Leaderboard

Related.... https://www.popsci.com/technology/merlin-labs-air-force-cargo-planes/ C-130J...go figure, wonder how well Merlin can fly a Day Vis LL? Or Max Effort LDG? Now with a UPT2.5 graduate upgraded AC in min time who is also a fast burning, minimum flying WG/CCE??

This is a growing sickness in our system. The ability to produce an excellent product or provide a great service seems to die with the founder. Then whoever the shareholder-elected board installs to run the company bleeds it dry one CEO at a time until a shell is left. Each pays themselves in stock options, takes on corporate debt to buy back shares and boost the price a few pennies, then quietly leaves a hundred million bucks richer while the stock works it's way down to zero. And when the consequences of their shitty management finally manifest, they are either long gone or pulling the handle on the golden parachute. Just look at Boeing. Capitalism is being raped by the modern financial system while everyone else argues over bathrooms and abortions. The Democrats have declared war on meritocracy and individualism, both prerequisites to a capitalist system, so that leaves the Republicans to save us. I'm doubtful. Tucker Carlson gets it, but he's a bit quick to embrace a conspiracy and his foreign policy views aren't playing out well either. Who will be our hero?

Exactly what I’m thinking. Some kid will upgrade, have no depth of experience to fallback on, and be sent to the wolves. GMAFB.

Samsies as @nsplayr. Bought some for me and the better half. As stated, crappy website and $10k annual limit per SSN, but it's something in this sea of turd options. It's always Woulda/Coulda/Shoulda and that hindsight is always correct/you would have always played it expertly. If you'd sold at $80k you'd have felt like a genius looking back now, but you'd have gone through a stretch of kicking yourself when it rode from $80-$137 as "having missed the boat." I had a stock I had bought for $1.18/share and sold north of $8/share in my Roth and felt pretty good about a 700+% gain. Until it went up and hit a high of almost $250/share and would have been north of $300k in profit (if I'd actually held it that long; which I probably wouldn't have). Counter point: held another one (wasn't gonna miss out on those gains this time!) and watched it go from $30k in the green to about $1500 up now. It's all gambling with a longer timeline to help fix mistakes (if you don't buy a total turd). Just keep plugging away and investing in the simple stuff (TSP stock funds, ETFs, Mutuals, etc.) and sit for the long haul for a majority. If you wanna gamble with some, it's everyone's prerogative. But, 99.69% of us aren't going to play it perfectly, most of the folks that were loudly spouting their market prowess sure do get quiet when they're wrong which gives most an improper picture, and there's always a victor's bias with folks that "called" this or that move, while not addressing the majority of folks that were stone cold wrong (or even just right, but at the wrong time).

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-boeing-737-max-ceo-severance/boeings-ousted-ceo-departs-with-62-million-even-without-severance-pay-idUSKBN1Z92DQ Disgusting.

The Stearman is cheaper to operate and maintain.

Second to last and last page.

Baby steps. For starters, let's get the FAA (and everyone else) to agree that it's ok when two pilots are flying, if one decides to take a nap, in the seat, at cruise... while the other pilot stays awake. Why is this such a big deal? If we cannot get past that, then being OK " with fully RPS big jets doing cargo" is a long, long way from reality... and really shouldn't be discussed much until the former issue is solved.

People would roll over just as easily as they did last time. Med groups are still in masks and will be forever.

This seems like an insane solution lol. With coupled autopilot + autothrottles, all you need is software, you don't need some weird robot arm that's just a likely to turn into Skynet and impale me before taking over and crashing the jet into the White House or something out of a Michael Bay movie. That being said...I'm fully on board with fully RPA big jets doing cargo and etc. both over the oceans and CONUS, as well as remote-pilot augmentation for a manned crew.

You carry one of these in your flight bag? https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-4514916/Footage-shows-Darpa-s-robot-pilot-flying-737-sim.html Just on a regulatory basis, it’s certificated for two pilots, and the FAA isn’t very quick these days.

Final travel update: Made it to Denver after 9 (!) delays due purely to personnel reasons. Arrived home 13 hours after fragged. Both flights also didn’t have a gate to go to so we spent another hour sitting just outside the gate. And then my checked bag got lost. Other than that, no issues.

No way it gets approved. This ain’t Nam

Not to bust your bubble, OP, but the only place I’ve heard it called Strike Eagle II is your post. All the official literature calls it the “Eagle II”. That in and of itself is telling as to what Big AF intends to do with this platform, if it even survives. Read this

Her tag sticking out of her pants. Hot chick wanting an interview about a cock. Seriously, roosters can do some damage. Iv'e had chickens for over 20 years. My grandaughter loves to feed the chickens. I always keep a close eye on the rooster.

Galaxy brain level genius here if he thinks this makes him look good and Kinzinger look bad... These people have worms in their brains.

The judge in Doster v. Kendall just this morning certified a class action including all Air Force, Space Force, Guard/Reserve, Cadets, etc, and issued a Temporary Restraining Order prohibiting the AF from taking adverse action against unvaxxed members who filed a Religious Accommodation Request that is either still being processed or was denied. The TRO lasts 14 days, DoD has 7 days to respond and argue against class certification. At that point the judge either accepts DoD's argument, unlikely IMO, or more probably issues a Preliminary Injunction.

Just watched the Hunter Biden videos. That fact these aren't dominating the news cycle is a testament to a broken system. I know we only have 3 liberals here, but I'd love to hear a defense of the near media-blackout. If Eric Trump had 15 seconds of similar video leaked, it would have never ended. The dude flat out says his laptop, stolen by Russians, could be used to blackmail him. It's mind-blowing.

Is there only one shooter? So they shouldn't be covering other potential axis' of approach? I'm not saying they shouldn't have gone in, obviously they should have. I said this fits the description of an emergency situation. Put it this way. Look at the first handful of cops going in on the video. Do they look anything like any video you have ever seen of dudes going into a building? But they are moving towards the shooter. Then shooting, and then running. Panic. No idea what to do. Success in that environment requires speed and teamwork, which requires training to acquire. If one or two of them had straight up banzai'd the shooter, the outcome would have likely been hero of the day. But if the plan is rely on a hero emerging instead of training competence and confidence, well hope is not a tactic. So the lesson learned in debrief of this thing is to stop hiring pussies? Essentially "do better," great lesson learned....

When unarmed civilian parents are more willing to enter the building than tactically outfitted cops...I'd say the pussy label fits pretty well.

That's a complete lack of training. They have no idea what to do, they're out of ideas. Not knowing what to do, is what breeds that fear.

There's always an excuse. The guys hired in the last few years spent 10-17 years stuck at the regionals. The TWA guys got stapled twice. B-scale, mergers, integrations, bankruptcies, pandemics... It's always something. You either act as a unionist or the bad times will persist. You don't have to like it. I don't. But it's a unionized career, so act accordingly. You did, but others don't. I always find it funny when an old guy tells me about how when he was hired they said he'd be a captain in 5 years and they'd have to back up a dump truck full of money to his driveway. Then he got screwed by xxx or yyy and it took decades to get where he was "supposed to be." That's why he can't afford to follow the union guidance this time. Sorry. But don't worry, he tells me, you'll be a captain in 5 years and they'll have to back a dump truck full of money to my driveway, so I shouldn't worry about him acting like an independent contractor, it'll be different for me... Even after a pandemic these guys still don't see the irony or hypocrisy. But pilots are funny creatures...

What generation do you think made this possible? What's the average age in Congress? What generation has dominated academia for the past 30 years? Who ran the Fed? Obviously it's not an indictment on *all* boomers. There are plenty who lived honest, honorable lives. But anyone who decries the laziness, weakness, sensitivity, neediness, absence, wokeness, etc of a generation that is only just now reaching the age and ability to have influence over the vast systems they are a part of (millennials, the genZers are still completely subordinated) is being obtuse. Millennials did not create participation trophies. They didn't create infinite useless social-studies degrees to justify tuition costs for themselves. They didn't increase the tuition costs, nor did they increase the administrative staffs. They didn't change the interpretation of Title IX. They didn't put critical theory or Marxism into the curriculum, nor did they invent critical race theory or intersectionality. They didn't create CDOs, mortgage backed securities, or order-flow processing fees. They didn't set the interest rates to zero. They didn't rezone entire regions to prevent stable housing growth. They didn't lower the lending standards in 2002-2006, and they didn't bail out the banks when those lending standards destroyed them. They didn't invent Quantitative Easing and they didn't raise the debt ceiling a few dozen times. They didn't outsource our entire manufacturing base to a geopolitical adversary. They didn't come up with global warming and they certainly didn't fly their private jets to Davos to pontificate on carbon emissions. There's a huge list of societal changes that the US underwent from 1990-present, and the boomers were overwhelmingly steering the ship. Gen X certainly didn't help, but they were more profiteers than anything, and their sins, the wholesale destruction of the common polity through social media algorithms designed to increase marketing revenues, are another topic. I'm sure our generation will have our own sins, but that doesn't change the facts, or who owns them. The successful millennials who were lucky to have good parents (another factor that didn't used to matter as much in America), good genetics, and good timing should be wary of leaving the others behind. That evolved sense of fairness is not easily tamed. The boomers who created the greatest income inequality in modern American history will be dead by the time the bottom half radicalizes and starts "eating the rich." If the poor can't save (0% interest rates + inflation = savings destruction), can't invest (wildly overpriced equities), can't support a family on a single income, and especially when the implications of the Millennials being the first generation to be worse-off financially than their parents becomes the norm, cheap TVs and free phones won't keep them quiet.

The root cause is shitty/lazy parents for sure. They wanted to be their kid’s best friend instead of their parent and mentor. And because of that they’ve produced kids who are entitled, lazy, ignorant, etc. And did you call me a clown for buying trophies? My son’s participation trophy he received in t ball years ago went directly in the trash at the field - he learned a valuable lesson on attitude and effort that day. Several millennial parents were mortified, the difference years later is my son doesn’t have an attitude or work ethic problem, where as their “best friends” do (I know some of them personally, their kids are everything we’ve been talking about). And now that I think about it, my boomer parents (and friend’s boomer parents) worked hard to give us kids a good life within their means. They parented and mentored us instead of coddling us. They actually did a hell of a job raising that wild pack of animals (err, kids) back in the 80s and 90s. The point - blaming someone else (especially in the past) while sitting on your ass gets nobody anywhere. Again for the 3rd? time, adapt and overcome or be a whiny bitch who will go nowhere. It’s actually pretty simple.

I’m a PM for a bunch of engineers. Why am I the PM? Because I don’t have weaponized autism and I have a social science undergrad and STEM grad degree. Do you want to live in a world with all STEM majors? I sure as shit don’t. I also don’t want to live in a world full of philosophy majors. The worst pilots I ever flew with were STEM majors. Why? They’re too analytical and a lot of the time that doesn’t translate over to flying skill. Best pilots I flew with? Business/History majors.

Nothing has been selected yet and I am still in the camp of, "I'll believe it's happening when I see it on the ramp." Light attack and active duty AFSOC MC-12s were ideas that got really close to happening and then just didn't. It should be really cool overall, and Armed Overwatch will be a replacement for the U-28 fleet (in theory), so talk to an active U-28 CSO and ask them about their job. I'm happy to put you in touch with some if you DM me. ACJ CSOs should be able to speak competently too since those two communities share a lot of overlap in technology, mission sets, and mentality from my experience at least. If you want to fly Armed Overwatch, graduate Nav school #1 and rank U-28s at the top of your list. And probably put ACJs #2.

Admin Note: Sorry brabus, there's no way in hell I am going to delete a post with this picture in it!

Yeah I read that later but it just makes it worse for me. It's his own blood in those rooms and he's standing there.