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OK. I’ll play. If he was my WG/CC, his performance is way better than you let on. His GP/CCs (Governors) have received everything they needed* (important to distinguish between wants and needs) to conduct the mission. When they needed ventilators, hospital ships, etc, they received it. I’m not taking this down the rabbit hole of unemployment benefits given the shit show of shenanigans associated with the game. The benefit my WG/CC has is he can fire underperforming GP/CCs and SQ/CCs (governors and mayors). He has the ability to massage the leadership to manage the crisis, not stand there and take the mutiny. It is nothing short of absolute horseshit to vilify the “inaction of the administration” when local and state governments are putting condoms on the monkey to let it go fuck the football. Where is the outrage for cities and states not enforcing PPE and distancing requirements? It has somehow become popular for the federal government to be responsible for the failures of local-level officials. In all of the issues we see regularly, it’s mind boggling how little local communities are seen doing to improve their situations other than pointing the finger at the federal government. This is exactly why socialism fails, and for some reason a large portion of our nation can’t see this ugly truth staring them in the face because the glow of “free shit” is blinding them. FUCK!

Republicans did. Twice. George Bush was easily a good man. They called him a Nazi. So then, a few years later, they picked Romney. Maybe the most ethical person to ever run. Biden accused him of wanting to re-enslave black people (metaphorically), and then he was called a sexist for having resumes from females. I believe that most politicians are corrupt, but the final straw was the Kavanaugh hearing. The (D) party tried to paint a good man as a serial rapist on absolutely zero evidence. I do not blame Democratic voters for buying into the bullshit; I expect no complex thought from the average voter. But the Senators and Representatives who knowingly participated in that smear campaign are evil people, who did evil things. So yeah, the Republican party is a bit tired of being lectured about "human decency." There aren't many parallels. The highest levels of (D) party leadership enthusiastically lied about the characters of good people. Not just one or two random representatives. The whole damn party.

Now Nancy Pelosi is saying that Biden shouldn't debate Trump. Wonder why?

Remember that time when 5 liberal democrat governors forced infected with Chinese virus into retirement homes. And then they investigated themselves and claimed "we did nothing wrong" followed by boasting on news how awesome they are! Yeah...good times.

I think you just described IFS, phase 3 and IFF

This right here.^^^^^^ The monthly, building block training cycle is key. You don't do one BFM sortie per month. You spend ALL of your monthly sorties focusing on BFM and then move on to a more advanced phase. Development of muscle memory and "snap-shot" recognition of fleeting opportunity only happens through repetition. Instead of having an engagement always develop from a familiar perch or high-aspect "go" point, now we all can recognize those snap-shots seen over and over through the meat of the engagements in any visual situation we might encounter. The "startle" is gone and our ability to quickly analyze a situation is enhanced. Sure - BVR and longer range WVR employment is the most likely outcome to current combat engagements. But, discounting the value of enhancing the skill of visual maneuvering to a WEZ is to make the same mistake our predecessors made more than 5 decades ago when they blew off the gun and assumed missiles removed all requirement for visual engagements. Success in the visual engagement is still one of the most difficult skills to master. Hoping our weapons and technology remove our need to use those skills is to repeat the mistakes of the past. A well designed, repetitive training program should allow development of basic skills all the way to the most complex.

I get what you’re saying, but the “fairness” argument doesn’t work for me. It wasn’t fair at all when I went through and some really good pilots in 38 classes got sent off to non-fighters and UAV’s because there weren’t any fighters in the drop. Juxtapose that with now where kids graduating 18/19 are getting fighters. That’s not “fair” either. The USAF needs to fill cockpits and motivated individuals should be able to give themselves an edge within the structure of the program. This would also empowering flight commanders to have some control of vectoring if a guy is a totally selfish prick and doesn’t do anything to help out and be a bro. On the issue of accessing the sim building, have it available 24/7 but manned normal hours. I’m sure it’ll get broken or something, but these people are military officers. We trust them with opening and closing SCIFs and accessing SAP material as Lt’s, I think using the T-6 sim is okay. And if they’re fucking around to the point of breaking the sim, boot them out of UPT. This whole topic to me is odd because so many people are convinced we are going to produce terrible aviators that will kill themselves or not be able to accomplish the mission without doing UPT the same way we did in Vietnam. In my current community (U-28), I’d gladly take a smart kid that was T-6 only trained. Main reason for that is we put them in the copilot seat and most of their mission duties aren’t flying the airplane at all. The second reason for that is we have companion PC-12 trainers where you can go practically anywhere you want VFR or IFR and develop great air sense. That companion trainer is amazing to develop young aviators and I think that would help a lot. Admittedly, the PC-12 variants we fly have identical avionics and for all intents and purposes the performance is similar so that wouldn’t work in a lot of communities. Having some T-6 or T-7 (T-38 could work but I know they’re very in the tooth) sitting on the ramp for young bucks to cruise around in and build time would be great. I’m not personally a fan of the C-172 and similar as companion trainers because they’re just so different in performance than the assigned MWS. It’s better than nothing though.

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That's a luxury AD squadron can't afford with the upgrade burden right now. As I was leaving my last ops squadron, they cut the MQT/FLUG syllabus to a single "low aspect" BFM sortie and one high aspect.

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But nowhere near the level of New York and New Jersey. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

All the previous boards I have applied too that require the 369 simply want you to attach the filled out DD 369 with your info and then the squadron itself will submit it for a record check if they so choose.

So "2' on all of the advice above from your post to now. That said, wife originally carried a S&W .38. She got an airweight for it's lightness but that made it a sumbitch to shoot and thus she wouldn't. After about 20 rounds, I too was done with it. At that time, I carried an XDS .45 and loved it. Small, thin, made a big hole in the target. However, we both switched to carrying a S&W Shield in 9mm for outside the home use. For her, it's a manageable recoil in a fairly light platform. For me, it's a case of if we both carry the same model, she can use mine and I can use hers (sts) should that necessity arise. Ability to swap magazines too. I put night sights on both. Inside the house, it's a scattering of other 9mm platforms in convenient places.

I get it, some units have the iron. Some not as much. But blanket statements like that make me chuckle.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!! Getthefuckouttaherewiththatshit...... Funniest shit I’ve read all week.

Federalism, 10th Amendment, these are all good problems to have! I don’t want Trump or anyone in the federal government have that much power. You guys give him and the position way too much credit. I’ll take decentralized federalism over the false security of centralized control found in other countries any day. This is bigger than Covid with a less than 0.1% mortality rate.

Lol-we waste so much money on bullshit. Prime example, there are still many offices that are suppose to be “teleworking” that usually provide “support” to the force during the non China virus times. Yet somehow the people hacking the mission continue flying and deploying without them. Cut the 69 billion pointless jobs on bases we have and we would have enough money for a new fleet of Phase 2, 3 trainers and god knows what else. Don’t get me started on how much time/money we waste on whatever the social justice hot topic of the month is. let’s be honest, the Air Force long ago decided your flying ability wasn’t really that important. Who was on the party planning committee and spending time in school is what matters to the bobs. This attitude has finally trickled down to UPT. Edit for grammar. I shouldn’t post before I’ve had my coffee.

Good capability additions to be sure if only money grew on trees that were planted on every AF base but if there were to be a US mil operator for this the USMC would likely be it. Too expensive for the Coasties and not enough assigned mission(s) requiring this capability for the AF to invest in a fleet of 30 to 50 aircraft, the Marines, maybe as they get back to their Naval / Amphibious roots with the direction the Commandant is taking them, necessary to prepare for Pacific shenanigans. Thinking about the article (Bring Back the Seaplane from WOR), the problem with the current feasible model (Shinmaywa US-2) for the US (maybe the Aussies too) for military amphibious airlift is the lack of a ramp for parallelized cargo or vehicle delivery to austere locations. Don't see that feature on the Chinese AG600 either. People and their personal gear to a remote distant island(s) would be no problem, but something that could really have an appreciable effect on the fight like a small SAM battery or other system/cargo, don't see how it would carry and deliver it without an unacceptable amount of ass pain. We still need a seaplane though 😉

I’m just glad their fact sheet doesn’t say you can track to Bears or Backfires from the T-1 track.

How long are guys sitting casual before starting UPT now? I think we should start those casuals on ground school immediately and get them some basic instructions before they start UPT and give them access to the sim building. Give them basics to develop their hands and some instruction for primacy and that way, they can start the syllabus ahead of most guys and trim time off of how long UPT takes. If the goal is truly to produce talented aviators, let the motivated ones work on it instead of some bullshit casual job. Get rid of syllabus deviation and shit like that and allow students to take care of events themselves ahead of time. Just rewrite those events to make them hours requirements and assign some IP’s to ensure they’re not going full stupid with what they’re doing. Then give them something like a checkride prior to UPT start to ensure they’re at a standard and start them on the syllabus. I honestly think with some basic instruction with this type of training you could cut out large portions of contact and local instrument sorties.

BURN THE WITCH!!! How dare you say more sims isn’t the answer! BURN!!!

It’s almost like the thing that makes you a more experienced pilot that is better at flying tasks is...more flying.

I know several WSOs who are great dudes and solid “force multipliers” in the strike eagle. They kick ass, and I mean that. But I also have a lot of previous strike friends now flying F-16/15C/35 and all of them have a similar statement: flying with 10% of the WSOs was great and increased effectiveness in the strike, but the other 90% were boat anchors for one reason or another (and one reason may be the pilot’s inability to work well with a specific WSO, so the PCF can also be on the pilot).They would never want to go back to 2 seat and are incredibly glad to be flying single seat. Haven’t talked to a single one of these guys who wishes they had a WSO in their new jet. So, it’s not that GIB=bad bro, it’s just that technology has well surpassed the need for one in fighter aircraft (outside of the strike, which is obviously specifically meched for 2). Guys can be offended all they want at this post, but it won’t make it any less true.

Uh oh, now I’ve done it. 🙄 So, are all the F-22s and F-35s just missing a seat in your world?

I did RJs from 2013-2017 at Offutt (non-EWO). Omaha was a surprisingly great town to live in. The winters were cold and its a long drive to get away. But otherwise the wife and I enjoyed it. Cost of living wasn't bad. Nice downtown scene. The area around base was decent compared to a lot of bases. I felt like there was a lot of politics in the Wing, with the "front end" and "back end" crew members being split into different units. The RJ has three officer AFSCs on its crew, and there were elements in each "tribe" jockeying for relevance. But that seemed to go away during deployments. I really enjoyed the mission. From the EWOs I worked with, the theme was that guys who preferred a stable family life went RJ. The single dudes who loved travel and per diem went CB and CS. The more high speed EWOs were always being groomed for WIC. But if I remember right, they also had opportunities to do JOCCP, which is a much more rare and interesting track IMO.

With the benefit of hindsight, what should he have done differently? whatever your answer is, imagine trying to implement that COA in the Feb 2020 environment with the other party calling you racist for curtailing travel from China. There was so much flip flopping on recommendations in the early days, that all politics aside I’m really curious what you think was so obvious.

To be fair...the MQ-9 won't see it either

The reality is that the AI jet will win the fight... only to mort on the RTB when its sense-and-avoid system doesn't see the MQ-9.

They may have the greatest drop video ending ever...

Don't feel bad at all. I spent 4 years at DLF with no airline service. Back then, we drove these things called "cars" to where we wanted to go. Everyone crying about no airline service needs to give it a try. Get a fast "car" and go. With your buds. You can be at SAT airport in about 2 hours. No different than flying out of DLF. And a lot more convenient. BTW... front gate of DLF to front gate of Randolph in 2+12. On a Friday. Going through the city at rush hour. (According to a friend... not that I approve of such behavior from 22 year old student pilots.) That was when the Auger Inn was "a thing". Oh... and when you see a Border Patrol airplane at 50' AGL flying east-bound, down the shoulder of Hwy 90, and they pass you... and then YOU decide to pass THEM... it's pretty fun. I had a blast in DLF. There's no reason you can't. Even if you're from "up north" and used to having 1,000,000 people in a square mile of city. Give it the college try.

Oxidized wings all the way. They look far better than the shiny wings in all uniform combinations