The replacement for the A-10 looks like it will get a trial by fire

This is kind of unusual -- as in, I don't think the U.S. military has ever done this before -- but it looks like the Air Force is planning to test-drive proposed replacements for the A-10 ground-attack aircraft in combat. Holy, as in shit:

The U.S. Air Force is sending two of the four aircraft involved in its OA-X light attack aircraft competition to the battlefield. The move, likely unprecedented, will allow the service to evaluate both airplanes in combat missions before a final purchase decision is made.
Aviation Week & Space Technology reports that the Air Force is sending the Embraer/Sierra Nevada A-29 Super Tucano and the Textron AT-6 Wolverine to a yet-to-be-determined war zone. Under a program nicknamed Combat Sent III, the Air Force will stand up an experimental squadron and send two A-29s and two AT-6s, along with seventy pilots and maintainers, to test the aircraft under combat conditions.

Both aircraft involved are propeller-driven, although both are turbo-prop, which is pretty much a jet engine that uses the exhaust to drive a turbine that turns a propeller. A higher-power jet engine would use the jet exhaust to propel the aircraft. Nonetheless, a turboprop aircraft, while slower than a jet, is faster than a traditional propeller-driven aircraft. So they have that going for them.

The goal of the OA-X program is to put an effective ground-support aircraft in the air against relatively low-tech opponents. The F-35 is expected to handle ground-support missions against opponents with sophisticated air defense systems. For other opponents, such as ISIS or other terrorist organizations, the air defense threat is very low and a turbo-prop attack aircraft such as the ones being tested should be more than sufficient.

Both of the aircraft mentioned are dumptrucks -- both can carry a butt-load of things that go bang to drop on bad guys. I think the Textron plane should win simply because it is an American company. Embraer is Brazilian, and we cannot count on a continuous supply of Embraer aircraft, should they win the contract, simply because they easily could decide they don't like us. It happens.

I hope both planes do well. I want a good replacement for the A-10. The guys on the ground deserve it.

Kitties and such

Time, I suppose, for the kit-tay roundup, photo edition. Mrs. Wolves has been supplying me with numerous kit-tay photos of the adorable variety, and at some point I am obligated to put them on the blog. And so, without further ado, I do so.

Here is a rare sight -- both sisters, Murder and Mayhem, in the wolf paws box at the same time. (The wolf paws box is so named because of a scarf with wolf paws at each end that was part of a Game of Thrones Halloween costume a couple years ago, which scarf now provides some of the bedding in the wolf paws box.) No photo of the wolf paws is available as the wolf paws are completely covered by kit-tays:

Anytime, anywhere, if there is a bag, a kit-tay will get in it:

They also like to make camp on Mrs. Wolves' legs before she can get out of bed in the morning:

Another wolf paws box shot:

Sometimes, paws come shooting out from the strangest places:

Just to show that the sisters are not the only cats who like to get into bags, here is Mischief with a bag around her neck that originally held a Christmas present:

OK, housecleaning complete with respect to kit-tay photos.

A new addition to the Wolves clan

Cpl. Wolves has obtained a new puppy, who names is Gage:

Obviously, not a replacement for Sadie the Auxiliary Backup Dog in any emotional sense, but we now have a new Auxiliary Backup Dog. Some kind of mutt. And yes, the trained killer holding the cute puppy in his lap is wearing a tee-shirt that says, "To err is human, to forgive divine. Neither is Marine Corps policy."

Really, it's not about the bikini

It's about what's in the bikini.

Gotta like this

Covers government employment generally and that stupid fuck government employee in Hawaii who sent out the "Nukes on the way" message and still has a job:



Not only does he still have a job, he is refusing to cooperate with the investigations (state and federal) into how he could possibly have fucked up like this. Naturally, the fucker is a union employee, and the union will back him to the hilt, regardless of why what happened, happened. My money is on intentional to make Trump "look bad" somehow. Of course, he's a government employee, so it could have been simple stupidity.

Oh Lord, look at me and my sixth-generation boner

As regular readers of this blog know, I do like me some advanced fighter aircraft. Of course, I am always happy to support relatively low-tech solutions that work, such as the A-10, but I get kind of excited by news of big advances in fighter aircraft technology.

And so, hot on the heels of the fifth-generation fighters, the F-22 (of which we did not build enough) and the F-35 (which is consistently proving its critics to be just fucking wrong) we are apparently hard at work (as we should be) on a sixth-generation fighter:

The Air Force has begun experimenting and conceptual planning for a 6th generation fighter aircraft to emerge in coming years as a technological step beyond the F-35, service leaders said.
"We have started experimentation, developmental planning and technology investment," Lt. Gen. Arnold Bunch, Military Deputy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force, Acquisition, told Scout Warrior in an interview earlier this year.
The new aircraft, engineered to succeed the 5th-generation F-35 Joint StrikeFighter and explode onto the scene by the mid 2030s, is now in the earliest stages of conceptual development with the Air Force and Navy. The two services are now working together on early conceptual discussions about the types of technologies and capabilities the aircraft will contain ... [w]hile the Air Force has not yet identified a platform for the new aircraft.

Keep in  mind, no other nation has successfully fielded a fifth-generation fighter. The Chinese and the Russians both purport to have one in development, but neither is in production, both appear to have huge problems and neither has the full spectrum of features that make, for instance, the F-35 such an effective fifth-generation fighter. Avionics, communication and networking are at least as important in a fifth-generation fighter as performance. The game is no longer about dog-fighting ability. If you get down to that, the F-16 and the Russian Su-27 (and its descendants) will kick ass every time. The game now is about killing the enemy from a distance, in large numbers, before they even know you are there.

After all, if you are going to kill large numbers of highly trained fighter pilots you've never met, you should at least be efficient about it. There is a whole bunch about what the services hope to achieve with sixth-generation fighters at the link. I'm pretty excited.

As government shutdowns go, that was kind of lame

Personally, I think Chuck Schumer, the Minority Leader of the Senate, now looks like a feckless peckerhead for trying to push a shutdown of the government in an effort to get amnesty for a bunch of illegal immigrant would-be Democrat voters. Let's face it, he's going to get that later anyway, so why look like a powerless pussy in advance. Having shut down the government on Friday at midnight, Schumer and company caved on Monday and agreed to a short-term funding bill. Sure, they'll be screaming again in three weeks, but does anyone seriously agree with them siding with illegal immigrants over actually doing their jobs and keeping the federal government running?

Don't get me wrong, I'd be happy to see the federal government send "non-essential" employees home for a month or two, then figure out why they need to keep "non-essential" employees in the first place. Won't happen, obviously, but I can dream. In the meantime, consider the nothingness that happened Monday, while those ever-so-tough Democrats shut down the government, with what happened when Democrats let Republicans shut down the government in 2013. Oddly enough, this time around, nobody tried to close parks and monuments. Wonder why that is.

This is all I'm going to say about this one

There are stories swirling around that President Trump had an affair 11 or 12 years ago with a porn star. The stories are not verified, but, hey, they're probably true. So what? There are verified stories that, while in the White House, President Bill Clinton was getting busy having a 23-year-old intern suck his dick repeatedly in the Oval Office (or in rooms right next door). Neither case represents what you might call a character reference, but one, while reprehensible, did not involve a subordinate at work and in fact involved two adults, neither of whom held public office at the time. The other affair involved a much younger subordinate employee of a far more powerful individual. Which relationship would you be quicker to condemn?

And then consider this. Monica isn't ugly or anything:

But which way would you go first?

Yeah, me too. Hey, maybe I should come up with a hashtag: #Metoo.

Been avoiding this for a couple reasons

First, this kind of thing shouldn't be political. Second, I received a text from someone I care about while she thought a missile was inbound. Given that, I was disinclined to jump in on the false alarm about a missile attack on Hawaii. I think that story captures things quite well -- people were freaking out, and their government failed them, taking twice as long as the flight time of a missile from North Korea would take to reach Hawaii to inform residents that, in fact, the initial "This is not a drill" notice was not only not a drill, it was a dumbass mistake by someone who still has a job.

As crazy as things got during the missile alert -- understandably -- they go crazier shortly after the all-clear, as lefties tried to politicize the moment. How crazy? This crazy:

“This Hawaii missle (sic) scare is on YOU Mr. Trump. The real FEAR that mothers & fathers & children felt is on YOU. It is on YOUR ARROGANCE, HUBRIS, NARCISSISM, RAGE, EGO, IMMATURITY and your UNSTABLE IDIOCY. Shame on your hate filled self. YOU DID THIS!”

And this crazy:

“I woke up this morning in Hawaii with ten minutes to live. It was a false alarm, but a real psychic warning. If we allow this one-man Gomorrah and his corrupt Republican congress to continue alienating the world we are headed for suffering beyond all imagination. ;^\”

No blame for the nameless, faceless and -- given Hawaii's political demographics, almost undoubtedly faithful Democrat voter -- still-employed government employee who sent the state into a panic for almost 40 minutes. Nah. It's Trump's fault. Consider this:

I don't think anything that happens in Hawaii, at any time, can be blamed on Trump. And certainly not this. But that didn't stop at least one Hawaii politician -- need I mention that she's a Democrat? -- from blaming Trump:

“What makes me angry,” Tulsi Gabbard told CNN’s State of the Union, “is that, yes, this false alarm went out and we have to fix that in Hawaii but really we’ve got to get to the underlying issue here, of why are the people of Hawaii and the US facing a nuclear threat coming from North Korea?
“And what is this president doing, urgently, to eliminate that threat?”

My answer to that would be, um, more than the last worthless fucknuts who occupied the White House, who pretended that North Korea did not exist.

I don't take this threat lightly, but I don't take it overly seriously, either. There is no evidence the Norks have a nuke small enough to put on a missile. There is no evidence they have a missile with the range to carry such a payload to any U.S. territory. (The tests that indicate the Norks could reach the U.S. East Coast are no-payload tests. With an explosive payload, range drops considerably, depending upon the size and weight of the payload.)

Finally, there are no indications that North Korea can hit what it is aiming at with any precision. I doubt they could reliably hit, for instance, an island the size of Oahu. Range magnifies errors. If the Norks are getting help from Iran or China, we need to crack down on that. Trump is paying far more attention to North Korea and its nuclear ambitions than Obama ever did. You might not like his tone, but China is actually starting to take steps to rein North Korea in. That never happened before. You might not like how he's doing it, but at least this president is paying attention to the North Korean threat.

Name that party, people!

This is, of course, a long-standing game for followers of lefty sites and the mainstream media (we'll pretend, for the moment, that there is a difference). How long will it take for you to find out the party affiliation of this public official accused of criminal behavior:

Texas state Sen. Carlos Uresti “groomed” nearly $900,000 out of a former client and grieving mother by cultivating a sexual relationship with her, according to prosecutors in court on Monday.
The 54-year-old Uresti, who has also been accused by multiple women of sexual harassment during his time as a legislator, is on trial for 11 felony charges—including money laundering, wire fraud, and securities fraud—over his alleged part in a Ponzi scheme involving frac sand company FourWinds Logistics‍. Uresti, who served as legal counsel for the now-defunct company, has repeatedly denied all of the charges.

To be fair, the newspaper cited got to it in the fourth paragraph. On the other hand, most local papers, especially in Texas, are more conservative than The Daily Beast. Nonetheless, this kind of thing is a patter. Check for yourself, or I'll make this a regular feature.

It's Maryland -- of course we have a transgender convicted traitor running for the U.S. Senate

Naturally, Maryland would be the place that a mentally ill, convicted traitor who cannot seem to understand that X-Y don't lie would run for a seat in the U.S. Senate. Not that he has a snowball's chance of hell of winning, even in the People's Republic of Maryland. He is running against Ben Cardin, who has a ton of money and a corrupt machine backing him and cannot lose no matter how much the batshit crazy left base in Maryland likes the idea of sending a seriously confused, mentally disturbed traitor to the U.S. Senate:

Chelsea E. Manning, the transgender former Army private who was convicted of passing sensitive government documents to WikiLeaks, is seeking to run for the U.S. Senate in Maryland, according to federal election filings.
Manning would be challenging Democrat Benjamin L. Cardin, who is in his second term in the Senate and is up for reelection in November. Cardin is Maryland’s senior senator and is considered an overwhelming favorite to win a third term.
Manning declined to speak about her filing or to say why she might be running when reached at her home in Bethesda on Saturday.

Chelsea, a man who changed his name from Bradley and now pretends to be a woman -- and who, at last report, still sports more traditional male genitalia -- is best known for leaking an enormous amount of classified documents to Wikileaks, including information on U.S. undercover agents around the world that undoubtedly got lots of agents or at least informants killed. He was convicted in 2013 and sentenced to 35 years in prison. Emperor Barry I commuted Manning's sentence as he left office, so the traitor served only about 4 years out of the sentence. Now he's running for the U.S. Senate in the state I unfortunately live in.

Alas, I live in one of only about a half-dozen states in the country where this nutbag could be taken even half-seriously. I rate his chances at zero, but I am quite sure that the media will consistently refer to this mentally ill, dick-toting traitor as "she" throughout his short campaign.

What do you call 7,000 unemployed federal bureaucrats?

A good start.

Wait. This would be bad for his reputation?

So, Yahoo is reporting -- I'm sorry if the term "reporting" indicates that Yahoo is a journalism outfit, since those don't really exist anymore -- that at some point in the past, a lawyer for Donald Trump paid a porn star $130,000 to not tell people about a 2006 sexual encounter that allegedly occurred about a year after Mr. Trump married his current wife. Marital infidelity aside, could someone please explain to me how banging a hot porn star is bad for your reputation:

Hell, I'd have given her twice as much to tell people I was just fucking fabulous in bed. I'm just sayin'.

Something I meant to post in December because I find it fascinating

It is nothing of consequence, except historically. December 13 marked the anniversary of the 1939 battle between the German pocket battleship Graf Spee and British warships Exeter, Ajax and Achilles off of coast of Uruguay. The Graf Spee knocked the Ajax and Achilles out of the fight, but was damaged enough to force it to flee to the neutral port of Uruguay. Uruguay gave the ship 72 hours to leave the neutral port -- not enough time to conduct repairs -- and so the captain sailed the warship out into the River Plate and scuttled it. It was a big deal for both sides, though in different ways. It was a first early triumph for the British, and a blow to the German surface fleet, leading to increased reliance on U-boats. Ironically, the Graf Spee outgunned its three British opponents and likely could have won the fight had it not chosen to flee.

Here is the Graf Spee, sinking after its captain scuttled her:

OK, frolic and detour concluded.

Traffic comment

Eff You topped 200,000 visits a little while ago, but the top 10 visiting countries hasn't changed much in the last couple years. Sweden bumped the U.K. out of the number 10 spot a couple years ago, and since then, no changes have taken place.

Not in the order, anyway. The top five remain U.S., Russia, Germany, Denmark and France. But in the last year or so, Denmark has pulled closer to Germany -- about 2,500 visits behind now, rather than the 3,000 visits Denmark was behind Germany at about this time last year. Denmark also has opened the gap between itself and France. The French, of course, are cheese-eating surrender monkeys, so it doesn't surprise me to see them losing. But Denmark is kicking ass.

I suppose the fact that my European correspondent is Danish has a little to do with this, but there are clearly other Danes involved in the effort. Still looking for more content from my European correspondent, by the way (nudge, nudge, wink, wink). Anyway, tiny Denmark, land of exploding wind turbines, rocks. They haven't been this dominant since they took over England in 1013.

The Faroe Islands? Wow.

I've had some interesting visitors in the last few days. Brunei came to Eff You, as did Slovenia. I think both were second-time visitors, as a I have first-time-visitor posts for both but don't remember seeing them before this. Anyway, nice to have you guys come by again. Enjoy your stay.

But we also have a true first-time visitor: The Faroe Islands. The only reason I know where the Faroe Islands are is too geekishly embarrassing to relate here. A man has to have some pride, after all.

In any event, you should know that, like Greenland, the Faroe Islands and an autonomous country under the auspices of the Kingdom of Denmark. They are located about halfway between Iceland and Norway, with a population of about 50,000.

From 1035 until 1814, the Faroes belonged to Norway. For reasons that escape me, in 1814 the Treaty of Kiel gave control over the islands to Denmark, along with Greenland and Iceland. The Faroes have been self-governing since 1948 -- much like Greenland, I think, although I will defer to my Danish readers on this -- but are still part of the Kingdom of Iceland Denmark. [Corrected: Ed.] I still don't understand how Iceland slipped away from Denmark.

Anyway, there are 18 major islands in the Faroes and a buttload of littler islands. The climate is classified as subpolar oceanic, which means cold as fuck, although the Gulf Stream creates a warming influence that leads to milder winters and cool summers. The islands are windy, cloudy and cool, with more than 200 rain or snow days per year. The sun never fucking shines.

The economy relies primarily upon fishing. That is not always a good thing, apparently. Still, it is a pretty place:

With lots of sheep:

And rugged coastlines:

Having said all that, welcome to Eff You, Faroe Islands. Come back soon, and bring your friends.

Need a post? Kitty!

Hell, what else have I got at this hour? Mrs. Wolves loves it when the kitties show curly paws:

Apple apparently believes its own global-warming bullshit

Apple recently opened a store in Chicago -- cold, snowy, wintry Chicago -- that is not what you might call well-designed for winter weather:

Chicago’s new Apple store can’t seem to handle the frigid temperatures which have been hitting many parts of the country.
Photos captured outside the flagship store—which opened its doors to the public on October 20—show large icicles hanging from the roof, surrounded by caution tape, with signs that read “CAUTION—Watch for Falling Snow and Ice.”
Apparently, the building doesn’t have any gutters, therefore there’s nowhere for the snow to fall, Fortune reports. This has resulted in the closure of both a public walkway and courtyard.

 I guess at this point snow was supposed to be a thing of the past. Maybe the folks at Apple read The Guardian.

The heat wave continues

Temperature hit 19 today. Supposed to be single-digits tonight, though. For those of you on the metric system, that means "really fucking cold." Our zero is a lot colder than yours. Just sayin'. Anyway, given the high temperature today, this seems appropriate:

The Marines put out their favorite pictures of 2017

Worth a look at the slideshow here.

OK, here's a teaser:

Happy New Year!

Resolution Number 1: Post more. Last year was the lowest number of posts for a full year in the history of the blog. Just awful. Time to fix it. Hope you saw something like this last night:

The fireworks, I mean. If you saw writing in the sky, you probably had too much to drink.