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She will win, hopefully pass a bunch of legislation that BO will veto, the we will see who the party of "No" is.

So....we can't do this anymore?

And when is back his office will be closed early for "training", PT, running the Focus 56 group and volunteering at the Airman's Attic. Besides your paperwork wasn't filled out properly and was kicked back to Group along with a nastygram to your CC concerning your 'attitude'.

Is the stunt willingly getting aboard an Airbus?

That's fine except Lt's aren't real people.

we'd need a functioning "wall" to pull that off.

Never thought about it like that before...Thanks for the insight. Excuse me while I go throw all my watches away.

Too bad there's only one dude per MAJCOM with those specific burn rights...and he's on leave for the next 6.9 years.

Luck and timing.

20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30.

More like 6 months... "Free" food is available at the Andersen DFAC, temporarily relocated inside their officer's club while they do major repairs. The quality of the food leaves much to be desired. For my most recent deployment they didn't have a short order grill at the temporary facility (since rectified), so you didn't have the bread and butter of deployed dining (omelettes at breakfast and "midnight meal"), and you'd routinely see things like ants crawling on hamburger patties and a lack of condiment options. One of our Electronic Warfare Officers actually got salmonella eating there (don't believe me? it's in the 8th Air Force Bomber Force Improvement Program report). They got a 0% satisfaction rating on their own customer surveys. Most people did cook for themselves or eat out, using the $3.50 a day per diem that is standard for OCONUS incidentals when lodged on base. The thing you have to understand about Andersen is that we deploy there for 6 months, but the base is barely resourced to support its own permanent party airmen. True... The last B-52 OEF deployment ended in May '06. Of course, no one knew that at the time. Steady-state CAS ops had been supported by both BUFF and BONE squadrons on a rotating basis out of Diego Garcia for several years, as had the deterrence mission against North Korea based out of Guam (initially in response to specific DPRK provocations in '03 and permanently starting in '04). The B-1s were able to start operating out of the Arabian Gulf starting in '06, which requires one less air refueling to provide the same amount of time on station and they could carry more J-series weapons (the BUFF can only carry 1760 weapons externally until we get our 1760 Improved Weapons Bay Upgrade in two years), so they've carried the GWOT mission and us the Asia-Pacific mission ever since. Additionally in late '07 we had the "unauthorized transshipment of nuclear warheads" from Minot to Barksdale, so we shifted focus (painfully, but necessarily) primarily to the nuclear mission for a few years... In '09 the B-1s got the Sniper pod, giving them a Bomb on Target (BOT) CAS capability that we lacked (outside of our Reserve squadron) for a bit longer. So, long story short, lots of reasons we haven't been in the GWOT fight for some time. I wouldn't make a drop night decision based on this though. For one, the Afghanistan CAS mission is inevitably going to wind down at some point and you'll start to see the B-1 get phased back into the Continuous Bomber Presence rotation to gain experience in that AOR. For two, my personal experience, I was an AWACS nav before I came to the BUFF... When I dropped the mighty E-3 in '07, we had been out of the desert since '04. Less than 18 months later I was flying OEF sorties out of Al Dhafra. Stuff turns on a dime. Well, other than Guam and England, we periodically go back to Diego Garcia to check things out and make sure the taxiways haven't shrunk. We also go to Darwin, Australia about once per CBP deployment. Being a "Global Strike" platform we train in a lot of countries on long-ass sorties thanks to air refueling. My OEF "combat" sorties in the E-3 were all shorter than many of the training sorties I've flown in the BUFF doing CBP (and a few out of CONUS). Cons: Lack of immediate combat deployment opportunity. Compared to the F-15E and B-1B, a lack of opportunity to employ weapons right away, since you have to progress from the Nav seat to the Radar Nav seat. (You come out of the FTU technically qualified to occupy both seats, but our Vol 3 restricts performance of left seat duties by an Inexperienced Dual Seat Nav, er WSO, when carrying weapons to only doing so under the supervision of an Experienced WSO or instructor. In the ops squadrons this basically amounts to the "traditional nav/traditional radar nav" program, except with a local upgrade.) It sounds like this may change in the near future per the discussion above (I got independent confirmation from a former B-52 Sq/CC this morning), but who knows... They literally dropped the nomenclature change on us (Radar Nav --> WSO) in the dead of night last week when the new RTM came out, without really explaining or hinting at a long term plan for rewriting the crew CRM. Additional Cons: PRP/Nuke mission. I'm honored by the responsibility, and I think it's neat to have my name on a letter saying I can accept custody of nuclear weapons (only ACs and Radar Navs can say that), but the number of exercises and the amount of preparation for them take away from proficiency in the conventional mission i.e. the one we're a lot more likely to actually have to do. Also less opportunity to crossflow out and try other things once you have a Nuclear Experience Identifier (NEI). Pros: One of the few platforms where a CSO can employ weapons. A lot of upgrades and new weapons coming down the pipe (1760 in the bay, OAS CONECT updates our bomb/nav computer system significantly allowing for BLOS retargeting of standoff weapons and Link 16 messages via JREAP-A, Laser JDAM, SDB, JASSM-ER, LRASM, some tweaks to our EW suite, and down the line, a new radar... potentially an interim strapon radar pod along the way too). For the Electronic Warfare Officer, they get to be a lot more man-in-the-loop with jamming than the B-1 DSO does (if you're a "pride in your art" kind of guy). CSOs of both flavors can upgrade to Mission Lead and eventually Mission Commander (usually only the Weapons School dudes that do the latter). Neutral: Location... Depends on your preferences. Out of the FTU I wanted to stay at Barksdale, but I got Minot and I'm glad I did in retrospect. I love it here. There's a higher level of camaraderie and esprit de corps in the ops squadrons here, and I really fell in love with the town and the region. Barksdale obviously has the advantage of being relatively close to Dallas, New Orleans, Little Rock, etc., but I hated the summers there more than I hate the winters here. For the B-1 dudes, it seems like the opposite is the case... Most dudes want to go north (to Ellsworth) and not stay south (Dyess). I've played it both ways in my career... Initially picked E-3s largely for location, and I indeed loved Oklahoma City, but the nav doesn't hold a lot of mission responsibility in that community and is being phased out over the next decade. Re-picked B-52s for the mission, and while I would never see myself choosing to live long term in Shreveport or Minot, the advantages have outweighed the disadvantages. So wherever you go, I recommend you drop based on mission rather than location.