Leaderboard

I pilot I have mentored since he was 14 is a TPS grad and stationed there as an IP. As late as Thursday the wreckage was still on the runway. He mentioned they got back to flying and he decided to go to Palmdale rather than do patterns and see the wreckage on every pattern. It's been tough on the entire test and bomber community, I think there legacy will live on because they touched so many lives.

Normally I would but that lady is a weird type of fat. She looks like a meatball on toothpicks.

Dibs on the trash can, or on the orange and blue corrugated metal mesh waste receptacle?

I don’t agree with everything Pete has done but in terms of worst SecDef ever…

Everyone has to retire at some point. Guy was a 4-star general with 34 years..where the fuck was he supposed to go from here? COCOM, CSA, or Chairman. Also it’s been well known for some time that USAREUR is downgrading to 3 star command similar to USAFE. Not everything has to be some major conspiracy. Dude probably didn’t see a path forward and decided it was time to hang it up.

.. so we need to escalate in order to.. encourage Europe to recapitalize their energy independence, so that in some future hypothetical war that’s a foregone conclusion (in your head) our allies will be stronger? Guys these justifications are getting more and more convoluted and nonsensical. Talk about a goalpost shift.. I thought this was about an “imminent nuclear threat” to the US homeland

This is beyond tragic. I can't claim to have known any of the crew but I'm confident I've crossed paths with atleast a few during my occasional trips to KEDW. I don't want this thread to dissipate so fast, like how the rest of the websphere has a ten second attention span. We need to keep these bros in our thoughts & prayers as long as possible.

KEND 26-12AF F-35 F-16 T-38 FAIP B-52 AFRC F-16 Bulgaria

DIBS since biff dont want it!

My biggest fear for situations like this is that the cops realize they effed up and drop a bag to justify everything and avoid making him a millionaire. Again, the presence of cameras has helped mitigate that in modern times but still.

Anyone who was paying attention always knew AFFORGEN was simply a force presentation model to be sustained in competition only; in crisis - all bets are off. Y’all keep acting like Trump just started this war out of the blue. We have been in conflict with Iran since 1979 with more Americans having died indirectly from Iranian actions than from any other country. Not to mention the impact to global commerce through not just the SoH but through the Red Sea and the funding of Houthis. We just finally had an administration willing to do something about it. This escalation was bound to happen at some point. We can debate the timing of said escalation but this is far from “Trump’s war”. Now I agree that we may have missed and opportunity and I wish we had finished the job when we had them on their heels early April; too early to call it a shit deal when we don’t even have a deal yet. We can reassess after the 60 day mark. Yes our military is sadly smaller than in the 1990s; blame generations of shitty leaders and politicians who ignored the clear need to modernize and recapitalize our military.

@Biff_T This is where you chime in and say “Save the fat one for me”. 🤮

Short of a dropping nukes or a full ground invasion, I think this conflict has proven we don’t have the firepower needed for Iran to capitulate. It’s not about what the public will or won’t support, because we already proved we’ll go ahead and launch a super unpopular war. I’m talking about the real world limits of our military power. This might be a tough pill to swallow but we had 3x the fighter squadrons we do now when we took down the far smaller country of Iraq in 1990. And in desert storm, airpower was paired with a ground invasion. The notion that we can ramp up to some previously unseen level of air power just isn’t reality. Almost the entire tanker community is deployed already and run ragged with crew rest waivers. We redirected more carriers to the region than at any point in the last 30 years and one of the CSG’s retasked for this thing just completed the longest carrier deployment since WW2. Idk if you guys follow the meme pages but one of the running jokes right now is that big blue basically took the entire AFFORGEN model and threw it in the trash when this kicked off. They just said fuck it and deployed everybody. Now folks are tired and ready to be done with it. There’s no world where we turn this back up to early March levels of strikes, let alone exceed that intensity. We shot our shot, and it didn’t work. And now we’re taking a crap deal to get out of a crap situation. I think this is a super valuable lesson to learn after Venezuela folding like an house of cards got us high on our own supply. If we’re serious about deterring China we need to learn the actual lesson here: we aren’t all powerful anymore. If you want to sustain operations against a determined opponent, you need volume, and a deep bench. We’ve become insanely good at lighting people up night 1 with all the shiniest most expensive toys. But we’ve become terrible at sustaining that pressure over time.

Let’s not forget another, Les Aspin and the Blackhawk Down fiasco.

KDLF 26-12AF F16 B1 F35x2 T-38 FAIP F-22

All yours brother...all yours.

Yep, pretty much. The major, unforced error was starting the ceasefire back in April, stupidly thinking diplomacy would “totally work this time” with Iran, then combining that effort with, as you put it: short cuts, threats, mean tweets. Turns out none of those things worked worth a damn with Iran. The momentum was solid, the ass beating was large, and then we just stopped and have subsequently created the proverbial shit sandwich. As someone said earlier, tactical ass whooping without the foresight/capability to see it through to a strategic victory.

Too old (T38) Gotta move on, just for all the decision makers lurking here, hedge, get an interim / second advanced trainer

Trump started a war of consequence without the support of Congress or the American people and changed a status quo that favored the US to a status quo that favors Iran. Iran has been a problem for a long time, but maybe previous administrations didn’t “do something about it” because there was a high probability or a poor outcome.

I’d certainly offer it to boom operators. They talk on the radio, learn approach plates, and are already trusted to not carve their initials into 5th gen paint. I’d rather have instuctor boom E-5 — E-8s become warrant CFIs than civie CFIs teach LTs how to fly. If that’s a choice I’d ever have to make.

The morality of the general public, whether correct or incorrect, is going to prevent us from bringing the firepower needed for Iran to capitulate if this kicks off again. The administration vastly under-estimated the effort needed to succeed. We are world champs at converting tactical success into strategic loss.

Haha England tied Ghana.

@17D_guy I doubt this MOU goes anywhere, including an actual deal. But if somehow a deal is reached, and it looks anything like this MOU, it’ll certainly negatively impact our standing in the region and in the world (like you mentioned - NK, etc.) This is a big fail for Trump currently, and I hope any deal reached doesn’t look like this MOU.

All? I'm just talking to you. You haven't presented one particularly interesting thought in months. If there's a spectrum of intelligent, novel thinking, Clark Griswold is all the way on the right side of the spectrum, and you are fairly close to the far left side. You wonder why nobody responds to you positively, yet you don't seem to realize that the "cheerleaders" on this forum (CH, brabus, Fourfans, viperman, me, etc.) aren't here to beat the other team. We're here to discuss with similarly experienced humans with similarly matching values things that are going on in the world. If our goal was to prove our own intelligence to ourselves by going up against a couple dozen antagonists, we wouldn't be here on a mostly conservative leaning forum of mostly old vets. It's also why guys like negatory and Day man and NS player and 17D Guy end up rage quitting in a huff. They didn't see a bunch of like-minded people discussing issues from different perspectives in the same neighborhood, they saw some sort of den of conservative malignancy and made it their righteous duty to stand on behalf of "the other side." Bottom line, they were here to prove people wrong. Sure, Cleared Hot gets a little Fox Newsish from time to time, and I use big words that Boomer6 has to sound out each syllable to understand, but none of the conservatives come to this site thinking it's time to prove you or the other token liberals wrong. Hell, it's not like you've said anything that you believe that anyone can address, but even if you had, I'm not particularly interested proving you wrong. You say you don't understand my view, and so I explain. I never said you had to agree with me, and like I said you're obviously not at a point yet where you can accept the existence of a philosophy that might disprove your own. I don't mind wasting the time because my daughter is taking a nap and I have nothing to do right now. It would be nice if baseops was what it used to be, a repository forum primarily for military flyers to get information about life and work in the military. But technology evolved and web forums that aren't hyper-specialized hobbyist groups are basically dead, so a few dozen Ghosts of Air Force Past come here to chat amongst themselves, show off their guns, and occasionally respond to one of you guys who seem to have decided that of all the places on the internet you can go to battle with people of the opposite ideology, this is where you'll make your last stand. I mean my God, look at Negatory. The dude is still here with a new username that reminds you every time you look at it that he literally could not pry himself away from fighting with a bunch of online strangers. It's an addiction. 🤷‍♂️

One saved round: Remember that time I said we were heading down the road of irreversible stupid escalations and everyone called me a TDS libtard pussy? Well now here we are talking about how we need to bomb Kharg island so that WW3 starts on our terms 🤷🏻‍♂️ Can’t make this shit up

Wow, crazy thread. Stumbled on it by accident. I worked for Foglesong when he was a mere O3 flying T-33s. He was detachment commander; I think we had 4 pilots counting Bob. We didn't really have a lot of drama with him in those days tho there was some noise about friction between him and his ops officer. I guess authority went to his head tho because some of these stories...just...holy crap. We figured he was on some sort of fast track when general Creech showed up for a looksee at our little operation. Seemed highly unusual. Bob left soon after to fly F-15s. I lost track after that.

Louis Johnson in my book with McNamara a close second.

Bombing's back on the menu - https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/2222408/trump-launches-new-strikes-iran Has this ever worked without deep intel assets ready with a replacement, a la our forays into S. America? We just need to burn the rest of the world's economies to the ground and ours will be fine. K.

Quibbling. We took it from a bad situation to a much worse situation in which our adversary has significantly more geopolitical influence than they did a year ago. And now they know that we don’t have the capability or intent to do what is necessary to stop them.

Parts of the building DID need to be turned upside down. Firing caustic people like Slife and Cat-5 were among the good things, but bro went off his rocker with a Stalinistic purge of anyone who he thinks doesn't conform. That being said, previous administrations were not exactly angels when it came to promotions and pushing certain groups. The shenanigans with the promotion lists for women and minorities are completely unsat and if you scroll some of my others comments you will find I've already pointed that out. I think his damage goes far beyond the purge, the Anthropic deal is unreal.

If our president wasn't obsessed with using the stock market as his favorite indicator of his administration's success, we could end the Iranian problem forever. Just a few sorties to Kharg Island and it won't matter anymore. We keep trying to avoid a global economic catastrophe that is unavoidable, but the longer we push it off, the weaker our allies become through their own suicidal policies.

Maybe I’m old fashioned or just naive on the wonders of AI, but the side getting strategic wins here is the one with the massive TBM stockpile and control over a critical global trade route, while the side with all the fancy AI tools is getting humiliated on the global stage. Although.. a slightly smarter version of grok could’ve advised us this war of choice was a shit idea to begin with, in which case I’m all for embracing our robot overlords

Vance

I had T-41 training at the Valdosta airport prior to T-37s and 38s at Moody. I remember my T-41 instructor as a young guy, probably no college, wanted to go on to the airlines. He was a competent teacher and had the patience to put up with my fumbling around. Nice guy. I hope he found his dream. For what the T-41 program was intended for back then, he did a good job.

That made me laugh. I recall a 1980s USAF program that put new UPT grads into ANG/AFR units as a first assignment because there were no slots in active duty units. So we put an impressionable 2Lt into a unit of folks who essentially were people who wanted out of active duty for a variety of reasons, some good, some not so much. What could go wrong with that?!

The shit show continues... Top Army General Who Was Last U.S. Soldier to Leave Afghanistan is Suddenly Leaving His Post WASHINGTON — The Army’s commander of its forces in Europe and Africa — who was famously the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan in 2021 — is unexpectedly stepping down from his post after just 18 months in the job, the Army confirmed late Tuesday. GEN Christopher Donahue, commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and Africa and commander of NATO’s Allied Land Command, will relinquish his command on July 2, according to an Army statement provided to The Associated Press. He is the latest in a line of nearly two dozen top military leaders to either retire or depart their jobs early under the leadership of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has undertaken an effort to thin the ranks of the military’s top brass with the mantra “less generals, more GIs”... More at: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/army-general-christopher-donahue-unexpectedly-leaving-post-rcna351524 Other reporting indicates this is a forced departure as directed by Hegseth. Sure, there are a lot of potbellied GOs that need to transition to lucrative consulting gigs, but this guy seems to have a lot of gas left in the tank and it makes me wonder if Hegseth is now targeting generals that can do more push-ups than he can! If anyone has other insights, I'm sure we'd all like to hear them. Speaking of which, remember how the purges ended up going for Stalin?!?

At IPT now… If the goal is quantity, sure. If the goal is quality, there’s a lot to be desired. I’ll leave it at that in a public forum.

Relax, it was a post with words and some sarcasm (call MX on your detectors), not a Kelis song, which ironically, is probably how a lot of MAGA is feeling right now on Trump.

Well, I just bought an EOTEC set worth well more than the rifle, nice now having a 5X magnifier. Windham Weaponry 5.56

The worst part is this sheriff has zero skin in the game - there will be no accountability when his decree gets destroyed in court. There needs to be real penalties for public “servants” decreeing wildly anti-constitutional bullshit with reckless abandon. They’re like monkeys throwing shit at the wall constantly to see what sticks.

This MOU is hot garbage. It’s also not a deal and pretty much meaningless. The obvious reason Trump signed this POS is the midterms coming up. We did well for 40 days, then the train went off the tracks with a dumb idea of a ceasefire. Should have never happened, and it just keeps getting worse with this latest thing.

Hey all, just chiming in as someone who got picked up for UCT a couple years ago. Knowing a lot of people out there want to go fighters, just wanted to share that it is definitely possible through UCT. F-15 WSO slots seemed to be the one consistent part of the UCT drops, around 3-5 every class out of 14-20 students. For reference, the average class probably had about 6 people who ranked them high on their dream sheet. There are so many other cool platforms CSO’s go to that the fighter slots sometimes aren’t that competitive to get! Just something I wish somebody put out there when I was applying.

It is “incoherent” to you because you are blinded by your hatred for this administration. This is actually the first military conflict I’ve ever seen with clear strategic objectives (1) Attrite their military and military industrial complex (2) Ensure FON in the SOH (3) Iran does not possess a nuclear weapon Also please a huge shoutout to our kick ass Airmen across every platform and specialty who projected power under circumstances that none of us alive to this day have experienced. That extends to all the guard and reservists who were involuntarily mobilized and knocked it out of the park.

A few thoughts: This deal is going to be ass, but any deal no matter how bad is better than continuing the incoherence we’ve witnessed over the last few months. Any amount of cash given to the Iranians, be it pallets on a c-17 or sanctions relief or a $300B tip option on a square reader, is pennies on the dollar compared to the economic damage this thing was going to cause if we continued through the summer and ran our strategic reserve dry. I am happy to let Trump claim the win if it means we get to stop the abject retardation and putting our folks in danger for little to no strategic gain. The “biggest state sponsor of terror” line is so tired and silly. First of all, with the materiel we left the Taliban, there’s zero chance we aren’t the biggest state sponsor or terror on an absolute monetary level. You can say it wasn’t intentional or it’s all biden’s fault but over the years our blunders and failed interventions have financed and engendered more terrorism than anyone else.. by far. But more generally i just dispute this framing. “#1 state sponsor of terror” implies there have been countless Iranian backed terrorist attacks in our homeland. Except the reality is WE are the occupying force in the Middle East and the Iranians have financed groups that have attacked our troops in THEIR hemisphere. Still fuck Iran and every American service member killed is a tragedy but I think we can be more accurate/mature with our language and say “Iran acts against our interests in the region.” Their sponsorship of militant groups that attack our troops is no different than us attempting to arm Kurds to overthrow them. Just be honest and admit we have opposing interests and neither of us really consider morals when we are deciding who to finance to fuck over the other side. I know this point is bound to get a bunch of pearl clutching over “moral equivalence” but I think it’s more productive to acknowledge that our countries operate in our own (or Israel’s) interest with very little regard for what is morally “right.” Ultimately we’ll have a lot more to discuss once the text of the MOU and the eventual deal go public. Because we can’t be sure what’s in it. But what we can be sure of is the reaction: The left will hate it because it’s just JCPOA but with more money and more steps The zionists and neocons will hate it because it isn’t total war with Iran And the maga loyalists will love it and see our president’s months of unhinged waffling as completely vindicated and a totally brilliant negotiating strategy.

What you need is the 2808 which you can request under medical clearance in IMR then work with your flight med to complete. Eventually once you jump through all the hoops it'll be routed and be returned stamped as eligible for FC1 assuming all goes well. If you haven't started that you're behind. It took like 3-4 months from me completing the tests and having the flight doc sign it to getting it back stamped from HQ. Whatever date the stamp has on it is where the 4 year mark is based. In my case, my IFC was stamped in July of 2024 so it is good until July of 2028. This year's board would be the last time I could apply on that 2808 before I'd have redo everything to get another one since it has to be valid through 31 Dec 2027 IAW the PSDM. The 2992 is for current fliers showing their current flying status which is probably just to check that you're not currently DNIF.

I don't want to throw Biff under a Frontier Airbus but, holy moly, I've never had a car stolen or broken into and describing those issues as "comes with the territory" is a sad summation of civilization in a once great state.