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James Raab 🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🇺🇦🇪🇺🇹🇼 Profile picture
James Raab 🇺🇸🏳️‍🌈🇺🇦🇪🇺🇹🇼
@JamesRaxz
Software Engineer. I build robots. Machine Learning. Carnegie Mellon '08.
Dec 23 • 16 tweets • 5 min read
Okay let's look into this. Trump-class is not CG(X). We could use that. This, instead, is some confused thing that doesn't make any sense. So what would be the broad specs of a modern CG(X)? It's pretty simple -> Image 1) Big deck house and a lot of power to host a big SPY-6.
2) A lot of VLS cells. At least 128 and/or bigger than Mk.41
3) Sufficient facilities to command air defense.
4) A power system based on Zumwalt.
5) Not much accommodation for surface attack. Image
Dec 18 • 8 tweets • 3 min read
The NATO assumption was that average engagements would have dozens to well over a hundred aircraft at a time for 90 minutes within a 50km-50km box. Image
Image The upper end would have seen 300-on-300 air battles, particularly during the first few days, with a density of 1 per 30 cubic km.

Compared to World War II, there would have been fewer fighters in a battle overall (about half), but in a much, much smaller area (1/6th as large). Image
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Dec 17 • 25 tweets • 8 min read
Despite both being in the same ATF competition, the (Y)F-22 and YF-23 couldn't have been more different from each other. Really they didn't even try to do the same thing. They both looked at the requirements, looked at the Soviet threat and came to different answers. Image They're far more different really than even X-35 and X-32 were over a decade later. To answer "why YF-23 would have been superior for the Pacific" is also to understand why F-22 was superior for Europe (and won).
Dec 17 • 12 tweets • 4 min read
F-22 was the right aircraft to fight the Soviets in Europe, which is why it won. The Air Force made the right choice in that regard. It was also at a more mature level of development.

YF-23 would have been far better in the present in the Pacific, but that wasn't the focus. 80s and 90s contingencies just didn't so large scale air battle over the Pacific that F-15Cs or a carrier couldn't handled. The F-22 made perfect sense to fight in what was expected to be a VERY dense air combat environment over Central and Eastern Europe.
Mar 30 • 17 tweets • 4 min read
Extraordinary read. Austin and Syrsky come out looking like incompetent and the US-Ukraine relationship very dysfunctional, but held together through the heroism of people like General Donahue.

The indictment is unchanged: The US and Ukraine never agreed on an outcome. Image nytimes.com/interactive/20…
Nov 17, 2024 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
Biden made a bet - an honest but wrong one - that he could diffuse MAGA in the swingies and red states through economic development. Didn't work. People just swapped their real fears for fake fears (DEI).

There are two takeaways from this experience: First, Dems need to use their time in power to funnel federal attention to the swingies and their home states and districts. Trying to buy the reds doesn't work, so fatten up the blue regions and repay your consitentients.
Jul 8, 2024 • 11 tweets • 2 min read
My letter to my Congressman/Senators. Only other topic I ever did this for was Ukraine aid. It's the same fight. Image Dear _______
My name is ______. I'm a Democratic voter and donor from _____, ______. I am writing to you to express my support for President Joe Biden's re-election campaign and my hope that you will continue to support him in that effort.
May 25, 2024 • 21 tweets • 4 min read
There's been a lot of revolting comments from various Americans about the War in Ukraine over the last 27 months, but Thursday and Friday's comments by the Arms Controllers / Disarmers was, IMO, among the worst.

These are educated people, not MAGA trolls / politicians. /1 As a software engineer, I'm used to seeing experts in my field get lost in what they are doing. Becoming so focused on what they are doing, they turn fanatic and forget the why. It's infuriating, snarls development and there is never a lasting fix.

But we're just engineers. /2
Mar 2, 2024 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Ukraine needs ammunition, now, especially from the US. And this well meaning, but deeply misguided and very premature rising "Release the Leopards"esque meme is going to do the one thing to actually fatally damage American (and eventually broader western) public support. Ukraine will require NATO troops to act as a tripwire force post-war while it gets back on its feet and negotiates entry. Russia will likely regenerate quicker and it will need NATO presence to delay a resumption of the war.

The NATO contingent will be colossal.