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It was a complex situation. But in brief, all the gunners initially involved with Sperwer went through a civilian run flight school in Pembroke for roughly three months which taught them everything right up to and just short of them being certified as civilian pilots. They then went to France...

Ditto. 🍻

I'm still skeptical that our technology has come far enough in the way of autonomous vehicles except for the more simple logistics tasks. I'd need to see a lot of in-the-filed test results. 🍻

No. I'm no saying that at all. Just a quick point on the classifications. @dimsum kind of touched on the point - and he's correct. My recollection of Canadian UAV classification was in order Micro, Mini, Small, Tactical, MALE and HALE based generally on altitude capability. For Canada mini...

C'mon mate. That was unnecessary. 🍻

@dimsum @SeaKingTacco @markppcli I'll do this as a brief omnibus reply. RPAS pilots is not my hobby horse but getting rid of the need for unnecessary training and education and rank structures is. I'm cognisant of the fact that in the US the USAF and the US Army have split the flying...

Apples and Oranges. My issue deals with the wasted resources in running someone through a government funded education which does nothing to teach him the technical skills to do the job. It also deals with the individual's wasted time. There are numerous individuals quite capable of flying...

The WOs (actually CWOs) hold the command positions in platoons. None of the platoons have any officers. They appear only at the company level. The problem is that the training pipeline is too long. You can cut a minimum of four years (more if you take language instruction) out of the up front...

What impressed me was the austerity of the establishment. Basically a major and captain run the company but the operations side, including flying the systems, are various warrant officer positions. I keep plugging away with the idea that a warrant officer specialist program is sorely needed in...

@dimsum. Not sure if you've seen this video on how the US Army operates the MQ1 Gray Eagle. The last part which deals with the establishment and organization behind a twelve aircraft company is quite enlightening. 🍻

So did we scouts. It is essential unless you want a slouch hat. ;)

You know that a Stetson would look pretty strange on greens, but on a tan uniform ... We might be on to something here. Having been an old school boy scout though, they do take some looking after and are hard to store in an overhead bin on a plane. 🍻

My son is an aviation enthusiast which got him his job as a flight planner/manager. He belongs to groups that do plane spotting. When he was in Calgary, his group was dealing with the RCMP and helped out with reporting suspicious activities around Calgary's airport. The RCMP has a national...

Once again a complex question but you are artificially limiting it to the SS and Waffen SS and, without saying it, attempting to limit the definition of Pole to a certain class. There were hundreds of thousands of Poles that participated with the Germans in various ways from ethnic German Poles...

That's way beyond my level of expertise. I can't see the fuze and shell as one piece and don't think the material suggests that. A shell is a cast forging and a fuze an assembly of electronic and metal parts. By manufacturing necessity they are two components manufactured separately and...

There has been a change going on for some time. Back in my day the M107 was the standard projectile and when it functioned it would tear into numerous irregular fragments and splinters (some as big as the length of the whole projectile and several inches wide). That has been pretty much replaced...

I don't think we need to be that dogmatic. The problem I see is that the current army uniform that tells your life story is that it is a crappy uniform and its different versions (that take it from hanging around the office day-to-day and to parading before the King) do not look or function...

That's interesting and clearly shows how complicated the issue is. In my own case I was born in Berlin Germany. My father was from Berlin (i.e. Prussia) and my mother from a small village in East Prussia. That village is now in Poland. I'm not Polish, even half Polish. I'm ethnic German (at...

Okay. Got it. I had been under the mistaken impression that the term "combat arms" had doctrinally been replaced completely by "combat, combat support and combat service support elements." I must admit that leaves me with two questions. The first is: what is the purpose of having the term...

I think once again you are simplifying events to form a narrative. Urman is a small village on the western border with Poland. Its history has it changing hands several times most recently being created as an entity after being part of the Austrian-Hungary Empire. It lies very close to the...