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I feel this so much right now. In the last week, I've probably spent 9+ hours just trying to get a single PRF through the wickets for a promotion board. The DOD about lost a .gov laptop through the window (yeetus computus!). I could write a page or two on how all the issues in this process are great metaphor for how we're doing. Small example, I call the phone number that the rejection e-mail told me to call for help. They say, "oh sorry, we can't help you with that issue and we can't transfer you to the people who can, you must go through mypers (which means you can't talk to a human)." WTF, why even list the number!? In other news, anyone know a fix date so our e-mail doesn't lock up/shut down every time I accidentally mouse over the persons name? Or a fix date on when my flight pay will actually pay out correctly...in 2018, I was told it would be 2020, so we got that going for us! Don't you mean... -Flew 330 cbt hrs w/excptnl prof; gurnt'd success in high-prof msns & tgt neutr'ztion; 100% CMDREUCOM obj met!

Totally off topic but I spent 9 hours writing 1206's for annual awards today for people who don't event want them. That is more hours than I have flight time in the last two months, and I am (supposedly) a CMR instructor pilot in the CAF. We are going to lose the next war.

FLIR and an independent commanders sight for one… The best T90s the Russians had were still woefully lacking in capabilities like that across the force. T80s almost entirely across their fleet only have a single first generation FLIR for the Gunner to sight with. A tank that can potentially move and shoot at night will be a serious problem for them to deal with. Designed survivability considerations for another. Again… the most critical piece to having a viable Armor force in this attritional fight they are in is keeping the crews alive. Abrams forgoes the storage issues that an auto loading tank like T72/90 can’t adjust for. The only solution for the Russian tanks to enhance survivability is to only go with the ammo in the carousel and get all the stowed rounds out of the top turret. That cuts their total combat load in half. Abrams may only have 6 rounds in the ready rack, but if they penetrate the ammo and cook it off, you don’t lose the crew most importantly and the tank can be recovered and fixed much more easily than one whose turret blew off and burned with a belly full of molten copper/magnesium. Anti tank missiles and small ambush tactics with infantry will give Armor fits. It’s supposed to be Combined Arms for a reason. However a weapon like Javelin doesn’t really exist in a Russian formation. They’ve got a good collection of small portable anti tank guided missile systems, but again the old quantity over quality. And that’s where the fact we are also giving IFV/APCs over as well. Stuff more survivable to get the dismounted forces forward with that mobile protected firepower to take and hold objectives through mutual fire and maneuver. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

"Fire a clip into a 7 meter target, Aim for the head". I'm dying here.

We lost the last one, but GOs weren’t fired so the organization already forgot. To me the worst part of 1206s is lack of feedback. I spent hundreds of hours trying to get folks recognized and never received feedback on why they were or were not the chosen one. Our processes can’t work with shitty/toxic GOs running them, and we’ll never convince inspiring officers to stay unless we treat them better. Which we can’t do because we’re managed by shitty/toxic GOs…. The downward spiral is tragic.

Good thing my adsc expires 2024 Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

“Crew servicing/forklift training”: You pilots have gotta learn how to load those 100 UAVs on the tanker. We’ll be developing a technique whereby we depressurize and open the cargo bay in flight so we can deploy the things over the battlefield. You will then enter an orbit pattern over enemy forces, open the cockpit window, and “empty the clip” of your M9 into the heads of our enemies. We are calling this concept “gunship lite”. Oh and one more thing men; you will be doing all of this single pilot. Any questions? No? Good. Now, move out, we’re going to war boys!

“We will fight in 2025.” Pretty big stones for a GO to say that about the #1 adversary state when he isn’t even the CSAF, let alone the Chairman.

I wish every MAJCOM commander were as focused as Mini.

Do yourself a favor and stop pondering...

I'm still trying to figure out why I had mx officers. Here have some rope, let me know if you need some more. Dang! what happened to that guy, he was only here two weeks, Darn! I didn't even know his name. Only thing he said to me I'm a Cal Berkley Graduate and I'm smarter than you. Boy Howdy did he impress the shit out of me. The only ones I ever needed were O-5's and above. If I was King of the USAF, my plan was how Chuck Yeager started his career as a commissioned officer. He started as rated mx officer who flew all the FCF's and OCF's. Maybe it should go to the way the Naval Ops sq does it, pilots have to do leadership on the ground by leading mx troops. If your name was on the side of the jet, it was your responsibility to write the Crew Chiefs EPR and make sure he gets an end of tour medal. Rated Majors would run mx and hopefully by the time they get their own CC job they understand health of the fleet and just not sortie count. MX and Cop Sq's are huge and have very busy First Sgt's, if you know you know, historically those guys are treated like shit and are pounded with constant extended 12 hour shifts with no days off. Which to leads to why they are always undermanned because no one reenlists, the enlistee raises his hand the first time, but his family reenlists. Also bring back Warrant Officer, that way a technically shit hot E-5 or E-6 doesn't have to eat shit from the Top 3 so they get a decent board score. I retired an E-7 but I knew I would never be a Chief due to that I could never get off the flight line. Most of my fellow senior E's were nothing but backstabbing apple polishers, they were given jobs off the flight line just to get them out of the workflow because they suck. Unfortunately, they were the ones who made Chief due to showing they had diverse career broadening assignments, in reality they were getting moved every 6 months due to effing up that section they had to move them. Plus, their EPR was written in way that he was a water walker and not the Charlie foxtrot he was. The good ones were kept on the line and were manipulated by the Chiefs to make sure they stayed on the line making the Wing King money. My only shot of getting off the line was interviewing for a Wing Safety job. My incentive was a slot for the NTSB crash investigation course if I got that job. The Vice Wing CC interviewed me and told me then to report back Monday. This was a Thursday and started doing PCA paperwork. Friday morning get called into the Chiefs office, got told you're not going anywhere. He told me point blank you will be on that flight line with a brick and schedule to make sure we make that schedule. I'm sure if I was milk toast maintainer, I would have gotten that job because the guy who got it sure was.

I thought I was fairly clear in my last response but I’ll remind you that the breakup of the Soviet Union happened over three decades ago. Ukraine did not secede from Russia. They became a sovereign nation thirty years ago. The better analogy would be the United States granting Puerto Rico independence in 1991, and then ruthlessly invading it in the spring of 2022, deliberately targeting the civilian populace, and unleashing our hardest criminals to rape, pillage, and do god knows whatever else to the people there. Ask yourself if you could see that scenario unfolding for the United States anytime soon? There is no comparison. Get outta here with your secession assclownery.

So back in the day, AFSOC started doing a thing called “Air Commando Field Course” which involved tactical driving, shooting, clearing buildings, emergency medicine, etc. We all scoffed it with typical aircrew knowitallism (see above) and how all these people wanted to play GI Joe etc. Fast forward to Iraq 2015 and I found myself in a Hilux, with body armor, loaded M4’s and M9’s, and civilian clothes with another pilot driving to the Consulate that had gotten bombed the previous day and I was wishing I’d spent a little more time paying attention. Or Kabul when everything went to shit and aircrew guys had to apply similar skills to break into structures and clear them to get food when the people working it said “F this, I’m out”. More stories like that will come out from that deployment and I have the utmost respect for those folks, but they weren’t anything but motivated type A winners making shit happen. Mobility folks can do the same stuff if they’d just stop with the GD pessimism about everything. From my outside perspective, I love Gen Minihan’s whole program and hope that AMC embraces the urgency and importance of their role in this fight. Easily the most important MAJCOM in this scenario.

Wrong letterhead. Rejected

I'm going to take a leap of faith and assume the Ukrainian tankers are a bit more experienced/educated on utilizing tanks properly.

we are making a huge strategic mistake escalating this conflict the biden administration needs to be providing off ramps for both sides and not stoking the flames of war with russia. my hope is cooler heads are prevailing behind the scenes that we aren't privy to.

It's funny - I was actually part of the convo with their team. When they realized they needed to update the emblem, they asked for input, and had a specific idea of F-16 flyover to "rectify" their mistake. I had (begrudgingly) scoured their regs, and in fact used the "specific aircraft" (which is not allowed - exactly for the reason Scooter14 said; that it doesn't "stand the test of time") as another argument point to them for updating the patch. When I mentioned that changing it to an F-16 doesn't fix that part of the problem, they said "oh no, we DO want that aircraft on there" I guess we're beholden to living life one step at a time... I'd even made a design with "darts" which would've preserved the missing man portion of the patch, at least. YCMTSU

Also press should be mandated to report financial contributions for stories they run. You might not know this but companies often pay news organizations to write stories or do segments on their products/service disguised as "news." Same goes for political campaigns that do the exact same thing. Lastly, a significant amount of primary education needs focused on teaching people that news media is not a reliable source of information in any capacity. There's a reason its not citable in academia but we need to be more explicit at telling youth and teens that media isn't there for your benefit to consume information--its there for the benefit of other entities who want to advertise products/services or push policy efforts. The legitimate news stories that are featured on news are often just there to keep the entire image of media as a trustworthy source afloat and make it impossible to distinguish biased/bent stories. But by and large a journalist does not have a noble job--their job is to make revenue for their network. Same as any other private sector entity. Why we place so much trust in them is beyond me.

You should. stuff that isn’t bothering you now or an issue at all may get worse later. establishing that it’s service connected, even if it’s rated at 0%, is a lot easier now than it will be later. For example…I broke a big toe on AD. Fully healed. Zero issues. But it’s documented and service connected at 0%. If, some time in the future, that joint decides to be the epicenter of arthritis, or fuses up, or starts growing horns…or some other such bullshit … getting it treated will be a lot easier. same with the neck/back. Fine today. But if I can’t move it in my 60s me and the va May have to chat.

I’m taking a swag and will assume you’ve been in ops squadrons most of your career? In my whopping 3.5 years in the Air Force, I’ve gathered that ops squadrons tend to have minimal to virtually zero enlisted. There’s not much need for an E-8/9 when there may only be 4-5 E’s running around. Contrast that with mx, force support, SF, and you have a ton of enlisted to few officers. The E-8/9 needs to be there Having run a maintenance department where I had ~200 enlisted working for me, a good SNCO was a godsend. E-8/9s definitely have a place.

I'm not entirely following here. Reductionism is useful in theoretical conversation, but it can't be confused for a framework for viewing the real world. There are no relevant hypotheticals, the real world has already created the scenario. Is Russia being evil in their actions? Is Ukraine to blame for the invasion? Who is right and who is wrong in this conflict? The world is not black and white, but the many shades of gray do fall on a spectrum that are either more black or more white. Arguing that Ukraine has done something wrong, and therefore a moral judgment cannot be weighed against Russia, is the geopolitical version of saying well she shouldn't have cheated on him if she didn't want to be beaten to death. It really is amazing to me how many people are using other conflicts as some sort of basis for minimizing the obvious moral dilemmas we face in Ukraine. Past acts do not impact the moral characteristics of present conflicts. Right and wrong are not relative. To argue otherwise is too close to post-modernism, which is thoroughly deviod of intellectual substance. It is also remarkable to me that conservatives are now using the same twisted logic that progressives have used for the past decade or two. Well the United States had slaves, so who are we to judge? It's nonsense. Did the chauvinistic kleptocracy deserve to be invaded or not? A fundamental basis for our nation is that we do not inherit the sins of our fathers. Ultimately, there is no United States of America, there are only the people who make it up and the decisions that they make. I don't give two flying fucks if other people made the wrong decision in the past. My job, my duty as a moral being, is to make the right decision in the scenarios I am faced with. And when I fail, as I have before, I do not get to use that failure as some sort of justification for future inaction. Now, I would not say that the moral nature of international activity binds us to any course, but the Tucker Carlson wing of the Republican party seems hell bent on disputing the moral nature of this particular war, rather than just the appropriate national response, and I find that to be almost laughably obtuse.

M2, you explore some truly unique corners of the internet.

WTF?!? 😶😶😶

Also, a common misguidance is “well I just don’t need that much money.” Totally agree, but what you will value for sure is an exceptionally large increase in QOL (with ability to choose whenever you want to give up some off days to make all that money to pay cash for the kitchen remodel your wife wants). I significantly underestimated QOL gains, it’s a real thing that just can’t be realized until you break free of the only work life you’ve known since you were 18-22ish.

I dunno man. Kinda hard to tell a sovereign nation to stop fighting for every inch of territory that’s been annexed by an aggressor. If the Ukrainians are willing to fight for the next 20 years, & tie up the Red Army in the process, I say let ‘em & provide whatever weapons are reasonable for that end.

I'll take a swag and say you have no clue how to run a maintenance squadron.