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Yup - the main thing I can't understand is why the fact that it will not need AR support to do an operationally relevant sortie (ISR, CAS, Surgical Strike, or all of them on one mission) is not breaking thru and getting more traction towards acquisition and this coming from a former tanker bubba. Even way back when I was a tanker co I knew that having a two ship of 16's on station with the huge tanker commitment to pass gas to them (and all the other two ships) did not make sense when you had cheaper options given the threats you actually faced, the amount of times we were going kinetic after major combat ops ended and the cost of keeping x number of tankers on station 24-7-365. This is a perfect plane / mission for Guard / Reserve, but like the C-27J and two brothers, if I can't have one he can't have one. Because as I alluded to in my earlier post it isn't as simple as the cost of X airplane vs Y airplane. Hell look at the billion dollar stack put up over every single Swoopy HVI take down. Or the days worth of data collection to build pattern of life before we even do that. Yeah it would probably be cheaper to go in with 1/5 the Intel and an AWT and a predator 95% of the time and get away with it. The problem is that time it doesn't and you lose a bunch of tier 1 asset guys who cost millions each individually in training not to mention a pair or more of 160th crews which cost tens of millions in training dollars. The view is we can stand to absorb the cost of being way way overly conservative better than we can both financially, emotionally, and all too important polotically absorb the cost of a failure to be ready and it's really true. A situation like what happened in Mogadishu where we tried to do something that invested on the cheap resulted in a failure so spectacularly bad it stopped an entire special ops campaign as well as our peace keeping op participation, organized tens of millions of dollars of forces to respond to the 2nd and 3rd level effects, and became the reason we don't do it that way for the next twenty years.

Recommend Vanguard - easy for a dude who doesn't know/want to learn a bunch regarding investing, low expense ratios, and good performing funds overall. Way better than USAA.

Nah, it looks like a chubby dolphin.

Kenny's point is huge. I've been gone from home a cumulative 4 years out of 9 years of marriage...and I'm pretty sure that's average at best, there are many dudes who have been gone a lot more than that. Flying is awesome and I love my job, but it's not easy on the family. I *think* the ANG is better than the picture I painted, but spending YEARS (cumulative) away from family is reality over a career, regardless if you're AD or ARC. UPT is only the beginning, and almost laughably low stress/easy once you get a few years in the future and compare that to UPT. It's a great life/job for many, but not for all; make your decision being the most informed possible.

USAA has been going down the shitter lately. They use to have the best rates for everything. Over the past few years I've been doing better looking elsewhere for loans, insurance rates and credit cards. Only thing beneficial now is their checking where they refund your atm fees.

Just placed an order with Vortex and thier military discount is 40% off MSRP, well below what I can find in stores and online. Great people to work with and highly recommended. Saved a good amount for my viper pst, mount, quick throw lever and bubble level. They also have a pretty sweet referral program. You get a 5% credit from a referral's purchase. PM me if you're going to order from them. https://www.vortexoptics.com/content/military_le_program

No different than a room full of LockMart engineers.

We would do that like crazy when we had to play stupid ROE games with CDE or continuous PID. Joke was always that IED emplacer is going to have a hell of a time figuring out which one is the red wire in a few days.

I wanna open a cataract center in the 'Stan. All the lasing I did sure can't have been good for everyone.

Valid, a dolphin's advertised capabilities are much more reliable and effective.

Keep in mind, being away from her isn't going to stop after UPT. How will deployments/tdys work? You'll probably stay busy/gone after you get wings so you need to take that into consideration. Like others have said, this job is great but I wouldn't put it before my family. Sent from my SM-G920V using Tapatalk

Clovis is a debatable combat zone depending on where you live.

Just some article observations.. "Operational in 1983, it was not publically revealed until April 1990" The 117 was shown at the Nellis airshow in 1990, but was technically publically revealed in 1988 in a pentagon press conference. "It was not a fighter, but a light bomber without a scintilla of air-to-air capability" Not operationally, no. But not exactly true either. Each bomb bay did have AIM-9 umbilical connections, marked as such, for a reason. Regarding Spoon Rest/Fan Song/Tall King, about the only thing I'll say on that is since we planned specifically against fixed threats/radars, we had methodology to make detection by these systems nearly impossible. We carried LGBs, but also had GPS weapons too, so we weren't completely dependant on the former. And in terms of defenses onboard, there were items, just nothing standard. "No F-117s were so much as scratched by Iraqi defenses" One was very nearly shot down by medium/heavy caliber AAA that was tracking it visually. Luckily no hits were made. "No accident this; Col. Dani’s battery also shot down an F-16C, making him the only successful air defense commander of the entire conflict" Not entirely specialization on the part of the Serb SAM operators either. We ourselves helped them out alot with not remembering a damn thing from the first days Linebacker II, 27 years earlier. Nothing like helping the IADS narrow down its search area. In terms of maintenance, the 117 was up there in man hours. As mentioned, the Martians had the most difficult job in just maintaining the RAM coating. One of the things you'll notice in looking at day-to-day 117s, is how the jet looks somewhat ratty looking, and with strips/pieces missing underneath the tail number of the vertical stab, as well as white chalk looking stuff around the cockpit. This was not the fault of any kind of maintenance, but merely a limitation of the jet itself. F-117s at home station were not kept in a full CMR status. Their weapons attack systems were fully ready, but the jets themselves had to be prepared for combat if the call came, in terms of the stealth items and specifically the RAM coating. With these first generation stealth jets, the outer coating on the jet....the RAM, or Radar Absorbent Material.....came in "sheets" and had to be placed onto the metal fuselage of the jet by trimming to fit, then gluing into place, with a fairly long curing time. Because of this, bits and pieces of of RAM would come off inflight often, and it was alot of work to maintain it. To do so would have far too many jets down for service, so RAM was only replaced in larger sheets if need be. Smaller areas of missing RAM were either left missng temporarily until maintenance could get to it, or were filled in with the RAM putty, resulting in the worn look that some of the jets had, even though that was only a look. When off to combat or to an exercise like Red Flag (or an airshow), the jets were fully prepped and looked pristine, with their RAM coating perfect and Radar Cross Section for that particular tail number well within specs. Other things that would cause severe loss of RAM were actions like dropping the tailhook, if needed.

This is both pretty good and funny! Sadly, I'm guilty when it comes to much of this...

Which is too bad. Honestly all of the software and interfaces in the boxes are awful but GA controls the thing from tooth to tail so there's no really a big rush to make things better. Would love to see that contract opened up to competition so better solutions that already exist would be fielded. It also seems ridiculously obvious that one avenue to help with the manning crunch is to get that interface right i.e. having a single crew controls multiple aircraft. Not sure why this is not more of a priority - it's easily feasible during long transit times especially.