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a bit generous referring to them as people 😁

Took my wife to the shooting range in Conecuh Alabama yesterday, as we were wrapping up we had a very unexpected flyover. I thought it might be @Hacker in FiFi but after checking the schedule online I am guessing it was Doc returning home after cancelling the rest of their season for an engine change in Panama City. Must have been a sight to see the sky filled with these beautiful birds. The sound was incredible.

i totally agree that UPT cuts are seriously degrading the quality of the product. But don't conflate the UPT syllabus cuts with a need to create a new ACE program: even with a robust UPT syllabus like I went through many moons ago, the ACE Program was extremely beneficial for the new co-pilots. Story time: I remember back in the 2005-2006 time frame, there was a Langley F-22 at Hill AFB whose crew chief lost control of the landing gear pin during ground ops, and the pin got sucked down an engine. IIRC $6.8M in damage. That year, at Beale, our T-38 CT Program was run on a budget of around $6M for ~3700 hours of flying time. Think about that. That's around 3,000 SORTIES in a T-38... for $800,000 less than the cost of a single Raptor FOD incident. My experience in the Beale T-38 CT Program has made me such a better U-2 pilot and overall aviator than I would ever be without it. A magnitude better. There is so much that could be done to make our USAF aviators "that much better"... but the AF leadership will simply not invest the pennies... and I do mean "pennies"... to make it happen. It's no longer a priority. I hope I am proved wrong on my last statement.

All things being equal, I'd rather have the gas.

Engines are numbered left to right... for those unaware like I was at one point. Brabus... In the Viper or F-35, that would be "#1".

A buddy who is a long time captain at Delta posted today basically saying through no fault of your own sometimes your luck just runs out. I know they will find the cause and I seriously doubt there was thing anyone of these guys could have done. Same for the people on the ground including a baby from reporting. Rest in peace.

My only comparison to heavies is the airlines, which I know isn’t apples to apples, but I don’t think it’s far off much of the time. These styles of flying allow for significant decay of stick/rudder skills and dealing with EPs/abnormals/unintended events that require them (vs. manipulating automation/simply pushing buttons). It is a disservice to young pilots especially not having ACE - the mil is holding them back on advancing their skills/maintaining solid proficiency. There’s a lot of airline pilots who could really use some GA time for this reason, and the ones who don’t care and rest on their 6900 airline hours don’t seem to realize they don’t really have 6900 hrs of flying, they have 6900 hrs of managing computers and rinse/repeating the same taxi flows/departures/arrivals (over generalization a bit, but point remains).

I bet those T-37 hours were probably 10% the cost of -135 hours and at that point in your flying career twice as valuable in building airmanship. Resurrect ACE, fly COs after UPT thru a solid 300 hour min program. Give the new ACE program T-6s from AETC (after an avionics update) then recapitalize UPT with PC-21s, T-6Cs or M-345s… or this training aircraft offered by Grob https://gaf-aerospace.com/tpx-cobra-en.html#:~:text=The TPX is a low-wing%2C side-by-side%2C two-seater,turboprop engine with 750 HP%2C 7-blade propeller. One more thing, ACE was unfortunately before my day but I believe it was there to give COs flying hours they weren’t getting sitting alert to assure pilot development and to aid the development and timing of Aircraft Commander eligible (by hours) pilots of whatever aircraft they were assigned. Good for the pilot and good for the Air Force. ACE 2.0 would serve the same / similar rationale, cheaper flight hours developing Aircraft Commander eligible pilots sooner, less expensive and less wear and tear on an already well utilized fleet of aircraft

The best graphical depiction I have seen so far...

This. https://www.marxists.org/subject/economy/authors/pe/pe-ch40.htm "Communist society passes through two phases of development: the lower phase known as Socialism, and the higher phase known as Communism." That's from the writings of the Economics Institute of the USSR. As Brabus said, it's merely a pit stop on the way to a communist society. Even Marx and Engels didn't really distinguish between Socialism and Communism in their writings. To them, it was all part of the same project. I'm not even convinced anymore that the Left thinks it's a good, workable economic system. I think that's a mask they use to hide envy and a misanthropic desire to destroy things that they can't have or otherwise haven't achieved. It's a hope, desire, and bet on future Schadenfreude.

It's more likely that he was here under a different username. That seems to be another Hallmark of his type. They say enough stupid things they no longer want to be associated with, so they hit the reset button. It's ironic, because they just end up posting the same stupid shit anyways. 🤷🏻‍♂️

Well, looks you got your answer.

Correction: ACE did not end when SAC went away. It remained within the newly-formed ACC until summer 1994 (maybe '95) when General Loh cancelled the program literally overnight. In my opinion, this was one more indicator of the lack of understanding that officers like Loh and many of the other ACC generals with fighter backgrounds had WRT to the non-fighter platforms under their command. Although I was never in ACE, I have many friends and classmates that flew as ACE co-pilots, or that were assigned to ACE as instructor pilots. I have a lot of experience with the CT Program at Beale, which ran in conjunction with ACE until the ACE portion was killed. You pose a number of questions, Clark. Bottom line: the ACE Program was a cost effective and solid aviation method for getting low-time co-pilots some much-needed quality flying experience. Not to mention, it made pilots very happy that they were able to fly... actually fly anywhere they wanted to go, and work on developing their new aviation skill sets. Imagine that... happy pilots working to better their fundamental aviation skills. For a brief period of time, Beale RQ-4 pilots were flying Beale aero club aircraft in an ACE-like program. Pennies on the dollar. Of course, it was cancelled. But it showed that with a tiny bit of thought and effort... and not much money... something positive could be done. The short-sightedness of Gen Loh and his staff was very unfortunate. Bringing back an even better version of the ACE Program should be done today. In both ACC and AMC.

Unfortuantely, there are experience and recency blind spots no matter where you find yourself in the aviation industry. When bringing guys in to fly the B-24 and B-29, I am looking for a mix of: - Multi-pilot, multiengine, "professional" flying - Day/VFR GA flying - Tailwheel experience There are a lot of other desirable traits, but these are the ones that keep the airplanes from getting wrecked.

If you give the government the power to feed you then you give the government the power to starve you.

Be more like Boyd... https://www.artofmanliness.com/character/advice/john-boyds-roll-call-do-you-want-to-be-someone-or-do-something/

So he can’t influence vendors to charge less for a beer at the dude’s own event…but…come Jan 1st he’ll be able to influence property owners to reduce/stop increases when it comes to charging rent.

Yall were enjoying it too much.....cancel that shit now!

I've gotta go dig in my tubs of ol' USAF shit to find my "WSO Hater Union" card I was once presented at a roll call. Looks like I have others to pass that along to here. Wish I could remember the occasion for which I was awarded it.

The only applicability of “democratic” in that sense is they were all stupid enough to vote for it via a democratic process, and ironically that currently valid democratic process would soon disappear entirely if their ill-informed plan actually played out fully.

I will be completely stunned if anything in the report suggests an alternative outcome. It's hard enough to deal with an engine failure during takeoff, but when the engine completely explodes, to expect someone to analyze that in seconds is already a heavy lift. It's what we're trained to do, but that doesn't mean it's easy. But to then have to analyze a second engine starting to fail? No way. And all for what? Based on where the plane was on the runway in the videos we've seen, there was no stopping, and there was no going. At that point you're just arguing over where to put the fireball. I sincerely hope for the sake of the maintainers who were working on that engine over the past couple months that they too are the victims of Fate, and not something that's going to make them feel like murderers for the rest of their lives.

God damn that's delicious.

Access is all that matters, which might come back to bite them in the long run.

Leave the kids alone. If the boomers hadn't raped every institution and convention for their own advantage, all the while incinerating the housing market, suppressing interest rates, saddling every 22 year old with crippling debt, and inventing "too big to fail," maybe the younger generation wouldn't look toward something different. The American Dream was raped by the generation that cried out for free-love and no war until they got in power to give us a corporatist government and endless wars. Now they don't like that their kids are skeptical of their promises. No small wonder. Socialism is a nightmare, but you have to be blind to think this is just about lazy young adults. 😂

Watching POTUS realize that Putin is a menace in real time has been entertaining.

I think this about the 5th cycle of colored shirts and name tags in my career. Thankfully I’ve been able to mostly ignore all of the knee jerk decisions and keep doing the right thing: morale shirts and call sign name tags (and no hat/sunglasses on head), as God intended.

Yeah while it's an interesting conversation in an academic sense, the simple reality is that the people who view flying as an unfortunate necessity and impediment to ladder climbing are not going to do anything but the bare minimum to train and keep pilots trained. The bare minimum will be discovered by gradually reducing flying experience until too many planes crash to ignore the problem.

This is from the cheap seats, but everything being discussed in this thread strikes me as the whole point of pilot training. What am I missing? What is the USAF missing? Is this a serious proposal? We cut pilot training in half, but then add a program like this shortly thereafter? WTFO?

One more idea, in another thread this may have come up but what if ACE 2 were run at one or several centralized bases and participants TDY’d in for recurrency and a set training profile, like recurrency flights then an intense 2-3 weeks flying schedule. Figure 3-5 training programs. Since it would be about a one month TDY, the interference factor from home base could be eliminated.

The putin simps like bashi are confused because they got played. They thought they were voting for an idea (pro-putin) but now they realize their idol’s hurt feelings and chase for a Nobel prize are way more important.

No, no…you have it all wrong. The progressives told us it was a Republican shutdown.

Won't matter soon, free/cheap beer at all those soon to be city owned/run grocery stores.

Being a pilot wasn't enough reason for them?? 😁😆

You are not far off the target, my time in tankers 01-05 had a LOT of one to a full stop at the Died flying essentially the same mission 2-3 days in a row. Complacency and expectation bias was a real CRM / ORM issue. Variety is the spice of life and necessary in the development of a military aviator

Agreed Huggy, the ACE program was awesome for us -135 and -52 copilots. I ended up with over 400 hours of tweet time while a CO at Plattsburgh. Used Csquared (the off days right after alert week - for you youngsters) as an opportunity to cruise down South for a few days with 3 hops each day. We’d leave out on Wednesday right off alert and return Sunday evening by 6pm. Any controlled airport with a military fuel contract and at least 5,000 feet of runway was good to go. Smyrna, TN used to give a small bottle of Jack for each 100 gallons of fuel. The Squadron bar keep was happy every time i flew through there. The furthest I flew out of Plattsburgh on a tweet trip was to NM and back. A few others to Homestead, FL and back. Great flying experience and tons of fun to boot. A few of us even got formation qualed and flew a few out and back formation trips too. I’m still shocked how many of my fellow CO’s didn’t take full advantage of the program. I was able to fill empty flight slots/schedules tons of times just by being willing and available to fly. One year I flew 2 “guest” flights with our 2 tanker squadron commanders.

They have been hosting NATA Formation Clinics out there for several years. An old SAC base with huge runways, lots of ramp space, and tons of clear airspace around it is a particularly good place to have 'em. The runway is long enough that a couple of years ago a formation of T-6s took off, lead had an engine loss of power at about 150' AGL with the gear up, and he was still able to get the gear down and land in the remaining runway. IMG_3978 2_E614E742-A9FD-4ADE-AE7D-726FC77310F9.mp4

Blytheville AFB. "Hooterville". Forgot all about that place. It was one of the ~13 bases that had B-52s and KC-135's when I graduated UPT. They had Tweets too, for the old ACE Program... which Gen Loh killed, in what I'd call a not-well-thought out decision.

I had a 50/50 shot…put it all on black!

Right now they have the advantage since CSOs/WSOs seem to be the bulk of the people that are staying in.

The WSO mafia is stronger than I thought.

I don’t think losing the one engine (at least in an airbus) is a huge deal, not even hard to deal with. But, all bets are off when it falls off, likely resulting in ruptured hyd lines and fuel cells. Then throw in the alleged loss of the #3 at 500k GW. Screwed…nobody can recover from that.

Boss called me this morning. UPT/enjjpt select. 95 PCSM / 99 Pilot / no PPL. 50ish hours

Could be worse, could have been Slife.

Don’t want to veer off topic too much and fantasize this plane or that one but…. this jet, yes it’s a kit plane, could be the basis for what could be a great ACE CT aircraft https://www.kitplanes.com/viperjet-redux/ Like a modern Folland Gnat, small light quick nimble and cheap in jet aircraft terms. It would be modified some for sure if adopted for an ACE or CT aircraft but the basics I think are handled.

As long as we're swinging for the fence, don't forget the fleet of Super Cubs that studs need to solo before they can move on to a turboprop.