Leaderboard

Someone please remind me why the fuck we continue to spend billions of dollars and send thousands of troops to defend their catbox shithole of a country?

“EFFECT OF FAILURE OF SELECTION.—In the administration of this subchapter pursuant to subsection (a)— ‘‘(1) an officer described in subsection (a) shall not be deemed to have failed twice of selection for promotion for pur- poses of section 629(e)(2) of this title until the officer has failed selection of promotion to the next higher grade the max- imum number of times specified for opportunities for promotion to such grade within the competitive category concerned pursu- ant to section 649d of this title; and ‘‘(2) any reference in section 631(a) or 632(a) of this title to an officer who has failed of selection for promotion to the next higher grade for the second time shall be deemed to refer instead to an officer described in subsection (a) who has failed of selection for promotion to the next higher grade for the maximum number of times specified for opportunities for promotion to such grade within the competitive category con- cerned pursuant to such section 649d.” i.e. everything that talked about twice passed over previously, is now amended to ~”fails to promote in their [5 year] zone” https://www.congress.gov/115/bills/hr5515/BILLS-115hr5515enr.pdf loophole closed. If you take the bonus and don’t get promoted you’re still committed through 4 more IPZ looks before continuation or getting out becomes an option.

He is a personal friend of mine. Please leave the bad jokes as the sole property of the author of the article.

Change may be slow, but at least change is happening. Since I joined: Master's degrees are masked, we stopped picking school selects at the O-4 board (everyone competes yearly now), you can decline school without prejudice (can turn down school after receiving orders without having to separate), 365s are on the decline (still more work to be done here), helmet art is back, sleeves can be rolled up, lots of civilian contractors have been brought (back) into the squadrons, etc. Can more be done? An unequivocal yes... there are so many other things that still need fixing, but things are changing.

Referring to the dudes that are actively trying to rework your syllabus as “Bobs” is a little disparaging.

OPR: Brig Gen Goodwin https://gazette.com/military/air-force-academy-removes-commandant-of-cadets-amid-investigation/article_7d20dc86-6aae-11e9-83cc-2b0168fe8995.html Too soon?

First, insert whatever socially acceptable "F the man" comments that will keep the Internet Police off my back. But specifically to the civilians not being in the sqs, after being away for 3 years and returning to a mobility flying Sq, there are 4 civilians back in the sq to handle some of the worst jobs that were previously forced on aircrew, during the Do more with less years. There's more to be done for sure, but at least that's a start. So it's not just ACC. The good fight will maintain more credibility if we can stick to facts.

Sure glad no one else was concealed carrying besides the shooter. He could have gotten hurt.

Which is great for today’s fight. but start playing with a marginally competent opponent in an even slightly denied environment and you’re gonna have to dust off some of those old fashioned fighter pilot skills. next thing you know, they’ll be building F-4s without guns! /get off my lawn

Sub categories didn’t work out so well for Naval Aviators.

In limited cases, yes. I heard the instructors could not tell a difference between them vs a UPT grad. Caveat, these people were super sharp which is why they were selected. It shows you can train a good product on minimal flying if you select the right people. This could go down the wormhole of are we as a AF selecting the best pilot candidates. I don’t think we do. Other variables...how is IFF doing on training a product? When I went thru, very little was relevant to what I saw in the b-course skills wise. It was BFM and dive bomb-centric with legacy wingman admin focus. Today, wingmen are expected to fly formations based off sensor cues at 6.9+ miles, work their systems and have tools like HMD and data links to free up flying workload so they can maneuver to a large bubble in space to release their PGM’s. It’s a far cry from following lead to vid your target and roll in for a weapons pass. Whole new world, I say embrace it, move on. Accept some short term pain and flailing while we experiment to make things better. *IFF has complained about the UPT product for as long as I’ve been in the USAF and I’ve seen specific people they thought were bad UPT products go on to be tactical leaders in our most advanced jets. Because guess what...being .2nm wide on the way to the MOA or setting bad aspect on a BFM set just doesn’t matter much in reality. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Masters: Great so we’re going to kick out people who went the extra mile. Good idea. (better alternative is to have separate tracks... aviation-only vs strategic) School selects: This was a good move in conjunction with new strat rules... would have liked to have seen this in my day. Decline school: Why would you apply in the first place? So we’re only sending folks who get their way now? Perfect. Again... need two tracks. 365s: Need more data, as in, more than a slide with a few numbers saying they’ve decreased, but a slide per 365 that still exists to explain why it still exists and who is vulnerable. The rotating bills is also a great trick because each community can say they only have 5-10 365s to fill each year (you could be next!) oh and btw a few (20-60+?) that rotate between various communities (like roulette?). Helmet art/sleeves: Who wasn’t doing this anyway? Civilians: Not being in the SQs, I’ll accept this, but it sounds like only ACC is getting this... and we wonder why AMC and SOF folks are leaving for the triple six figure paychecks and the 3 weeks off 1 week on plans. We just can’t get enough of our boxes. Until we can think outside of them and handle that the best leaders might not check all of them, any changes we make will be superficial at best. I love our Air Force so I hope we can turn this ship around. “Fingers” crossed for new SECAF to make some sweeping leadership/cultural changes.

Our feedback from IFF is the exact opposite wrt the cut in hours. Now, in fairness to your point, IFF is teaching to the classic wingman philosophy, and I concur with your assessment that a movement towards the "multiple flights of one" of the "5th gen" paradigm would yield some efficiencies in cutting some MIF items. My only objection to your assessment of the T-38 program, is that I think you dismiss the degree to which the dexterity required to fly formation to a 4th gen standard in an incredibly manual and underpowered airplane like the T-38, does lead to more well-rounded baseline product, and safer 5th gen wingman by proxy. Yes, it is also more expensive, but I thought we were the world leader in tactical proficiency...we certainly have the defense budget for it no? (don't answer that, I'm being rhetorical). My read of your argument is one similar to what the airlines are making these days with the MPL approach to training. E.G. "The airplanes are so automated, we can lean on that automation to mask the significant lack of pilot comprehensive dexterity we're willing to eat in order to cut training length. These guys are to be system/sensor monitoring experts." I'm not particularly persuaded by that argument. As to the macro philosophical point on 5th gen nuances, I'm with ya by all means. My objections to your assessment of UPT Next efficiencies are not to be taken as a Luddite argument at all. I agree with you that the syllabus should incorporate hardware that better exposes the kids to the new rides. I believe the T-7 will achieve that.

Incompetence at best...at worse, indifference. We've already been brushed off with respect to the flight pay fiasco. We've been told it will be fixed when the new pay system rolls out in Jan 2021. So with that, I expect the answer to be that we'll get it back with our taxes. Honestly, unknown. The OG is taking this one on, so I haven't sent any flaming arrows towards finance. It has already been sent up the chain and guys are still being taxed at an extremely high rate and no TSP is being taken out, or that we'll have to do a CMS case. Some of the guys have just given up on them until this whole process gets unfucked. I mean, I appreciate the extra pay but it shouldn't be this difficult. These are for additional pay cards we didn't have before. As with most things in the military, the rollout has been a rusty coat hanger abortion. It pisses me off because it continues with the trend of making life harder on the part-timer. It's almost as if they're intentionally trying to make it harder for guys to be part time. But hey, they've made it such a PITA that I pretty much have to blow a pay card or two just to get paid. Lol...getting paid to get paid. Life is still pretty damn good in the ANG, but I'm seriously looking forward to the day I have 3 years time-in-grade.

Dude, don’t give that guy’s opinion an ounce of credibility.

That statement tells me everything I need to know. What a piece of shit.