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All this talk gave me an idea to make a shitty meme. So here you go, I propose, the 3-Piece Flight Suit. As a side note, it comes with a nice inner liner pocket for holding stack wads of money.

God, I forgot about this guy. While I was fortunate enough not to have too much interaction with him, the couple I had were bewildering. He stormed into tanker ops one day pissed that he had a showtime prior to 0700. My crew and I just landed after flying a 14 hour sortie only to see this short dude complaining about having to get to ops at 0700. We had no idea who he was until his crew stepped to their intel brief and Rat parked his ass in the Sq/CC's office and closed the door. The ADO filled us in that the short dude complaining about banker's hours was our warrior OG. Fast forward a week later and an FCIF drops saying crews can't wear baseball hats. No shit 6-9 days later I'm doing the walk around and across the ramp is a B-1 crew stepping to fly all wearing baseball hats. Rat is with them to fly real combat with the Bones with a baseball hat on as well. A second hand story I heard was the 340 EARS/CSS troop had to clean his O-6 parking in case the dude showed up to the squadron. Rat would apparently lose his mind if there was any sand on his spotless O-6 sign. Lead from the front gents.

Here’s my Rat saga. One day I landed at the Died while deployed there and they parked us in an unfamiliar location. Because of this it took us a little longer to get into the chocks and shut down, you know, because we all know taxiing into something after a long day makes bad things happen. While we were gathering all the classified...you know, all the stuff you don’t want to lose after a long day because bad shit happens, a dude from the RegAF squadron at my base pops up the chute and says “hey we are sharing a bus, can you guys hurry up?” Yeah, ok, sure. So I walk over to the bus with all my crap and when I hop on I hear a voice say “Are you guys running the dick around checklist up there???” I don’t recognize the face or voice in the darkness, so I laugh it off. I leave the bus to grab more stuff and when I get back on this guy is legit busting balls. I look closer and it’s the EOG/CC, none other than you know who. We drive over to MX and past the Bones. He proceeds to look at the bombers and says “you tanker guys don’t fly combat sorties, THESE guys fly combat sorties!” And then starts telling stories about all his B-1 time. We go into MX. His jet is code 1. Mine is not. His pilots drop off the forms and get on the bus. I have to spend some time in there. I get back onto the bus and he starts in on me once again for being slow. Not even in a joking way, borderline hostile. I don’t even fcuking know this assclown. Never met him before in my life. The whole bus ride was telling us how inferior the mobility aircraft are. Not exactly the way to inspire your wing that has 6 bombers and 69 tankers and herks. No “where are you guys from.” No “thank you for being out here.” Just really hostile belittling. We get to customs. He prances off the bus with only his helmet bag and proceeds to the line. His crew and my crew gather up all the shit and schlep it to customs as he stands there waiting for his AC (who has the flight orders) with an impatient look on his face. Don’t worry Colonel sir, we will get all the bags. So we get into the customs area and there is some sort of kerfuffle happening between customs, the head shiek, some locals and some OGA types so my crew goes as far away from that as possible to wait it out and use the Wi-Fi to text back home. Rat goes and finds some Marines so he can tell them how awesome he is. When it’s our turn to go to Customs he looks over at us and yells across the room “What are you guys doing, playing Dungeons and Dragons over there?” We clear customs and again he strolls through with only his bag, gets on the bus, and then disappears when we get back to Ops. My entire Rat experience was about 45 minutes, but fcuk that guy. Once we all started talking and hearing the stories Bergman illustrated, it all made sense. I’m a pretty easygoing guy willing to give the benefit of the doubt, but he was by far the WORST O-6 I have ever run across in my life.

I’ve known Rat for years. He could honestly give a shit what others thought of him. I know that it probably upsets him that he never climbed into GO status being a HPO throughout his whole career and all. I always laughed at how no community claimed him as “theirs.” The Herk bubbas thought he was a tanker dude, which was impossible since he despised the KC-135 and community. He’s a strat airlift dude (-141/-17) by trade, but they wouldn’t claim him either. Dude was a Captain Sobel who got promoted O-6 status. I will say this, he was a really good pilot flying with him a few times. But the -141 apparently flew like the -135 does, which means a 1979 Lincoln Mark VIII. He was also one of the douches who bounced out of town with his MSM in tow on his way to school when Fairchild failed their ASEV in 2010 while Rat’s old DO, who replaced him as CC, was the scapegoat in that and was relieved of command over it. Thankfully that guy, who’s a great dude, was taken care of by some GO’s later on and made O-6 and was the Vance CV a few years ago.

He was my Sq/CC at Fairchild and Manas. He made a copilot, who just had testicular cancer, talk about it in front of the squadron. He ordered a copilot in from his two weeks time off after a deployment with his family to have a formal promotion ceremony to Captain. It pissed Rat off that the guy was super pissed at him for coming in to have a promotion ceremony. Later on the guy was supposed to assume alpha alert early in the morning. The night prior he felt sorta ill, but thought he’d feel better in the morning. He woke up and felt worse, went to the flight doc and went DNIF. Rhatigan was so mad at him, he gave him an LOC/LOR for dereliction of duty since he thought the guy was trying to get out of alert duty (which was a god send to do, since you were away from the squadron and Rat). The guy is in the Guard now last I heard. I personally flew with Rat on a deployment sortie when he was my deployed Sq/CC. Since we had three pilots on board, I took my copilot back to the boom pod and let him refuel A-10’s and F-16’s all day. I felt bad for him since the cruise out to the AOR meant Rat was GKing him on all of the various Soviet era airfields between Manas and Bagram. If Rat’s reading this, he was pretty good, but I can’t believe your allowed that to happen being the A-Code! Oh yeah, one more story. Guy that was a copilot/AC at Fairchild was in Rat’s squadron. He ended up going to Kadena and getting into some “TDY Shenanigans” while on a typhoon evac that got him an Art 15. He ended up deploying soon after when Rat was the new OG at the Deid. Rat sends out an email about his “vision” and about himself as the new OG. Guy in question responds with “Hey, maybe we should lunch sometime dude.” Why? Who the knows? He tells me the next day his crew shows up and the ADO tells him that his crew is off the schedule and that he has a personal meeting with Rat. So, he goes and see Rat in his office during meeting time and Rat says “Hey, ###, come on in. Haven’t seen you in a long time.” He walks in, not thinking defensively, and sits down and Rat immediately stands him at attention yelling at him about how he’s a Colonel and how dare he use lack of email professionalism, how he had the audacity to ask Rat to write him a character reference to the Wing King at Kadena when he got his Art 15, etc. The switches tones and says “yeah, we should do lunch with me and your crew sometime, just let me know!” Rat was an English major at USAFA and speech writer for the SECAF. We used to have to select 93 ARS/All distrobox, then manually remove his name from a squadron wide email because he “hated spam.” He used to print out emails that people would sent him on various day-to-day issues, order them to his office, and proceed to pull out a red pen and correct their grammar in front of them in the email. He’s Selva’s boy (was his Wing Exec when he was a Wing King). That is most likely the only reason when as far as he did. The people I personally know who he ruined their careers are doing well in the majors. I’m not really surprised that he isn’t flying for the airlines knowing the amount of black lists he’d appear on.

Shady J has Reserves right? Prolly gotta be established in the Strike world for that gig tho. South Carolina isn’t too far away if u are willing to be close to North Carolina instead of IN North Carolina. As for the firefighter piece, I used to fly jets with a former firefighter, no kidding. On another note, “My father was a fireman....he puts out fires!! My sister Sal....”

Brown boots with the bag? Marines have been doing it for years. Doesn't look worse than the sage green boots. Leather jacket with OCP? Oh the humanity!

Was a fireman’s gal....

AR conversion kit, I’ve been hunting and shooting since I was 4 years old, still can’t hit the broadside of a barn, always passed military testing, but never marksman. I’ve never really cracked the nut on my right handed, left eye dominant situation. My point is, I need more bullets to make up for it. 🙂

Based on a google search of “Col Patrick Rhatigan” there are a shit ton of results from Wordpress, Medium, Scribd, etc that just contain the text from his official bio. Looks like an unsuccessful attempt to bury his infamous JPQ article in the results.

i always wonder if dudes like Rat are embarrassed by their behavior when they look back on their careers

If by that you mean turn on “own ship” on my Foreflight sectional then yeah. 😁

Like a new green bag, they need to be broken in properly. I’m not a huge fan of the regular top, pen pockets suck for pushing up sleeves. MASSIF combat shirts are money though. Once the bottoms get broken in and soft they feel like a cozy pair of light sweat pants. I love the MASSIF winter jackets. They break the wind and are comfy in a wide range of temps.

Seriously? That's what Big Air Force does!

The only true benefit I’ve seen with the two piece is when I’m in the helo and I have to wear hard and soft body armor with full kit. The ‘combat shirt’ makes that exceedingly more comfortable. Otherwise it’s really not needed.

Hell yeah. If you get naked you can shit facing backwards and have a convenient little shelf to hold your snacks.

Agreed. Great stuff.

You would be surprised how much people in the military don't know. When I left my 11R platform filing VFR was like a Pandora's box of mystery to them. They thought it was this way out there wierd thing that needed special preparation and planning. VFR. You know, what every GA pilot does until they get instrument qual'd. The military had it's strengths but each community has their weaknesses as well. At the end of the day the aviation sector is huge and people will specialize in their organizations niche. Hanging out at an FBO and talking to some old timers is a great way to realize how much you haven't seen, even with an Air Force background.

Good stuff Marc. Read your book cover to cover a few months ago. It helped out a lot and answered a shit ton of questions.

Like everyone said, there’s the milcomp tests to award all the civilian equivalent ratings for your military experience. Also, as someone who went through the civilian training before doing military flight school. AF training is much, much better than my civilian training. It made me realize that the majority of non-airline civilian pilots are really incompetent and dangerous.

It's not declaring innocent... But then, even if you're found completely blameless in a court of law, you still wouldn't be declared innocent. You'd be declared "not guilty". Innocent until proven guilty means that innocent is the default. If Trump is not prosecuted and found guilty, he is by definition innocent. It's a bedrock principle of Western law.

Indeed. Perhaps I was also wrong about a statist ideology not being popular since the "innocent until proven guilty" thing seems to be out of fashion as well.

No chance as far as I’ve seen in the 19 years I’ve been flying jets in the USAF. Stick with the civilian career, sounds like it’s going well. You’ll be on with a major in no time.

Oh sweet baby Jesus. That guy.

Found the problem. https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-rhatigan-1814b622/

I never met a single airline pilot who wishes he could have a worse seniority number . I'm half joking, but in the OP's situation if he gets an AD pilot slot, he won't be at the airlines for another 14 years if he goes active duty, probably closer to 15-17 depending on how long his break in service is and to finish out his 20. If he continues on the straight civilian route he'll be at a regional in 3-4 years and a major in probably 5-8 with the current retirement situation and projected hiring. That is literally millions and millions of dollars of opportunity cost. To the OP, I think it all depends on what you want to do. If you want to fly in the military, that will be the longer road at this point to flying in the majors. The flying is way more fun in the military, but there is exponentially more BS associated with it. The camaraderie and friendships are way better in the military. The sense of accomplishment and service are better in the military. The medical benefits are better in the military. The guaranteed retirement is better in the military. The QOL is exponentially better in the airlines (unless you value weekends and holidays off, then the military is a little better until you have some seniority at an airline). The pay is better at airlines (perhaps minus regional pay, but that has increased so much now and upgrades are generally quick now, so it's probably a wash). The flying in the airlines is just a J-O-B...it isn't exactly fun flying. Follow a line and A/P is on 99% of the time. Military flying is way more fun, but can also become a J-O-B. I think your best bet might be to press with your degree/flying plan, get your CFI/ATP, get a regional job, and along the way rush guard/reserve units. This will be the best compromise to allow you to do what you want (fly in the military) while still allowing yourself to build a longer lasting, higher paying airline career. I've never met a guard or reserve pilot who said they wished they went active duty. I've also never met a guard or reserve pilot who did OTS who wished they'd done ROTC. I wouldn't mess with OTS or ROTC, frankly. If you rush guard/reserve flying units, you are applying for a part time flying gig, in a known airframe at a known location, with some full time orders available for training and possibly a full time gig later on. The gamble there is actually getting hired. They can be competitive...but if you are competitive for an OTS or ROTC pilot slot, you're probably competitive at a guard/res unit.

Well this post didn't age well...

Thanks for the quick reply. Right out of the gate? Or would one have to get a job aside from flying?

Wut? Mueller conducted an investigation and summarized his findings in a report, he didn't adjudicate the case. When a district attorney declines to bring murder charges against someone because they don't think they have evidence to meet burden of proof you thought that meant the state was declaring the individual innocent? You need to fire your criminal justice teacher. And for the record, if you go to trial and the verdict is "not guilty" that's not a declaration of innocence either.

Message me for more information! Just kidding. But I assume that’s true because of the lack of UPT boards. I’m just using reasoning. I’m not a pilot and you probably shouldn’t rely on me for information. I’m just passing along what I was told.