Leaderboard

I think the flexibility of the platform is already extremely limited by 1) The 2 holding so much of the power 2) All Combat lines being chopped to specific units by the COCOM because the CFACC doesn't have / doesn't exercise that authority I'm pretty sure, at least for the MQ-9 side of the house, the preference would be to work more for the 3 and not be lumped into an Intelligence Command. I realize that we don't belong 100% in the 3 realm, but I think giving the 3 more authority over the MQ-9 than it has now is a better answer.

Shitty leadership from the C-17 community? Weird.

Thank you! No I didn’t. Kept my original scores and have discovered over time that most units don’t care about scores, this is subjective, and worry more about the whole person concept.

Keep the 60 vote rule. The more barriers to legislation, the better.

Can’t wait!!!

Congrats. Good luck.

Touché. Used to be the best kept secret. A lot of work from home/on a layover. Can't beat that.

Was this self-inflicted based on your aircraft selection? If you bid the 787 at the earliest opportunity, I don't have a lot of sympathy for your plight. "For your information, you stuck it in your own ass!"

Thank you. I do have a job at one of the Big 3 but the benefits for me taking AGR is that I’m in the most senior base, currently 5 from the bottom and can only hold reserve (I’m in year 3 currently). The company is supposed to ramp up hiring and I’m hoping they start growing my base so that I can be a line holder. Also to note, the base I’m in is the only single leg commutable base from where I live. It’d also be nice to get to my 20 so that I can retire and only have 1 full time job because it seems to me that AFRC has become AD light and I put in a lot of time at my squadron. First things first though, I have to see the outcome of my MEB when that time comes.

In the school's "safe zone"

You’re correct. My plan was always to apply for AGR this summer/fall. My squadron currently does not have AGR but we are receiving them. You're also right in the fact that I asked about medical retirement vs 20 year military retirement. I like to have knowledge on all my options and be in the know so that I’m not surprised by something unexpected. I think it’s funny that you think you know me and think you’re smart in calling me out just because I asked a question about retirement and stated my opinion/plan about AGR. Keep fighting the good fight... okay.

on friday you couldn't decide whether to medically retire for a hip replacement, two days later you're applying for an flying AGR position? okay.

Copy that. Another fix that really would be the thing that could actually cause the others is IMO that the RPA community needs a home of its own for its core function/mission of Global Integrated ISR, resurrect AF Intelligence Command and give them the top cover of their own 4 star. It's a large enough core function/mission that it has out grown ACC and is sufficiently different that it needs its own dedicated leadership and MAJCOM.

What’s that word that management always uses as an excuse to decrease morale? Like when my squadron was told not to go TDY to fun places because it looks bad for us to have a good time on the road? Oh yeah. Optics. It goes both ways AF. I’m the midst of a pilot retention crisis, not paying everything that Congress authorizes you too? Bad optics.

Tread lightly, it wasn't the GOP that started that.

The biggest difference I saw with the last shutdown was you didn’t have an asshole administration trying to make the shutdown as intrusive and painful as possible for the public. Fencing off open air monuments in 2013 was a real dick move, and I think it says a lot about the character of the last administration.

cmon, man. were talking about planning to exploit a technicality in a law with a design and intent to protect people who are required to perform periodic legitimate military service. it sure as shit wasn't designed for people to skip work for three years immediately after being hired for the sole purpose of enriching themselves. how is this not completely obvious? the fact that integrity (especially among military officers) should extend a least a little bit beyond what the law allows you to get away with shouldn't be something that needs to be typed on a forum post. it happens. people can scam the system all the time. but let's have a little intellectual honesty here, admit that's it's harmful, and not encourage more military folks to do it lest we poison the well.

Do you ever accept there might be a time and a place? I can, but it better be end of the USA big. -Just as a side bar.

If we would just get back to the Constitutional method of declaring war, the arguments for needing a draft lose steam. Right now we are engaged in de facto WW3 against militant Islam, but Congress and the general public have yet to realize that fact. Under an almost 20 year old AUMF, we now have troops and/or have taken action in Libya, Somalia, Niger, Djibouti, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. I’m sure I missed a few, and there seems to be no end in sight. The War Powers resolution limits troop commitments to 60 days without further approval from Congress. The 2001 AUMF specifically addressed those responsible for 9/11 and ‘associated forces.’ We’ve gone way beyond that in the last 16 years. If we started making law makers actually vote to send our kids into harms way like they should, they would have more to answer to their constituents for. While drafting Congressmen’s kids into the military may have more effect, at least making them go on the record about military action makes them take a stand and show leadership. We shouldn’t be fighting without a clear mission, a clear finish line, and then a clear exit strategy. If you’ve ready history about our involvement in Afghanistan, it illustrates how we just keep creating monsters unintentionally with short sighted goals. It kills me to see us making the same mistakes every 10 years. I don’t want my kids to have to suffer for that in the next few decades.

I wrote this while deployed after watching "good kill". Lots of words, some of them funny. I rented good kill from itunes the other day, and within the first 5 minutes i was p1ssed off. I thought the only good that could come from this movie is to reign in its bullsh1t by correcting the inaccuracies. I am exceptionally qualified to offer such corrections, as the film is a biography- melding the personalities of ###-### and myself to form the protagonist maj Eagan (coincidence?). please enjoy and learn from the following first five minutes: you can't hear jet noise in the GCS unless you flew your droid into a wormhole where it was teleported within earshot of the parking lot of creech and you buzzed yourself. Unless the government has invented wormhole-proof datalinks, the driod would immediately lose connection. further, the mq9 is a turboPROP. The least the producers could have done is dubbed in some droning propeller noise for accuracy but these are the same clowns who took footage of maj Eagan dancing on the rudder peddles like he's sweetening up a guns kill at WIC. NO ONE touches the rudder peddles unless you dropped your can of chew, and even then I'd use a pencil or some other inanimate object to fish out whatever fell behind those funny looking foot peddles. The opening scenes also show the driod at 9k AGL or something ridiculous. You might as well send in a 4 ship of vipers because they'd have the same noise signature at that alt. Other stupid shit in the first five minutes: the camera doesn't click- it's not a polaroid the sensor operator doesn't talk enough about world of warcraft The people in the back of the GCS talk way too much not enough awkward silence. minute 6: a car with unknown occupants (collateral) rapidly approaches from the north. Eagan and the SO get all worked up in a dither because they can't "take the shot" if it's within their FOV- never mind actual CDE numbers. Jezus, if it's the FOV they're worried about why don't they drop that bird down another couple thousand feet or just zoom in-problem solved. anyway, Eagan is in such a hurry that he expeditiously counts down from three to zero before he shoots his hellfire. He's not launching the space shuttle atlantis, therefore you don't need a stupid countdown-just shoot the weapon. However, you would be surprised how many tools would practice their counting skills before shooting a missile in the UAV world. It was a habit I tried and failed to break and i see it made it all the way to Hollywood despite my best efforts. minute 7: Rando lt col busts in the GCS to blather on about what a great strike it was and barks random orders. then exclaims "careful eagan, you're beak to beak with an mq1" and the sensor ball magically picks up some other driod trundling through the airspace faster than an IRST sensor could have. There's a lot wrong with this, like why would the mq1 be co-alt while entering the stack, but then i thought it was probably some JSTAR pilot sent to driods so that made sense. the most irritating thing was the colonel being there to begin with. You ever heard of CRM? don't mess with it and GTFO of the GCS. minute 8: the movie shows some place that is not creech AFB. there are few HumVees at creech yet in the movie they drive around like it's Baghdad circa 2004. Eagan makes a right turn out of the gate to go home. He either lives in reno (nope), the director was practicing good opsec (absolutely nope) or they consulted no-one about this movie other than some tin-hat clown on chemtrails.net about military accuracy. Eagan is then shown cruising through vegas in fancy classic car. The car is accurate-plenty of heart broke aviators tried to subdue their pain with large purchases. one need look no further than your's truly to see what happens when a figher pilot tries to replace all he's lost with large ticket toys (mooney, sports car, electric hoverboard skate thing), but no one lives south of the 215 that goes to creech because the drive is too damn long and costs more money over time. you'd rather spend that money on Avgas or up your montly on your pittycar than waste it on an extra half hour of commute time one way by living near the strip. On the plus side, his wife is accurately bummed out when eagan announces he's moving to nights. you may as well be TDY for 7 weeks. back to the inaccuracies: Eagan then refuses his wife's advances. bullsh1t. Nothing is more satisfying than wasting terrorists then going for a role in the hay. no current or former fighter pilot turns down the advances of his wife/girlfriend - ever. Eagan then drives to work the next day via las vegas blvd. I don't even take LVBVD when i'm on the strip because the traffic is so awful, let alone use it as a thoroughfare. minute 9:15- lt col says "fvck" in his welcome brief- would be instantly fired. lt col talks about how hard it is to take off and land these "birds". WRONG. many pilots have demonstrated that they can't land their previous airframe but can land the MQx just fine. minute 10: six to nine more "fvck" from the lt col during brief. Dishonorable discharge for sure. "3k viper hours as a major?". this has never happened. There are no co-pilots in UAVS- there is a pilot and a sensor operator. Let me rephrase that- there are plenty of co-pilots in the UAV community who spent 5 years in whatever platform they came from and were never upgraded, but as far as duties within the UAV community, there are no co-pilots. The new "co-pilot" is touted to have 500 hours in the MQ-9. 500 whole hours!!!! average day = 7 hours of "flight" time. that's about 80 work days of experience. Whew, the day is won and we can all relax. Eagan asks "what's the lag at?" Well Eagan, it's probably exactly the same as what they told you in the TX course and it hasn't changed since ever. But maybe I'm pessimistic and today is the day that the USAF paid general atomics a gagillion dollars to solve that latency problem. It seems like all the shots are around 10" TOF. either they doubled the size of the rocket motor on the hellfire and they now cruise through the sky with the speed of a meteor or the bullsh1t factory that is hollywood just got away with another doozie. The lt col is still nervously hovering about. I've seen leadership hover inside the GCS. when you're out of bodies and all you have left is the C130 navigator to put in a kenetic situation, godd@mn right leadership makes sure he arms the weapons and doesn't set the autopilot to roll inverted and stay there until it's out of gas while permanently shutting off the datalink but Eagan is a superstar, so seeing the boss hover around (and even give clearance) makes me more annoyed. 17:00 - choppers at creech. no one lands there except the thunderbirds with EPs because real pilots don't like the uncomfortable looks they get from a thousand heartbroke aviators. It's like bringing chipotle to refugee camp in Somalia and not having enough for everyone. 21:00 someone asks eagan "i heard you want to go back to combat". And i heard that octo-mom isn't a virgin. 26:00 lt col still hovering about, giving clearance to engage and pi$$iing me off about the whole bullsh1t hollywood establishment. 26:30 "3 2 1, rifle" good grief. 29:00 after whining about being a droid pilot, Eagan's boss tells him to take the day off. I'm delighted that the manning situation has improved so much that they can give days off to disgruntled majors who can't handle the stress of sitting in a chair for 8 hours a day. 33:00 enter the CIA, who apparently thinks that in between hellfire shots is the best time to discuss foreign policy with combative droid crews. 35:00 there's some doubt as to whether Eagan can make the shot happen due to turbulence. that's like asking me if i can still do a good carrier landing on a veneer table top vs marble- it doesn't fvcking matter. 36:00 cafeteria food at creech- WRONG. they had a casino next door that served good food but the AF demolished it. they have your standard bullshit subway, but most importantly there is a delicious Korean restaurant on base (I know, WTF, right?) that has decent seating outside. 43:00 mouthy sassypants good-looking sensor operator opens her lippy piehole again with her politically driven vitriol and asks "what are we, Hamas?" well ms sassypants, maybe we are, it depends on who our enemies are at the time. If we're fighint ISIS, then I suppose we are on the same side as Hamas. If we're securing bagdad in 2003, then no, we want to kill Hamas and the other Shia militias but she nor hollywood has any idea nor do they give a sh1t. 45:00 more political discussions than capitol hill. shutting the fvck up WRT political viewpoints is a survival mechanism almost all of us have developed after our first 6 months in the military but having a stoic disposition and com discipline doesn't sell movie tickets. 47:00 the "date" between ms sassypants and eagan is awful. If I could have taken my wife up for an f-16 ride like eagan claims he did, just think of all the money I could have saved had I not had to court her and get her to look past my ginger good looks without the expensive dog-and-pony shows at nice restaurants and spontaneous, impromptu, fun, rebellious dates. "hey wife, just strap in the back seat of this D model and stand by for marriage". Fvck you hollywood. 48:00 "the thrill of landing an f16 on a carrier". Hollywood, fvck you. the whole date with ms sassypants is bullsh1t. I saw several officers lose their sh1t (and careers/families) because they submitted to the siren's call of ms sassypants. pretty hard to get a job as a washout uav operator with paperwork. 54:00 when egan "turns off the video recorder", he is actually turning off the pilot and sensor consoles of the GCS. Hollywood got away with another one. 55:00 eagan is texting in the GCS. this isn't the ops desk at base x-cell phones are not allowed. 59:00 and the rest of the movie- they've finally found a way to make that elusive hover-mode work. 1:05 Hollywood sends eagan on a huge pitty-party around this time, where he confesses to his wife that he blows everyone up to include the attendees at funerals. It's so full of bullsh1t the septic tanks here at base-x have less fecal matter in them. but during this whole time what pis$es me off the most is Eagan has been wearing his leather jacket the whole time, in vegas, in the summer. Bro, i get it. Those jackets look SHARP and I love my custom jacket from dark-horse more than any man should love a piece of clothing. but if you want me to listen to your bullsh1t about how you kill women and kids, don't distract me with your wardrobe. 1:22 I was blown away when i noticed a small detail in the briefing room- the 8 point orbit drawn on the white board!!! that is accurate, as were some of the other things drawn on the board. These clowns talk about landing f16s on carriers but had the hired expertise to accurately draw stuff on the whiteboards? I'm so confused right now. 1:23 ms sassy pants has to be told twice to turn the laser on. weird how I've never had to tell my index finger twice in the viper. 1:29 sh1t looks pretty bad for eagan. his wife left him, he's never going back to the viper. looks like it's time to execute plan B: "Plan B" is when you target your own GCS with a hellfire missile. think about it, it's some existential, deep futuristic sh1t. 1:30 eagan stops drinking after his wife leaves him. Wife=drinking problem. The rest of the movie is full of more horrible inaccuracies, and we all remember the "i'm still first class" line of crap ms sassypants ends her hollywood debut with. Of note, he turns off his "video recorders" (GCS) again and shoots that bearded crazy at the end of the movie. never mind that there was no laser energy guiding the weapon. Finally, at the end of the movie, he makes a left turn leaving creech. I was relived that the producer finally got something right but not 14 seconds later he's in Reno. Verdict 2/5 stars. the two stars come from the accurate portrayal of the compensating-for-somethin car and the 8 point orbit drawn on the white board. the rest is sh1t. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk