Leaderboard

Just wanted to give you guys a shoutout. We just finished up a 5 day 1900nm cross country bringing our Kiowa Warriors to the boneyard and it was pretty overwhelming to see the warm welcome you guys gave us as you taxied by. We have a huge respect for what you guys do and it was awesome to see.

Sorry to see the Kiowa go. Was nice to have you part of the stack up in Mosul back in '06-'07...you did really good/close-in work with the .50 Cal. Much appreciated. Cheers ATIS

There goes breakfast. Thanks FE.

In a perfect world that'll happen. Not necessarily the case anymore. I don't know about AFRC, but in the guard nothing is for sure until it has already happened.

So you think the guy who is the mission commander for a 100 aircraft, led the planning and/or the actual mission execution isn't utilizing multiple types of leadership skills? This is MDS agnostic, but being a mission commander (100 was a large example, but the point still stands for the guy running 20-30 assets) in training and combat is a huge leadership role and by far shadows a lot of other "leadership" roles out there. Budha made great points above.

The ability to make decisions under pressure is vitally important for a leader. Aviation highly refines that skill. "Management" doesn't, necessarily. Certain career fields must have home grown leaders. Firemen, cops, soldiers, pilots, doctors, etc look around a room and see themselves as the top dogs. They will never really respect a leader from another career field, or even one from their own group that is subpar. This is just the way things work.

I get the gist of your point, but disagree flying doesn't at minimum enhance and grow one's leadership capability. There's a lot of leadership skills required in aviation - maybe some communities/areas more than others, but overall there is leadership required and increasing ability to lead is generally required as one's experience and position in their community increases.