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I think the General's article raises some interesting possibilities to improve UPT. Better said, I think he is offering some valid ways to improve the transition from UPT to today's modern fighter/attack platforms. However, I think he's forgetting the basic goal of UPT. We still need to produce pilots with strong foundational skills in basic aviation before we start giving them extra "toys" to play with. The problem with making changes to syllabi and training programs in aviation (military or civilian) is the guys making the changes are usually the old guys who were trained one or more "generations" in the past. They always seem to apply their perspective of how challenging it was to adapt to new technology when most of the time, the young guys do fine. What’s actually harder is being able to go backward once someone had become proficient with new tech. I've seen it over and over again. F-15 FTU syllabus changes to include advanced subjects and tactics that had traditionally been left until arrival at the ops units. Old guys are highly skeptical and swear the students will flail because when they had to learn the same stuff 10 years into their careers, their ingrained, semi-hardened brains found it a challenge. Surprise - the students eat the shit up and adapt because they don't know any different and they come out the other end more lethal than their instructors were when they were LTs. Airline X decides to put new hires into the right seats of the latest Boeing or Airbus wide-bodies because 1 - there aren't any more 727 Engineer seats to stick newbies into and 2 - they need to fill the seats. Old guys lose their minds again considering the impossible task of learning the ropes at a major airline while getting through right seat training on the modern marvel that is a 21st century airliner with a glass cockpit and all the bells and whistles. Surprise again - new guys (most anyway) from all kinds of backgrounds deal just fine with all the magic that the old guys stared at like a pig looking at a wristwatch. My point is that new pilots rarely have difficulty adapting to new technology that reduces workload, enhances SA and allows easier human interface. But, once you give them those new toys and train them to use and rely on them from day one, they have no ability to retrograde back to more basic methods. When my airliner computes a descent to hit waypoints at specific speeds and altitudes down track, I do the math and compute my 3:1 descent in my head to make sure the jet's plan is reasonable. It's just a habit developed before I had all the magic. A "child of magenta" probably doesn't have that same habit and may not even have the ability to do it. He's never needed to. So, when Murphy strikes in that scenario or any number of potential problem areas in civilian or military flying, if a pilot has no old school skills and is completely reliant on technology to do his job, he's less capable - period - dot. I laughed when I saw the side by side picture of the T-X and F-35 cockpits. YGBSM. The fact that both cockpits utilize similar displays and automation isn't going to matter on "Stanley's" UPT sorties when he's trying to figure out how to develop contact flying skills, land out of an overhead, not kill his classmate during a rejoin or shoot an approach to mins. I guaran-fucking-tee that his first sortie in an F-35 is not going to be any easier because he had a moving map or some other sensor display in his T-X while he was still earning his wings. Anyone can go from round dial steam gauges that actually required an instrument scan and some mental challenge to maintain positional awareness and overall SA to the latest, greatest glass cockpit. Going back in the other direction is a far different story. UPT needs to produce pilots with solid, basic aviation skills. Skipping over those by handing Stanley a glass cockpit with a moving map, HUD and whatever other toys are available isn't going to do that. I have no doubt he'll do just fine with them, but there's benefit to learning this job from a basic level first. You produce pilots who don't just take the information presented to them as gospel and blindly follow it - but have the ability to understand how to back it up, QC it to ensure it makes sense and flex to another option if it doesn't. I've seen pilots blindly follow steering bars on a flight director into oblivion because that's all they've ever done. Another is unable to transition to a round dial ADI because they're a HUD baby and it's now tits up. I watched a guy in the sim completely pork a way an approach because he chose not to use DME to the field, mis-interpreted his NAV display and lost SA on where he was. A bearing pointer and DME is a beautiful thing if you know how to use them. My point is that the General's concern seems to be how can we introduce more shit to Stanley sooner so he'll be more familiar with the F-35 or F-22 cockpit if and when he finally gets that far. I think students will adapt to those environments just fine when the times comes. There may be an opportunity to help begin their transition later in UPT or during whatever we're going to call the IFF phase. But not at the expense of creating a generation of pilots who start out from day one completely reliant on the most advanced cockpit we can field. Maybe the General needs to take a peek at the existing F-15C or A-10 cockpits. They sure as hell would be about 10 steps backwards for a UPT student who just got winged in an F-X and now has to figure out how to fly round dial steam gauges so he doesn't kill himself on his first ILS to mins. Anyway..... just my old guy two-cents. I still see some value in swinging a weighted bat in the on-deck circle before I'm up.

Long story short: Go fly with an instructor once or twice, build a rapport with the place you'll be renting. All that certification stuff is great, get your mil comp, etc. But I know plenty of dudes who went into flight schools or FBOs like a big swingin' dick with their new wings and have almost killed their family, or been asked not to rent from the airport again. If you didn't start in GA or haven't flown GA in a while its really worth it to humbly go fly with an instructor for a ride or two, and just listen to them. The whole time you might be making fun of their multiple knee boards with information on the closest 69 airports, or the way they make radio calls like their flying AF1, but it'll be worth it in the end. UPT doesn't teach much about VFR flying with the rest of the civilian populace, and if you think you can take a rental airplane on an IFR adventure in the weather, I'd strongly advise against it. Not a holier than thou type of speech, it's just embarrassing to go rent from somewhere and hear from the school about all the AF guys who said they knew what they were doing and subsequently did not.

Had a buddy who once called me because he was a poor missile maintenance officer at Minot arriving shortly after failure #2. His boss was up in arms about something great the Lt did, and wanted a story to sell to leadership. CC was known for taking off he's lower ranking officer's names in emails and drafted MFR's to make it all about himself. Told my bud to write out the MFR, print it, sign, scan and email it. Then claim ignorance of doing a digital signature, or of saving the file to disk.

Remember, the house of cards is almost entirely predicated on every officer self-enforcing 100% productivity in the hopes of getting promoted. There is no external mechanism for getting you to work more than the minimum. Here's a little pick-me-up for the next time you don't want to do some pointless project gathering data for a commander who will just take the CYA option anyways: Put all the numbers into Excel, but don't use borders, colors, or formulas. Add/subtract/multiply/divide things by hand and type them into the cells if necessary. Don't resize columns or rows to make the numbers fit, just leave the scientific notation. When you get the email back asking for conditional formatting, notes, categories, borders, etc, simply point out that you have no idea how to use Excel, since the Air Force offers no course on it at PME. There is no way to "teach" it reliably. Every formula they tell you to Google is one bad keystroke away from taking longer to fix than just do themselves. Mediocrity is a liability for a commander or DO that intends to make general. You have been freed from more than just your dreams of being a LtCol.

No. They hire Herk guys but only while holding their nose and because they've run out of Thunderbird leads. On the plus side they give them an extra sim to learn how to fly Mach. 😏 If you have the fixed wing hours and the AF-trained box checked on your app, the rest really doesn't matter.

We finally agree on something. No free services, no school for illegal children and no birthright citizenship. That’ll reduce illegal immigration immediately. I don’t blame the immigrants, they’re just doing what I would do if I were in their shoes. I blame politicians that make the illegal route the easier one. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I must have misunderstood what you were saying. I took it to mean that Fedex had a hard limit (say 100 hrs/mo) on what you could fly each month like my previous Legacy airline had. There is no "number" except FAR limitations. Not unusual to get 100-150 hours per month simply by bidding carryover, volunteering for extra flying, taking flying offered by other pilots, etc. In other words, if you want to be a flying whore, Fedex is a great place. On the flip side, you can also drop down to zero hours for the month at no loss of benefits (unlike my previous Legacy where you had to fly 55hrs/mo to keep Medical ins, etc. Having access to both extremes makes Fedex a great place to find your individual lifestyle. Not trying to "sell" anyone on Fedex, just trying to correct my misunderstanding of your post....

DEVIL and FLEA are spot on. I did my PPL training in a C-172 before pilot training and after UPT graduation went to a FSDO and got my CMEL w/IFR ratings for free. Even though I have the license I would not feel confident flying IMC/IFR in a Cessna. VFR is fine but only since I have about 60 hours in 172s. GA flying is fun and I would definitely recommend it but do NOT over-estimate your UPT experience and think you can just go fly one without any training. Just my 2C.

Spot on post. The new guys are doing just fine going straight to advanced shit (way more advanced than I had at their age). Their airmanship and decision making with degraded systems, shit WX, etc. is lacking. The naturally highly talented guys overcome at a decent rate, but the average guy today is far more dangerous than the average guy 10 years ago, and it takes him much longer to get to a reasonable level where myself and my counterparts across the CAF can finally stop watching the guy like he's going to kill himself or me any second for the entire sortie. I bet NEXT type stuff will work well to prep guys for advanced mission systems and employment, but their tactical knowledge and capability will rest on a foundation of balsa wood stilts stuck in the sand at Mexico Beach - good luck when that next hurricane hits.

Wow. I guess UPT has changed quite a bit since 1989. This was not my experience (especially since CDs only had music on them at the time 🤣). Essentially zero time when I showed up. I seriously doubt I could have "taught myself" much of anything. I was a quick study and picked it up pretty quickly, but the lightbulb didn't really come on until T-38s. I sure as hell wouldn't have succeeded without the daily attention and instruction from the IPs in both flavors of trainers.

I think what you're getting at is are we like the Army, where as a commissioned officer you will eventually grow into a desk. As others have said, it largely depends. Remember you're being hired as an officer first and a pilot second. Unfortunately for us the word officer is spelled with the word office. By and large, you can mostly stay in a cockpit until 20 years of service with the occasional exception of a 2-3 year staff tour somewhere in that career. Based completely off anecdotal personal experience most officers will do 1 staff tour to get to 20, a few will do 2, and a few will do 0. After 20 you are probably moving out of the squadron level and while you may fly on occasion you can expect to do mostly adminstrative type work. Also realise in most communities even as a pilot you will have an office job of some sort you will do in between missions. Sometimes your growth at admin skills will take precedence over your flying skills. For example, a group or wing exec won't have time to fly much.

That's awesome they got rid of the centerline thrust restriction. We really need more mil dudes into GA. There are synergies to both communities when we get out there on our own sometimes. And it will make you a better pilot. You'll never get to a point you think you know everything because when you do you will meet some yocal who has done something so outlandish you won't believe it exist until he shows you a YouTube video on his phone.

The quickest way I know to attack the “cause” is to make America suck just as bad as the countries people are leaving. Good news, we are well on our way to solving illegal immigration! Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

So the easiest way to break the ice is to start by taking the military competancy test which is a closed book test. A really good study guide can be bought from SheppardAir (Google). It's a 50 question closed book test you will have to drive to a testing center to take. You don't need to wait for your MWS qual. You can do it as soon as you finish your phase 3 instrument check at UPT. Most wait until after UPT though. If you are at Columbus there is an ex-mil civilian who offers the test, study guide and paperwork for a fee but honestly it's rather expensive compared to what you'd pay doing it on your own. Take your completed test score and to the FSDO FAA office who will print your license. FSDO office can be googled but there will usually be one within 1-2 hours of you. You will get single engine land, instrument, commercial and multi-engine land either with or without a centerline thrust restriction based on your phase 3 aircraft. (Although I've heard they may have done away with this.) Last step is to call a civilian FBO. Most FBOs will require an insurance checkout with an instructor before you can take a plane solo. This can be done in about 4 hours and usually includes a question and answer session, a written and a 1-2 hour flight. The checkouts are usually VERY non threatening. The planes (C-172 etc) are very simple and my experience is these insurance checkouts are mostly instructional to insure you are familiar with the aircraft. This insurance checkout, to me, is the easiest way to break the ice, because you will have someone you can ask questions to and explain anything you're unfamiliar with. It helps you to learn the faces at your club and get a general sense of what you're doing, know who to go-to with issues, etc... After that you should have a folder in the FBOs office that contains a copy of your licensing and insurance checkout which is your ticket to call them up on Friday to take a plane out Sunday. Don't forget to buy a log book.

Never been a UPT instructor but I always hated UPTs system and felt anything could be better. The more and more I recollect on my experience there, the AF never taught me to fly. They handed me a book, a disk full of CDs and a syllabus and I taught myself how to fly, after which my progress was graded by an "instructor." (This is not a knock on IPs, they are great Men and Women who do the best with the tools they are allowed.) My understanding is UPT NEXT uses new technology in the VR and sim spaces to increase repetitions before students get in the plane. Working off my perception of how UPT was, it makes sense that if you give the students better tools to teach themselves you will get a better product.

An interesting article that leads to only 6 months “savings” by the drawings at the end. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

The Air Force doesn't define who you are. Great day when I realized that.

You can blame fingers for not holding them accountable.

Flying video...there's a twin otter there in the beginning.

Been here three years and meet him once at the beginning of my first year. I was introduced as the new guy who used to fly Hawgs. He immediately checked my back for bird strikes. Sharp even on the way to retirement.

Is that what he said? Or that "method" of completion is not a discriminator? Hence complete/not complete versus Residence/Non-residence.