Not that either range will be causing major problems. Probably the worst we’ll see is some slick roads and a small amount of snow that we’ll need to shovel off the driveway.
One related issue we’ll be dealing with is the end of ice fishing season. New Hampshire Fish & Game is reminding ice fisherman their bobhouses need to be off the lake by April 1st. For some, it may be too late to remove their bobhouses easily as their only way off the ice is blocked by open water. They’ll have to float them across the open water to get them to shore. This is nothing new as there are always a few procrastinators who wait until the last minute only find they can’t reach them without using a boat.
And so it goes at the ‘official’ close of winter here at the lake.
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How often over the past 20+ years have we heard that the US Air Force wants to do away with the A-10 Warthog? It is a formidable Close Air Support aircraft that can carry a considerable amount of ordnance on 11 hard points as well as shred targets with its GAU-8 30mm Gatling gun.
The Air Force says the F-35 is more than capable of filling the role presently held by the A-10, but a lot of the ground troops – Army and Marines – think otherwise. We are certainly see it filling a role in the Iraq war, taking out boats and smaller ships of the Iranian Navy in the Straits of Hormuz to safeguard ships wishing to pass through the Straits.
The close-support aircraft, battle-proven in the Gulf War and Global War on Terror, has been threatened with retirement for decades. Congress has often pushed back; the most recent National Defense Authorization Act caps the number that can be scrapped until the Air Force details its retirement strategy. Experts told Defense One that the aircraft’s latest operations prove the war in Iran shouldn’t be the Warthog’s last rodeo.One of the biggest issues with this argument about whether the A-10 should be retired was whether or not the F-35 could fill the role of the A-10. It turns out there was a “fly off” competition between the A-10 and the F-35 some years ago…and the results were buried, at least until recently.
The A-10s renewed use in the Middle East should serve as a “wake-up call” for lawmakers and the military calling for its retirement, said Dan Grazier, a Stimson Center senior fellow and the director of the nonprofit’s national-security reform program.
“The longer the A-10 exists, the more impressed I am with that aircraft,” Grazier said. “It’s just proof positive that when you design a weapon system that is stripped down and all the decisions that were made in the course of its design were all made for matters of military effectiveness, you get a really effective aircraft.”
A report on the controversial close air support-focused flyoff between the A-10C Warthog and F-35A Joint Strike Fighter that took place between 2018 and 2019 has finally emerged. The declassified review, which was only completed last year and has been essentially buried until now, is heavily redacted and raises more questions than it provides answers in many areas. However, it does still offer valuable details that have not previously been made public even as the U.S. Air Force looks to retire the last of the Warthogs no later than the end of the decade.I do have to wonder why the report has been buried. Could it be the A-10 showed to be the better aircraft when it comes to close air support (CAS), airborne forward air control (FAC[A]), and combat search and rescue (CSAR) than the F-35?
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One of the things that is immediately unclear from this report is why it took nearly three years to produce this final product in the first place or why its core findings were never announced publicly or even distributed to stakeholder communities in the military. It is The War Zone‘s understanding that very few people had previously seen any portion of this document, or details from it, and that it was not provided to members of the A-10 community or F-35 communities. In essence, it has been effectively ‘buried.’
It looks like every time the Air Force tries to kill one of the most effective air support aircraft in the world it proves to the rest of the world that it is anything but old and ineffective.
While it is not a multi-mission type aircraft like the F-35, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. One of the truisms that anyone familiar with military aircraft is that multi-mission aircraft don’t perform some aspects of their missions nearly as well as mission-specific aircraft.
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It looks like some folks are finally waking up to the fact that Iran has had the capability to strike targets in Europe with ballistic missiles for some time. This realization was brought about when Iran launched a couple of missiles at the joint UK-US base on the island of Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean, a distance of ~2361 miles. Neither missile reached its target as one failed in flight and the other was shot down by US Navy warship using an SM-3 interceptor missile.
The distance between Tehran and Paris is 2610 miles.
The distance between Tehran and London is 2750 miles.
The distance between Tehran and Berlin is 2200 miles.
Estimates puts the maximum range of the missiles of the type used by Iran to attack Diego Garcia at 2800 miles.
So Iran hasn’t been a threat to anyplace but the Middle East?
Another talking point busted.
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Talk about hypocrisy!
All the hypocrites whining about Trump’s reaction to Mueller’s death stayed silent while Democrats mocked Charlie Kirk.
Trump posted that he was “glad” Mueller was dead.. Not something I would post, but Trump doesn’t hide how he really feels, especially about fraud like Robert Mueller.. Now of course Democrats, the media and some worthless RINO Republicans are whining about Trump’s reaction… These are the same scum who either had nothing to say or participated in the mocking of Charlie Kirk, and his wife after the assassination of Kirk in Utah.It seems their hypocrisy has no bounds. Therefore we need not listen to anything they have to say.
When there are a mass of people mocking the death of Robert Mueller, and it even being applauded on networks like Fox when TMZ went live, then get back to me.. Until then, STFU.. You have no leg to stand on and you are nothing more than hypocrites.
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And that’s the news from Lake Winnipesaukee, where the ice on the lake is getting thinner by the day, plans to pull our boats out of storage are being made, and where Monday is returning all too soon.