Leaderboard

It gets better. https://taskandpurpose.com/news/air-force-general-mike-minihan-mobility/ “Lethality matters most,” he said. “When you can kill your enemy, every part of your life is better. Your food tastes better. Your marriage is stronger,” Minihan said.

Not to worry - the (checks notes...) AMC Commander's got the read on what the actual operational personnel in the service consider "the mission" ... (I think this is a great turn of messaging for the command by the way) https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3167080/win-or-die-amc-commander-presents-mobility-manifesto/ "The world turned upside down..." Chuck

The same chief bass that most pilots have outranked their entire careers? Who cares what a chief says about anything pilot? I would like to see that if it is the case.

I’m sure they be fine with it. Asian nations are known for their acceptance and lack of racism toward other cultures.

I stayed at the TWA Hotel at JFK the other day. It’s like a time warp. Wish I had more time to check it out fully, but min ground time. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

First time here…welcome to the Internet. Wild speculation based on second hand, unconfirmed statements. Enjoy my friend Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

It's hilarious watching everyone get spun up for one single question and so far nothing to back it up. I'm not a current Chief defender in the slightest but holy shit.

Super subjective question and your answers are going to vary greatly depending on a multitude of different factors, such as: airframe, state, rank, guard or reserve, deployment or stateside, income requirements, just to name a few. That’s why you didn’t get any responses. Every unit is going to be different. One place may have no copilots bumming because they all went to the regionals and another unit may have 20 full time bums. So to answer your question, like everything in the guard…it just depends.

Hey, practice makes perfect, or so I've been told.

I think most people skip over the fact that this is the first clean sheet tanker design in MANY years. They also miss that fact that the KC-390 tanker (minus the boom), is already in service with The Brazilian Air Force and The Hungarian Air Force. The Netherlands and Portugal both recently placed orders for five each. Before modification in the previous baseline configuration with three aux tanks it holds of 77,000lbs of gas. That number has gone up greatly after a big weight reduction mod and increased fuel tanks.

Exactly!!!

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.

Now, we must all fear evil men, but there is another kind of evil, which we must fear most, and that is, the indifference of good men

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.

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.

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.

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

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!

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🙄

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.

KC-Y was not the KC-135 replacement, it was the bridge tanker meant to address the shortage of booms in the INDOPACOM CONOP. If you watched the news the last year USAF made a lot of noise until Kendall decided to skip KC-Y and jump right to KC-Z which now defined by USAF as a family of systems. As many other programs are going "family" one can assume a host of requirements that can't be met by a single platform. I would think having several platform will reduce your efficiency but increase your capability. I also believe the KC-Z family will field our first LO tanker. That is because you are stuck in legacy thinking. The very nature of agile tankers means they don't have to park at Fortress Guam. I give huge props to General Miniham and a few others that are trying to break dogmatic thinking and flip the calculus back on the Chinese. We all know Guam is going to eat 1,000+ missiles on day one so what big thing had been done to protect the tankers? Aside from some Patriots that will tag a few of the inbound shots the only major move has been to lengthen and improve the runway at Tinian, great job you diluted the inbound missiles to 500. The Hudson Institute with no mandate from industry recently completed a Resilient Aerial Refueling Study which outlined the problem and examined the Agile tanker concept. A quick look at the AOR shows 254 airfields available for traditional tankers, lower runway requirement to 5000' and your options more than double, allow for dirt and you have completely diluted the Chinese missile advantage, widened the number of approaches by a factor of three, and allowed for FAR more gas on station. Potentially misleading, not intentionally and it really relates to the CONOP. Given the distances the KC-135 will have to operate from there is no way it can make it to the potential top off points and give 110K. When you operate an agile tanker closer to the fight, you have to acknowledge that proximity adds flexibility. Operating 500-750NM from a closer airstrip and being able to pass 75,000lbs+ at least equals if not exceeds a KC-135 trying to operate from Guam or other longer runways. Lets be real, you call bullshit on everything I say on here. I am sure you won't believe me, but having been on the aircraft, I can tell you your assumption is wrong. Never would I suggest we don't need strategic tankers, that concept has been proven in blood. What we need is new thinking and new ways to flip the calculus back on our adversaries and in my opinion Agile tanker does just that in a multitude of ways.

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.

Present at my squadron CAO today. CEP 0 on my trip to the range today.

Well, 83% of Americans disagree with you, but you keep thinking that lol. https://news.gallup.com/poll/398963/economic-confidence-improving-weak.aspx