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Talk to anyone in AFSOC, they have no issues picking anyone up. I'm talking anyone intelligent from O-3s to O-6s who say they will drop what they're doing to go pick up Jack. Talk with anyone at staff and they get offended by the idea that they wouldn't make the pick up. Designated forces could just as easily cover the role as dedicated. CH nailed it when he talked about Stockholm Syndrome. If we're talking about what is best for the mission/USAF IPs, then Rescue belongs in AFSOC. Does it mean we lose some CRH? Yup, but it is an underpowered, undersized, too slow platform anyway. Don't be territorial. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Guys you’re really trying to justify fucking up rotating?! Doesnt matter how fast or slow it happens...don’t rotate 20 knots early and pull your gear up before you have flying airspeed Jesus h.

Epic night in U-2 Land last night. The fires north of the base tried their best to stop the gathering, but to no avail. The Wing and Ops Group leadership went out of their way to help us make this work out (especially considering what they had on their plate with the short-notice POTUS visit today), and it was quite the event. We had around 50 Alumni make it out. Even Tony B showed up... he solo'd in the U-2 in March 1957, and about 10 years later went on to fly the SR-71. Great guy! When something like last night happens, it reminds me how great things in the AF can be; how great the people that work in the flying squadrons are; and how I'm thankful I ended up in the U-2 Program for my career. Hail Dragons.

Magnitude of fuckup? You’re kidding right? Hoss my point is this: no matter how fast or slow something happens pulling the jet off the runway and raising the gear below flying airspeed is inexcusable. Chalking it up to “it happens faster than you think” doesn’t pass the sniff test. Sounds like the CAF could use some “getting back to basics”. Which is ironic. But I’m not a fighter pilot so clearly I don’t know what I’m talking about.

No dog in this internet slap fight, but this made me laugh. Thanks for that! Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

I’m not saying this dude didn’t fuck up, he did. And likely while shining his ass, which is worse. But yes, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Taking off isn’t any harder or more critical than the other phases of flight ... but it also isn’t done by committee with time for discussion and deep meaningful introspection between V1 and VR

So, now the base is making quality of life worse for the dairy owners? Please, someone say to the dairies, "if you don't like it, you can leave."

Kenny - I thinks it's understandable that someone from a multi-role, multi-ordnance fighter would scoff as you are. However, don't discount the impact of MDS culture, especially with a single mission, single load-out (more or less) fighter. An air-to-air fighter doesn't have the myriad of ordnance and potential takeoff variables that say, an F-16 has. On most take offs, the TOLD data is a square filler. Sea level bases and an overconfidence in a/c and engine capes could easily create an environment where things like density altitude is not in the cross-check. I'm not saying it's right, but I can understand how they got there. For the the first two decades of the F-15's existence, pilots didn't even compute TOLD. Every takeoff you rotated at 120 knots. Full aft stick to get the nose moving and adjust after that. Mil, Burner, missiles, training load, clean, 1, 2, 3, bags... didn't matter. Or did it? I'm sure if someone took the time to compute rotation and takeoff speed, they would have varied somewhat in all the different scenarios. Takeoff speed? WTF is that anyway?😜 It started in FTU with the aborted takeoff discussion. The guidance for some "issue" on takeoff went, that if you're at or past 120 with the stick moving back to rotate, then you're going. If you're not there yet, then you abort. Of course, there was always the caveat that if it was a "no shitter" (whatever that is was up to you) you could abort above that knowing you had the hook. That was for mil power on an 8K runway. Anything longer just gave you room to work with, but didn't change the decision process. How's that for TOLD? Even after we started putting TOLD numbers on our line-up cards, not much changed. I also wouldn't discount the effect the FTU training environment may be introducing to this cultural problem. If you actually read the report and look at the data, it's pretty clear that there's a huge trend throughout the F-22 community to rotate early, even in FTU. That makes it pretty clear this stuff is being taught early on. Another thing to consider - There's probably a bunch of ex-Eagle guys wearing coats and ties and teaching sims and academics who may be throwing out some questionable techniques and info from "back in their day" that's being gobbled up and retained by "Stanley" the newbie Raptor dude. I think back to more than a few bogus techniques I had to unlearn thanks to some retired F-4 guy, now sim instructor, throwing out something he thought worked great. Some bigger stuff but mostly little things. I ended up with an audio only version of my HUD tape during what anyone would argue was the highlight of my career thanks to one of those sim instructors teaching me how to set up my cockpit for start. But, I digress. It's pretty clear from the report that this is much more than one guy not reading his line-up card and being a dumbass. That's not to say your points about not checking safely airborne, etc. aren't valid. As others have mentioned, we're not talking about a huge amount of time from brake release to gear up and I'm sure muscle memory and expected timing took priority over a more accurate check. At least the result was a shiny a/c underside, some personal shame and hopefully a better approach to takeoff ops and not another nickle in the grass.

And I should clarify. Im not trying to be a raptor apologist. Im trying to provide a little context for the folks that think rotating 20 knots off speed is absurd or poor Piloting or gross negligence It’s not. It’s a radio call ... it’s cross checking something inside the cockpit for a glance ... it’s seeing movement in your peripheral vision and glancing over to see if it’s a bird or another aircraft .... it’s less than a second. The dude fucked up. He had the wrong told. He had bad techniques. It’s a community issue. Criticise that. He didn’t have a crew of 3 or 4 people up front, with at least 2 of them doing nothing else but staring at the airspeed indicator nor the luxury of time. That’s the crux of my issue

One concept I thought intriguing--Increase the size of the House. Since 1789, when the Federal Government began operating under the Constitution, the number of citizens per congressional district has risen from an average of 33,000 in 1790 to almost 700,000 as of 2008. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_congressional_apportionment

We have that problem now with CA. The next part of my detente plan to cool the hostility in this country amongst its citizenry is to break up the larger states with now regionally politically distinct areas that are basically in opposition to each other. Look at CA, FL, VA, MN and IL: These are motley (politically) and not wisely constructed for today's cultural and political environment, harmony is what we should strive for instead of the naive, blind faith that somehow disparate groups of people who don't like each other that much will coalesce around vague concepts and get along. If instead of our current political structure that lumps people with not much in common with each other politically and economically, we had new states that allowed for the changes in the economy, growth and distribution of population and recognized that cultural change in America, we would be in more stable and functional place as a nation IMHO. There's a lot of reasons for the red v blue, rural v urban, traditional v cosmopolitan divide in this country but one of the reasons again IMHO is so many people think their voices aren't be heard. Forming new states that allow for this, just like court mandated minority-majority voting districts would at least allow their voices to be heard and also bolster local control rather than being tethered to an indifferent and aloof coastal elite.

I have a tough time believing that designating units on a temporary basis is as effective as having units whose primary mission and OT&E functions are dedicated to making it work. When the taskings are more numerous than the units or the rescue missions go sideways, is designated really as good? Corporate knowledge does count for something. ...and yeah, I don't think people here are questioning the line-AFSOC dude's willingness to do rescue. It's more about the organizational side and resource allocation.

Every takeoff is a soft field takeoff

I wonder what the report/fallout would’ve been if this was an AMC crew, lol.

to be clear jack was "saved" because he landed on the good side of the river. nothing more or less. certainly not because the navy took their "shot" ^^^this

Maybe not the best choice of words but it certainly sounds worse when you clip the sentence immediately following it, where I mention using lessons learned to become better and safer, out of your quote. Point was that guys should not be blindly applying someone else's technique to their jet without putting some thought into it. Teaching techniques to a young guy in the B-course is a slippery slope and, for the most part, they should just be teaching from the books. Techniques are for people with experience to understand the assumptions behind them.

It's not hard to avoid a gear overspeed - increase pitch attitude/reduce power as required. A plan of "raise the gear as soon as I break ground" is not a good plan for overspeed mitigation; sounds like that thought process may be fairly widespread in the Raptor community. This should be something briefed in motherhood to a young guy when an AB takeoff in cooler weather is planned. Also worth bringing up to the squadron at large at a pilot meeting as winter flying approaches.

You forgot to mention getting the gear up before the overspeed. Doesn’t always happen without pulling power and pitching the nose way up to slow the acceleration

For those interested in hearing the fire mission in action, there's some good traffic of the tankers working the Camp fire near Chico, CA available here during daytime hours: https://www.broadcastify.com/listen/feed/20854/web If looking for a phone option, I use the Scanner Radio Deluxe app

Here's an article and video The Union paper in Grass Valley did on the Air Attack Base located at the Nevada County Airport. Jake, the Battalion Chief there, talks about the program and fighting fire a bit. It also shows the loading pits and retardant reloading during a fire in the area. https://www.theunion.com/news/local-news/guardians-of-grass-valley-air-attack-firefighters-keep-nevada-county-and-beyond-safe-from-wildfire-video-photo-gallery/?fbclid=IwAR1bgRm3gVZRpUHQVvVUE2tTe4ohFvqLYCz7FNFl-Y0asCXQhrBUhuyMKCM

This is a storyline that I didn’t like. Greer was a great character in the books and didn’t need to be changed. Every time I read the books, I always heard James Earl Jones in my head.

I've sat alert for SOF. And awkwardness had nothing to do with going back to ACC. That CAF 60s aren't primary for SOF dudes is a doctrine thing. Each component is responsible for fulfilling it's own PR needs.

Breath. Even if it is about money/iron, the AFSOC staffers really do think the mission can be done better with Rescue over there. The bros over there aren't bad Americans.

Huh...Are you new? When Gen Brown was the SOCOM/CC he basically forced AFSOC to divest all helos, besides the 53's were TIRED. To understand the CV-22 you have to understand SOCOM and AFSOC were born because of the failure at Desert One and a helicopter even today can not execute that mission in one period of darkness but the CV can. I was never a CV lover...in fact I hated, it killed two very good friends...then I flew it...then I commanded it in combat. It is a game changer that has had its hands tied by a manning shortfall driven by decisions from above. Is it perfect, nope, but on the battlefield today it IS the platform of choice of the high end users. I've heard the internal discussions about CSAR at AFSOC and not a single word of stealing assets or $...just how can we do this better. Sadly the CSAR O-6's will never listen because they have Stockhom Syndrome and still believe their ACC puppet masters will do the right thing.

Well, she came through for my neighbor. He built an airstrip on his land 3 years ago and applied to the FAA for a airport designator. They have ignored his emails and phone calls since then. He called MMc's office yesterday and got a call from the FAA at 0730 this morning giving him his designator. I've got to give her thumbs up for that. LS

Lol.