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My wife has yet to put any of my tools back in the correct spot either.

@ClearedHot Excellent attention to detail lol.

This was a very well articulated reply, thanks for the thoughtful words. I don't agree with everything you've said. But you're right that I dropped because I was there (not because I was an optimal choice) and TEA trusted the weapon. And I definitely grant that no one does CAS better than your community... in pylon turn employment. "Pushing 5 minutes" was a real radio call I heard when they were doing CLT shots. Compared to other assets engineered differently that reported "in continuous." But that's a result of forcing gunships to do something they weren't built to do. Thanks for writing this, good post. FWIW I don't agree with the decision to divest the 105 and, despite poking fun at gunships sometimes (who send more than their share of shit at other communities), I have extreme respect for the effects they bring to the fight and the heroic things they've done. My favorite part of your community is the aggressive mindset they inculcate in crews. It does make you hard to work with sometimes (and hard to talk to), but we're here to kill not make friends. Even so, drinks on me if we meet 🥃

The funny part about this is with a LSCO fight we keep forgetting about our opponents SOF and what they will be doing. It is entirely possible we will need a heavy dedicated asset to remain behind the forward line of troops in the support zone both to keep an eye on whatever strongholds we bypass, as well as be there to smack the shit out of whatever irregular forces they try and hit us with. Nobody wants to brief that as their chosen mission set because it’s not sexy. I for one would feel a lot better in a division combined arms rehearsal or target decision board if we weren’t standing around a table but simultaneously worried about Charlie jumping the wire while the MPs are busy picking their noses. The murder bus being overhead for persistent security would help solve that. That would be the Gunship truly going back to its roots in being the overhead persistent ass whooping for any ground troops in Asia. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It has been my limited experience that "30 minutes of straight misses to eventually have an MQ-9 do it", does not typify the gunship community I was a part of for 20+ years. You are certainly entitled to use your observations and experience to form an expert opinion, kind of like when I heard about the C Model dude screwing his Crew Chief at Kadena, that obviously means all Eagle Drivers (past and present), swing the other way... I like you bro but the plank holders from your community are old friends (many from my community), and they hold the #1 moniker. As you can see below I've given you a more appropriate designation. It is one of the most maddening observations one can make if you dedicate your life to this endeavor, as good as we are we constant run to the latest crisis and in haste we forget the lessons of the past. 14 short years after the great aerial battles of of WWII the mighty F-4 launched on it's first flight, sans a gun. As a reward for forgetting that history the lads initially paid a heavy price over Vietnam. The AIM-7 had a sub 10% kill rate, in total 452 Sidewinders were fired during the Vietnam War, resulting in a Pk of 0.18. Years of gun pods to get them through until the E model came along with a gun...we will never repeat that mistake right...here we are in 2023 and Fat Amy Charlie does not have an internal gun. I am guessing you don't know how this went down. This whole thing started not because the SOCOM masters wanted out of the CAS business (quite the opposite), but because Slife was harvesting manpower from Ops squadrons across the command to man his pet project. When Slife tried to cut the gunship crew further he was stonewalled by the Gunner union and A1. Keep in mind that community already paid a price when another herbivore was at the helm (Wurster), and convinced Congress he could cut the gunship crew from 13 to 7 in order to replace 8 H models with 16 J's and keep it manpower neutral. Think I'm kidding, go look at page 23 of the 2009 QDR, actual airframes and numbers are rarely called out in a strategic document but it is there in black and white. When the union said "No" to Slife he immediately replied, "Ok, get rid of the 105MM". There was no analysis on employment history, just a shoot from the hip response. There is much more to the story, I feel bad for the folks that continue the day to day in that toxic HQ building. Keep in mind, this was NOT a Big Blue decision. I REALLY wish the system worked as you think it does but SOCOM is a different animal. In the history of the command there as been exactly one Airman running the show. Slife badly wanted the job but was denied and sadly survived long enough to worm his way into the VCSAF job (god help you all). Because this was a SOCOM decision and the CC is a ground pounder, the boss looks to his air power experts to shape his decision. Keep in mind the proposal is coming from his air power component commander so he turns to his USAF aviator SOCOM/CV for expert advice and validation. Said SOCOM/CV is a Slife's puppet, he is an herbivore who wants the AFSOC/CC chair next (and gets it), does understand kinetic airpower and most certainly does not push back. Again SOCOM is different and components get a vote so when this idea surfaced the component commands representing the ground parties pushed back VERY hard, but if you know SOCOM you know the components fight each other for resources. The Purple Pot battles get ugly and if you think USASOC is gonna give AFSOC support, especially when the TF is fighting to resource 160 rotors of their own that are running around with guns and rockets...they will quickly stab a brother in the back to get $. Big Blue could give a rat's ass, they are completely focused on China so there was no debate or actual thought put into the impact this decision will have. Well done, but as pointed out above just a bit different from the fight I was in. I would also point out that because last days of AFG differs from the early days does not mean fights like the early days will never happen again...thus I would actually prefer to have BOTH options. The gunfight I ended up in was far more typical of Al-Fallujah, supporting a team fighting a crap ton of bad dudes literally across the street. Chaos everywhere as the bad guys tried to flank, got on the roof to throw hand grenades, popped in and out of windows, doors and alleys. Thank god both guns were humming and we were able to shift fire in a second or two to stop every attempt to over run the good guys. PGMs would and the time it takes to employ them would have been useless in that particular fight. Point and click CAS is cool and offers another tool in the container but it has limits and dangers all it's own. Professionally I would ask you keep in mind the actual definition of CEP...it means HALF of your munitions will fall within those parameters, there are consequences when they land outside that circle. 26 years of flying and a little bit of combat time, the most focused and SCARED I've ever been (including two MANPADS guiding on me at the same time), was when I pushed that button that close to the friendlies. 8 seconds TOF felt like an eternity and I will freely admit some quite moments of reflection the next morning over some bootleg brown liquor. There was no chest thumping, just a quiet thanks upward that I didn't F it up...and I say "I" because it was me that had the A code, it was my decision and my responsibility. I recall a training sortie as an O-6 when I was flying with the W's working AGM-176 employment on movers. Obviously I won't get into tactics but it was an exercise in frustration as we tracked farmer brown driving his truck around Clovis. Numerous turns over a 10 minute period repeatedly tumbled gyros tumbled as the crew rode the struggle bus trying to reset the LAR. I could not watch them hump the bowling ball anymore and finally said "Shoot TWO if you want a high Pk, but for the love of god shoot something before he gets away." Point being, there is a benefit of deep magazines. A couple Griffins is cool, a crap ton of candy corn is even cooler and useful in big fights. I am not trying to be a dinosaur, I was actually an early adopter and advocate for SDB and incorporation on on the gun pig, but as a whole I see USAF and AFSOC forgetting our history and drifting away from core capabilities like CAS. I have great concern when we take away the 105MM (and maybe the 30MM...yes it has been discussed), and retire the A-10...the two greatest CAS platforms that have existed, all in the name of a pivot to peer near-peer. God help us if we do these things and end up in another dark night over Jalalabad and all we have is Fat Amy with 181 rounds and some PGMs.

20 seconds time of fall after 10-20 minutes of coordination necessary to satisfy all parties with weapon release. As opposed to 5-10 seconds to get a round away. You were asked to drop a PGM at 15m as a matter of convenience. It's a testament to the engineering of the weapon that they trust its accuracy and effects so implicitly that they will accept the risk of weapons employment in relatively mundane scenarios, but I assure you the gravity of the situation that required CH to employ at 27 meters was in a different universe by comparison. Also, while your hyperbolic description of gunship employments doesn't reflect reality, a concept that the point-and-click 'CAS' community lacks understanding of is that suppression now is almost always 1000x better than a kill in 5 minutes. Pylon turn employment comes with its survivability and other minor idiosyncratic downsides, but in a permissive environment it's the greatest CAS force multiplier on the battlefield. There is no other platform in the inventory with this benefit to include rotary wing. No run-ins, no maneuvering to an IP, no 'i was off-aspect when shit kicked off'. Just ready to go, always. The fact that Air Force Special Operations Command is thinking of divesting itself of a specialized capability so as not to be left on the sidelines in a conventional conflict tells you all you need to know about the competency of those running the place for the last while. Especially when adding a dime-a-dozen capability to the gunship platform results in a second rate implementation of that capability, when plenty of others can already do it more effectively. Precision munitions are great as a complement. Hang as many as you can the airframe, but not at the expense of the cannons. It's hard to 'get through' the gunship culture, as Danger41 suggests, because they know better than those who are trying to get through.

looks like i did have it figured out. kiss the ring.

Nah you’re overthinking it…. It’s more like the movie beerfest. Just a giant drinking competition to decide who gets selected or not

Your stats should be perfect for UPT, but I'd be worried they'll give you ABM since you put it on there and they need good ABMs

Tell me you don't do CAS without telling me you don't do CAS. "Hammering away"...I don't even have words other than thanks "SEAL of the Sky" for your input. Removing the 105MM is nothing more than moronic payback from two herbivore AFSOC/CC's that hate the gunship community. There is a story about how this all started and it had NOTHING to do with anything related to combat, rather Slife wanting to harvest manpower for a pet project and being told no because they had to keep X number of gunners on the AC-130J to man the 105MM. As a dude who has shot bad guys 27 meters form the friendlies, advocating for BVR CAS is one of the dumber things I have ever read on this forum. Slinging a Small Cruise Missile (SCM), at GPS coordinates is not CAS, doing it in a dynamic fight is Fing stupid and dangerous. As for "accuracy not being as good as folks think"...the advertised unclassified accuracy of the AC-130 is two mils. Again as a person who flew it once or twice, techniques like two-shot bring that much lower. The hammering away and they keep running scenario mentioned above is a function of poor employment or training, not the damn gun. Come on over some time, I'll pour you a glass of brown liquor and show you a couple hours of video 33 pound projectiles filled with 6 pounds of Comp B pissing-off all the virgins in Jannah because thanks to me "hammering away" with the 105MM, they are about to be overrun with business. Rather than guard core capabilities AFSOC leadership is grasping at straws trying to remain relevant in this pivot to peer/near-peer, the Air Force is feeding that mantra as we slowly walk away from what should be a fierce dedication to those on the ground, reference insert A-10 retirement as further proof. I am not opposed to adding SCM to the gunship arsenal, it would add a great stand-off capability to suppress semi-permissive threats in CORE SOCOM mission sets, but if having 30 gunships with SCM is the key to the fight against China, we've already lost.

LOL. The pivot will be from "We wouldn't do such a thing" to "I hope we do it again".

standing by for apologies

From Putin’s henchmen deep inside the Washington Post:

I knew you'd check it...

I love that even the news report references a 10mm socket...

You win the internet today! Love my wife, but preach brother!

if you don’t get picked up, we’re all screwed lol

Mine.

Thank you! I'd honestly be happy with either, UPT is by far my #1, though. My wife is from the PC area where the ABM schoolhouse is, so I know she'd love to be there for a few months, maybe even years if I "FAIPd" there. We shall see if I am even picked up, though. Just praying the numbers are higher this year.

Hello all, I am not new to the forum, I’ve just been lurking and posting here and there. I figured I’d post my stats below. I am a UPT (#1) or ABM (#2) hopeful. As weird as it sounds, I was essentially an enlisted ABM and it was dope! Current MQ-9 IP with ~1200 hours AFOQT Pilot: 99 PCSM: 96 PPL with 99 civ hours UFT Wing Strat: #2/3 M.S. in Unmanned Systems (Embry-Riddle online): 3.9 GPA YG: 2018 Some things I included in my package: OPR Strats listed on 215 o 2021 (JrCGO): #8/341 (Wing CC) o 2022 (JrCGO): #1/42 (Sq CC), #2/134 (Group CC), #5/350 (Wing CC) Awards listed on 215, Personal Statement, and LORec o Officer Awards: - 3x Quarterly awards (2x squadron, 1x group) - 1x Annual Award (squadron) - 3x Superior Performer awards (2x squadron and 1x joint/coalition exercise) o Enlisted Awards: - Commendation Medal as a SrA - 3x Quarterly awards (group equivalent) - Commandants Award in ALS Additional items: Safety School Grad (2022) Electromagnetic Course Grad (2022) I am extremely thankful to be an applicant this year and hope there are more selects than last year. I’ve noticed scores are not everything. My buddy applied last year with a 99 PCSM/98 Pilot and was not selected. Good luck to everyone. We got this!!

B-21 first flight, Full big dick, America, F*** terrorists Brian's Stepdad November 2023 Such potent and poetic words.

I heard they are replacing the 105 with a hot dog launcher.

Only in America baby!

Because in the absence of a real, and active threat, the military is a vanity project for the general-caste. You are led by those who have been fantasizing about being generals since they were in elementary school. Yeah, I know, there are some good ones. But obviously not many, or we wouldn't have the military we have right now.

He's lucky to have such supportive fathers!

You saying this unironically is peak you. Overturning Roe was a good thing, though it may have bought some R losses for a while, it was a shitty legal fiction that needed to go, and it's after-effects will subside in time. You are right about one thing, though, most Americans agree that there should be some restrictions on abortion. You construing this as being anti-republican, however, is confusing. If most people are ok with some abortion but not unrestricted, then why is it still such an issue for the left? I'm not sure your characterization that the left doesn't want abortion on demand is actually true. Most on the left use such notions as "life of the mother", rape, incest, etc (i.e. some other extreme justification) to serve as the justification when the know good and well that it's really about getting it approved because they consider it a family planning tool - which is the justification you quoted in your post. So sure, there's some elections to be lost for a while. I'm fine with that. This is merely the first step in getting back to a rational basis for abortion. The next step is defining the issue more clearly so it rules out the real crime, which is abortion "because I want one." The "life of the mother" trope is precisely that: a trope. It was never illegal in this country for a woman to get an abortion if her life was in danger. Don't take my word for it, though, here's the Texas law that Roe overturned (https://www.sll.texas.gov/assets/pdf/historical-statutes/1925/1925-3-penal-code-of-the-state-of-texas.pdf#page=278). Read it yourself if you don't believe me, but it's your side that has been propagandized and spouts non-starters as if they're informed on the issue or historical context. In reality, your lack of SA is on blast. So yeah, the left wants abortion because they believe it's a family planning tool, or a "bodily autonomy" issue, or some other such nonsense, but they use the above tropes as emotional wedges because it's easier to sell it that way. You know that and so does everyone else. So let's not avoid the issue by saying it's all about the "health of the mother" because it isn't, and it never was. Eliminating abortion at any point for frivolous reasons is what this is all about and most Americans agree that it shouldn't be used as birth control. That's all I get from the poll you posted.

Yeah I guess my question is what constitutes a perfect score vs how do they subtract points? I noticed the starting point is 7.5, so what are the thresholds for adding/subtracting. I.e. I assume Wing ranking of #1 is worth a certain amount of points, I assume a certain AFOQT/PCSM scores equates to a certain amount of points, etc etc. Or am I assuming incorrectly? Also, how do they score subjective things such as letter of rec and personal letter?

Who knew how much you could accomplish with 7.5 to 8 inches….. Somebody needs to get Yeet into any brief on said concept. Still I think there’s something immediately applicable with SDB and a rocket engine that could be translated later to something like the air launched effects project working in the Army. I think we need to look at some form of common “standoff shuttle” that can handle a family of effects types over what appears to be JASSM in a smaller package with the same costs. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

The Russians have violated established sovereignty and peace established borders 9 times since the fall of the Soviet Union. And the Ukes don’t have to “win” they have to repel and resist. Why when you have effectively driven the aggressor onto the purely defense would you negotiate for a cease fire that only serves to restore their combat power. Russian couldn’t “win” and annex Ukraine right now without deprecating all their effective conventional combat power. They won’t do that because of their baseless fear of some impending NATO invasion in whatever crazy reality Putin lives in. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Not to put too fine a point on it, but that 100 billion killed a lot of Russians with zero risk to us forces. A win by any accounting.

I. Told. You. So. Hopefully some of you can finally wake up to the realization that we're being led down the wrong path by f'n criminals. I want to believe USA is good and Russia is bad, but "The World is Grey, Jack". I don't want these devious acts to be done in the name of America, but they are. Our allies were harmed by this and the people of Europe were lied to. How long can we keep doing this before the rest of the world turns on us?

The original vision for the association was mixed support to FTU and ops, and we had half the squadron aligned with and actively flying the FTU mission. But RegAF asked us to support the combat squadron exclusively, and at that time most of our FTU augments pulled chocks because they weren't looking to deploy at that stage of their lives. The billets that came from the 9th/28th were vacant UMD billets that hadn't actually been filled by AFPC in some time. It cost the 28th zero actual personnel, the requirement for the 28th to maintain some people CMR to support 9th deployments went away, and seeing as the B-Course classes are 1/3rd smaller now and the FTU is out of the TX and FIC flying business, the demand signal on the FTU is demonstrably down. When we were told to support the combat squadron we naturally adjusted our hiring strategy and brought in more off the street and crossflow guys, so naturally we need our instructors to instruct our non-instructors... Not to mention supporting MQT, upgrade, FIC etc. at the 9th [who we associate with, not are "part of"]. And we are required by our MAJCOM to fly our own Flying Hour Program, so while we did the rainbow crew thing as we were standing up [we're still "standing up," we've only gotten to 2/3rds of our planned footprint so far], now sometimes we just need our instructors butts in seats, flying the line, making RAP, and getting CT. Instructor CT is a good thing... Especially when we rainbow up in the deployed arena as we should. When we've gotten a specific request from the FTU that we could actually support (i.e. not three months ago, when we were deployed) we've sent people... Case in point, two of our IWSOs flew with them this month. And two of our new hires (1x IP/1x IWSO) are going to live/work primarily in the FTU (with the caveat that they have to stay CMR and will have to deploy). But our force structure can't change on a dime just because one year RegAF wants us all-in on ops and two years later new local leadership wants us back in the schoolhouse in a big way... Especially because while RegAF's near rock may be FTU production, AFRC's long game is B-21 involvement and at Dyess that means Ops/Test/WIC, not FTU. There are two parties to this association, and AFRC is not going to let the other party unilaterally dictate our priorities. RegAF needs our Ops/Mx manpower and we need RegAF's iron, so we each hold some of the cards, and we (ARC) know we aren't going to get everything we want, but when y'all don't get everything you want it isn't because we have bad attitudes. It's because we're pursuing our organizational interests (from Sq to NAF to MAJCOM) like any rational group of people.