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This video sums it up

This sums up my point perfectly as only the fine scholars at Duffle Blog can. The whole article is f-ing savage! https://www.duffelblog.com/2018/04/colonel-gave-reenlistment-oath-dinosaur-puppet-forced-retire-rank-jeffrey-sinclair/ “In my estimation, allowing your subordinate to reenlist with a sock puppet is approximately half as bad as forcing your subordinate to perform oral sex and then threatening to kill her,” said Haston, as he attempted to wipe a mustard stain off of his uniform. “We aim to promote good leadership, which is exemplified by actions such as destroying morale within your organization by levying draconian punishments for minor infractions for the sake of political expediency, kowtowing to the whims of social media vigilantes suffering from Outraged Veteran Syndrome, and maintaining a body fat percentage under 45%.” Duffle Blog, while also hoping this will blow over soon so we can get back to quietly killing bad guys without making headline news...

Thank you for the Intel, but frankly I have a tough time believing that. Air Force has nickel and dimed me my entire career, tough to believe they’re capable of anything else.

Why? Why is it different? Because it's "cooler"? Because you approve of it? It wasn't appropriate, but this is not a career-ending offense. Especially in an Air Force where a chief who drives drunk and kills someone is allowed to retire as a chief, and where a senior officer guilty of massive sexual misconduct and abuse of power was given the same punishment - retire as a Lt Col. The implication is clear - wrong-doing is only punished if it might cause awkward questions for senior leadership.

Wait we cant drink beer in uniform?

Well said, concur. the video was embarrassing and filming/posting by experienced people showed a huge lack of judgement. However, their error did not jeopardize life, mission, equipment. Firing these folks while ignoring senior leader mistakes that do jeopardize life, mission, and equipment tells me two things: image is valued above substance, and leadership will crush you for violating non-criminal undefined standards. I like that immediate forcible retirement is a tool at the disposal of senior leaders, but this incident is when they use it? Would any of us want the GO who crushed these folks to be our GO who may turn on us if a video surfaced of you without a hat, or having a beer in uniform? What if, theoretically, CVR and FMV emerge of you shooting an injured squirter and CNN demands accountability. Think this group of GOs would have your back or throw you to the wolves? TLDR: initial incident bad, reaction worse. Nsplayr reply good.

Just saw this. Implications could be huge, if Japan is willing to pay the tooling/restart cost for an F-22A while we bring online an upgraded F-22 as a result. The question is, will Congress/CSAF/DoD ever be able to tear their eyes away from the F-35 to seize the opportunity? Lockheed Should Restart the Raptor Line If Japan Wants An F-22-F-35 Hybrid Geopolitical trends, security concerns, and industrial and combat aircraft capability needs, could give birth to an American-Japanese Raptor 2.0. By Tyler Rogoway Osakabe Yasuo Reuters has published a report that came as little surprise to us at The War Zone regarding Tokyo's interest in having Japanese industry work with Lockheed Martin to develop a semi-indigenous fighter that combines the best attributes of the F-35 Lightning and F-22 Raptor. The Reuters report states in part: USAF Although Japan has put forward notional Raptor-like designs, what they could also be talking about here is merging the higher kinematic performance and low-observability of the F-22 with the F-35's smarter attributes—including updated avionics, mission computers, and sensors—as well as new lower-maintenance skin coatings. We at The War Zone have posited exactly this, writing the following in a 2016 article dubbed 'Just Allow The F-22 To Be Exported To Japan Already': Fast forward a couple years and the F-35 program has progressed past the point of no return and President Trump is looking at pretty much any opportunity it can to boost sales of weapons to allied nations. With this in mind, the chances of such an initiative actually happening have increased dramatically. The biggest question is does Japan have the financial capacity to take down such an expensive project, especially considering other new competing priorities. These include everything from acquiring a cruise missile, to setting up Aegis Ashore ballistic missile defense batteries, to fielding F-35Bs on its helicopter carriers. The $366M Mitsubishi X-2 technology demonstrator took its final flight last year after a relatively short life. Apparently, technical difficulties impacted the program and it was clear that Japan would need a deep foreign partnership in order to field a stealth fighter that could also benefit Japanese industry: What's also new is that the USAF has completed a study that looked into what it would cost to put an updated F-22 back into production. The basic findings were: -Approximately $50 billion to procure 194 additional F-22s -The total includes an estimate of approximately $7 billion to $10 billion for non-recurring start-up costs and $40.4 billion for aircraft procurement costs -An estimated cost of $206 million to $216 million per aircraft (the last F-22 produced had a unit cost of $137 million) That cost may be too high for the USAF to stomach, but for Japan, it's highly unlikely they will be able to field something superior to an updated F-22 for anywhere near less. It's also likely that once the U.S.-specific politics of putting the Raptor back into production are removed from the equation, the cost of doing so would drop. Lockheed Martin Lockheed just rolled-out Japan's first of 40 F-35s on order. But if Japan is willing to buy an updated Raptor instead of developing a near identical but still unique design, clearly doing so would present a mutually beneficial opportunity. If the U.S. would become a minority stakeholder in an F-22 production line restart of sorts, with the intent on buying a number of airframes to bolster the USAF's undersized and cherished F-22 fleet, then the opportunity could work out for both parties. Once again, the F-35 lobby will be strongly against such a move even though the F-35's future is now assured. Any fighter dollar given to another program is one less spent on it, but the possibility that the USAF could acquire a Raptor 2.0 of sorts without bearing the vast majority of the non-recurring restart and development costs is an incredible proposition. If Japan is looking to buy a couple hundred fighters and the U.S. was to add onto that order, the unit cost for each jet would plummet as well. As for Japan, it would benefit by realizing lowered unit costs, technology transfer, and also by being a key supplier for certain components of the jets built for both Japan and the United States. The potential to export the jet could also be an added benefit, but this would likely be curtailed by the U.S. in order to protect F-35 sales abroad. But above all else, Japan will be able to lower its risk substantially by buying into an existing and proven airframe, improving upon it, and will benefit from the full backing of the U.S. government and industry in doing so. USAF Don't think for a second that Japan is not willing to pay through the nose for a semi-indigenous modified fighter design with deep industry offsets. The F-2 ended up costing nearly the price of an F-35A today, and even then its radar proved to be highly problematic. Japan could have bought late-block F-16s for nearly a third of the price of each F-2 while realizing only minimal negative impacts in terms of some capabilities. Also, keep in mind Donald Trump's extremely close relationship with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Approving Japan to get 'the very best' while also lining the pockets of big defense contractors seems like a very attractive proposition for Donald Trump. And it seems pretty clear that when it comes to weapons export to Japan, Trump is willing and ready to give Abe what he wants. We will watch how this story develops closely, but if the Pentagon was smart, they would embrace an upgraded F-22 restart with Japan, and if Tokyo is willing to foot the majority of the bill for doing so, the USAF would be nuts not to take advantage of it.

Your viewpoint is valid. I don’t want to work with the people in the video or for the general who crushed them. Having worked around both types, seems leaders who cave to political pressure are more of a threat to mission whereas the others can be ignored. I don’t know bro, maybe being on staff has made me a big pussy and I’m overthinking it. Ultimately, I look at these folks getting paperwork/fired and think the same thing my daughter told my sick wife in the hospital: “good thing I’m not you.”

TA i disagree with you on this one. that video was complete and utter bull shit... both the O-6 and SNCO should know better... it made my blood boil. if someone sees me drinking beer in uniform or not wearing my cover so be it...i brought "shame" on myself and expect to deal with the consequences...but god damn did those two bring shame and scorn on the entire enterprise and shit all over a oath that thousands have given their lives upholding. they mocked the entire military IMO and deserved to be absolutely crushed.

Remind me which administration bombed their surrogate in Syria twice plus killed a bunch of their merc’s, actually got NATO to agree to not be an empty shell of an organization with a pretty blue flag and pay up, approved arms sales of munitions to include anti-tank weapons to Ukraine, shuttered the Russian consulate in Seattle, and has their diplomat to the U.N. pretty much daily taking them to task for stuff. I could have sworn that all happened in the last 18 months. But you’re right, that picture couldn’t reflect Obama. He was after all willing to be much more flexible in how he got f’d By Russia.

K11F3H requested 6 months 15Nov approved yesterday for a 09May separation Does anyone have experience pushing the DOS back? I’m working with the PC folks to try to get pushed back to 09 July. I’m pretty sure I won’t go from scratch to separation overseas in 19 days....

FWIW the 118th OG is a flying unit all day every day and twice on Sundays Negative ghostrider. 16 years of service and a PA/customs & courtesies fuck-up means you should be shown the door? Crashing airplanes negligently, getting others injured/killed, losing your weapon, etc. will all get you stars on your shoulder from what I've seen (no shit), but something like this means you get the boot no questions asked? I agree with pawnman above - this is an ass-chewing punishment, not a lose-your-retirement punishment. I know the internet outrage machine is turned up to 11 and it's a nice neat narrative that, "Haha, look at those POGs in the ANG with their fucking sock puppets!" and I cringed and face-palmed too, especially because this was right down the street from where our guys are sitting and taking the fight to the enemy, but zoom out a little bit and realize we've all made mistakes that would probably severely embarrass the Air Force. Luckily for most of us there weren't any cameras around.

The British are way worse. OUCH!

Disagree. Twice the regime has used chemical weapons, twice they've been subject to US airstrikes. This sends a message not only to Syria, but to other countries around the world, that breaking international law will have consequences above a sternly worded memo from the UN.

Just don't do it on camera. It might embarrass a senior officer.