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Disagree. The whole sim and VR can replace flight time mentality really bothers me. The sim has its place as an additional tool, but time in the air can never be replaced by it. The hawg community gives students 3 sims to learn how to start the jet and fliP some switches, and then sends them up for the first time because they realize this. From the instrument standpoint, not everyone flies around in glass cockpits, with coupled approaches, and 4 pilots all sitting around staring at the instruments. The first time I flew an ILS to mins on a stormy night with a shitty steam ADI and HSI was nothing like the hundreds of sim approaches, or the maybe 3-4 real approaches I had to take seriously in the jet. It was incredibly uncomfortable. I even forgot to lower the gear until well past the FAF. Now I always treat them as if they are real. I disagree even more that it can be applied to actual mission employment in a meaningful way over flying. Nothing replaces the experience, confidence building time, and feeling the jet and how it responds to environmentals. 90% of most MWS flying is done based on feel with fighters. There needs to be G, buffet, etc. The hours we give pilots in the jet is what makes them superior to other countries. Country’s who’s pilots fly in a year what many of our pilots get in a few weeks. I’m sure this can be applied to heavies too. The C-17 (who’s sims are crippling broken all the time) flies 300’ low levels and does air drop. Sitting in a box isn’t going to make you comfortable at 300’ with a 200’ wingspan, or jumping guys that will die if you do it incorrectly. Nor will it build any confidence landing on tiny assault strips. tldr: Sims augment actual flight time, they can never replace it. Decision making is learned from experience. Practice like you play. (In a real airplane)

I hear what you're saying and there is a point to doing things in sims vs. the proverbial 10k an hour KC-135R pattern ride to win the battle on training beans Just my two old fart cents, we had it right in the 80's for heavies. Flew as required the big MDS for ops, tng and such. Flew the ACE jets for training and proficiency (Tweet, 38s). For budgetary sanity, for the heavies, give them an economical trainer and replace just 10-20% of their training hours and get some Vitamin G once in a while. I can only speak for myself but I would have traded 50 training hours for 100 hours in a modern aero aircraft when at homeplate and not burining dinos over the desert. I like the GameBird https://talkbusiness.net/2017/09/faa-certifies-gamebird-aerobatic-airplane-to-be-built-in-bentonville/ Close visual formation, aerobatics, VFR by clock map ground, etc... not that those specific skills are applicable to their MWS but the fundamentals to them build strong pilots (multi-tasking, quick cross check, thinking ahead, etc...) After 20 years of flying heavies and sometimes flying GA, I can tell I'm in better pilot after a period of keeping those basic pilot muscles strong in a plane without George, autothrottles, TCAS, etc...

All of these changes are great ideas, and overdue. At the end of the day it’s still going to come down to DP or P. If you have one, you’re pretty much set. If you don’t, it’s a coin flip. How these choose to allocate and distribute those designations will be the real test of the “fairness” of the new system.

I’m very interested to read the AARs when the investigation is over. Reports are the Ensign that lost his life jumped a desk and engaged the shooter, and later made his way outside to assist law enforcement with location/description of shooter. I’ve heard vague reports that others might have attempted to disrupt the shooter as well. A Navy contract officer was shot and two deputies. My thoughts after a few drinks on Friday, a week to reflect, and living just a few minutes away. This asshole went to inflict mass damage. He encountered resistance from some absolute heroes and perhaps a building that was locked down by the time he overcame that resistance that saved lives. The simple fact the asshole engaged a soft target, and 3 people lost, 8 wounded (3 being law enforcement) I would say the assholes objectives were thwarted. (I in no way am down playing those lost/injured, but whatever happened in that building saved lives). I really hope when everything is over everyone who deserves recognition gets it. Engaging a shooter unarmed and sacrificing your life to save others in my opinion deserves a highest honor. The police (both military and law enforcement) that responded did their job absolutely honorably, they went in to saves and accomplished that mission. I hope we learn some lessons and don’t let the lives lost be in vein and unrecognized cheers 🍺🍺 To Them. 🍺🍺

You won’t drill with the 340th or your gaining unit as a Reservist before UPT; the 340th doesn’t have drills for UPT pipeline and won’t let you drill with your home unit. You’ll just be on DEP, basically. You’ll swear in, but you won’t be doing anything until you leave for your first piece of the pipeline. Your sponsoring unit has no control over you until you head to your PIQ/FTU. 340th handles your school/travel, pay, leave, orders, etc., so your home unit is just waiting for you to pop out at the other end with some wings.

This Fed Repo and Reverse Repo stuff is way to complicated for my pay grade (old ass) but it seems that all the Fed Repo Operations crashed at the beginning of the 2008 financial crisis (Sept 2008). - Some history (2001 until the crash in 2008); Fed Admits Failure of ‘Plan A’ to Control Money Market Rates, Shifts Back to Repos (which was ‘Plan A’ till 2008); https://wolfstreet.com/2019/09/20/fed-admits-plan-a-of-controlling-money-market-rates-fails-shifts-to-plan-b-repos-which-was-plan-a-till-2008/ - Repo and Reverse Repo Agreements; https://www.newyorkfed.org/markets/domestic-market-operations/monetary-policy-implementation/repo-reverse-repo-agreements

Here's a couple good vids. Forgive the "Click-baity" thumbnails, the actual content is good. This guy (George Gammon) just recently started explaining current macroeconomics via Youtube videos and I highly recommend his channel for anyone who is interested in the things that are currently happening. He's fantastic at explaining the issues to those of us who aren't expert economists. He has another vid on his channel explaining the Repo Market (above) and why this is a major event. Here's another great explanation:

Banks don't have liquidity. You might go to get your money, and it isn't there. Like in 1929.

Oh I’m not arguing to replace all or even a majority of flying with sims. I’m just saying that we CAN update and replace flown syllabus items with them and we should explore this and it’s being proven at the UPT/IFF level already. Which and where to cut/change will widely vary by airframe. I’d say on the fighter side the A-10 has the least potential for sim replacement due to the stick-rudder mission demand and jets like the F-22/35 which are more sensor based have the most potential but I think they already do rely on sims heavily vs other fighters. If time/money were unlimited, we’d do 100% flying. But F-22 cost what? $60k per hour? We also need to get real About updated missions. I was talking with a viper guy today who felt his community did too much A/A training vs his realistic real world combat role which he considered A/G. I don’t think he’s wrong. Yeah, I get this pisses people off. Example 5 years ago most Eurofighter pilots were claiming “not a pound for air to ground” (aka 90’s eagle pilots) and are now begging for a A/G role to stay relevant as they find themselves a 90’s 4th gen A/A fighter in a 2020 world. Heavies. I’m admittedly naive. I’d think you want to practice instruments in a sim and do real world mission stuff like assault landings and airdrop but maybe I’m underestimating the complexity of an ILS in a C-17. Good discussion guys, I’m not saying I’m right, I’m saying I believe I’m right...big difference. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

The seeming lack of acknowledgement of this fact by USAF leadership astounds me. Hands down, it’s the biggest thing we do better...because it isn’t VR. ~Bendy

Fed is dumping money into banks to keep them solvent. Banks regularly borrow from each other overnight to reconcile accounts, but for some reason they are becoming more reluctant to do those loans, so the Fed had to.

Meh, who wants to fly F-15's anyway. Obviously kidding. Great job for taking the initiative and getting through this hurdle. Best of luck moving forward.

Now that’s some speedy service! Thank you!

I can't quite put my finger on it, but it feels like we've seen this before... Goat fuckers are going to fuck goats...nothing we can do to change that.

For some missions the fidelity of the sim *is* actually better than what you can get LARPing in the airplane.

This is also funny coming from someone who flies around the flagpole in Fat Amy. Similar logic says you can cut most of your hours too

I’ll somewhat reverse what I said earlier based off an experience I had today. Student cross-country. He shows up with a beautiful VFR plan. Amazingly marked VFR chart. Even wants to pick up an IFR for some instrument approaches after. He briefs me that at 1100L the weather will be SKC, 9999 RVR. The problem is it was 1050L and it was still misty and overcast less than a thousand. The epiphany I had is that if we teach the students based off 1s and 0s in a sim and cut out too much flying, all we’re going to get is really good canned environment pilots. I know correlation doesn’t equal causation, but I have started to notice a severe lack of common sense amongst my T-6 students, and part of that is probably because we are taking away their opportunities to see real world flying.

I don't think your naïve but I would argue that what you saw was professional Aircrew after and the result of them having received a proper base of advanced multi-engine training and if you had observed aircrew that had a much smaller base of advanced multi-engine training, it would likely have been a different data sample from which you would have drawn a different conclusion. Likely said AC or Co would have required more supervision and training them on operational mission(s) would have entailed more risk and/or supervision to possibly make it inappropriate to do so. As to the airlines, they care about efficiency but take advantage of the base, fundamental training and experience already provided to their employees by other institutions, usually the military or other companies who earlier in the careers trained them. They get already experienced pilots, if the airlines had to start at the very beginning and provide for their pilot's training, they would not just take them at low hours and get the rest of their training done on the job. Not sure exactly what the low end of total hours for an FO in a 121 company (regionals) is but likely at least 500 hours, competitive candidates probably have around 750 hours. This is just not a good idea, case in point (tragically) - The Ethiopian Airlines 737 MAX accident 'You basically put a student pilot in there': The copilot of crashed Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 had just 200 hours of flight experience They had someone not at the proper point in their career to be in that seat, he was with an 8,000 hour Captain, and while I am sure his low experience was not the main causal factor, but it likely contributed to that tragedy. Not speaking ill of the dead, I am sure that young man did his best but IMHO, he should not have been in that seat and I think that is a salient example of why you need properly trained and experienced aircrew in heavies. Full stop. Not throwing any spears and not sure what was going on when you observed crew operations but it can get demanding quickly. Planes are expensive, people are irreplaceable and proper training is required to protect both.

VAT is another one of those taxes that are ridiculous and we need to leave it to Europe, most things we take for granted are so overpriced over there, in part, due to this. I’ll fight VAT tooth and nail. How bout we spend less. Gevernment oversight of every step of manufacturing, what could go wrong?