Leaderboard

They are removing ~44 aircraft from service. The rest have/are receiving a rewing to extend their lifespan. The aircraft removed are mostly AD because the guard has mostly lower hour jets. Some of the guard units are receiving F-35s/other aircraft and their A-10s are going to AD. If you get in the A-10 you will likely do a few ops assignments if you don’t try to transition, and then eventually transition to the F-35. If you desire to play the role of CAS/CSAR/FAC(A) then it is, by far, the best aircraft to go with. Things are currently winding down in COIN, but the A-10 has been the most kinetic jet in the COIN fight, with the 354FS recently returning the most kinetic deployment (OFS 2019) since the early days of the Afghan conflict. The first time you are at a TIC, employing the gun within 20-50m of friendlies is a pretty rewarding experience. We were regularly winchestering the jet during Syria (a jet that has 11 hard points and carries more weapons than the whole formation of vipers).

https://www.yahoo.com/news/9th-circuit-ends-california-ban-172126816.html I never thought I would see this kind of decision from the 9th Circuit.

Cool story bro.

Hopefully it was one of his ring fingers so they can change his callsign to ‘The Shocker’.

As a UPT student you probably have 6-9 years to go before this is even an option.

Two good things for America, I believe. One yesterday, one today. Yesterday, the current Administration announced it had brokered a deal for diplomatic relations establishment between UAE and Israel. That's a very significant development. Today, the first guilty plea occured in the Obamagate investigation. An FBI lawyer pled guilty to intentionally altering a document that was used to renew, again, one of the bogus FISA applications on the Trump campaign. While I'm too cynical to believe that any of those "too big to fail" will ever perform a perp walk, that fact that a worker bee is being held accountable might, just maybe, be a hindarance for future wannabe hop on board the corruption train riders in our government. I do hope there will be more such items to follow.

Pretty soon we’ll be behind on the mineshaft gap.

For the most part, noone cares. However, there may be a time in your career where you may apply to a job where they will actually read through your FEF (Guard/Reserve unit). So keep being a good pilot. It may help you one day.

Bottom line: Heavy - Heavy = Easy Fighter - Heavy = Easy Heavy - Fighter = not Easy

It's much easier to get hired by a guard/reserve unit that flies the jet in which you are already qualified. Otherwise they have to find and pay for a training slot for you. If you're not already qualified then fighter going to another fighter is easier than heavy to fighter. It's not uncommon to switch airframes in the guard/res, but timing is everything and it may or may not work in your favor. No one can say what it will be like 10 years out, your dream unit might not even be flying the same jet by then. Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

Let's be clear, the important point to emphasize is the USAF is not just paying you to fly airplanes. We have Delta and United for that BS. They need you to take a plane and utilize it as a weapon system, which is going to be impossible without a little vault study. You're a military officer first which means your first obligation first and foremost is learning how to kill enemies and break their shit or resupply good guys and keep the fight going as long as possible.

Just put MQ-9s #1...you can actually fly your airplane from inside the vault! You never have to / get to leave! /sarcasm Real advice: Talk to more IPs - actively seek out ones that fly the things you're unclear about DM specific people here if you know their backgrounds, and overall... Pick the mission you think sounds the coolest Lifestyle-wise, you'll honestly have no idea and will be basing any perceived preferences on what one guy/gal told you at the bar sometime which is a terrible way to make life decisions. Then... Bloom wherever you're planted To my advice above, I'm happy to talk U-28s with you via DM if you'd like. Good luck!

If you don’t want to spend time in a vault then FAIP. KCs, C-17(if you don’t airdrop/SOL)/21/5s are about the only ops aircraft that wont require much vault time, or really even much mission planning and debriefing. Anything kinetic, ISR, or the what support kinetic assets (airdrop, FARP, etc) will be spending time in a vault.

After flying 14 different types of aircraft over almost 16 years, I’ve learned everyone flies circles, just at different altitudes. My advice is to pick something that lets you blow something up at the end of said circle.

“Previously vetted.” You sure about that? By whom? What’s to say the Trump campaign doesn’t have a surprise skeleton to reveal about her come October? Sure would be karma after the Kavanaugh debacle.

VPs rarely ever deliver states anymore, the effect is very small. Indiana was going for the Republican nominee in 2016 no matter what (although it was a surprise in the Obama 2008 coalition). Ironically California (Harris) balances Delaware (Biden) quite well in terms of geographic spread which is sometimes desirable. Harris is the first member of the most populous state in the nation on either party’s ticket since Reagan 40 years ago! Harris balances Biden most importantly in age and identify, both of which are important in the Democratic Party. She’s also a credible President on day 1, as was Pence, which IMHO is the very most important criteria for a VP. On age, Biden (and Trump! and Hillary!) are all IMHO too old to be a President who could win and govern through two terms with all their marbles intact. Not everyone believes that but I do at least. 45-65 is my strike zone for a President or other high level leader and ideally they’d all be done and retire by age 70, i.e. don’t run for a first term if you’re already over age 62. Biden is 77 and Harris is 55 and she’s already been in the Senate since 2017 after working her way though other high-level state offices - good balance. In terms of identity, the Democratic Party still has a lot of white male leaders while white males are a minority of typical party voters, so it was important in a big-picture sense to have more leaders who are women, people of color, or both. It’s not about “racism” or “sexism,” but representation and making an effort to have our party leadership look like the party membership. Stating the obvious, she is a she, she’s black and Indian, and the daughter of two immigrants. He is a he, white, and of longer American-born lineage - good balance.

That model has infected all of our politics. I feel like they all took a lesson from Ashton Kutcher's character in "That 70's Show" and the ultimate political brownie point is a "sick burn." We live in the dumbest of times.

If either of them shy away from a debate, they'll end up the loser. However, one upside to COVID would be if we finally got rid of audiences at debates. Without an audience reaction, the power of one liners and insults go away and the candidates might actually have to have some substance. Sent from my SM-N975U using Baseops Network mobile app

I’m sorta ambivalent on $15 min wage. It would obviously help put money in the pockets of working people, which is very good for an economy driven by consumer demand. On the other hand large jumps all at once do cause problems. The Fed min wage, along with many many other government program payment numbers, should be pegged to chained-CPI or similar and then automatically raise or lower with inflation. If you don’t do that, inaction ends up being an affirmative choice to devalue current programs which is not what congress usually intends. See the pilot bonus and flight pay issues where they were the same from like 1990 - 2017 even though a lot of the value had been lost to inflation. In principle the AF didn’t value pilots any less, but in practice they absolutely did; same goes with all these other programs. If you had to hold my feet to the fire I’d say I support a higher fed min wage so long as we chain it to CPI from here in out so it doesn’t become an issue again in the future. Seems like the historical high water mark adjusted for inflation would be IVO $12 in today’s dollars so maybe that. Happy to post in good faith from the Dem POV...echo chambers don’t help any of us and I enjoy most of the perspectives here and in my squadron, which are more conservative and/or libertarian than my civ friends and family.

Well, one of the things that will be really great, you know the word experience is still good. I always say talent is more important than experience. I’ve always said that. But the word experience is a very important word. It’s an — a very important meaning. I never did this before. I never slept over in Washington. I was in Washington, I think, 17 times. All of a sudden, I’m president of the United States. You know the story. I’m riding down Pennsylvania Avenue with our First Lady and I say, ‘This is great. But I didn’t know very many people in Washington. It wasn’t my thing. I was from Manhattan, from New York. Now I know everybody, and I have great people in the administration.” You make some mistakes. Like, you know, an idiot like Bolton. All he wanted to do was drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to drop bombs on everybody. You don’t have to kill people.

Study a private pilot general knowledge book for the aviation stuff. As for the math, its all stuff that can be done without a calculator. Just do the AFOQT practice tests really. Sounds like you've done that, so take the material in those, and find videos that teach you tricks to nailing them. For instance, any questions that involve finding percents, move the decimal place to the right one spot, and times by the % value with its decimal moved as well. For example. 3% of 250. 250 is now 25.0 and 35% is now 3.0, which gives you 25x3=75. Works for any number/percentage. There's tricks like that to mot arithmetic operations.

Noone here has forgotten the whole lesson about US involvement in European instability. However, that lesson is receiving heavy scrutiny now because of its cost. And it should receive scrutiny. There are no "natural laws" or "rules" in geo-politics. We should always be adjusting our thought. First off, I'm skeptical anytime mentions US foreign policy and "track record" or "history" in the same sentence. 200 years isn't history. Its a sneeze. China has seen continuous governance under a unified identify for over 3000 years. Sink that in a for a bit because its a bit amazing to think about. Sure they've had overthrows and invasions that took power, but they always remained predominantly identified as a single people (disregarding discussions of sub cultures like the Han, im talking specifically, how long has there been a "place identified as China"). So building trend data off of two events that happened only 20 years apart probably isn't prudent global planning on our part. Second, saying that a secure "Europe" is better for American prosperity is a bit dishonest. Europe is a geographical feature that says nothing about where the global balance of power lies. Pre-WW2, many of those powers happened to be conjugated in Europe. Today? Not a single European player (outside maybe France in the UK as notable exceptions) has global influence. The center of power has shifted dramatically from Western Europe to the Pacific. The top 6 military power centers in the world on the Global Firepower Index all have borders on the Pacific Ocean. (8 if you count Britain and France's Pacific holdings) 6/12 of the largest economies are on the Pacific, including the Top 3, the US, China and Japan. The problem with the above philosophy is it puts WAY too much importance on how much influence Europe has on the world order in modern terms. Third, we tend to have a lens that puts too much emphasis on the WW's as what happened in Western Europe. We forget, that they were global wars, and especially in WW2, most of the fighting did not take place in Western Europe. I promise you the Chinese don't frame their historic perceptions of WW2 as something that mainly occurred in Europe. As our #1 adversary, that should be something that we take important note of. Fourth, having the basic premise that a continent cant organize their shit so we have to occupy and pacify them for our own successful aims just doesn't sound like a good long term strategy. We invest 320K DoD personnel in Europe. That is literally 1/4 of our entire military, on one foreign continent. The largest military in Western Europe is the US military. Think about that for a minute, and then think about what your squadron could do with a 33% manning boost? To quote your terms, why are we spending "on peace and prosperity in Europe" when we should be spending on Peace and Prosperity in the United States, the largest threat to which, is in Asia. I totally understand and hear your point of view. But I find it outdated and irrelevant with what is actually going on in the world right now. I think there is a growing crowd of skeptics that question if Europe is "worth" our investment.