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Thought I'd recap and follow up with everyone. I've been super fortunate to have met some awesome people who have contributed to my success while I continued to pursue my passion for flying fighters. Not only did I finally get sworn in, but I also landed a fighter slot. Case and point, don't ever give up.

I’m an inch shorter than when I started UPT because I was young and bulletproof in a viper. I am no longer young and my back and neck remind me of that every day. Was it worth it? Prolly. Ask me again when I’m 60

Definitely a happy ending... 🤙

An MEB is NOT a bad deal. Chances of a medical retirement are great in your case. Are you a fighter pilot or a Buff/B-1 pilot? Your injuries are very common in G pullers. Write down every possible question you can think of for the neurologist. Get on a PT test exemption ASAP (no running, no crunches, no pushups, no timed super speed walk). I and many fighter pilots hold a class 1 FAA medical with spine problems. DO NOT let flying for the AF, nor doing the PT test, screw up your long term health.

Congrats!! Where at if you don't mind me asking?

Haha sometimes I definitely think about quitting my job but I know that reserves/guard is a much better move (and if I get accepted and I love it I an still go AD if I want to). I appreciate the feedback as usual.

I still wouldn't worry too much. Unless you're quitting your job to make this opportunity come to life, then you have nothing to lose. If you give it an honest shot and don't get picked up for your criminal record, or low scores or *insert reason here*, then you can sleep at night knowing you did something about it i.e. tried to pursue your dreams. Keep applying and obviously highlight your strengths. No one is a saint and it may even show you are human if you don't have a perfect slate. I had a record for "disturbing the peace" (school fist fight), which happened to be an entertaining story for the studs I interviewed with. Don't sweat it too much. Just work hard and hope for the best. 🤙

I had no idea how many of us have neck/spine issues. Mine aren’t probably caused by g forces but probably due to hundreds of hours of NVG use. I’m waiting for MRI results after a c spine X-ray revealed degenerative problems in my C4-C6. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Ok, let me know what they say.

FAKE NEWS!!!!! NBC had to retract two fake news stories today. This was one of them.

I know a guy who flew ejection seat aircraft with back and neck issues like you. He went through surgeries and stuff to help mitigate the pain. They allowed him to switch over to aircraft without ejection seats and he’s still flying I wouldn’t not speak up about it for fear of an FEB/MEB. I don’t think they would boot a pilot that can fly other aircraft, and flying is most definitely not worth destroying your body.

Having been through the MEB process myself, I was removed from single seat aircraft and restricted to crew aircraft. From what I saw in the process and it was a very lengthy process, it takes a lot to actually be removed from duty. I would go in with the argument that it was the high G aircraft that caused your issues and petition to be restricted to crew aircraft. Whether you can prove it or not is not as important as you think, I think most flight docs should understand that high Gs on a herniated disc is probably not the best thing for you long-term. I’ve known quite a few people go through the MEB process and Only one of them kicked out of the Air Force and she wanted to be kicked out. Someone else can speak to this, but my assumption would be that since you are an ACC asset you would probably look forward to an ACC crew aircraft, which kind of limits your options. I’m not saying a C-17 to Hickam is out of the question, but I wouldn’t bet the Farm. From my experience you can sway the flight docs to get what you want to get within limits and reason. The first person to come up with a plan typically wins. If you want to stay and fly I’m sure they can make a way for you to do that as long as you are healthy. If you are looking for a different lifestyle and a different aircraft, I would go in and lead with that, with the reason being that you don’t want to live the rest of your life in a wheelchair. Regardless of what you decide realize that you are on a long path. It took the Air Force nine months to figure out what to do with me and that was with just a simple shellfish allergy. Best of luck and keep us up-to-date with how it goes! Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-citizenship-children-of-troops-government-employees-not-automatic-new-policy/ According to the fact sheet, the new policy won't affect the following children: Those whose parents are both U.S. citizens, with at least one parent who had a residence in the U.S. or its territories before the child was born; Those who have two married parents, one of whom is a U.S. citizen who "was physically present in the U.S." or its territories for at least five years, with two of those years occurring after the parent was 14 years of age; Those who have unmarried parents, one of whom is a U.S. citizen meeting requirements listed in U.S. statute INA 309; Those who are eligible to have their U.S. citizenship certified at birth; And those residing in the U.S. with their U.S. citizen parent after being admitted to the U.S. for permanent residence.

What if you can’t remember all the names/nationalities of the mothers?

Thanks Obama

Why would they not? T-1 has much more in common with a B-52 than a T-38 does Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Better (add to .htaccess): RewriteEngine OnRewriteCond %{HTTPS} offRewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} [L,R=301] Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

A valid question; here's my opinion based on my involvement as an AF O-6 at NSA working airborne programs for the Asst Dep Director for Operations, Military Affairs and post- retirement as a civilian in OSD (DARO, OUSD/ISR, and NIMA/NGA)at the time The answer is that in the very early 90s, Bill Lynn, the Director of DARPA (actually named "ARPA" at that point but returned to its original title of "DARPA" later in the 90s), and Bill Perry, the DepSecDef (not sure if they were in those exact positions in the very beginning, but by mid-90s they were) believed that unmanned aircraft had the potential to revolutionize airborne operations, starting with ISR, by reducing personal exposure to threats, enabling extended ISR (long duration ops) and save money by reducing the manpower costs in the systems. Additionally, they believed that a new acquisition concept called the Advanced Concept Technology Demonstration (ACTD) could speed up the introduction of new systems from the current (in the 90s) and painful 15-20 years. The idea was to marry up the contractor side and the government side early in the development cycle to better work out operational issues while designing the vehicles (sounds good...didn't work!). They married the two ideas and DARPA initiated the High Altitude Endurance (HAE) and Medium Altitude Endurance (MAE) programs in 1994. The HAE program envisioned two platforms; a high altitude "U-2-like" vehicle and a smaller low observable, craft for better penetration of highly defended areas, referred to as "tier 2+ and "Tier 3-" in their concept terminology. The MAE program started with an existing much less capable unmanned RPA called the "Gnat", built by General Atomics for another purpose. You'll note here that this effort was a DARPA technology development effort, not an acquisition effort responding to an approved DoD mission need. In fact, the Air Force was not particularly enamored with the idea of unmanned mission aircraft and did not support the effort; there was no AF money or manning in the POM to support it. In fact the HAE program plan itself says there is only one required outcome...and let me quote from the ARPA 6 Oct 1994 ver 1.0 HAE CONOP..."A dominant objective of the HAE UAV program is to obtain the maximum capability possible for a set, non-waiverable Unit Flyaway Price (UFP); accordingly, while there are performance objectives, the only requirement that must be met is the UFP." In other words, it doesn't have to do anything except fly, hold a camera, and cost less that $10 million a copy; no operational needs have to be satisfied. To many in the system, the real effort was for DARPA to develop the new acquisition concept, using the HAE and MAE as exemplars. The AF eventually got the aircraft because the outcome of an ACTD was to be either: 1) a failed program, so cancel it, 2) showed promise, so move on and correct issues, or 3) Provide program residuals to the eventual user (AF in this case) for them to decide to either keep and operate or dump. The ARPA and SECDEF seniors decided it flew, collected something, and (sort of) met the UFP goal (at about $15.5 each), so they chose option 3 and passed it all to the AF (both HAE and MAE, although the DarkStar segment of HAE was cancelled after it crashed on flight 2. Why they kept it was the usual case of political and industrial influence, I guess. Some of us suggested the best course of action was to dump the Global Hawk because it met few operational needs, would cost too much to upgrade (if it could ever be upgraded...too little space, too little power, too little payload), and met few of the original desired capabilities, We felt it would be cheaper to take the money and start with a clean sheet design, using the knowledge gained to drive the new (unmanned) platform (which we referred to as "Global Truck"). The estimated $200-400 million extra was consider too much money by leadership, so we stay on the "cheap" track...which I suspect has cost us an extra $5-8 Billion by now (just my guess). As for the ACTD experiment, it hit a few bumps, too. When the Predator program was turned over to the AF and told to operate it, they found the DARPA program provided no money or manpower in the DoD budget to do so, no tech data was ever developed for the Service (it was all contractor proprietary) so they couldn't fix it, no ground control systems built except the contractor's test stuff so they couldn't deploy or fly it fly, No additional money was provided by DoD or Congress to the AF so the AF started a program called "Predator 911" to find money (to operate and buy support) and manpower, and facilities, "robbing" it from the current and future years budgets, causing major disruptions for years. As for GH, the idea of killing the U-2 and replacing it with the GH didn't float either, because the GH had practically no operational capability as delivered and it took a decade to develop the RQ-4B with more capability and slightly better sensors. So, that's why we have it! BTW, as far as Perry and Lynn were concerned, the success of unmanned systems since then probably indicates their vision was a success, and I can't really argue that they'd be wrong. Its all in your perspective.