That is not generally the consensus on the Joint Staff, so I’m not sure what national security perspective that you are referring to.

I’m not sure what you mean by have to hire US pilots.

By the way this nothing to do with the original thread.

While it may be discomforting the rule in place in India, that an Indian must be in every cockpit. I kind of see why this is the case. You wouldn’t want a key, not to mention safety critical workgroup of your flag carrier being controlled by foreign nationals regardless if that country was an ally of yours or not….same reason that a foreign individual or entity cannot hold more than 49% of any US airline. Now if we can only get the IT firms to think like that.

Listen I get it, it’s complex. I was willing to work in developing world Asia to fly an A320 or 737 for what now would seem like quarters on the dollar….but I tell you this: it’s certainly was a LOT more than I was making as a flight instructor or as a first officer for any US regional at the time. You see I knew people who had access to multiple passports and visas were able to get into right seats of 73’s and 320’s at 250…..spend like 5 years there come back to US and be seen as more competitive than me because in those same 5 years I could only draw on CRJ or EMB 145 experience.
These types of rules put in place by politicians or people appointed by politicians well WELL THEY MATTER.

The people that went to Asian contract carriers (five year contracts example) also had to play by their rules and many came back because their contracts were terminated. More power to them if they wanted to play for less pay…over there.

Our US air carrier unions have fought hard for scope protections in this arena. I don’t want SWAPA to roll over or relax international scope items for a dangling carrot that lets the camels nose into the tent.

Slight digression on my part I guess.

You have to understand how that game is played... of *course* they'll advocate for policy which is tangentially beneficial to their mission planning and execution, when it doesn't come out of their budget.

It would also be *really* great to have 20 carrier strike groups and associated air wings, escorts, and log ships. But you don't see the JS pushing for that now do you? Why? Because they'd have to pay for it...

Ultimately it's a calculated risk... rely on allies, partners, and third parties for merchant lift (for both economic and security purposes). Alternative would be to artificially build a US merchant fleet, which the government would likely have to prop up indefinitely.

I worked on the Joint Staff. That isn’t exactly what the joint staff does.

I also know from experience what the JS does, and how, and why.

Maybe a better way of putting it... if the DoD were to fund say a 1000 ship merchant fleet, would that be worth taking the $ away from other parts of the budget? Like combat power?

Even if the DoD didn't fund the entire program, just the delta between cost and commercial revenue, would it be worth it?

On that note, while the US flagged merchant fleet is minuscule, there are almost 1,000 US *owned* merchants which operate under flags of convenience... those could be reeled in relatively quickly in the event of a long-term change in geopolitical landscape.

Based on what you are saying, I don’t think you really understand what the Joint Staff does. It’s understandable, reservists unless they were EAD generally were given menial tasks since they didn’t have the time to see anything through.

I know what you're saying but I was given non-menial tasks for about a decade. I did more than my fair share of AD, and accumulated a critical mass of expertise and credibility.

But why attack my service history, instead of the merits of the discussion? I know some regular AD folks like to look down their noses at reservists, but if it helps I did start life as regular AD on day one (back when that was a thing) and made my own choices along the way. Not everybody who bailed on regular AD had a DUI.

So we are asking the Chinese to help us in iran now? Is this real life or a Saturday night live skit?

Only RU actually stands to benefit from this mess (they have plenty of oil themselves and what they can manage to sell around sanctions is probably their major source of hard currency).

PRC suffers from high oil prices like the rest of us. They would benefit from stability in the region (and in oil prices) more than they would from abstractly poking us in the eye. They also participate in anti-piracy ops in the region, in coordination with western navies. So not really a ridiculous idea. They are pretty practical.