Leaderboard

You're certainly entiltiled to your opinion, but all my experience says otherwise. Most of the BS ROE you lament originates from the military itself. Rules on top of rules to make extra special certain we get no where near any red lines. And there will never be war without "Political games." Never. War is a political action, and even the super rare total war scenarios like WW2 were suffocatingly political. Good senior leaders need to find a way to adapt and overcome political obstacles as we do in tactical scenarios; that's the GO fight and they mostly suck at it. Might be they have to take a stand and get fired if the true obstacle really is a politician. How often does that happen, versus how often a line guy makes the ultimate sacrifice? There are definitely some military leaders who are tearing shit up and held back from above. LTG Thomas said in an interview recently that he is told no 9 out of 10 times. He also admits we are losing badly across the board. He is a leader and not a manager, one of few. Leadership like him is the only reason I've stayed in the AF. We have one like him who posts here sometimes. Most of our management has a graduate degree in risk aversion. They got their rank by being the guy who never took a chance and always found a reason to say no, thus avoiding any incidents on their watch while simultaneously leveraging career ending paperwork on the few who take a chance that doesn't work out. I was drowning in those types when I was in AMC, and they absolutely got people killed.... More on that if you care. They are the reason we have failed to follow up any gains and consequently stay mired in indecisiveness. Ive seen the same thing in AFSOC, though to a lesser degree. But we are losing. It's someone's fault, and that someone is not the folks on the line doing the fighting. It's the people "highly respected at the pentagon" because that respect is gained making life easy on bureaucrats.

No more logic from you

Only A1 would call paying a certain class of people 1/4 the money to do the same job "elegant."

Another thread that you guys make me LOL in. https://www.afpc.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123470944 The PSDM with the selectee list should be out early next week on mypers. The folks heading to McConnell and a few going to Altus will complete Type-1 (Boeing Contracted) training. Others will be the small group try out class at Altus. Training should occur in the next year.

IOT&E selects from last year were released around October and told to recompete at the February call for applicants.

So many wrongs with your thinking... Don't disagree with people volunteering for these positions are looking for personal gains. But the AF has been hiring/promoting careerists/box-checkers for the past decade+ and I'd say that hasn't turned out well for the AF based on the AF-wide retention issues and the strategic-level miscues. Of course, you'd disagree with that assessment. I'm glad you acknowledged that a working on a Master's degree is a distraction to a person's primary AF job. So it's okay for a GO to get your undivided attention but not your current/previous bosses and colleagues because you want to be on that O-6 trajectory. Got it! You sound arrogant here, but typical for the number of careerists I've encountered in my career. Can you explain what a "run-of-the-mill" Sq/CC job is as opposed to a "special" Sq/CC job? At any point in your career, does the word "leadership" ever come across your mind (besides required PME readings/discussions) and/or is a part of your normal decision-making process?

Wouldn't mind reading up on some of those stories if you're willing to share them.

8:1 is just a publicly available number I was willing to quote, the real one may or may not be classified or just FOUO but was just my reference for that post. I'll respectfully disagree with you on whether dudes will stay, I think a lot of Guard dudes would use those 1000 to 1800 points to get them to or over 7305 then leave but some may not, that is a far rock, the near and close rocks are the ones we have to deal with right now. No disagreement on the fact there is no easy/quick fix, but I really doubt contractors save us money in the long run and the problems of legality, public perception and contracting I don't think are worth it. Long term strategy for the AD is one they are probably not willing to accept: - An RPA assignment is a must for an aviator aspiring to leadership not a fake Master's degree - An RPA assignment is not a pedigree factory, I saw this from my assignment long ago in the RQ-4, lots of people there, just a few who really manned the shelter, lots of fast burners there to have RPA put on there records, get some bullshit job with a fancy title at the Wing or Group, then leave after 2 years for a school slot or staff gig. - An RPA assignment is not where slow swimmers are automatically sent (not a swipe at anybody), the Navy doesn't necessarily allow all the top dudes to go to Hornets (anecdotal but I have heard that multiple times over my career that they will assign top grads to other airframes to ensure all communities have some top performers out UPT); you have to have a reasonable distribution of talent; we should probably have RPA with a T-38 companion program with a fighter follow on; ditto for heavies to allow fast swimmers to go there, benefit the community then go to manned aviation taking with them a good start in RPAs - Establish the long term orders concept I proffered to have an easy to manipulate rheostat (from an HR perspective) for RPA surging / draw down using the Guard/Reserve Just my rantings

Was it as hard to land as the 135R?

Good critical thinking Chang. Requiring CGOs to have masters degrees for advancement never had second order effects before. Should be fine this time too. Kind of standard for A1 though - can't think more than 1 assignment cycle down the line.

Doubtful - the solution to this is actually either opportunities for Guard/Reserve members for long term orders (3-5 years) or as referenced above, resurrect the WO program and apply it in a targeted fashion to the career fields that need augmenting with skilled, selective, and with a focused career path / expectation. Quick math: Hire 300 pilots in blocks of 100 pilots from the Guard/Reserve over 3 years, at Full Burden Cost of $185K per year average (WAG). That comes to $55 million per block, stager them to have a natural off-ramp if you want to draw down from this surge and for $166 million just factoring aircrew, apply another WAG of 25% for additional costs (training, support, etc...) and it comes to $208 million. Minimize other cost (PCS, per diem, etc...) by surging at the Guard & Reserve in addition to AD bases and assuming an 8:1 pilot to CAP ratio, from this public reference here and you have robust growth, easily scalable up/down force size with the flexibility of offering extensions or letting orders expire, and minimized infrastructure cost by expanding only where you have operations and God forbid actually utilizing your Guard/Reserve for what it was meant for: surging for periods of time, short or medium term, to meet an operational need and routinely using your Guard/Reserve forces to keep them viably manned by giving them work, operationally relevant by participation in current ops and optimally utilizing the hardware they have that Big Blue paid for. If you make these orders 3-5 years in length the Guard/Reserve bubbas will be interested as that is inside the scope of USERA (make them Contingency Orders and you can go beyond 5 years) and enough time to be compensatory for interrupting lives, other careers, etc... and if you allow AD dudes who want to leave to PC and steer them to this program (regardless of AFSC - if not an aviator or 18X, then AD could train them before PC to Guard/Reserve) this fixes RPA manning, but it requires out of the typical stovepipe thinking and Big Blue to be bold, not two traits it has demonstrated of late...

Jaded, it is an elegant, quick, easy solution to implement and help alleviate some of the personnel pain in the drone community. Aviators should be the FIRST to embrace this idea.

Article Link Still hiring... Lockheed's 30-aircraft TR-X plan priced at $3.8 billion 16 March, 2016, BY: James Drew, Washington DC Lockheed Martin’s plan to construct a fleet of 30 high-altitude, single-engined tactical reconnaissance aircraft from cannibalised U-2S Dragon Lady and RQ-4B Global Hawk components would take 10 years and cost approximately $3.8 billion if adopted, a company official says. Called TR-X, the programme would furnish low-observable airframes – powered by the U-2’s GE Aviation F118 non-afterburning turbofan engine – with sensor suites and antennas from the manned Lockheed U-2 and remotely piloted Northrop Grumman RQ-4B. The scheme would consolidate the two divergent platforms – which were designed to be complementary but have competed for limited resources – into a single high-altitude intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance fleet for the US Air Force. The now-unmanned TR-X, previously known internally as the optionally piloted UQ-2 or RQ-X, was revealed last year by Lockheed’s Skunk Works advanced development and design division. Since then, design staff have finessed the concept and aircraft planform – which won’t be revealed to the public because of protected design features. “It uses a lot of systems off [the] Global Hawk and U-2,” said Skunk Works U-2 business development manager Scott Winstead, speaking at a Lockheed briefing in Washington DC on 15 March. “In fact 90% of our mission systems, sensors, payloads and avionics we repurpose, and 80% of hardware is repurposed as well. By re-using the U-2 engine, you save a ton of money.” The company had been considering an operating ceiling of about 77,000ft, but that would require two engines. Instead, TR-X will fly at 70,000ft with one engine, peering across borders deep into target countries using its Raytheon ASARS-2B advanced synthetic aperture radar system – an electronically scanned array that will come online in 2018 – as well as new multispectral imaging sensors like the UTC Aerospace Systems MS-177. The wingspan has been restricted to the 39.9m (130ft)-wide span of an RQ-4B to prevent costly infrastructure and base modifications. Winstead says TR-X will be built as a one-for-one U-2 replacement. As U-2s go through their programmed depot maintenance cycle – once every five to six years – they will be stripped down and usable components such as the engine will be transferred to the new aircraft body over a two-year construction period. “Instead of tearing it apart and rebuilding it as a U-2, you’d tear it apart and scavenge its parts and rebuild it as a TR-X,” Winstead explains. “Yes, we’d be scavenging pieces and parts off the Global Hawk, primarily it’s sensor inventory. You’d build your first handful of TR-Xs using the U-2 sustainment line.” Lockheed estimates it will take six to eight years to recapitalise the air force's 33 U-2s and another two years to replace its 21 Block 30, and 11 Block 40, Global Hawks. “At the end of the 10-year timespan, you’d have 30 TR-Xs, which give you greater capability than you’ve got today,” says Winstead. Skunk Works has come up with a low-observable aircraft design that could be made more stealthy through modular upgrades. For instance, the baseline configuration retains the U-2’s long nose, which houses the ASAR radar or UTC senior year electro-optical reconnaissance system (SYERS-2C). That nose might eventually be swapped with a conformal low-observable version for use on sensitive wartime missions. The antennas ported across from the U-2 and Global Hawk will also show up on enemy radar screens, but they too could be replaced with conformal shapes. “With a low signature for survivability, tie that in with a very good defensive system, and you’re going to have something with survivability better than an F-35 is today,” says Winstead. “It won’t be unnoticeable, but it will be survivable.” TR-X can fly for 24h and is capable of in-flight refuelling. The air force has stated a preference for an aircraft with 40h of endurance, with refuelling allowed, Lockheed says. Lockheed doesn’t expect to begin construction any time soon, based on conversations with US Air Combat Command. Fiscal pressures and a change of president in 2017 mean any successful TR-X bid would not be in the air force budget until fiscal year 2020 at the earliest. That’s “an extremely aggressive schedule” and it will more likely have to wait until fiscal year 2024, to introduce an aircraft in the 2030s, Winstead adds. The U-2 could keep flying to its structural limit of 75,000 flight hours or “beyond 2024” based on current estimates, says Lockheed. Last year, the air force was pushing to retire the U-2, beginning in 2019, but Congress will not let that happen until the service comes up with a credible transition plan that involves modifying the Global Hawks to carry the U-2's SYERS-2C, MS-177 and Optical Bar Camera sensors. Northrop has already begun flying demonstrations using those sensors through a co-operative research agreement with the air force. It is testing a “universal payload adaptor”, which involves hardware and software modification. US Air Force chief of staff Gen Mark Welsh confirmed at an Air Warfare Symposium last month that 2019 is no longer a planned retirement date for the U-2. “2019 is when we believe we will have proven the capability of the Global Hawk to use the sensors that have been hosted on the U-2 up until this point,” says Welsh. “Once we do that, we’ll build a transition plan from U-2 to Global Hawk capability as we have done in the past. Until we’ve completed that work, projecting the future doesn’t make a lot of sense.” The air force's latest budget plan spends almost $2 billion on Global Hawk modernisation, including MS-177 integration, compared with the U-2's meagre $46 million allocation.

Calling anything pertaining to AU "academic" is an insult to professors of 17th century French poetry everywhere.

I don't. I had trouble finding one before I started. Best bet is to find someone who is going through UPT now and ask.

That is one good looking plane. I really hope they'll be dropping without long wait times by next year.

It's interesting to me that you think this is all a joke. Is it just your contempt for operators that has driven you to be so bad at your job?

Don't post drunk.

Mine has been at SAF/PC since 10 March. Hoping that I get some news on Duck's timeline.

Plenty of dudes who tracked t-1s could have done just fine in -38s. I'd say most of the top T-1 guys would do good, it's the bottom of the T-1 class that doubtfully would have made it but you never know. There is a certain truthfulness when you say it's completely realistic for a person who washed from -38s to do fine in T-1s, but not vice versa. Some commanders tried to argue this, it didn't go over but I think we lose some potential pilots who would be just fine in a crew jet. Give me a dude with a killer drive and attitude to fly fighters over the reluctant top stick T-6 student anyday though. UPT performance is not always a great indicator. I had some T-38 students who we thought were lucky to get a fighter back in the day, now they are patch wearers, community leaders etc. Likewise some of the DG's were sh-t in their fighter.

Best bet is to buy all the high tech survival gear you discovered you needed right afterwards. And then spend the next 6-9 years looking over at it every time you walk through your garage before finally throwing it away.

This will go a long way toward ensuring the future of the overall rated community. Chalk up a "W" for team A1!

The KC-46 is bigger?

Have to disagree with you somewhat here. Even though I have almost zero faith in our senior leaders I do believe that if they were unbounded and actually able to conduct military operations without b.s. ROE and political games that we would be winning most if not all of these "wars". I have faith in the Air Force's ability to break stuff and kill people effectively in spite of our "management" generals.

Gen McDew is a highly-respected senior General at the highest levels of the Pentagon. We should be so lucky for President Obama/ Secretary Carter to nominate him.