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I'm guessing he forgot the cardinal rule of "don't talk to the press.... Ever."

I think we need both platforms, for completely different reasons. And the F-16, it can do CAS, just as other aircraft can. Just not necessarily in the same way the A-10 does, or other planes do. Like anything, it has capes and lims. As Hogs can't be everywhere, all the time; sometimes the best CAS aircraft, is the one overhead with ordnance when the crap is hitting the fan below.

Hoss, He clearly stated that in 10 years' time, the F-16 will be a flying target and that the F-35 is the answer to that. My understanding has always been that the F-35's key role was never intended to be CAS - it was intended to be a door kicker on Day1 in a denied, double-digit SAM environment. No other airframe in the Air Force inventory can do that (at least, not in the white world inventory), so isn't that really what the F-35 must excel at? If the F-35 is 'as good as' existing MDSs at CAS (and I note your caveats about that), but will be able to operate in a highly-advanced threat environment a decade from now, and if the Air Force has decided that it doesn't have the cash to splash on single-mission aircraft, then what is the solution?

I miss your old eDodo stuff, Zero.

Warning: Rant in progress..... This is a great example of people feeling entitled to a hand out. Though I'm not in the military (working on it), I am a student pilot about to take my checkride for my PPL, going to school full time, married with two kids, a full time job. Guess what I did to get the money for my hours? HARD WORK(job, working on motorcycles, washing planes,etc.) and penny pinching. Amongst all of this, I always make sure that my family comes first. MAN UP AND FIND A WAY TO GET THIS ACCOMPLISHED. Rant over.....

Love the first comment at the bottom of the page... Classic!

No. PST's aren't allowed to reside on the fileshare. There's good reason for this. PST's get huge, into the GBs. You really should try to keep them below 2Gb or they start to corrupt. You can keep organizational PST's on the share. Legit org, like a flight's org box or a CSS org box. Plus those legit boxes can get increased size as well. Talk to your CS. Additionally your file share.. clean that shit out fellas and ladies. We're doing scans at the wing king's direction and there's so much duplicated data that's just eating space. I know to you guys it's "free" but imagine if that was paper docs. That space is precious to us for numerous reasons below. 1) Regulations - Your electronic records should be filed in accordance with your file plan. A fair chunk of your emails probably could be filed under this. The CS is required to make sure the ERM drive is big enough to support that. We are not required to maintain the Share Drive. That's right. The ERM drive and Share Drive both run off the same equip. Which leads to more problems - 2) Tech Challenges - Sure, we could connect a 3TB disk via usb to the SAN (Storage Area Network has diagrams). It'll void the storage array warranty (haha, just kidding. ACC didn't pay for it to be continued, but didn't bother to tell us.) The storage stuff isn't as easy as plugging in another hard drive. The APC have had problems because they populated storage arrays with different speed disks (ex. 10K vs 5Krpm) and its causes write/read errors. There are whole certifications around the management of data and data storage products. Just look at the product break down here - EMC Toys So, we have to get vendor approved hard drives, installed by trained professionals (i.e. generally not my Amn) and expand the arrays through their software tools. Now, we can buy more drives. Except that they're usually red/business/special and cost much more than your normal drive. Here's a EMC approved 15K RPM, 1.7TB drive.. for ~$14K. Much like our aircraft I can't pop down to Frys/Best Buy and stick any hard drive in this specialty equipment. 3) Programming Challenges - I don't mean code, I mean money. Your base stuff is old (probably). Almost all of our expansion/new stuff is fought over at end of year. I'm not going to get into how much of my current bases equipment is pushing against the EOL/EOS. Just this year the AF decided to move off of Windows Server 2003. Why? Because MS said they were going to charge millions for continued patches past the July drop dead date. Even this move was couched with "show us if you really need it and we might pay." This is a double impact. I can't get a new array when it starts failing, because Comm/Cyber support equipment doesn't get regular updates from MAJCOM/HQAF. We fight for end of year funds to make sure we can expand services (VoIP) or continue with vendor warranties and/or equip. Imagine if you had to fight for F16 block upgrades at end of year against the new gym/finance offices. Kinda like that. Remember when I said we weren't required to support a shared drive? This is why. If we were, it might get programmed against. 4) Old. Sure I kinda mentioned this before, but think about how well old hard drives work. Touchy, special dedicated hard drives. I've no kidding seen a 50% disk failure rate on a base's share drive array. And the only thing you can do is plunk down more $$$ and hope they work. Once the disks are no longer provided by the vendor all bets are off. Now - I bitch about the APC's and move to consolidate. BUT - this is where things are getting programmed against and regular updates are being applied. The cash isn't flowing to your bases even close to the way it was, but it is flowing to these Orgs. So, that's better. Unfortunately, the service isn't on-par with what can be supplied locally. I'll have another post about consolidation, security and cyber later. It's Friday and my D&D group is starting. Hope this answered your question, I rambled a bit. EDIT - TL;DR - Regulations, Money, old tech and specialized equipment make PST's on the network shares bad. But mostly expensive old specialized equipment. Also, I'm trying to spell out all the acronyms, but if I miss one let me know.

Listen, think, pause, respond, and stay inside your circle!

New PSDM on myPers. 9 April 2015 / PSDM: 15-31 / SUBJECT: 20 - 24 July 2015 USAF Test Pilot School Selection Board Announcement / (APPLICATION SUSPENSE: 5 June 2015)

That's still the bet I'm sticking with.

No. Yes. I did use the sarcasm font earlier, but there was quite a bit of truth to my post. During the years I spent as a support officer, and even when I was enlisted, I always had my own computer. Since becoming a pilot, I've always used whatever workstation is available since everything is shared. It's a totally different mindset when you only have 100MB. Period. Including for archiving the important stuff. Also, webmail is buggy. It used to be better, but it doesn't play well with encryption. Especially with all the newest rules and algorithms that are supposed to protect PII by limiting access to attachments. Outlook is definitely not the smoothest interface out there, but at least it works.

What Whittle completely ignores is that the most significant amount of the destruction of the warrior culture took place under the W Bush administration (it is really post-9/11 that the changes he mentions in his video began). All of that change, by the way, was a natural evolution of the changes put into motion under the Clinton Administration during the mid-late 90s. All of the Clinton shenanigans, for reference, were part of the fallout from the witch-hunt following the scandal at Tailhook '91...which, for those of you historians out there, took place during the administration of the 41st President. So, I find his whole "Obama the Socialist's plan to destroy the tool of American Imperialism" schtick completely shatters his message because it represents a colossal misunderstanding of what has led up to the situation we have today. It gives way too much credit to one Administration -- it is really not possible that it is the "fault" of any one of these Administrations as part of some dastardly strategic plan, but rather it is part of an overall cultural shift in the US.

Found it!

Its hard to find decent FTE information, as the job is so different based on platform and location. It could be anything from directing a F-35 test flight from a control room to running instrumentation from a test station on the back of the KC-46 to testing some new datalink test widget in the back of a 707. The real challenge with FTEs in the Air Force is that being a FTE is a position and not a career. Our FTEs are expected to see AFRL and Program Office positions in their careers, and may not ever develop the depth that a really good Industry FTE would have. FTEs still have their same functional at AFPC... they don't switch to a TPS-only functional like the rated guys do. I seem to have many discussions with young engineers that revolve around "I'm not happy: I thought I would be doing actual egineering and I'm not." There are some really interesting civilian FTE / test pilot jobs out there. Most don't require being a TPS grad either. In both the U-28 and MC-12 programs, FTEs were critical to developing new capabilities on very short cycles. Guys writing the code were often the same guys using the systems on developmental flights.

Assumption: Green is the sarcasm font. Probably also required: