Leaderboard

I think it’s well past time to GTFO.

Trigger Warning: Unpopular old-guy opinion ahead. 😁 Our ORM sheet is the last remaining untechnologified step in the administrivia process before we head out the door to the aircraft. 5 people can pick up a pencil and scribble a completely subjective number in about 30 seconds without requiring 5 individual logins with certificate-less CACs, computers attempting to connect, and a slow, if not stopped, network. Please don't take that from us.

ORM should be laser etched into a sheet of stainless steel with all the "points" already selected. I can count on one finger the number of times that sheet made a difference in someone flying. And that one time was someone in disagreement with leadership trying to make a point.

That last part is the most important. Please don’t ever forget that in your career!

What kind of back-end safety analysis are you planning on? Have you got a real statistician to validate the method and results? (Serious question, not a spear) Will there be a column for “how much did you lie in order for this thing to look normal?” Back end analysis is something aircrew is great at, but for most of us involves fistfuls of singles.

https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/rep-adam-kinzinger-air-force-veteran-trump-turnberry-resort Check out that brilliantly written oped.

Checks. Sounds like most of you guys don’t routinely sit in the jet for three hours for maintenance troubleshooting in 100° heat on your five hour sortie that had you show 4 hours before takeoff. MX slip loses your tanker, your range time, and your coordinated mission training. “Mr Gp cc says he thinks you should still fly duration because you can ‘still get some training.’” ”Broken, confirm you want me to burn 120k and do patterns during my 14th hour of duty day?” ”Yeah, you’ll still get pattern work. “ ”Well Mr GP cc, this ORM sheet you signed off on says that’s not smart.”

If you craft the orm sheet for your squadron correctly, you can never add up enough points for management involvement .....

The K might be a stretch. I'd call it a T-46 until everything gets sorted out. And people will probably be promoted, not fired.

Bury Us Upside Down is a great book about the history of the MISTY FACs in Vietnam. None Braver is about the early OEF PR support and was ok. As with most things it focused far too much on the PJs but it a good job taking about how we postured PR in the first 6-9 months of the war.

Uh. No. But it doesn’t have the free managers special at the embassy or free Hilton breakfast, so pocket extra money there, buy breakfast at trump with your own money. We both know the rules. Thanks for playing tho

Not hating, I know you're just doing you're supposed to. I'm just fatigued with leadership's fascination with and addiction to electronic data collection, be it ORM, MICT, GTIMS, PEX, ASIMS, surveys, etc, etc, etc. All so they can walk over to HQ and present it to more senior leadership in hopes of an "Attaboy!" from people who pretend to be interested in it for 30 sec during a staff meeting. Let's face facts, none of this changes anything for the flyers. We've never cancelled for an ORM score at step time, we're just told to be "extra safe."

Resistance is futile, the future is here. I'm not senior enough to have an aid (AIDS is different, recently got educated on that through green dot training) but if someone wants to log 69+ ORM cuts a day for the remainder of my time in the seat, I'll give you like...a couple bucks or something. I have done that in the past, but performing a manual input and parsing that amount of data isn't feasible. For the haters...I guess be glad you have your current system and don't need to endure the shittiness that will be inflicted upon the squadron.

I have to agree with this. I’d much rather continue doing our ORM on a dry erase sheet than deal with a computer. Make an excel sheet and enter everything after the crew steps if they want it all tracked. Don’t make my job harder with terrible Air Force technology skills.

I literally was unaware that the regular season started last Sunday. So after watching the F1 race, seeing the schedule on the Direct TV guide, reminded me, "Where's Kaepernick?" Not gettin' any younger, are you Colin?

Shut up and color. Take your lumps and learn. If you quibble, and it is quibbling, you may win the battle...but you may also lose the war. And of course, the obvious answer, don’t fuck up the pattern and you won’t face this issue.

#Trump2020. I’d fill out my ballot now if they’d let me.

Whenever I hear this phase, I love to recount the DOZENS of times I’ve flown a completely empty C-17 across an ocean.

I stayed at the Turnberry last year. I've been stopping in Prestwick to/from deployments since 2002. We just tell the FBO when and how many people, and they make the arrangements. Last year we arrived right after a snow/ice storm that shut most of the major freeways for days. All of the hotels in Ayre (our usual location) and Glasgow were booked. The Turnberry, an hour drive away, had enthusiastically agreed to give us the government rate. The hotel itself was absolutely incredible and the staff thanked us profusely for our service. The bartender let us sample some of the local Scotch whiskeys. It was too cold for golf, but we toured the course which was an old WWII pilot training base, and some of the old runways/taxiways still exist on the course. The hotel called in a bagpiper to play us out the door as we departed for the sandbox at 5am. It was one of the best deployment sendoffs ever. There was nothing to it other than it was the only place with rooms available at the government rate, and the FBO was proud to have found a place that they thought we would enjoy. The media and politicians are idiots.

According to Salon: https://www.salon.com/2019/09/09/were-starting-to-see-the-scale-of-trumps-personal-corruption-and-its-massive/ That's some world-class "reporting".

Nobody who's sane is suggesting the WH is pressuring individual aircrews to make specific technical stops that might somehow benefit the POTUS. The frustration is that our commander in chief hasn't divested himself from his business interests while serving us. It leaves him open to accusations of all type. Nobody expects President Trump to impoverish himself and give away his assets just for the privilege of leadership. But he should not own or control them in any way while in office. This would be analogous to your new wing commander (Colonel House) owning a real estate sales company that had a large, two page spread in the base newspaper. He also owns a country club. Your OPS group commander buys the largest property they've got for sale and a membership in the club. Later, you see his name on the O-6 list. Totally legit, right? People just want to hate on Col. House because they really liked the other candidate for Wing CC that got passed over. People had better just quit their bellyaching about Colonel House. It's all loser sour grapes. Colonel House is the best wing commander we've ever had. So what if he broke a few rules selling subordinates houses? Who gives a crap about propriety and rule of law when we're finally winning? Also, Colonel house has amended the TAFs on your weather sequence with his black sharpie, you're good to go - no alternate! Best get stepping to the jet and stop being a pussy about weather minimums, he knows what's best for us all.

I work with a guy who’s father was killed because he was an interpreter for the Army in Afghanistan (from Kabul). He got an expedited temporary visa because the Taliban found out he was working for the Army and started calling his house and found his work number and threatening to kill him, his wife, and kid. Obviously if it’s not for nefarious reasons, I don’t blame those that defected knowing they could lose their lives for just interacting or being trained by Americans. He’s taking his citizenship test laster this year, just had another kid, and bought his first house. If there is someone that loves being in America, it’s him. Sometimes we just don’t realize how good we have it to be naturally born Americans. It takes hearing stories like that to make us realize that despite the internal turmoil that this country has, it’s still the greatest one on the planet.

2!! Very good series. Separate but related is nearly anything by James Hornfischer. He writes USN in the Pacific during WWII stuff. Haven't read a bad one yet. In particular, "Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors" is amazing.