Timothy's fans don't like it when people point out that most of what he posts is clickbait.

I don't think the great-grandparent grasps the degree of specialization the various sub-components of and individuals in the services have.

It's more that I don't see how the Army can have the level of generalisation enough to have an air corps, and an engineering corps, but somehow running their own A-10 division is suddenly out of scope. The division seems arbitrary.

Like I said... you don't grasp the level of specialization. Army engineers (which isn't the same thing as the Corps of Engineers) are specialists in battlefield engineering. The aviation corps (like the tank corps) is specialized to Army needs (and isn't quite the same thing as the TAC air groups of the USAF and USN).

As far as the A-10 goes, yes, the division is somewhat arbitrary and dates back to the Key West Agreement (and subsequent updates) that split the various roles and missions of the armed services up to prevent duplication. Any system is going to have edge cases, and the A-10 is one of them.

Both the Army and Marines operate their own rotary wing aircraft, but only the Marines operate their own fixed wing aircraft too

It should be noted that every time the Army tried to get its own fixed wing aircraft for ground support, the Air Force blocked the move.

And the only reason the Air Force doesn't do the same to the Marines is that the Marines are NAVY. And the Navy never let the Air Force camel's nose into their tent.

For those who aren't big on inter-service rivalry history, this all grew out of the squabbling between the Bomber Generals and everyone else in the WW2 Army Air Corps.

The Bomber Generals believed that the Army (and Navy) were no longer necessary, because any enemy could be defeated by just bombing him into oblivion. They didn't even see a burning need for fighters, since the massed bombers could defend themselves nicely.

After WW2, when the Army Air Corps started pushing for their own branch of service (US Air Force), they very conveniently overlooked things like the Schweinfurt Raid (bombers only, no fighter escort, since the P47 and P51 weren't ready, lots of bombers didn't come home. Not quite a majority didn't come home, but it was close), and demanded control of ALL fixed-wing aviation. The Navy told them to f**k off, but the Army was forced to give it all up.

Since then, every time something new that could fly came along, the Air Force has tried their best to make sure it was forbidden to the Army. They failed with helicopters, but they've always succeeded with armed fixed wing planes....

Wrong. You said it yourself: radar technology is so sensitive that they have to dial it down, otherwise they're swamped by false positives. If a giant bomb-dropping machine traveling at Mach 2 can pretend to be a sparrow flying over some forest, it's already a win. So it's a huge positive when fighting someone even with that kind of technology. When fighting someone whose AA system is a guy holding an AK-47, it is 100% useless. Until we get to active camouflage.

Seriously, though, as long as the combined size is about the same and the respective size of the service branches (or "specialty branches") stays the same, all you will have done is to (slightly) rearrange the deck chairs.

Indeed. And your warfare specialists will still be specialists... an infantryman will still be an infantryman, and you'll still need differently trained techs to work on the gas turbines in a tank or on the gas turbines of a tin can or a cruiser. A land based pilot still won't be a carrier based aviator. Etc... etc... You *might* save little bit on the aviation side by only having one school for some of the subsystems on the JSF, or only one basic electronics school, but that's about it.

I don't think the great-grandparent grasps the degree of specialization the various sub-components of and individuals in the services have.

You need only look at who posted it to know that it's clickbait: timothy.

Uh... So you believe espionage is a civil offense like copyright infringement?

The Air Force doesn't want to keep the A10.

Alas, the A10 suffers one irredeemable fault - its only function is to support the Army.

Which function the Air Force disapproves of on a visceral level.

A multi-function aircraft, while it is handicapped by being ABLE to support the Army, has the virtue of being able to NOT support the Army. Hence the F16, F35, etc.

Two things:

1) Causality isn't necessarily a law of nature, so much as "the way our senses are wired to see things".

2) It is unlikely that tachyons have brakes. Cars have brakes, even bicycles have brakes. But probably not tachyons.

But that said, some people are morning people. They are weird but they exist. They get up by their own preference at like 5:30 am

***raises hand***

That's me, folks. However, a qualifier must be added. I didn't start behaving that way till I stopped ALL caffeine intake. Back when I did coffee/pepsi, getting me out of bed before noon involved liberal use of dynamite. A couple decades back, for reasons I no longer recall, I decided to stop with the caffeine. And since then, waking up is like flipping a light switch - fully asleep to fully awake in a second, ready to get up and do things at oh-dark-hundred...

Drives my wife crazy, btw.

hey, I had a GE made in Mexico about a decade ago - complete junk. I just gave away a Bosch too - also junk. Before the GE was Whirlpool junk. Replaced the Bosch with a Maytag, a model with a grinder, and it's the first dishwasher I've bought that I haven't hated in two decades. Not sure where it's made.

That's a lie for good programmers, for mediocre ones, it might be true.

And, NAICT, it only applies to "tech industry" jobs. Every time I see a picture of a team working the Shuttle software, or the flight control software for a major civil airframe, etc... etc... it's older programmers. The "kids" are the minority.

I was surprised by the .36. When Lexus first came out c. 1990 they advertised the LS400 heavily as having a .28 and later models got down to .24. .36 is 50% worse than a 1990's sedan and surprising since range has always been an issue.

I guess it looks cool, though (hard to argue with the company's success).

I'm willing to bet the NSA has prior art on this.

You think the Lizard Squad is teenagers? The conspiracy theorists have been warning us that the NSA is run by the NWO and Lizard People for decades.