Leaderboard

*Promote ahead of peers*

Honestly it was a ballsy move by Iran, if they had killed any US with the TBM strikes on IZ I think things would look different right now. The mood was lethal. When we had zero casualties (granted many folks had TBI) the decision was made to stand down. It could have easily gone the other way. Fun side note: since they destroyed our hangar with TBMs I used the event to clean up 5 years of property book shenanigans. Seriously, it was very beneficial. For anyone reading this: if your stuff ever gets destroyed by the enemy, seize the opportunity to do your unit a solid.

My favorite output from that was the crater directly where the hangar with gym in a box was with a quote “I told you to stop dropping the weights!”

Man, this idiot doesn’t know crap!

Wait… what? It’s one thing to joke about bangin’ his Mom, but that’s AGGRESSIVELY establishing dominance! 😳

Okay, I've been there, done that although it was a while ago in 1994. Got hosed by what passed for DEI back in the day but that's another story. So, got hosed as the A-10 Division Chief of Stan/Eval for the Wing and my AF career is pretty much over. Not much I can do to fix that. "Should I stay or should I go now..." was an appropriate song lyric and I chose to go. However, I wasn't prepared to go with no airline apps but airlines weren't hiring, no Guard/Reserve contacts, nothing. So, I had to get those done before I cut the income lifeline and I ended up sticking around for about a year and a half before I separated from Active Duty and left with a $52K separation bonus. Got a GS-13 job as an IP at Barksdale but I was looking at the job as a place holder until I could get hired at an airline. I did get promoted to Major. After 2 years, I got hired by American so I switched to the traditional Reservist role. Somewhere in there I hung up the G-suit and got a staff job at 10AF. Got promoted to Lt. Col. I retired with 28 years total service although I wanted to retire earlier but 9/11, a faux bankruptcy, age 65 retirement, and a real bankruptcy made me not want to give up that lifeline until I had to. I'm currently paying back the $52K. As much as getting passed over was a huge insult, I think I'm better off for it. I wasn't worried about the next promotion, I wasn't worried about the next school, and I wasn't worried about the next job. I flew T-38s and A-10s for 21 years. I got into a more lucrative career and approaching my airline retirement, I have financial stability I'd never thought I'd see. That $52K that I'm paying back was basically a 30 year interest free loan for a house now approaching $1M in value. The military retirement also includes medical which helps. So, you have skills that are marketable and there are companies out there that value them. Even after getting hosed for promotion, I did do Air War College, I did an Electronic Warfare School and a few other odds and ends. Making yourself more valuable is always a good idea and don't burn bridges that you might need to cross back over. Your life isn't over but it is going down a different path than planned. Best of luck to you!

No shit there I was immediately following the Soleimani strike when we were expecting a response and the direction for response to the contingency planners from above was “fuck Iran up”. I’m not kidding.

Nothing brother...just a quick spike of the ball to give you shit.

Didn't realize Iran was employing balloons.

I’ll bet there are some Raptor dudes in the sandbox begging to get let off the leash.

On that note, on the AF portal search for “ARMS” and find the one labeled “aircrew summary”. Great way to make sure HARM is inputting sorties. Also, the AF apparently rolled out a cool thing called “envision” (envision.af.mil) that has all that along with career summary stuff. Very good product.

C-130H and C-130J sims are certified Cat C or D (Full Flight Sims) sims and count for sim hours in the civilian world for maintaining currency. Yes there is a civilian type for the C-130J (L-382J type rating is different than the L-382 type). Yes, there are civil carriers that operate the C-130J. They exist, the end. If you doubt the certification of all the C-130 sims, go look up the Sim Cert folks at Little Rock. Certifying our sims to an FAA standard is literally their entire job. It's sim time. Log it and keep track. It doesn't count toward total time for civilian companies (though there may be a few exceptions). Don't expect to get anything for it though RIGHT NOW. Realize that at the drop of a hat the FAA or some airline you might fly for in the future may want to see that sim training, or even count it towards some time counter they track. The civil aviation career field is known to be ossified and immovable...right up until it changes over night. Be ready. Long view: It's professional training you've accomplished. Keep track of it in your own logbook. If you don't have a personal consolidated logbook (all civil, UPT, mil flying) start one. You're a professional and that is your professional resume and professional journal. I've met more than enough airline pilots who stopped logging their own hours when they got hired at their "forever" airline, only to be shocked years later when they needed to find a new flying job and had to scramble to make sense of the 'flight log' that their company kept. Pro Tips: DO NOT TRUST USAF HARMS RECORDS TO KEEP TRACK OF YOUR FLYING Keep your own logbook. Also, yes it will be years before your log PIC time. That's normal. Don't fudge those numbers to make it look like you've got turbine PIC before you should. Airline hiring shops see right through those tricks.

Science, obviously.

Well said. It's a sad thing, but our modern concept of urban warfare and being able to solve these problems without massive human casualties is a pipe dream - and honestly, Hamas' strategy takes direct advantage of the fact that it's a pipe dream. Someone else said it best, which was that Hamas gave Israel two bad choices. Israel is making the less bad choice. People who honestly think there's a good way out of this are deluding themselves. The entire population of Gaza is will likely need to be displaced in order to solve this conflict. That's a sad thing to confront, but it is what it is, and it's not Israel's fault.

Anyone watch FBI Director Wray's testimony yesterday on renewing FISA? "A coordinated attack on the U.S. is likely." He tried to say it without saying it, the border has let a lot of bad actors in and we are about to reap the outcome. The administration is now signalling Biden will come out with an executive order the end of April on the border so he can claim he fixed it...even though he has been saying he doesn't have that power for the past three years.

Disagree, I think Israel is doing good WRT CDE considering they actually need to win. They haven't leveled Gaza which is exactly what we did in Kobani. what precisely should they do differently? "Do better" is feedback I've received alot in life and I must say, it's unhelpful. Again, can you give an example of a war won while respecting/protecting civilians against an enemy who does neither? And given our own track record, are we really in position to be giving advice of how to win?

Another important distinction is that while losing Afghanistan, it wasn’t an existential threat so we had the luxury of pretending to avoid civilian casualties more than we actually did. So it’s pretty ridiculous that Biden has the nerve to try to tell Israel how to conduct war after losing two urban wars. The only one that we “won” was bombing every city block to exterminate ISIS. Hamas (and by proxy Iran) are an existential threat to Israel that embed themselves in the local population as shields. They’re honestly doing a great job limiting their impact to civilians. All the numbers are dubious in the news because it relies on what Hamas reports. Definitely trust those guys.

The idea that Reagan doing a bunch of deficit spending somehow won the Cold War implies that the Communist model was sound but for the US issuing a ton of bonds. That gives far too much credit to their economic model - the Cold War was always going to be lost by Russia, the only question was whether it would be lost due to internal collapse or lost due to nuclear annihilation.

You remember where 1200+ Israelis were literally raped, tortured and murdered? Sorry but the hunger of the supportive population does not trump the security of the attacked population. Anything else would be an abdication of responsibility to the Israeli people. And a friendly fire accident is another regular feature of war. Sucks. We sure had our fair share. Unless you are arguing that the WCK convoy was intentional, then just saying "do better" is horseshit. Hamas could do better too. Everyone could do better. Lets make this useful and say how many dead Israeli soldiers are a fair exchange for how many dead Palestinian "civilians." Until then it's just sideline commentary. The Palestinians have a government, that's who should be worried about their hunger and safety. Instead it is up to Israel to move hundreds of thousands of people who cheered the rape and torture of their wives and daughters so the terrorist psychopaths they are protecting can be hunted and killed. But sure. Do better. Funny how the standard is always "do better" up to and past the point that the objective can no longer be accomplished. And how many of those were sheltered over or around the many varieties of Islamic militants? Subtract those. How many were storming the border fences or checkpoints? Subtract those. How many were civilians killed as the primary target, not collateral damage in response to direct attacks on Israel? That's the more relevant number. Once again, do you believe we were wrong for Hiroshima? Dresden? Because we did blockade Japanese oil, and most of Europe made Germany into a pariah state after WWI. Holistically is a cop-out. There is a line between geopolitical competition and outright acts of war. Hamas, not Israel, started this war, to the cheering of their poor, hungry population. It is Israel's responsibility to it's people to end the threat. When Israel starts raping Palestinians, bombing apartments, or dumping humanitarian aid into the sea to "make a point," then we will have the beginning of a basic equivalence. They are humans with free will. Yes, pawns. Yes exploited. So too was every population in history that eventually found their way to peace and freedom. And they elected Hamas in 2006. Hamas has since taken total control, but since when did Americans decide that populations are no longer responsible for their destiny? Once again, how many Israelis should die to save the lives of people who want Jewish blood in the streets more than they want their children to eat or survive? Americans and Westerners have a really tough time understanding religious fanaticism. When death is a reward for killing your enemies, you can't freedom and compassion your way to changing hearts and minds. How we haven't learned this after the last 20 years is mystifying.

Agree on Sullivan and I like Blinken as well. Yellen is excellent at Treasury, she never should have been replaced at the Fed, although Powell is also good...their policies & philosophy seem very similar. Haaland and Vilsack are quiet A- players in their jobs. Linda Thomas-Greenfield is great at the UN. Overall some hits and some misses, as usual. Hoping that a second term brings some fresh faces in some key positions!

I'll go in pieces: Israel is not starving anyone. Hamas is. It's not Israel stopping the aid, it's the complete absence of anyone to receive and distribute it. Because Hamas wants more dead Palestinians. They have stolen aid for years, and continue to do so. Those deaths are irrelevant because they have nothing to do with Israel. Because as you are pointing out, what matters is how you wage the war. What does not matter is how many innocent civilians die as a result. You wage the war ethically, and that's all you can do. Especially in this situation where civilian deaths are specifically being used as a countermeasure to Israeli attempts to destroy Hamas, arguing that the arbitrary number of deaths is somehow relevant is literally playing into their strategy. You seem to have bought the Hamas narrative that Israel is starving the Palestinians. Nonsense. Sure, but that's global policy anywhere and anytime. It's not like the Allies didn't have culpability for isolating Germany and turning it into a pariah state. That ended up with World war II, but we still killed a fuck ton of Nazis. The dirt on their hands arguments is always used to draw a moral equivalence between the two belligerents in a war. But there is no moral equivalence here. Israel has never done what Hamas did, and by any rational account would never do what Hamas did. Hamas not only did it, but the vast majority of their population celebrated it. Anyone who has even the slightest difficulty understanding who the good guys and who the bad guys are in this war, and I'm not saying that's you, has no place in the discussion. Ultimately you have to base your judgment of a society on what they do, and what they proclaim. Based on this, I choose 100,000 dead Palestinians today over 100,000 dead Jews over time. I would rather neither, but not all civilians are equal, because not all countries are equal, and not all cultures are equal. Hamas was chosen by and supported by the Palestinians. At a certain point the population has to be responsible for the type of country they create. Again, that doesn't mean you have a green light to intentionally Target civilians. But that's not what's happening, and that's not what I questioned from your first post. The number of dead civilians does not serve as the measure for whether a war is fought ethically. There would be a whole hell of a lot fewer deaths if Hamas didn't purposefully put their military targets under and around civilians. And our long-standing rules of engagement allow for killing those civilians. Doesn't make it fun, but it doesn't make it unethical either.

Tight chin strap, but on which chin?

Probably belongs in the WTF thread… https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/04/04/former-air-national-guardsman-facing-child-porn-charges-may-have-defected-russian-military.html?amp

I was traveling last Friday and was kind of tuned out. A week late but……19 Jan was the 33rd anniversary of my first combat mission in DS and the kills #3 and I (#4) got that day while escorting the strike package. 1300z, day mission, 2x Mirage F-1s. AIM-7s. It was a good day. 😜

Yeah, that would work. Maybe they could have called it “Peace of our time”…since negotiating to give evil what they want has usually worked out pretty well in the past.