Leaderboard

And, not so incredibly, Pancho Villa knew Huggy.

Happy birthday to the 1st Reconnaissance Squadron at Beale AFB 113 years old today. In 1916, the 1st invaded Mexico to try to capture or kill Pancho Villa. Probably didn't get much per diem.

Fairly certain @M2 gave Eddie Rickenbacker his first intel brief.

Hopefully Bondi. Unfortunately Trump seems to hire women based solely on the "Biff test."

This seems appropriate

@Negat0ry @Pooter @Sua Sponte @gearhog You naysayers are something else, man. I'll tell you what. It doesn't matter if we can't install a democracy in Iran. If we turn them into Afghanistan, we win. Because they don't have nukes. Last time I checked, they already want to destroy us and our friends, so the bit about them becoming jihadis is a red herring. They're already jihadis. They already hate us. We didn't need to bomb them to achieve that. WhAt's ThE pLaN?? The plan is to destroy their government. This is specific, measurable, achievable, and realistic. I'd be far more concerned if I was hearing soothing sounds of "hearts and minds" and "girls' schools" and the like. Do you guys honestly think there was a different path forward? If you do, I'd love to hear it. And ISIS? Yeah, I remember ISIS. The terror group we bombed the shit out of? Yeah, where are they now? Oh that's right. Their caliphate is gone. Finished. Accomplished almost entirely with airpower. You people need to get it through your head that war is the state of human nature. It will never end. There will never be world peace. We will always be at war. Get over it.

Agreed, but the same logic applies. Forecasts of doom and chaos are worthless when the doom and chaos never comes. Your entire point is hypothetical. Maybe you'll be right. But so far the anti-interventionists have been wrong on basically every single Trump engagement, especially WRT Iran. And they can't spell out exactly how this goes sideways. What, we get another Islamo-fascist regime, but with no credibility or military might left by which to threaten the world? Oil goes up because the production of a country viral to our biggest enemy (China) was squashed and the American energy complex gets more money and power? That doesn't mean you should keep quiet. It just means there's not yet any reason to believe the sky-is-falling crowd. If we send in the infantry, I'll happily be the first to agree with you. As of yet there's no evidence we're planning that, and you can't hide troop movements like that. Too many people are still shell shocked from the failures of Afghanistan/Iraq that they are conflating all military intervention with nation-building. Now, if we send in the men with beards to capture and control Kharg Island, all the better. The message is pretty clear to anyone who is listening. Fuck with the US, and we will take your stuff and kill you. I for one am a big fan of that message. If my neighbor woke up every morning and threw rocks at my wife and kids while they left for school, promising to rape and murder them when they got home, I'd light his house on fire and execute him as he fled the flames.

Brother Bill trying un-alive Hillary by pushing her into traffic. Break Break - why does she always dress like Charmian Mao? AQMnD1eaZ9nTx_usU7ZG9njlu_ozqA2WxUQTd-1fD5WSoCNwoLev7nJey670MQM8XbmDOupkxAoKDxMBQe8iVk4KXhHssDh_HEjNqiHPPQtVGA.mp4

Ah yes, the hardcore fucking of a... **checks markets**... 4% drawdown. From astronomical highs. Like the economic disaster from Ukraine? Or the social catastrophe that followed Maduro's capture? Or the military disaster of the summer attacks on Iran? How many times does the philosophy have to be wrong before you question the philosophy itself?

Hell, it beats the alternative!

Disagree on Patel. I haven't found a better measure of a politician's value than their ability to handle a long-form podcast. Patel is not perfect, and he engages too much in the Twitter chest thumping nonsense that has become the status quo, but he's able to speak intelligently on anything he's asked, and he has guiding principals. That doesn't mean you have to agree with those principles, but it's refreshing that a politician at this point can even spell out what guides them in their decision making. And I don't find any of the frat bro stuff off-putting. I'm tired of politicians pretending like they're formal and keeping all of their immature/illegal/immoral nonsense behind closed doors. Just be honest about it at this point. I trust an FBI director who can smash a beer with an Olympic team a hell of a lot more than the colonels and generals we dealt with while we were in the military who pretended like they had never had a drop of alcohol once they were in power.

He's the hero we deserve, but not the one we need right now.

Biff is my hero, sir

just got my date! Check vMPF boys/girls

Heard back from AFPC this morning that my dates are flowing through the system. Going to Laughlin mid-May with IPT projected for the end of June at Prescott.

Correct…Canadian oil is still like $40 or $50 bbl, Venezuelan even cheaper. $70 is the us is very healthy. Creates enough profit for capx, hiring and future expansions. Brent at $70 and above….stupid profits I think what’s being ignored is the squeeze on china. They’re losing 50% of their oil imports, they’ve stopped exporting fuel, the longer this goes the richer irans neighbors get and china starts to bleed out. Read an article last yr how there is a push for a new economic zone with India being the manufacturing hub and moving away from china. They need a fuck load of oil and the products would flow west through the gulf and they railed to Europe. Iran was the only piece in the way.

I just got the email for a 30 Jun IPT date out of Del Rio that was for Prescott. AFPC guy told me that the location changes all the time though due to AETC doing load management/balancing so to take that with a grain of salt. Sounds like its going to be a cluster until were in the student flights getting ready to go

ClearedHot knows that because he hooked Eddie on his first contact check

Here is what Mr Trump thinks of you, your service, sacrifice, and your life should it end with his actions; a promotional appearance to sell hats.

oooffff I remember showing up here as a UPT select and you were still AD. My back hurts...

Water is wet

Bondi and Patel.

Tell me more ChatGPT

We had a plan for optionally manned... Obviously this program was and is personal to me. In the simplest terms, the Tactical Tanker debate comes down to one core issue: vision. For years, we’ve all acknowledged the “tyranny of distance” in the United States Air Force fight—especially across the vast operating areas of United States Indo-Pacific Command. Distance is the pacing threat’s greatest ally. It stretches logistics, constrains sortie generation, limits persistence, and ultimately caps combat power at the worst possible time. The Tactical Tanker concept directly attacked that problem. If I could distill the entire discussion down to the basics: it was about putting more gas forward. Not incrementally more. Not marginally more. Transformationally more. The modeling—while I can’t share specifics here—showed roughly three times the fuel offload at the IPs compared to the current construct. Three times. That’s not a tweak. That’s a different fight. More fuel forward means: Fighters push deeper without sacrificing weapons. Bombers retain flexibility instead of flying razor-thin margins. Tankers operate with more options instead of predictable orbits. The entire air campaign gains elasticity instead of brittleness. In a Pacific scenario, fuel is range, range is presence, and presence is deterrence. The Tactical Tanker fundamentally changed the calculus of how airpower could be projected and sustained. And yet, the conversation kept getting stuck. Specifically—on the boom. The boom became the intellectual gravity well. Instead of stepping back and asking, “What does tripling fuel forward do to the operational problem?” the debate narrowed into technical objections and legacy expectations. The inability to zoom out and process second- and third-order effects stalled momentum. That’s not a knock on anyone’s professionalism. It’s a reflection of institutional inertia. Large organizations optimize around what they know. They protect existing paradigms. They scrutinize deviation more harshly than stagnation. But transformational capability rarely fits neatly inside legacy mental models. The Tactical Tanker wasn’t about replacing the fleet. It wasn’t about novelty for novelty’s sake. It was about solving the INDOPACOM logistics geometry in a way that current constructs simply don’t. At some point, we have to ask: Are we optimizing for yesterday’s constraints—or tomorrow’s fight? Because in the Pacific, fuel isn’t a support function. It’s the strategy.

Squids are VERY excited today...one of their attack subs torpedoed an Iranian Frigate. The Skipper had the stones to come to periscope depth and film it....epic! iGGQpwCNXNAdL1R1.mp4

Sure, but I don't see behind any curtains anymore. In short, Russia is a dog we cornered that we have to be very careful with. We're probably doing this for the same reason the US Government limited Ukraine's starlink access as they tried to advance into Russian territory: Russia have nukes on functional ICBMs pointed at western nations. Cutting off Venezuela and Iran in Russian oil calculus has made our sanctions that much more effective. I'd imagine we now have to carefully meter just how tightly we squeeze. Too hard and we get nukes airborne. It's a position of power that has to be carefully managed. Again, that's from my non read-in perspective. If I've learned one thing, it's that open source media is never privy to the behind the scenes negotiations that end up changing all the diplomatic calculus of how, precisely, the US is screwing over other countries. I'd guess this article is us seeing 10% of what's actually going on.

I was notified for my assignment yesterday, Vance with a RNLTD of early May. My IPT CSD is 5 June. Got my RIP for IPT today. I’ll shoot you a dm you for that class schedule!

S-V8I-PT is the AETC course code for the IPT syllabus. P-V4A-B is the same for the new post-IPT T-6 syllabus (other examples being P-V4A-U for the dead 2.5 T-6 syllabus, P-V4A-M being the XPW syllabus, and F-V5A-F being the T-38C GPT syllabus). If you are showing dates for one or the other, those will either be IPT or UPT start dates based on what the course code that's showing is.

Yeah I think so. Just got my RIP as well so trying to figure all the things out

That's life. We don't do nothing never we can't do everything. This isn't a Iraq, a country that was by and large doing nothing to the United States in the early 2000s. This is Iran, the country that has been actively and perniciously attacking us for decades. If your analogy holds, and the children of the Ayatollah attempt revenge, how is that materially different? In this case, the worst case scenario is the status quo. It's just not the same as the forever wars we were used to.

Im with you Lord Ratner.

True. What's making a real dent in the oil market...is it the actual loss of oil, or the perception of loss? Not saying it doesn't hurt, but the bounce back will be faster than we think, at least in the USA. Moreover, the USA doesn't need anyone else's oil. The only people severely hurt by this are Russia and China, and even with that it'll be shorter lived than any pundit will acknowledge. We backed a small dog into a corner. Oh no. Their capabilities are insignificant. They'll try, but it will be feeble at best. Their much vaunted Navy of missile destroyers was bodied in a single day. Not that they can't hit, just that they can't actually hit hard. The biggest actual question mark is whatever sleep cells they have in the wind. That op targeted the hardware that man men were using to try and hold their adversaries (mostly middle eastern countries) at threat. They didn't stop, so now we've targeted the mad men themselves. You mean that we're in the middle of an active shooting war and our wild-card of a CinC isn't showing all his cards? Weird. It's almost like that's how he's operated every single time in the past. Definitely time to panic. There is clearly a ground element to this game (spelled in part 'Kurdish'), and I guarantee that it's been in the works for a while now. This is a long game that involves a LOT more players than the US and Iran. Critiquing the man in the arena while the swords are actively swinging is a game played by fools and universally leads to incorrect conclusions. Let it play out.

VA politics is driven by the DC metro folks, which is really an extension of Maryland politics. It didn't go blue, it was just having an affair with a Republican.

James Cameron/Skynet already designed that thing:

Yeah sorry basically any training code that doesn’t have IPT labeled will be your UPT dates

KEND 26-07AU T-38C x5 T-6 FAIP KC-46 Seymour Johnson KC-46 Altus x2 KC-135 Altus x3 KC-135 General Mitchell ANGB KC-135 Pittsburgh KC-135 Beale C-17 Altus C-130J Fort Worth C-130J Little Rock x2

To include Lt LeMay.

Cuba is teetering on the edge, out of fuel, 90% of the island has been without power for the last 36 hours. If Trump cleans up Venezuela (not complete yet, Iran and Cuba)...Liberal minds will explode. Again, the dude is a narcissistic asshat, but he has done some good things. Still early on all three but at least not the status quo of the last 47-60 years.

Being able to fully see behind the tanker with multiple cameras. Not being able to look through the deice/anti-ice fluid to try and make contact. Not having to cancel air refueling due to a cracked window. LWIR ability.

"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse!" -- Henry Ford

The UPT assignments person told me, but also said it could change depending on AETC needs

Fat Amy got her first kill. A yak130.

ADMIN NOTE: This thread is being absorbed into 'The Iran Thread"...

So far, this wins the award for coolest thing to happen in this war. What a fucking day to be a submariner!

Not odd if the Hornet driver has some questionable loyalties... There is an effort to contain some of the details in order to limit the obvious bad press and political consequences. Complete $hit, rip the Fing band-aid off and call it what it is.

I think he was a F-4 WSO, then UPT, then F-111, then A-10, passed over for Major, hired by the Reserve A-10 unit in New Orleans, hired on at United but invited to leave during training (lying on his application?), invited to leave at New Orleans for flying violations and personnel conflicts, tried to get hired at Columbus Reserves but blocked by the NOLA A-10 folks, hired at UPS and fired after a conflict on a Asia flight with the other two pilots that resulted in them locking Runner out of the cockpit. After that, it is a mystery that I'm sure we will learn more about. Quite the resume, if you ask me. Maybe he was a plant to screw up the Chinese PLAAF.

Glad to hear we have a strong OPSEC program.