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@argstarted the other thread about Gunships in Desert Storm and I recommended a war stories thread because I’m sure this group has some good ones. I’ll kick it off. Decmeber 2, 2014 Nangahar, Afghanistan Flying Draco out of Bagram and a raid comes down that we’re going to support and run the stack for. We weren’t doing hits every night but by dumb luck, I’d been on a few as we rolled through the schedule. As some of you know, they’re usually a bit hectic at first when the helo lands and then it’s pretty chill as they make callouts and not much would happen so that was what I expected. We brief up, get out there, get everyone checked in and ready to go. We had 2 Vipers, a Gunship, a few RPA’s, Compass Call a ways off, and the helos that had a couple DAPs and 4 60’s. TOT hits, all the sensors are assigned and I’m looking out the window and I see multiple 12.7 and 23mm open up from all along this river bank/village that were covered up until we landed (1). We haven’t even made comms with the ground force yet and it’s a madhouse immediately. I vividly remember seeing tracers crisscrossing the village and then under NVG I can see airburst going off above the Gunship and behind where he was (shooting at the sound). The assault force gets out and are immediately under fire. I had some young guys running sensors and a pretty weak swimmer (that got much better but he was a 1st Lt at the time and somewhat weak) as our CSO who, in theory, should be running the show in this instance but kind of locked up a bit and was overwhelmed. I started directing sensors and getting directive to get people sorting and finding targets. We finally get the JTAC on the radio and I unload the situation to him (overly wordy and crappy comms) and he basically tells me to run it because they’re under fire (gunshots and yelling in the background). I had some very good Viper pilots (2 Patch wearers I come to find out) and had them tracking targets, RPA’s on ADA positions, and the Gunship in close on the good guys. I started working with the DAPs and we would find stuff and they’d kill it. Time goes on, we start thinning out targets, the assault force is clearing the northern village and it turns out to be a dry hole so they start moving about a KM south toward the secondary objective. As they move, it’s more of the same with the sensors except we split to help the Gunship escort the assault force and to find targets for the DAPs with the other. As this is going on, I’m starting to realize that the timeline has gone to absolute hell and we won’t be able to support this whole thing so I call back to our TOC and tell them to wake up the crew that would be flying the first line of the day to backfill us (2). Every jet there worked extensions and Tac C2 worked tanker reflows and all that. The whole team came together to support the guys on the ground and we didn’t get any push back. Incredibly awesome teamwork and proud moment for me as a member of the USAF. While I’m neck deep in trying to secure all that, the ground force is moving to the southern area and enemy fighters pop out of VC style spider holes and engage them from about ten feet. By the grace of God, no friendlies get hit and they kill the enemy and continue to move (3). They eventually make it to the southern compound and start to make call outs IAW the ROE. I’ve got two bingos (one for JBAD and one for BAF) and know I’m getting close to having to leave. I didn’t want to go to JBAD because I knew our MX flow at the time we didn’t have enough airplanes to backfill our backfill (jet happened to be in phase) if I went to JBAD but I couldn’t leave until we had another Draco because everyone else was gainfully employed and I assumed we’d lose the Gunship at Dawn (Spirit 03) and didn’t want the ground force to lose their comm lifeline. Personal thought at the time was that this would take until about noon the next day. About this time, my good friend and his crew that got shaken awake and scrambled check in on comms and I start filling them in. I’m doing a handover and they show up and match sensors and see DAPs killing targets under our sparkle and we hand that off (an easy confirmation haha). As they’re making it, I commit to BAF and know I’ll be landing at min fuel but that’s fine. We are about done and their radios all take a shit and lose crypto at the exact same time that an assault force member gets shot and the ground force calls for an urgent CASEVAC (4). Our backfill has no comms and the ground force is relaying the CASEVAC 9-line in rapid fire to my aforementioned weak swimmers who dropped their nuts and did a picture perfect job and made that happen to get the helos back for the exfil (5). My backfill gets one (of their 10) radios working and takes the stack and the situation over and we get out of dodge. I run the numbers and realize we will be at emergency gas when we land so I coordinate to zoom as much as the mighty Draco can and get into a glide profile to enter a 69 mile right base. I call the SOF (A-10 guy) and tell him to get everyone out of our way and he worked with everyone to clear it out for us. He does it and I get cleared to the numbers and land with 78 pounds of gas. I’ll never forget that number haha (it also went up about 70 pounds when I reset the counter on the ground so I didn’t shut down and get towed back). We shut down, get back to the TOC and things are still happening but long story short, we got everyone back a few hours later (6). I’ve never felt anything like that and I was absolutely jacked and when I landed and came down off of that, I couldn’t sleep for a long time and was antsy hearing about the fate of the wounded assaulter because I assumed he died based on how it sounded over the radio. When I found out he lived, I can’t explain the feeling of relief and flush of emotions that happened. He was sent to Germany and ended up being paralyzed, unfortunately but he’s alive today and sounds like he’s thriving. Anyways, I felt like I earned that 1/20th of an Air Medal. 1. Turns out one of our Afghan allies let his Taliban buddies know we were coming and they decided to try to make this a Blackhawk Down scenario. 2. We didn’t have a backfill and a 4 hour gap from when we would land to when those guys would takeoff for the first line of the day to coincide with sunrise. The LPA and junior enlisted that were awake and running our graveyard ops absolutely killed it getting those dudes prepped, getting them food, etc. I was incredibly proud of those folks that didn’t whine or complain at all and just made shit happen. Draco standard. 3. https://www.army.mil/article/147892/1st_battalion_75th_ranger_regiment_honors_its_heroes The dudes that got the Bronze Star with V were for this part. 4. https://www.socom.mil/fighting-on-to-the-ranger-objective The Rangers that got Silver Stars above in 3 were for this part. True heroism. 5. Army helos were sitting at level 1 at JBAD and were there in minutes. They earned DFC’s for this deservedly so. 6. Later on I heard from that intercepted comms said something like “how are they finding us? They’re killing us and we can’t see them.” Over 25 EKIA and a great mission for SSE overall.

Don't do the math on how much money we spent killing a dude in a mud hut in the middle of nowhere Afghanistan.

As much as it takes to utterly destroy Russia. This is easily the most effective and efficient military spending we've ever done. We've set Russia back decades, for less than the 10% of the DoD budget.

9x makes complete sense.

So, is there going to be a big party at the club tonight to celebrate the first Raptor kill? "So, there I was..... Got a visual on the bandit and used the awesome power and thrust vectoring to manuever to his 6.... well, there really wasn't a 6 position. So, there he was just floating......"

why do you want to utterly destroy russia? and replace it with what? haven't we already learned this nation building lesson before?

Filthy, I believe you’re having a hard day, and I don’t know why, but if you need help, ask.

Bro I have been here since 2005 and it was never that place lol.

What everyone else said…you’re gonna get shit on at some point in your career until you figure out that no one cares how professional or motivated you say you are, it’s demonstrated by your actions on a daily basis. Every AD student in my pilot training was ready to take on the world and be the next Chuck Yeager, but most of them (including myself) started flying and got a sobering dose of reality. Pilot training is HARD and it’s not easy to keep grinding and maintain the drive to get better. Once you get to your first ops squadron it’s not any different. The grind starts over again as you work towards the next upgrade. If you walk in to a UPT class and adopt the mindset that you’re somehow more disciplined or serious or more deserving of a certain platform because of some factor unrelated to your performance, your classmates and instructors are gonna sniff that out and you’ll look like a jackass. It certainly won’t help you in the “be a bro” section of your ranking. Be in a competition with yourself. Don’t take criticism personally. Don’t argue with the IPs. They aren’t critiquing you because they don’t like you, they want you to get better. Help your bros. Keep an open mind about airframes. Ask your MWS IPs what it was like flying their airframe. Pilot training gives you this skewed mindset of what’s “cool” or not, and often masks the reality of the lifestyle associated with that airframe. List what YOU want and make sure it actually aligns with what your spouse is okay with. Alright, no more unsolicited soap container rants. Now to answer what you were actually asking…AFSOC is cool no doubt. But every community has its upsides and downsides. I know guys in the AD 146 squadron as well as the AFRC squadron. It sounds like the reserves get the better deals. My AD buddy spent several months just flying rotators to the same type of bases that C-17s fly to. You’ll get to do things that are really cool, but don’t think you’re gonna be Barry Seal in American Made. Also there’s only one AD squadron, so the 146 doesn’t drop to UPT too often. We had one in my class and the guy was a top stud in the T-1. You could very well be the number one guy in the class and the Air Force just doesn’t have a spot for you. Luck and timing is everything. Look into the U-28 and the MC…they do some really cool stuff. Hell, if you want some difficulty and excitement, flying C-130Js out of Dyess in an 8-ship airdrop is more high-speed than what you’d do in many other career fields. You like a challenge? Fly a platform that requires air refueling. You wanna work with some spec-ops hitters? Fly the HH-60. You’re gonna find shiny pennies and shitbags in every community. AFSOC certainly doesn’t have a monopoly on professionalism. Best of luck to you, and remember…work hard, be a bro!

I recently had an overnight in Kansas City. Went to the WWI museum. Absolutely fantastic. The section at the beginning devoted to the social, economic, and political situations honestly gave me chills as they nearly identically describe the types of things we’re seeing today. Upstairs, they had a section for the conflicts in Russia. I think it’s a little to easy to be removed from the conflict as all of us are, read headlines, and make an accurate assessment as to who is more committed. This not nearly as one-sided or the outcome as predetermined as most seem to think.

Lets check their Microsoft Office licenses before we go throwing around that phrase all willy nilly.

There's a large community of them in my city right now. A lot of upper middle class males fled conscription by leveraging international business contacts to get overseas temp work visas. I live in a major financial hub that already house a large Ukrainian sub-population--which is how I became aware of it. Its probably less so a problem than for Russia but its still a significant population. Its like the same thing that happened with Afghan terps/contractors. The country goes to crap and they start making phone calls to people they knew to help them navigate the immigration pathways. Unfortunately for the Afghans that tried this, US military members aren't in a great position to provide work related sponsorships. But with Ukraine specifically they had a lot of trade in arts/entertainment/wealth management with the US and Western Europe.

Found this on Reddit. Taliban fighter now feels disillusioned because he has to sit in an office 8 hours a day and do queep and Kabul traffic is atrocious.

I don't know where you went to UPT, but if you think I'm an asshole, you must have had some really nice, fun loving IPs.

Put a few 20mm holes through it and it still drifts quite a ways (international waters complicates recovery), get closer and you give it potentially more chance to capture data from the F-22, and gunning an object going that slow is incredibly difficult with low probability of success and increased risk of midair (and at 60K I can’t even imagine, even in a raptor).

I know you were saying and I didn’t take offense in the slightest. I was also not being facetious with saying you’ve done a ton of risky flying, REMF or not. Anyone else have a story to share?

Just the other day I was telling someone about your student that tried to do a NH recovery by rolling out and attempting to Immelmann at the top of the block.

I never said he did, you inferred that. I said I did. Not where I was going with it, but you are probably correct, statistically speaking. 2,586 instructional sorties as of last week... with an ASD of 1.14 #oof. 3,100 IP/SEFE combined AETC hours, 2,100 or which are in the fatality-laden MDS in question. 4,200 total AF time, if you add the grey jet time. And still 4.5 years of flying duty to go to active retirement. So yeah, that's a lot of fingertip at 2-4* bills (*you'll have to wait til my retirement to hear the declass number lol). Fair amount of close calls, To say nothing of all the funerals of direct co-workers(2), and students (2) in the last 6 years than I care to share on this message board. I just wanted to clarify I was not being facetious about your combat story. I meant it unironically when I said it is a BAMF anecdote. I'm just a REMF living vicariously by comparison. The only thing I was mocking was my own career (I've earned that right after all). Apologies for any confusion, inflection in humor doesn't always land in written format. Cheers. 🍺

I’d suggest you do what you want and let your intentions of a B-21 transition be known. You bring up good points on all and I won’t pretend to know the inner political workings of Bomber Mafia politics, but make yourself as credible as possible and have a good reputation for interpersonal skills. Initial cadre, especially for a crown jewel program like B-21, will need to offer more than being a good stick.

Once upon a time, over the Atlantic Ocean, just offshore from the Outer Banks, an air-to-air kill was logged, a balloon. The end…or was/is it?

Congrats to BigRed on his initial Solo in the U-2 on Wednesday. 🥃 He will be known as "Solo 1095". Not bad for an old Navy guy.

Well thank god we have experts like this, who can weigh-in and tell us what's really going on. I wonder if he is an expert on anything else we can count-on, because there are so many things I just don't have an answer for - like chemtrails.

Fake news and fake video. He says its not possible to hit it with a "missile". https://twitter.com/AdamKinzinger/status/1621560405448343557?s=20&t=gvv3v9_H9UzAaoSHzS5HCA

What airframe for WIC? I’d suggest you do the WIC thing because that’s an easy discriminator. I got selected as the demonstration pilot and then initial cadre for SOCOM’s Armed Overwatch program and the only thing that discriminated me was being a grey Patch.

Jumping in — back when I was a part of the push to transform the 318 SOS from straight PC-12 NSAV (similar mission to the -146) to the U-28 we literally had one squadron with two different missions. A lot of the PC-12 guys couldn’t understand how we got satisfaction from the Draco mission (left turns for hours and hours) and same us for them (all you do is fly from point a to point b). We had a few of those folks cross over to the Draco, I wonder if looking back on it which mission set they preferred. Im glad I ended up in U-28s, after being a part of the TAMI push from BONES. That community was all about getting the desired effect and the plane was a means to an end. ILSs and patterns were a necessity to get the job done. Draco is all about meeting GFC intent. That being said there is something to be said for having a buttload of twin turbine time. Good luck with your career it goes by so fast. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

BAMF story. Good thing I dealt with my combat cred inadequacies years ago. To wit, and take a page from a certain POTUS: Tumon Bay was my Vietnam.

Who do I contact to have my picture removed from the internet? Asking for a friend.

Gun porn. My babies have been in my buddies (F-111 WSO) safe for over 10+ years since I moved to Cap Hill. Finally got a chance to get down there and inspect/clean what was needed. Other than running a patch through a shotgun and my S&W M19 2.5” .357…..the rest of the family was as pretty as the day they went in there. Lesson: clean/oil before storage is you friend. Need to get out to the Quantico range if they will let us. Nothing like the feel of an M1 Garand or a Browning High Grade Ultra O/U, along with bro talk over morning coffee. Cheers ATIS

He's been showing other countries that they are for two years

I thought the bar would be the place to talk about bacon and wine. It would take me an hour to type it all out so I'm going to provide links. I tried to find the first video I used to make bacon but I guess since it was 15 years ago it's gone or buried deep in the interwebs. You need pork belly if you don't raise your own and we run out. Any grocery store that still has a real butcher will have it. Shop around for price. Even if it's a little more expensive than ready made it's worth it due to shrinkage. Ready made bacon has a lot of water added and you pay for that, it says water added on the label, that's why it shrinks so much, the water steams out. Homemade bacon doesn't have that water. The fat will render out but you save that for other cooking uses. It's stupid easy. All you need is salt, that's it. Salt a pork belly for four or five days and you have bacon, the basic bacon. But who eats that? You got to smoke it right? We, I say we because my charming bride has pretty much took over the bacon making duties(God, I love her), use a Weber Kettle to smoke it. My wifes recipe is basically salt, prague #1(you need to be careful with that stuff but like I said you don't need it) and brown sugar. Token video for motivation. Trying to find that dress for my wife on amazon. Wine. The Desert Storm wine recipe is so far gone I could never remember it. We made it with pure grape or apple juice we got on the local economy. I remember we used the clear five gallon camping jugs to make it. The med techs donated some medical tubing to help with the off gassing. Our room looked like an episode of MASH. Here, we have grapevines and after making jelly we still had a lot of grapes left over so we searched homemade wine recipes and made some. Wow, that stuff made MD 2020 jealous. We may try it again. Here is a link to a cool website. I've used their recipes for curing a ham and to make pastrami. Both were absolutely kick ass. https://amazingribs.com/ We can talk brisket on a Weber too if ya'll want.

Underestimate the Russian bear at your own risk. How many more hundreds of billions should we be willing to invest in the most corrupt country in Europe?

I'll disappoint you more. Do you really believe that was a Chinese spy balloon?

this is why its dangerous to stick our nose where it doesn't belong. Ukraine means NOTHING to the US. NOTHING. it's not a NATO country. it has ZERO national security implications for us. well maybe something to the bidens...$$$...