Leaderboard

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.

Well jeeze, they had 24 wheels down. Easy to lose count.

I think you’ll be fine if you have those strats. Good luck!

Reserve thing to allow a commission into the reserves...not to be confused with getting an appointment order once sworn in. This process, signed by the secdef, essentially recognizes a previous commission from another branch/component into the reserves. I don’t think the guard does that but I’m not 100% sure. Here’s a few mentions of it in the link below. There’s a little info on google but not much. It was a PITA because I kept asking my recruiter who asked AFRC what the status was and it was “awaiting secdef signature” for a long time...so it’s hard to get any SA on the status. https://www.flyingsquadron.com/forums/search/?&q=Scroll&search_and_or=or

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....

See my example above, and what guardian said for another example. It is plainly spelled out in the bonus language - bottom line there will be some payback if you don’t do a min amount of your total years you originally signed up for (based on bonus type/length), BUT there is also a time point where if you pass, you can keep it all and still not do the entire length you signed up for. Infinitely better than the AD bonus, which makes me laugh (and feel bad for my AD bonus friends)

This is the reality and perspective of a seasoned pilot and based in experiential-reality, what you're arguing against is leaders who are making an on-paper argument for new toys, technology refresh, and better performance (MX & Ops). How leaders from desks perceive and justify things is and will always be slightly, or majorly, disconnected from reality (because Execs/Aides dont fly as long or far as a turkey). However Execs/Aides can be good people...they just have a different admin-fight

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.

Saw that. Since we don't have to rebuild the wall every year, monthly changes in border crossing won't be an issue. But this has nothing to do with efficacy or numbers. You're not stupid, you know a wall would work, just like you know a whole slew of solutions would work. You don't want illegal immigration curbed, plain and simple. It's not like it makes you unique. Best as I can tell from actual conversations with liberal friends (not internet), it's a largely unfocused sense of empathy and Western guilt that fuels the response we see today. "I don't know what I'm for, I just know I'm not for that [the wall, deportations, eVerify, national guard on the border, etc]." Ultimately I blame conservatives. They've allowed an alternate history to propagate that paints the triumphs of the post-enlightenment West as solely the result of exploiting other cultures and societies. Howard Zimm has the most egregious example of this in his book. Until conservatives can unify and explain how capitalism, cultural assimilation, individualism, free speech, the second amendment, low minimum wages, blah blah blah, actually benefit the very people that liberals seek to protect, there will be no progress.

I should have put ethnocentric on quotes, as I'm not using the term literally but figuratively. I meant to say that the air Force is obsessed with one drop rules and degrees of separation in everything they do, regardless of fiscal realities or combat readiness. 11f centrisms in pilot training pipelines being the historical perfect example of this obsession with elitism. Enlisted flyers or the warrant discussion would be another one. So then, even though the reason the idea is stupid is because an enlisted flyer would have a bigger economic incentive to jump ship with his training than a comissioned officer, the reason they'll end up shelving it will have little to nothing to do with this reality. But dead is dead so what does it matter anyways. That was my point.