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He is mentioned in the memoirs of several POWs, including Leo Thorsness (MoH recipient who at one point shared a cell with McCain) , Bud Day, and James Stockdale (also both MoH recipients). They did not speak ill of him then, nor when he ran for President in 2000 or 2008. I'm personally going to take the word of three MoH recipients over "some guy my dad knows whose uncle was a POW", or some swiftboat conspiracy theory website that looks like it was designed for free on geocites in 1997. Throwing spears at the mans grave is pretty classless, imho.

So Israel is going to foot some/all of a $10B bill to restart production? Suspect...but I’m all for them/LM doing this and the USAF piggybacking on it. I’m also not holding my breath.

So I put this here vs starting another thread that likely wouldn't be that long. Sean Connery died today, aged 90. The best James Bond ever. So suck it, Trebek!

Disagree. I've never met Pres Trump, but based on what I have seen of him I don't think I would like him personally. But I agree with enough of his politics that I would campaign for him if I somehow had a reputation that would help his campaign. Being a good person and being a good politician are unfortunately two different things these days.

Says a bunch of "POWs Were Left Behind" conspiracy theorists who weren't there. Could you find a few people out of the 500+ that were prisoners who didn't like him? Sure. Bud Day campaigned for him. That's all you need to know.

“Give me a committed B student with a boiling will to win over an A-plus scholar with a careerist agenda, and we’ll be on our way.” Dan Pedersen in his book “Topgun” about his founding of the Navy Fighter Weapons School.

There are a lot of levels to this, but it’s overall culture problem in the Air Force and in society in general. As the article said, military service isn’t as appealing as it once was, and a lot of American youth aren’t even eligible for service. A lot of the motivated type A, willing to learn inner city youth dedicate a lot of their time to sports, as culturally that is viewed as one of the only ways out. These kids are smart, motivated, athletic, we need to find a way to reach these populations. (Not just the athletes, but I think they provide a larger pool). You hit the nail on the head with the chess club bs. We need to change our recruiting and our officer training programs. Trying to convince any youth to spend 4 years at the academy or in ROTC marching in circles wearing blues and folding shirts into perfect squares to (maybe) get a opportunity to fly is a tough sell(and that’s assuming we give them scholarships). Ya, there is OTS, but in the context of low income youth they probably aren’t going to have a 4 year degree. I don’t have all answers, but trying to only get 4.0 GPA “smart” cadets isn’t the best strategy to me. I get we aren’t the Army, but their ROTC program seemed to be a lot better structured than ours. While they were out in the field doing land nav, building shelters, learning weapons/tactics, we were in Blues marching in the gym and doing retarded GLPs bouncing balloons around and formatting Memos. I don’t give a shit how your memo is formatted, I’m probably not going to read it anyway. 99% of our force isn’t going to be on the ground running and gunning, but I think there is a lot more to take away from that training than marching and memos. When I’m flying around bum fuck no where, and everyone on the ground wants to kill me, I want a diverse crew/team (not talking skin color, I don’t give shit how much pigment is in your skin or what set of genitals you have). Having the 4.0GPA person brings something to the table, but so does the country boy who can live off the land and fix anything, the inner city kid that fought tooth and nail and has “street smarts”, the athlete, the immigrant, etc. Filling the rated ranks with people that checked the “chess club” box is a major contributing factor to the cultural/bureaucratic nightmare of a organization we have become.

🎵"Gold bond powder, you are a friend of mine"🎵

On the campaign trail - “In 2010 at Kunsan...” ”I’m going to stop you right there; I’m out, good luck to the other candidates”

Don't let the USAFA boys band see this

I would just say pilots are well equipped for it (as are most vet officers from an ops career field) You have the right degree of charisma, government knowledge/expereince, intelligence, aggressiveness and patriotism. Being a veteran to some degree gives you an electorate advantage although it's hard to quantify. It certainly doesn't hurt though. And holding a TS means you likely lived a fairly clean lifestyle free of scandal.

I think the unwillingness to talk, even within “private” settings (phone call, face to face, etc.), is a negative byproduct of the safety empire. We immediately debrief every sortie and freely share lessons learned, but as soon as something bad happens, there is no debrief/lessons learned for anyone outside the immediate circle for months on end. Guys with direct knowledge of a mishap should be able to provide any initial info/lessons learned to bros around the community...maybe not on a public Internet forum, but certainly privately (including phone and email). Example: The Holloman strafe mishap that killed the contractor. I was a couple days from my guys flying CAS with hot guns, none of whom had flown CAS in the last year or so. I sought privately any debrief/LL info, as I wanted to pass those initial LL onto the guys; I was concerned about our low proficiency on the heels of a fatal mishap that occurred doing exactly what we were about to do. What I got was zero info, in the name of “safety process.” Cool, because of our safety overlords, we were denied any lessons learned, and pressed on. Turns out we got into a very similar situation a week later, except the pilot had enough experience to recognize it and avoid any problems. We literally almost repeated exactly the same mistake a week later, completely ignorant of what happened at Holloman and any initial lessons learned we could have applied to our own flying. That is a massive foul. Same exact thing happened recently with the two F-35 landing mishaps. Separated by a week, no initial info/thoughts passed to the F-35 CAF. Hill repeats similar conditions as Eglin. Only after that does an SII come out about landing. Could have easily killed a pilot a week later; all we had to do was pass initial thoughts debrief-style and Hill may not have happened. I flew probably 20 times after the mishaps before I knew what was going on...20 times I could have fucked up/ignorance is bliss. That’s bullshit.

Concur that post accident discussions, if done with appropriate maturity, can be a healthy way to grow as aviators. However it’s also true that speculative discussions without facts often devolve into useless shit, much like eyewitness reports. Unhelpful. i go back and forth. I love to chat with experienced people who can offer insights I wouldn’t otherwise know into this crucial question: how could a couple professionals trying their best to avoid an accident still experience one? The answer is relevant to me today. Right now. And the safety process doesn’t satisfy. On the other hand, attempts at having that discussion without emotional hysteria tainting the outcome are statistically unlikely. That’s why seasoned aviators try putting a lid on the talk right away— they’ve lost friends only to immediately afterwards listen to uninformed speculation that usually trends downwards and helps no one. It’s a tough situation. i think we can’t avoid human nature, which is to speculate. Since we can’t avoid it, the best option is to demonstrate the appropriate and mature way to execute it. Which I think this forum mostly does well, despite inevitable chuckleheads who abuse anonymity and dangers of misinterpreting the tone of the written word. The key here is everyone just assume the best about each other, as we all assume the best about the 2 victims of this tragic crash, and seek together finding ways we can avoid such a fate. To them 🥃

Here we are again, Huggy...So then, once the investigation is over, is it now the time to start speculation? I tire over this concept that speculation can’t be a valuable tool for pilots to discuss scenarios that aren’t driven by historical fact. While the platform for such speculation is a real cause for concern, pilots should be both sharing personal facts and talking hypothetically to be their best...this absolute tank opinion on talk is unhelpful. If one believes this forum is an inappropriate place, that’s one thing...but, speculation is actually healthy if done for the right reasons. Certainly no one needs to be sharing their speculation with the family (or in view of the family, thus the only possible rational argument from keeping it out of here). Although, I think it should 100% be here...that is (one of) what this place is for. I can agree either way on that one because I understand we can’t contain what we say in here anymore like we could 10 years ago...although, I’m not sure I think it’s a horrible thing it even gets out if people could just stick to saying smart things. Pilots should speculate with pilots. It breeds healthy discussions. Discussions keep us safer. Keep privileged information just that...once the report is briefed...discussions become stifled. It’s just my opinion, agree to disagree. ~Bendy Sent from my iPad using Baseops Network mobile app

I'm calling it for Trump now. Biden is visiting Minnesota, when everyone is saying Texas is a tossup. Biden should be living in Texas if that were true. Trafalgar has Trump up in Pennsylvania, and Michigan. Close in Wisconsin. People are going to be so mad this upcoming Tuesday.

Too early to speculate. 🍺

Not a liberal but literally NONE of that matters. Although I'm sure some grandpa's back during WW2 bemoaned that the worlds greatest generation didn't know how to change wagon wheels or work a plow. The world is changing. Self sufficiency is a nice ideal but you have to recognize civilization is held on the pillars of cooperation, not on the pillars of individualism.

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2020/10/27/biden-becoming-president-not-make-everything-suddenly-normal-column/6042756002/ Screw both Trump and Biden. It’s up to us as individuals to stop treating the other side as if they were some kind of fully-functioning mentally challenged person simply because we disagree with their ideologies... Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

All political stuff aside, if you don’t like flyovers then you’re a commie pinko fuck and I don’t like you.

Meanwhile, in the UK:

Slackline?

That tends to happen when people go through NPC University.