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Oh my god, the horror, surely there aren’t tens of thousands of pilots who have done this for decades and are currently doing it now, without any automation at all.

Honest question: What’s the safety record of communities that fly single pilot hard IFR look like vs the heavy communities? Related: what’s the cost (monetary, lives, collateral damage) of putting, say, an F-16 in the dirt vs. a large transport category aircraft? Also related: Would the single seat communities ever consider ditching their chutes and pinning their seats for the duration of any flight? Also, also related: How often do single seat guys fly single ship, without mutual support? Ever have lead set your shit straight when you were a clueless wingman & used up all your brain cells trying to walk and chew gum? That’s the AC’s role in a big airplane.

BQZIP's Mom...

Unfortunately my friend, you have been had. While I do not agree with right wing/evangelical ideology - republicans are not actively trying to destroy America. Their fringes have been contained. Democrats have not only failed to contain their fringes, the fringe population grows stronger every day. The president and everyone on down in that party actively advocates for fringe policies. Actively advocates for them every day. Having a conversation with anyone who voted this garbage into office is no longer an option. That party either splices out the haters of America and sends them packing to make a third party, or they remain haters of America.

A certain meme producer on a certain platform has been calling loudly, screaming even, for anyone flying the -46 single pilot to be blackballed by the airlines. That may be where the ALPA talk is coming from

Can't agree with you there. The transgender horror show is on the news every day. Unchecked illegal immigration is on the news every day. Drug infested tent cities, BLM, unfund the police, very late term abortions, and on and on. All over the news/entertainment feeds every single day. The only thing I can think of that would cause you to make that statement is that you no longer consider those to be fringe ideals.

VMC only, like fighter pilots?

It’s threatening one of the dems sources of voters and reducing the effectiveness of a destabilization tool used to help make current America look bad. There is no other rational answer.

Single pilot ops in a heavy jet the USAF didn't even want to pay for electronic checklists in. Every time I think about staying in longer, the AF is gracious enough to slap some sense into me.

Word is the NGAD is arriving the first of next year with the SR-72 forward deploying to Guam to replace 82nd RC-135s.

Oh no, someone got a medal before you did when you went through 40 years ago!

Wgaf

One thing that has made me chuckle throughout this whole thing is lots of pilots but tons of FE’s, Booms, Loadmasters, etc having story after story of how they saved the pilot flying from crashing etc. Is it really that insane to be flying in AMC? JFC you guys deserve DFC’s on every flight as dangerous as some of you make it sound. And also, I don’t know if the meme community knows it or not but the USAF isn’t represented by ALPA. I genuinely don’t understand that argument with this. By the same token should all T-38 guys and/or fighter dudes get black balled by ALPA because they willfully chose to disregard the almighty CRM and fly by themselves?

Another thought/data point to consider in this discussion: Years ago, there was great fanfare in the bizjet community as many manufacturers designed and certified some of their less complex aircraft for single pilot ops. Today, the number of these aircraft that are actually operated single pilot is exceedingly small. Why? It’s often impossible or prohibitively expensive to get insurance for such operations. Why is single pilot so hard to insure? Because the safety record is fukkking abysmal. And that’s for relatively simple aircraft that were expressly designed to be operated by a single pilot on relatively short A-B legs. Now, take an inexperienced kid who probably wasn’t at the top of his UPT class, put him in a 767, and ask him to do a complex mission that may last upwards of 10 hours and involve receiver refueling ops, a combat zone, coordination of dozens of receivers, bad weather, night, and systems degradation and/or emergencies. Sound smart to anyone here? This dumb idea has got to be somewhere in the top ten epically dumb ideas of all time. But hey, someone’s probably hoping for another star on this one, so what the hell, why the fuck not? Not that guy’s ass on the line. In fact, I’ll bet a hundred bucks that the brass that’s pushing this garbage will be the first in line demanding heads on a platter when guys inevitably start bending metal. EPICALLY. STUPID. IDEA.

She was known for her right handers.

My question is how she got such huge shoulders in #3. I think I have an idea......

I remember going to the international pub crawl in Itaewon for Halloween a few years ago while stationed at Osan and it was fucking crazy. While the event is tragic the fact it happened was 0 surprise to me. The videos are exactly what I remember when I was there.

Freaking nightmare fuel here....

This is the truth. We (USA 30 years ago) started the sellout of our future selves for the almighty dollar. We now get to pay for it.

Thanks FLEA!

I think the culture aspect is much more important than the policy aspect, since policy is much easier to change than culture. But: Conservatives need to rediscover capitalism. If they are still scoffing at the idea of "income inequality" then we are in trouble. Check out how the wealthiest .1% did during the pandemic. https://wolfstreet.com/2022/09/26/my-wealth-disparity-monitor-september-update-qt-rate-hikes-dropping-stocks-bonds-reduce-outrageous-us-wealth-disparity/ What we have now is corporatism, and it's bad. As long as the government keeps a death grip on the macroeconomy (through Central Bank policy), the rich will continue to have better outcomes from better access. Beyond that, the 30 years experiment of globalism is burning to the ground around us. We killed the unskilled middle class in exchange for cheap TVs, and we funded the rise of our greatest geopolitical adversary in the process. Republicans (until Trump) are just at much to blame for allowing the wide scale infiltration of all areas of American life by the Chinese. That needs to end, and it's going to be painful. Always and forever, children are key to voters' hearts. There are a few areas the Republicans can really pull ahead. First, continue the fight against medicalizing trans kids. Next, as the social security and Medicare systems start to collapse under their debt, propose a new medical paradigm where old Americans have their unlimited medical costs capped in exchange for a new government policy that covers anyone under 20 for anything non-cosmetic. The most powerful country on Earth should not be paying to keep old fat people alive way past their expiration date while kids are medical victims of their parents' decisions/fate. A bonus, you take away one of the most traditionally Democratic campaigning strategies. Continue the push to return this country to a states-first mentality. The more issues we can push to the states, the more apparent the failings of progressive leadership will be. But it's not going to matter without conservatives taking the lead on the cultural front. And that's going to require the conversations I've been advocating for in this thread. We spent decades allowing the left to redefine reality, and they've been able to do so starting at a very young age, knowing that social change is measured in generations, not days, months, or years. That means conservatives are going to have to start now and plan on a very long and painful process of regaining the cultural narrative.

I’ve heard 66.66666% (repeating of course) of Peggy pilots at one base are non-current for receiver AR.

Make a KB-21 for that.

I find it offensive that the Army is still naming their aircraft after Indians (feathers). That's racist.

The part I struggle to understand is the -46 community is airframe limited.. not pilot limited. This whole thing is a (bad) solution in search of a problem. We got generals concocting weird scenarios in their heads where the AF is somehow super flush on FMC Peggy's with no one to fly them.

Those NGAD timelines aren’t rumor. The 7th Gen Army attack helos (AH-69 “Elizabeth Warrens”) from the 1/1064th CAB are the rumor.

Something overlooked is the single seat vs crewed aircraft mentality. I’ve flown some version of crewed aircraft since 2007. This year I switched to a single seat airframe and I just finished a T38 qualification. The stick and rudder was fairly easy, however the part that absolutely kicked my butt was getting past 15 years of crew mentality. That included things like not having the other dude talking on the radio, setting up approaches, running checklists, dealing with emergencies, etc. In a perfect world, a single pilot can fly the -46 without issue. When shit gets busy, it’ll be sketch at best, to downright dangerous, for that pilot to deal with the issues happening with the jet, and this whole experiment is geared towards the SHTF scenario. Without a lot of practice, I’d hazard to bet the guy flying the -46 by himself will have some subconscious crewed aircraft habits creep back in, which could be disastrous. And no offense to booms, I’ve flown with some really sharp dudes, but a boom isn’t the same as a pilot. The boom can help but it’s not the same as having another pilot in the seat. TLDR; crewed to single piloted ops is not as simple as it seems.

Guess you don’t know what “/s” means?

Maybe its a him/she/sher/theyz sorta identity thing. Planes have feelings too.

Tanker pilots who take command of tactical airlift wings and vs versa, and Phoenix crossflow airplane tourists who become squadron commanders in airframes they have 100 hours in without ever being squadron DOs. Specialization and actually being a professional in a single mission set is obviously a bad thing in AMC. That mentality has even crept into the Reserves.

The head honcho at AMC who is suggesting this is probably one of the best and most respected leaders in the Air Force. If he is so hell bent on doing this, he’s one of the few I would just trust as having his reasons. Now, what I don’t trust is middle management from Wing Leadership at McConnell and the staff not screwing up this concept, for example mission creep as you mentioned above.

Damage to the main shaft at 6969 Collins Ave, Miami Beach. Engineers aren't sure how long it will stay erect and residents are ordered to pull out. https://www.miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/miami-beach/article267933272.html

What on earth are you talking about? /s