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I think the “why” with a lot of these life changes is that folks at varying levels of authority think this is the way this country is going. A small, vocal, lunatic fringe wants to go this way and they know how to amplify their voice via social media and other key areas. However, the VAST majority of people don’t care for this stuff. Has anyone ever met a chick that actually cares if the group is addressed as “guys”? I’ve flown with several gay folks and they never made the slightest bit of a deal out of any of this stuff. Honestly, the root cause of alot of this is well intentioned (but wacky) liberal, upper class white women. This is not a new phenomenon. They’re so sure they’re championing marginalized communities (Latinx anyone?) that they can’t be bothered to actually learn anything about the issues. I knew this was all bullshit when we had the meetings after George Floyd and I took it upon myself to try to really learn about the issues. I brought up discussions of civil rights going back to the Civil War up through Malcolm X vs MLK Jr, recidivism with black men, war on drugs, crack cocaine epidemic and the effects on the above, disenfranchisement, etc and got blank stares. Someone brought up “white people bad” and we were back on timeline. Bottom line, educate yourself on this stuff and you’ll learn something and also realize how much of our national discourse is fueled by the sound byte and online engagement. But that’s not where real people actually exist.

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Ignore and downplay this garbage at your own peril. This is not some annoying side show of worthless CBTs. Ever since 2020 and George Floyd the extreme far left is not afraid to show that a pillar of their political agenda is racial and identity politics. These people are now in positions of power all over the govt and the DoD. They are not doing this out of some goodwill gesture to have a more accepting military force. These folks hate the military; the entire mil structure is a giant sucking chest wound of money that they believe would be better served being poured into social programs. What better way to weaken an entity you hate than degrade it by instilling and indoctrinating as many people to your agenda as possible while simultaneously turning off the main base of talent that the military used to recruit from. A chief of diversity for the Pentagon has legitimately and openly racist tweets from not that long ago towards white people. This is not some FoxNews fantasy, it’s really happening.

Ultimate slap in the face to your opponent is when you put meme's directly on your aircraft

Bad day to be a Russian pilot yesterday. Seems the situation in the Kharkiv region is bad enough that the Russians are willing to accept high attrition of aviation assets to try and blunt the Ukrainian advance. Good to see the Stinger is still a leading distributor of MIG/SU parts across the globe.

Wife and I each got 10k, planning to get another 10k through the "gift" allowance before the rates drop in November. If you have a company you control or a family trust, that's another few sets you can purchase Our "emergency fund" of ~ 6 months expenses are in the process of being converted from a high yield savings account (2%) to 26 week t-bills (3.5-4%). Just put 1/3 into the t-bills every 8 weeks with the auto-reinvest option. Now if you need the emergency fund, disable the reinvestments and you'll get the first 1/3 no later than 8 weeks, with the rest every two months after that. Still got to maintain enough cash in the high yield savings account to get you through that first two months. Depending on your situation, you can modify this plan using a rotation of longer (or shorter) duration bonds, but that's going to depend mostly on how much cash you want to keep on hand.

Gas comes out of a boom a lot faster than a hose and drogue. That matters when you're refueling bombers who want a lot of gas.

All tankers are combat tankers. Not a whole lot of combat (for the air force, that is) without them.

People used to say that the USAF favored RPAs because they didn’t have to risk an expensive pilot. The fact that they’re letting all their expensive pilots walk out the door shows that clearly isn’t the case.

AAL probably painted that jet in TWA colors then specifically made sure TWA guys didn't fly it. You know, just to fuck em one more time! 🤣

This, if implemented right now, also requires investing in over the horizon control of the droids that may or may not exist from night 0 to night X of the war. With a JADC2 architecture and AI enabled operations, you still are contesting basic control of the aircraft and may have limited ‘cognitive’ maneuver ability when the fight changes to a mode not contained in the model (potentially still true Re: aircraft control with a human operator present, but the barriers to entry are much higher, riskier, and likely to be discovered/countered.) Our fascination with unmanned aircraft was largely sold to the American public as “risk reduction” over the last 20 years. When the risk becomes “no gas = no fight = no effects on the enemy,” it is worth risking an American life to avoid creating center of gravity in the cyber and/or space domains. It’s marginal gains and an extreme example, but a peer fight will be a game of inches; you don’t get solutions like this with drones: https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-story-of-north-star-the-kc-135-stratotanker-that-saved-an-f-4-phantom-over-the-atlantic/amp/

You speak up, you’re doxxed by the militant tolerant left.

Only have put 50 rds through the new Glock 10mm, so hard to say confidently, but I’d lean more towards .40 (snappier feel vs. slow and pronounced). I will say it’s been much better to shoot than I thought it would be. Of course that’s only with 180 FMJ, we’ll see how it is with the 220 hard cast I’ll be loading.

This whole thing is happening because everyone thinks it's not a big deal. It's pure insanity. What's next?

I've been floating around baseops for a while and now figure I can speak to the fox news article. First this isn't something new this year we have had these diversity and inclusion briefs/discussions at the academy for a few years but it sounds like now someone decided to leak the stuff to the press. I can say that when this stuff happens 69% of cadets don't agree but also don't dare to speak up, because how dare you contradict the gospel in front of someone who believes it (especially leadership) and don't be the douche who makes a brief go longer than needed. But behind closed doors most people don't believe it, agree that it is stupid a waist of time and possibly more divisive than cohesive. Most cadets are not buying in to this but they know the thing to do is just nod your head and stay out of the spotlight.

1. Waaaaaay more incidents of broken probes and baskets--and Stoker is 100% correct, boom AAR is much faster. 2. Interesting idea...maybe the seaplane thread needs to discuss slapping a boom pod onto the floating -130!

I sympathize with your plight, and applaud your honest self-analysis. To answer your questions: step one: cancel existing mandates step two: accountability from those in power who lied to us step three: determine origin and respond with wrath Reconciliation is impossible without accountability, and it starts with Fauci.

I wish they would have put in an electric seat to take the boom to the ARO. I hated that long walk lol. I could have eaten my warm meal in the electric seat ride to the back.

Lots of agile mavic pros

If the CBT is forgettable, let’s not do it. If it’s genuine, our elected leaders have a duty to debate the content before new ideology is mandated upon the force. Either way, how am I “taking the bait?” Your commentary is logically incoherent. And nice dig at a past generation of war fighters who answered the nations call. Nothing makes your point more convincing than disparaging those who went before us🙄

Hugo, even if Tucker brings it up... it's either true or it's not. If it's true... and even if the cadets ignore it... it is a very concerning shift of the AF Culture for many people.

Have fun calling people "Genderfluid". Tell me again how this kills more bad guys?

I was always told that Y was a second buy of the X tanker to replace the -135 and Z was a larger format tanker for the -10 replacement. Not saying they didn't change the definition sometime in the last 20 years or maybe my info was wrong. AMC also thought leasing 767s from Boeing was a good idea the first time round too. Has anyone looked at how we are going to get, maintain, and resupply millions of pounds of jet fuel out of an austere location? Yes, dispersing our assets is a great idea for survivability...but each sortie for a KC-135/KC-390 is going to be 200K+ in gas. You're talking millions of pounds of fuel somehow being refilled in a dirt strip...and I don't think an oil pipeline is going to be easily hidden nor is an oiler ship offload facility. This isn't going to be a FARP for a couple helicopters that we can push off the back of a C-130 and keep the Army happy for a week. This COA is talking serious amounts of fuel. I'd just be curious what the plan for that would be or is this a disposable FOB that we will fly 2-3 sorties out of and then bug out back to a hardened facility (that probably would be a smoking hole).

Clearly! I love when you see that stuff happen because their responses are telling. It really let's you know who has a solid grasp on their side of the agenda (which every news...err...entertainment outlet does), and who is just reciting the talking points given to them. My favorite us when they just cut to commercial rather than counter lol. *I dislike all mainstream "news" equally.

He was clearly caught off guard…most of CNN’s guests are picked because they agree on the issue they’re trying to promote on the network. Little different than any of the other entertainment/news channels.

Just imagine if any non-Democrat was acting like this as President, how many news broadcasts, discussion panels, and late night comedy shows this would be on, discussing said President’s fitness to serve.

Sorry to hear about your misfortune at UPT, and correct me if I’m wrong, but can’t you just walk away at this point-no commitments? I’m sure you are plenty disappointed and feel you’d still like to serve somewhere. However, there is no greater dead end street than a C-130H Nav. It’s like being a VHS tape player salesman or something. The H’s are going away as fast as Lockheed can spit out J’s and all the Navs are trying to get their civilian ratings and get to an airline. If I were in your shoes, and Uncle Sam was cutting me loose, I’d go get civilian flight training and race your buds from UPT right to the same job at Delta, or whatever. Best of luck.

Nah, you guys are just confusing my apathy for opposition. But I’m still reading your measured responses and promise as soon as my lightbulb goes on that this is a national emergency and not just some anecdote that’s getting blown out of proportion then I’ll be fangs out too. In both the unit and the airline I’m yet to have a single person tell me their preferred pronoun, but daily I’m listening to someone’s rant about wokeness, so I guess my perspective of what we’re spending too much time talking about differs from y’all. I don’t plan to, so I just…won’t. No objection to the “won’t kill more bad guys” sentiment though. I had a former squadron commander tell me it was more important to go to SOS than IPUG. CCs say dumb stuff all the time. And if that gets under the skin of a Flt/CC then maybe they’re being too, uh, fragile. You’re right it is true, but lots of things are simultaneously true while also not being that big of a deal. Where did the leap occur that a single slide titled “What Can I Do?” is the same thing as a concerning AF culture shift? We’ve all complained for years that the suicide awareness training hasn’t done anything to stem suicides, and I’ll be the first to confess that if I ingested a biological agent my 80% SABC test score wouldn’t save my bacon….why are we running with pitchforks to the internet as if this is any different? Amen to your first sentence. Second one is interesting. Could be wrong but I’m unaware of politicians having a direct hand in debating and deciding on our courseware slides. You’re in favor of that though? I see unintended consequences of setting that precedent. I never intended a dig and upon further reflection still don’t see where the disparagement of those who answered the call occurred, but I’ll apologize for however you took it. Would you feel less sensitive if I changed it to “great aunt who retired from Wells Fargo?” Kind of have to tip my hat to the irony of you reading into my words and getting offended by something I neither outright said nor intended though. Maybe someone should put together some training so I can recognize inadvertent microaggressions and avoid triggering any groups? Oof!

I don’t know, some of y’all’s ability to get triggered by a random CBT slide is impressive. I can personally attest to a career’s-worth of completing CBTs and having no idea what was in them, but maybe I’m the weird one. Still I’d wager that 99% of cadets would’ve already forgotten about it too other than now their great uncle who fought in ‘Nam is emailing them demanding to know why the hell they’ve gone woke. I get that Tucker keeps bringing this stuff up to get us all in a froth but oof, it’s gotta just be exhausting repeatedly taking that bait.