1833

Terrific video of Admiral McRaven and President Obama reflecting on the Bin Laden raid.

PSA WaPo is have $29 sale for digital, videos like this is why it is worth it.

1834

Post Trump Pardon, he admits it. Not good for Americans overseas, including our Troops:

1835

The worst fucking timeline.

1836

I’m not one to wish violence on anyone but I hope some day that guy gets what he is owed.

1837

Yeah, that’s the kind of thing that was drilled into us during the (admittedly short) Geneva Conventions training we got. Being a shithead reflects back on the whole country and makes things tougher for any of our troops in enemy hands. A terrorist or zealot that kidnaps you is probably going to kill you no matter what, but being shitty to enemy combatants means regular soldiers have less of a reason to surrender to you or treat you well if captured.

Fucking asshole.

1838

That, and you know, all the stuff about us being the good guys and whatnot. Kind of hard to maintain the charade when stuff like this happens and a huge chunk of the country doesn’t care.

1839

From a strictly utilitarian point of view (not the only one I hold, for sure), this kind of thing is just stupid.

Something, something, Pacific Theater. Something something, US Marines and Australian (units I don’t know the names of but were by all accounts some bad mfs).

Also the very definition of evil, but y’know.

1840

I’ve been reliably informed by Mitch McConnell that the definition of evil is reducing poverty and preventing suffering.

1841
1842

Not relevant to anything really, but…

1843

Pretty damn cool. I mean, yeah, not operationally viable yet in any sort of combat environment I’d think, but by far the most usable and seemingly practical personal flying suit thing I’ve seen.

1844

The big problem I noticed is your arms are encased in control rockets, which means there’s no easy or quick way to access weapons. That would be a problem for a potentially hostile situation.

They either need to get some sort of separate control system – preferably something where the computer handles the bulk of the work like the F35B system, which apparently is quite easy to hover – or some sort of SciFi-like shoulder mounted weapon which will go wherever the user points it to.

So as you say, not yet viable, but getting there.

1845

It’s not primarily a military project, though I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s where it ends up getting funding. This is just the latest “test”, which is more of a promo/proof of concept really. The last one was a simulated mountain rescue.

1846

I do think this has a lot of possible uses for the police and military forces, especially in say coast guard or search and rescue type operations, if not directly in combat ops. Depending on how noisy it is, I suppose it could be of use in sneaky-sneaky type raids or something, but generally, simpler is better, and ropes and grapples are generally a sure bet.

1847

Something more like this?

1848

Sure looks like the arm jet thingies could mount some form of weapon, I guess.

Preferably plasma cannons!

1849

You’re not gonna be able to fire weapons while flying around in a jetpack, much less from the same arms that you are using as control surfaces.

1850

Yeah, you fire that cannon once and you are spinning like a top.

1851

I could envision a quick-release system that drops the hand controls and allows you access to a weapon.

Or even weapons integrated into the controls in some manner.

It’s still very much in the “cool, but not that useful” category, but every technology is at first. It’s a big jump from Kittyhawk to B-17s and that only took about 30 years.

1852

I think this is another promo video from the company that makes those jetpacks:

They’re trying to build a use case for this thing. Seems unlikely to replace helicopters though.