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I have it on good authority that these wars will be over by 2012.

Jesus Christ on a Crutch! They made him a wing commander?? this is one of the "leaders" I have referenced previously...terrible at the squadron and group levels...so move him up so he can shit on more people. Rule #3: There is no justice.

He ended up in Russia by accident; I think his passport was revoked as he was changing planes to go to South America or something like that. He has stated multiple times that he'd rather be in a democratic country. He broke the law, certainly. Doesn't deserve to have a security clearance ever again. But sometimes laws need to be broken to serve a higher purpose. The guy who leaked the Pentagon Papers thought the same thing and never had to serve time for his leak. The scope of the NSA programs completely out of control and the American people deserved to know it.

Here's my input to the "great debate"... I admit that if I had a choice, an A-10 (or A-10-like) capability for a CAS mission would usually be my first choice in a survivable environment. However, that doesn't mean that it's an absolute requirement. I know I'm a bit dated, but out of my 250+ FAC missions in the OV-10 (Vietnam), 125 or more of them did CAS support at some point during the 3-4 hour sortie. I don't recall a single one of them resulting in the good guys being overrun due to poor CAS capability. Only one resulted in a friendly fire casualty and that was because the idiot stood up to get a picture of a Mk82 hitting the bad guys about 75 meters away (the ground CC's immediate comment was something like "Never mind, it'll save me the time it would take to beat his stupid ass to death"). The point of this is that we did great CAS work nearly every day with no A-10s. I worked F-100s, F-4s, A-4s, A-7s, A-1s, A-6s , VNAF A-37s, and F-5s, AC-119s, AC-130s, and even some AH-1Gs and UH-1Cs (gunship variants), plus my own pitiful ordnance, of course. Most of the work was in the 100-300 meter range, but some as close as 30 meters. In some cases, the sheer power of the 30mm may have been a detriment...the 7.62 was actually safer to use and plenty good enough in terms of killing power with less collateral damage potential. Each platform had its good and bad points, and had to be used carefully to maximize impact on the bad guys and minimize threats to the friendlies. For instance, a light platform with small ordnance (like an A-37 with 7.62 and 250lb slicks) I generally started working close with guns and backed up about 10m a pass until it was safe to use the 250s. When I had a couple of A-6s (usually VMA 225 out of Danang...really good at CAS!) I'd put one or two mk82s as close as possible to slow the action, then start dropping sticks of five or six (remember, they has 28 bombs each) behind the bad guys about 300m then march the sticks forward about 25m a stick. It didn't take long for the bad guys to figure out they were soon to be caught between a wall of bombs and fire from the friendlies, and they backed out fast. It might have helped that the first sticks tended to take out upper management, watching from the rear, early in the game! In general, F-100s were not too bad, since CAS and other close support was a large part of their mission, and the Marine A-4s and F-4s were very good at CAS since that was almost all they did (especially the A-4s from Chu Lai). They averaged between 20-40 CAS sorties a month and were very good because of their sortie rate. On the other hand, the AF F-4s from Danang (Gunfighters) were usually terrible, but that's because most of them only flew a real CAS sortie once or twice a month. I hated to use them closer than 200m. The VNAF guys were pretty good, too, but most of them had been flying for a decade, with the leads frequently having 1000-2000 combat sorties (mostly CAS) over a decade or more. Navy (mostly A-7s) was my last choice, mostly because they rarely did actual CAS, and I saw them infrequently which lowered my confidence in their abilities. As a matter of fact, my feeling is that good CAS may be less about the airframe than the pilot experience in the cockpit (and maybe about the guy directing the situation (air or ground FAC, or whatever the current nomenclature is). The Marine F-4/AF F-4 comparison is a good example. Just a thought...

Heard the same thing, but they didn't say if it was 2012 of this year or next.

I think no one ing knows the answer. Either here or there at afpc. My bet is on people getting hosed at the last second when they 'suddenly' become eligible for VSP/RIF when it's too late to apply for 1.25...

He ran out of excuses to not answer the question "So what is your job in the AF?" and just drifted away.

Too late, we found it.

Snowden's not the first NSA "whistleblower" in the past decade, but he's received a heck of a lot more attention than the others. Why? Because he ran off to Hong Kong and has created a, "What will he do next?" saga for himself. So while I can't disagree with your pessimism, that's also sort of the point of civil disobedience. If you're going to stand for something, be ready to face the consequences. Snowden would have had a better leg to stand on if he was willing to take the punishment; in my opinion, he's lost credibility by fleeing abroad and using classified documents unrelated to domestic spying as bargaining chips.

Another vote for sheppardair on the ATP written prep software. Got a 96% following the directions.

'04 11M with PC app in the wickets. Asking for 18 months off of my ADSC; will keep you posted. Been approved by my Wg/CC, just up at PC Office and waiting for SAF. Unfortunately, submitted 2 weeks before FM measures released, but if denied will probably apply under VSP...Again. Have a job waiting in the Reserves. My idea was it's never too early to start applying, maybe you'll end up beating the exodus to the Reserves, so I started dropping apps a few months go. Best of luck, all.

Can I get one?

Restless natives.

Thanks, dickhead. The vast majority of us don't go to the CAOC by choice and we all question the validity of this place when our CENTCOM counterparts do their jobs from stateside locations and garden spots like Larissa, Tampistan, and Vokel. That's an old argument that no one in leadership will entertain. In other news, Detroit, Oakland, and all U.S.-Mexican border duty locations will be added to the stateside IDP list and Clovis, NM now qualifies for HDP-L.

How does he sound entitled? He asked if it was against the regs and/or how folks who have done it did it. He never said he should be able to do whatever he wants. It's people like you that provide no value to this forum, and probably the Air Force, if all you do is wander around saying no one should ask questions and you're better than everyone else because you've been around longer. No offense to you, just a common thing I see around here and I'm tired of it.

Best article I've seen on the subject. Uses facts and historical trends to debunk every myth currently being sold to the American public regarding military personnel costs. Please read and share. This article NEEDS to gain traction.

Alpharatz, are you a Nav, or just retarded?

Good God, stop while you're behind.

I got some jokes about all the various crew positions...but come to think of it, a lot of them aren't too funny. I think you guys might be a little too sensitive for those. My joke was right at the weather guy. Are you a weather guy? If so...sorry. What does the 10 dollars mean? Should I have tipped the weather shop?

Also of note, platforms like the AC-130U/W/J are highly CSO centric, the pilots really are mostly stick monkeys, and you get to do the bad guy shooting.

Why so angry? The BRA run out of Strongbow? The "clowns" comment was directed at the people who impede the mission and make it more difficult than it needs to be. Unless you are one of the guys who fall into that category and the comment rings true, GFY. I'm sure you've had a few choice words about the folks at TACC who do that exact same thing, so get over it.