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Yes, it passed in the house in 2017 but died in the Senate due to AF opposition at the time. https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/2810/text/eh#toc-HD6CAA416CAF74D1B9DE4FC89CF24A69F Text below of what passed. Based on today's announcement of it being organized similarly to the Marines relationship with Navy, I'd expect it to be similar to what passed previously ----------------------------------- Establishment.—Not later than January 1, 2019, the Secretary of Defense shall establish in the executive part of the Department of the Air Force a Space Corps. The function of the Space Corps shall be to assist the Secretary of the Air Force in carrying out the duties described in subsection Composition.—The Space Corps shall be composed of the following: The Chief of Staff of the Space Corps. Such other offices and officials as may be established by law or as the Secretary of the Air Force, in consultation with the Chief of Staff of the Space Corps, may establish or designate. Duties.—Except as otherwise specifically prescribed by law, the Space Corps shall be organized in such manner, and the members of the Space Corps shall perform, such duties and have such titles, as the Secretary may prescribe. Such duties shall include— (1) protecting the interests of the United States in space; (2) deterring aggression in, from, and through space; (3) providing combat-ready space forces that enable the commanders of the combatant commands to fight and win wars; (4) organizing, training, and equipping space forces; and (5) conducting space operations of the Space Corps under the command of the Commander of the United States Space Command.

Standby for Space peoples' QUEEP to increase ten fold as every wannabe Chief of Staff starts padding their resumes to get into a command roll...

So how many folks are planning on working until 65? I plan on sipping Mai Tais on the beach NLT 55 personally. How many years does it take until you’re earning $200K at a Legacy?

On the QoL front: Yes, the airlines can tank. If you're not willing to take that risk, nothing will change you mind. But here is what you are giving up. This is American airlines, saying what my projected seniority number will be every year based only on retirements. I was hired in March. Right now the lowest wide body captains are ~2000-3000 in seniority. So you may get it after retiring from the AF, but it won't be for long, and you won't have the seniority to control your schedule.

I'll be the first to admit that I've been out of touch with UPT for a while (winged in 1989). But, I still think this issue is getting more concern than it needs. I get it - there are some guys who might come back to UPT as instructors that have never flown a T-38. That's what PIT is for. UPT went dual track to focus some of the later training toward follow on heavy or fighter/bomber MDS requirements, but it was more about the fact that the -38 was in dire need of a break. When the dual track pipeline came about, it wasn't about producing fighter wingmen. That's never been the goal of the UPT syllabus. Teaching someone contact flying, basic acro, extended trail and some initial training in Tactical Formation doesn't seem to be the rocket science it's being made out to be. Personally, I'd be more worried about getting the guy proficient in single pilot instrument flying. I had a C-141 pilot as my primary -38 IP. He hadn't touched a -38 in 6 years when he came back to PIT. Somehow he managed to get me reasonably proficient in that aircraft. As an F-15 FTU IP I had to provide way more remedial instrument training than I did worrying about a UP flying tactical. Just my .02 i just re-read this and I’m not sure I gave my IP the credit he deserved with the “somehow he managed” sarcasm. He was good. He chose to fly a 141 and made no secret he wanted to be an airline guy. He may not have flown tactical for a living but that really didn’t matter. I look back and really appreciate his no slack attitude toward instrument skills and precise, smooth flying. Those things he beat into me saved my ass when I was shooting approaches to mins in Europe on a regular basis. That stuff was just as valuable as the other experiences the fighter pilots I flew with in UPT brought. I think my point is, regardless of their background, the IPs teaching our UPT students need to be highly competent. A mix of experience is valuable and nothing in the syllabus is that specific to a particular follow on assignment that a competent pilot can’t learn to teach it.

There are a host of systems that will provide both the standoff and survivability to keep a platform like this viable for the next 25-30 years. Until DE becomes so cheap and easy dudes in man dresses living in caves can do it, there is a lot of the world that with a small commitment of money we can put these aircraft without excess risk (CIRCM, CMWS, good sensors, APKWS, etc). We’ve got helicopters and FW slow-fat-kids-at-dodgeball game operating in airspace with an active Red Air Force. It’s possible because they know we have committed a small but lethal CAP and a willingness to use it and against the stuff threatening to the area we overcommit the willingness to kill it (watched the strikes F up a whole city block to get a ZPU that took a crack at us). Here’s and important thing with this light CAS thing though, that’s not gonna be and shouldn’t be its only role. You’re not just replacing Viper/Hawg/Dude, you’re providing a multifunction platform that can lessen the commitment of multiple platforms necessary for small scale operations typical of SOF. This has to be the aircraft that can be sitting in a recon role and do what a U-28/Predator does and then swing roles and start dropping hate in place of an Apache or Hornet against what some ODA teams or Route cleareance patrol needs when the call goes out. That saves the flying hours and cost off all those other platforms saturating airspace to spend 96% of their time waiting for valuable work. That’s the only way the cost of buying keeping and feeding an entire new MWS makes sense. Otherwise we ought to just spend the money on a few more of everything else because we haven’t really lowered the cost/stress in a valuable way.

My guess is that if you’ve already elected 24, you’re stuck with an adsc that takes you to 22. However, if you only elected 20, they may not be able to enforce the 22 adsc. Just a guess though.

Does a Space Force mean we get more satellites? If so, does that mean the military budget will increase by that much? Is there a reason the USAF is unable to use that same money to gain whatever capability the Space Force would bring? Seems like a USSF would just bring the same capes to the table (still can’t count on GPS!) while building a huge personnel bureaucracy.

Let us know the day and time of said party. I probably won't be there but there's a $50-spot on the GoFundMe for it. Crowdsource it if that's a more palatable term. Either way, I'd like to contribute. Promotion parties in my Guard unit are seemingly non-existent so I'm all for a de-promotion party.

Geez. Glad they fired the commander before figuring out WTF happened first.

Easy to make fun of until BLOS video/voice, GPS stop working...

I see the benefits as follows: 1. Space will be priority for the SF, rather than a side job of the other services. 2. We will finally be more military-ish than another branch, and can make fun of them for being pussies, and still make fun of the other services for being gay retards.

My last three assignments were AMC, AETC, AMC, with AMC by far being the worst MAJCOM with regard to queep, QoL due to poor leadership, and poor aviation skills. The poor aviation skills were magnified by the “Admin stuff first, flying last” mentality the MAJCOM has.

What?! Every time I hooked a student it was a personal choice to wrong him despite a flawless demonstration of flying ability.

I'm cyber...you're a fucking dork.

Check the vmpf for your line number. I know there’s a spot for it on there. Now I’m not at work right now to check but that’s where I’d look if you can’t see the list.

Operation Bolo details being declassified - https://warisboring.com/spies-helped-the-usaf-shoot-down-a-third-of-north-vietnam-s-mig-21s/

Cyber should have been the 6th department, not space.

I posted up in another thread, so sorry to beat the same drum, but being a firefighter (or cop) is another option if you don’t want airlines or an office job. A lot of larger-city options might be off the table if you did 20+ military due to age restrictions (36 is a cap in a lot of cities; but many smaller cities don’t have age caps), but it’s worth looking into. Most cities give points to veterans, let you buy back 3 years military time, are very conducive to Reserves/ANG if you still want to fly, may provide another pension, and are seemingly (only say that because I don’t have military experience...yet) similar mentalities/excitement levels to military service. There are 12 other people all day, every day in my firehouse, with nearly 60 assigned to the house in total. Lots of different personalities to keep things interesting. We have each others’ backs, are close-knit and social (both at work and with our families), help each other through thick and thin, laugh a whole lot (at ourselves and one another), and get to do some pretty crazy/exciting things that change daily. 10-20% of guys are prior military service, too. I’ve not flown a military jet (yet), but driving a 70,000lb fire truck through traffic, pulling up to a building with fire blowing out the window, and heading in when everyone else is heading out is pretty damn exciting. You’re forcing open doors and heading into an environment that’s hot and you can’t see your hand in front of your face to look for victims, or pushing a hoseline that’ll unleash 180-250 gallons of water a minute and nearly send you flying backwards. You will save a cat. Likely many cats over a career. I’ve heard of guys rescuing a cop, who got stuck in a tree trying to save a cat. In front of a playground full of school children... You’ll see the best and worst; often times within a few hours of one another. You’ll laugh pretty damn hard. You’ll go home feeling like you made a difference, even if it’s just a small one like opening up an arthritic old lady’s cat food can or making sure the local drunk is still breathing when passed out after his/her latest bender. It’s not a perfect job always, but it sure isn’t a bad one. Especially if you already have the mindset, as I’d imagine many pilots/military members do.

Probably? When I was at Travis, it was queep only. Straight from the slides, the #1 Wg priority was OPR/EPR timeliness. The Wg/CC himself was editing 2Lt OPRs to get rid of white space, literally working through the night to do so. Every Sq had to submit full-up 1206s for every possible award (think Blacks In Government, Airman of the Week, Verne Orr’s Wife’s Award, etc). By the time I left, there were 18 quarterly awards categories in addition to the 69 bullshit stand-alone ones. Each was boarded at the OG, with nominees showing up in service dress to the board. Of course, it didn’t matter if the nominee personally kicked bin Laden in the balls, because the squadron with the best copywriter/secretary/chief editor (aka FltCC/Exec/SqCC) combo who were most in accordance with the mandated “Brown Bag” (yak) bullet writing style won anyway. Additionally, every Sq sent up weekly mandatory “Weekly Activity Report” bullets to be run up the flagpole. We’d send up deployment successes and one-off first time mission stuff, but the only things that ever made it out of the Wg were volunteerism bullets. I kid you not, in a Wg with “AMC’s Largest Ops Gp”, well over 95% of what they chose to report to the NAF was decidedly non-ops. They may as well call themselves the 60th Mission Support Wing. The only two Weapons Officers worked as the Wg Exec and Wg DS. There was no mission discussion anywhere; our Sq didn’t even have a room certified to discuss classified information. This was a place where the guys returning from AETC white jet tours were the voices of reason.

23 missions over Afghanistan and 18 over Iraq, dropping 180 weapons (Danger Close 19 times) by the time I stopped counting with two months left in the deployment. GFY. It was possible to adequately support the Land Component without mortgaging the future of air superiority, which is one of our core functions and the umbrella under which the Land Component has to fight in any future conflict where the enemy has airplanes.

Let's not forget that all this and the Army also owned enough resources to sustain ~35 CAPs on their own but refused to go to a remote split ops architecture because it would mean loss of organic control of their assetts. Personally, I think it was right to go all in on the COIN fight. I am not a believer a 5th Gen war will ever happen. However I do believe the capability is necessary deterrence. That said, it was rather aggravating watching all of this come off the backs of Airmen while Army had significant capability to support their own air support requirements and did not want to update their Command and Control to the 21st century.

It's not binary. I've strafed and dropped bombs in troops-in-contact situations. I've given numerous "cleared hot" calls from the ground. I've spent many nights far removed from the FOB, and enjoyed that "first hot meal" after a few weeks that you reference. Happy to do it. None of that changes the takeaway here. How many RPA orbits have you seen pissed away by the Army SPC sitting at the S2 desk on the TOC floor who doesn't have a real task, so tells the MQ-1 crew to just start cycling through the target deck looking for "suspicious activity"? (Rhetorical, but I saw it nightly for the better part of a year). Big Army asked the Air Force to go all-in to throw resources at a problem that the Army maneuver elements didn't have, and nobody on the ground knew what to do with any of it. Your argument can be distilled down to "you haven't seen the ground truth, but the USAF focus on supporting US Army COIN actions over the last decade saved American lives and killed some bad guys." To that I say "noted." We stopped F-22 production, TAMId a bulk of our talent, extended deployments to 180 days, and deployed weapons officers / test pilots / instructor pilots to do non-flying jobs that could be done either stateside or by an A1C with no training. We RIF'd a bunch of experience, and then grounded half the fleet in 2013 for "sequester" because we wanted to fall on our sword rather than playing the budget shell game we finally started playing in sequestration every year since then. RPAs are cool, they do good work, they're far superior than a Hawg, Viper, Buff, or Strike Eagle for a persistent ISR tasking. No disagreement. That doesn't change the fact that we hollowed our entire force and culture, perhaps irreparably, to fight a war against enemies equipped with little more than small arms, rocks, cell phones, and motorcycles.

No way man. Gates’ obsession with and increase to 69 caps of RPAs was a total waste due to the utter inefficiency of the Army intelligence priority and assignment system. We could have given them so many fucking drones to cover every inch of Afghanistan for every hour of the day and they would have fucked it away. The USAF crews that were working those AORs did indeed do great work, but it was in spite of the way it was waged. Gates does not get credit here.

The main reason top leadership got leg-swept in 2008 was because they weren't playing nice with the Army and CENTCOM's insatiable desire for RPA orbits, and wouldn't back down on 5th-Gen at a time when we were committing 150,000+ soldiers at a stretch to fight a counter-insurgency against the stone age. They replaced CSAF with a yes-man who would play ball, thus setting the service back a decade while throwing our remaining resources at the Army's insatiable appetite for ISR feeds in exchange for a GWOT participation trophy. There are a lot of separate issues that factor into the black hole we're in right now, with respect to manning, experience, and morale. But if you wanted to pick a single point along the timeline where the wheels came off, it was firing CSAF in 2008 for ignoring illiterate enemies on mopeds in order to focus on a 5th-gen war. The Minot nuke fiasco, while unsat and hugely embarrassing, made for an easy way to sell the firing, but ultimately wasn't the main driver. Hell, the pilot-in-command of the B-52 continued on her HPO track after the deal.

Ok, you asked. Fedex 777. Mission is to make the company billions and for me grab some of the crumbs to the tune of $250K a year as a co-pilot(First Officer). Typically work 12-14 days per month either all at once with the rest of the month off or week-on, week-off. Much of that work time is soft time (i.e. not actual flying hours). Typically, I'm paid for 80-90 flight hours each month, but it's rare for me to actually have air under my ass for more than 50 hours each month. Since I'm an FO, many trip are as a relief pilot which involves deadheading around the planet in business or first class to various locations where I will meet up with the crew and act as the "free agent" third or fourth pilot on a long haul flight and then part ways. For the last 10 years straight, I've made the highest level in American Airline's frequent flyer program annually and have 1.5 million miles to use for family leisure travel. I can choose how I orchestrate my passenger deadhead flights using the company money available and any extra $$ is available for various travel expenses incurred in conjunction with any trip. Next month, I will be picked up at my house by a limo (paid for by Fedex) and driven to O'hare to begin my journey to Tokyo. My trip is due to start on a Thursday but since I'm not going to follow the deadhead schedule, I will stay home on day one getting paid. Friday, I will fly from O'hare to Tokyo in a lay flat business class seat sipping single malt and maybe catch a movie. From there, I'll take the bullet train to Osaka and have about 48 hours off before I have to work. My only flight on this trip is a 4-hour leg from Osaka to Guangzhou, China. Once I arrive in China, I'm done. I have a quick 12-hour layover and then I'm scheduled for 3 day deadhead sequence to get back to Memphis. Since I don't want to go to Memphis, I'm going to stick with the original plan of a private car driving me to Hong Kong which will get me to my first flight out. Thanks to my frequent flyer status, American has upgraded me from business to first class on my HKG to DFW flight. Once at DFW, I'll hang in the lounge until my flight back to O'hare. Once back to Chicago, another limo will take me home, dropping me off on Wednesday, 5 days after I was picked up. Since I shaved some time off my trip home by deviating, I'll be on the clock for almost 24 hours after I get home. For my trouble, I'll have about 30K more frequent flyer miles and my paycheck will be about $10K fatter (before taxes). Now the rest of the story........ About the time I'm landing in China after the 4.0 from Osaka, my family will be doing the Christmas morning routine. Being an almost empty nester, that's okay and gives someone with little ones a shot at being home. Hardly as noble as it sounds. I'm just a lazy MFer. Getting paid 10-grand to deadhead in style back and forth from Asia so that I can fly a single 4 hour flight is a fair trade off. That trip plus another for the first 6 days of Dec make up my month. So, that's one snap-shot of the Fedex 777 thing. Believe it or not, I've had better months, but this will definitely be a good one. The bad ones can be tough but with a little seniority, the good far outweighs the bad. Our bad doesn't hold a candle to the long days those of you still doing the job for big blue deal with. So, when you decide to bail, come on over - the water's fine. I usually get a paid commute via private car and first class international deadhead every month. There's lots of "Q" in the QOL and I definitely recommend it. Also, WTF is a "stewardess"?

So why not spin off space AND cyber into a thing? Staying at this public knowledge level, it would be akin to carnivores and herbivores in the air-breathing forces. Both rely on each other. Naturally, we can count on Big Gray and Big Green to give up their toys and people just like they did when the Air Service became the Air Corps which became the Army Air Forces which became Big Blue. Nothing in the history books about that. Or, if this happens, does the inevitable bloat and expanding staff mean it will eventually get its own seat on JCS? Obviously, a bigger committee makes for better, faster decisions. Or what about downgrading STRATCOM to a "nuclear corps?" (Pun intended...). Aside from a few other junk drawer missions that son of SAC has - EW - why is it a full-on combatant commander? The numbers assigned are small, the mission very specialized. Hey, if we're gonna reorganize, let's go the full monty. Must go lie down now...

But has space not become such a vast and growing domain (much like air power in WW2), that it doesn't warrant it's own service? I think it's arguable the AF is not much different from the Army post-WW2 in wanting to keep a hold of all the toys, but doesn't have the capacity to use/develop those toys to their fullest capabilities. Thank god we became our own service, because in 2017 the Army still showcases daily how fucking retarded they are with the use of air power. I wouldn't be surprised to hear some space guys say the same thing about their current services. I say let them become their own service. The con is the asspain of joint coordination (by the way, coordinating space effects today is a metric asspain, so it's not like we're losing easy coord capes by shedding space), but the pros of better space capability/future ingenuity and taking that domain off the AF plate = more focus on AIR domain is more than worth it. I like the space nerds, they do great things, so this isn't flicking a booger, it's making all of us better/stronger in our true areas of expertise. And for fuck's sake, let's not be like the Army and act like we know best how to do everything...everyone stay in your lane and we'd be way better off as a military in general. FYI, that comment is not directed at the bros doing the J-O-B.

FTW

The Chinese have man made islands. Everyone is shaking in their boots. Nobody has ever marveled at good old Chinese engineering. Hence they steal everything they can via cyber and still mess up the end result. You like wearing hot pink reflective belts to a bar fight don't you?