generation how the physical world actually works, and who has completely run out of patience for procurement decisions made by people who have never once had to make that call themselves.

#MAGA #Veterans #Trump

@JackPosobiec @EndWokeness @catturd2

[Commandant of the @USMC @CMC_MarineCorps]

On Thursday, I had the honor of administering the oath to poolees and officer candidates at the 9/11 Memorial. A special moment on hallowed ground, where they took the first step on their journey to earn the title Marine and carry forward the responsibility to defend our Nation.

[DataRepublican (small r) @DataRepublican]

🧵🚨 MAJOR BREAKING: THE 4-DAY MIRACLE, or How MWEG and a 500-Org Coalition Weaponized Charlie Kirk's Assassination 🚨

1,400 people. 20+ organizations. 3 professionally moderated panels. 4 days after an assassination. Does this sound organic to you?

September 14, 2025 (a Sunday, no less) the "Dignity Over Violence" zoom goes live. The coalition's central resource was a website called turntoward[.]us registered by Mormon Women for Ethical Government (MWEG) ONE DAY after Charlie Kirk was shot dead at UVU. Registrant email: [email protected]

"Turn Toward." Now say "Turning Point." Did they name the campaign after the dead man's organization to advance their own political agenda?

I'm going to reverse-engineer how you mobilize 20 NGOs in 4 days... because you CAN'T. Not unless the infrastructure was already built.

I dare you, @mormonweg , to explain how these receipts are "absolutely false."

As always, patience as I pull together the thread. 👇

[A Soldier's Whisper @SoldiersWhisper]

18 American troops were just seriously wounded in the Iran conflict. #majorstaract

If those service members are medically retired before reaching 20 years of service,
they WILL lose their military retirement pensions. That is the law right now. And the fix already exists. It is called the Major Richard Star Act.

But when the Senate had the chance to move forward:
Sen Roger Wicker blocked it.
Sen Ron Johnson blocked it.

Because they said it was “too expensive.”Too expensive to honor the retirement these troops earned through combat.
Too expensive to keep the promise made to the men and women sent into war.

Meanwhile Washington somehow finds money for everything else.
$18M to keep their sexual misdeeds covered up.

If a soldier loses a limb in combat and is medically forced out before 20 years, the government takes their retirement pay away.
That is the reality facing 54,000 combat injured veterans. And now it could include the 18 troops just wounded.

America sends them to fight.
Washington debates whether their pensions are affordable.
If you believe combat injured veterans earned their retirement, make some noise.

Tag your senators.
Share this everywhere.
Pass the Major Richard Star Act.

[Sassafrass84 @Sassafrass_84]

Social media can be such a bad place, but it can also be used for good. One letter saved a life.

I absolutely love this. You matter.

I will put the link to his website: Reasons to Stay in my comment section.

Thank you for sharing your story and doing this. ❤️

[unseen1 @unseen1_unseen]

Let's replay the tape. Two years ago in march of 2024 Trump clinched the primary defeating the uniparty's picks desantis and Haley.

By early June it was clear the left's lawfare wasn't going to stop him.

Trump then baited Biden into an early debate at the end of June. Biden the dotard showed up and got spanked. The field was clear. Trump was unstoppable.

A few held up some hope that someone could be drafted to save the dems/uniparty.

July 13th, 2024 (someone/some group) who lost all hope decided to try to assassinate Trump with CNN covering it live.

The head turned and Trump became truly unstoppable and most people paying attention knew he was going to be elected.

A hail Mary of a coconut throw and a PR joy vibe campaign kept hope alive for those not paying attention.

A second attempt to kill him was attempted. It too failed.

It was at this point that all the "hold outs" in the gop decided it was better to pretend to be MAGA and hope to counter message Trump after he won then actively fight that which they could not defeat.

They did the same during Trump 1.0.

The difference this time is that 2025 wasn't 2017 and when this fakers popped back up many in MAGA knew the game that they were playing and called them out.

The freedom clowns and high clown Massie were the first exposed. Many in the freedom clown bus decided it wasn't worth it and just joined the MAGA team in deed as well as word.

The high clown massie decided to go drive the bus off the cliff.

Others tried to do it on the sly. Hence the birth of panicans and doomers.

The problem for them is they played their hand wrong because they thought 2025 was 2017 but it wasn't.

People didnt want the doomers and panicans "keeping trump honest". They wanted the Trump agenda they voted for. Plus, The resistance from 2017 was dead. It's dead, Jim and their counter message fell on deaf ears.

The Trump voters wanted those late joiners to row the boat not fight to be captain of the ship.

Now many are being forced by MAGA to walk the plank for their attempted mutiny.

Oh well.