MCO

The real progress made is people have successfully made the talking point it’s ok to invade another country and take their land if you don’t like their government, even if they don’t pose a direct threat to you.

I don’t understand how we lecture Ukraine. Hey, Russia invaded your land and took a third of your territory. You want to keep fighting? Sorry, we don’t like that you have the will to fight for your land. We have decided it’s not worth your people’s lives so we have also decided that we will give the Russians everything they want. Imagine France told us in 1778 too bad, we won’t fund your war because the British are killing too many of you. Go ahead and sue for peace and just be British puppets again because we don’t like other people’s war or the idea of you dying. Your people hate it and just want to be British rather than have a war so let them. There is a valid argument over money spent which I think is separate to supporting Ukraine’s right to defend itself. I personally think it’s money well spent. Let a malign foreign actor who wants to bully those around him and affect our internal politics get stuck in a war they made against an enemy willing to fight them with little risk to us. Seems like a win/win to me, way better than other crap we’ve spent way more money on. Obviously the opinions on that are all over the place. The die hard support of all things Trump amazes me. You can be a fan of his and support him as President without just justifying everything he does. It seems like no one has their own views anymore. Trump was a dick to Zelensky because he correctly pointed out you can’t trust Putin, which could hinder a negotiation. Trump just wants to say he made peace at any cost, repercussions to Ukraine be damned. It’s like Afghanistan, he started that shit show pull out because he “made a deal” with the Taliban that they were never going to uphold, Biden just didn’t change course. Trump doesn’t care if his deals are held up, he just wants to say he made one. There are lots of things happening now in the country I like. I’m not a rabid anti Trumper. This just isn’t one of them.

If he’s UK based I assume he is talking about their service requested which is like their version of VFR/IFR. How much ATC is helping or responsible to the traffic. So IFR, VFR, VFR flight following would be most likely what he means. Depends if he was applying UK logic to US or if he just slipped up on his words.

Career badges are impossible to decipher. Give rated wings, kill all the other badges and give them basic tabs not broken out but broad. CE, WX, SF, ATC, etc. don’t make 10 different identifiers for each career field. Gives people pride and makes it easy to see what they do. Pilots do it with flight suits, let everyone else have a little morale and pride as well, within reason.

Both are problems. Yes you need to focus on creating lethal pilots, but the FGOs are the ones setting the rules and working to make the space to create those pilots. Shitty QOL, development, and leadership leads to people getting out. Everyone left becomes the shitty leadership because there is no one left to choose from for a quality cut. These shitty leaders/pilots make decisions destroying QOL and good pilot development driving out the younger pilots and continuing the cycle.

I love these hate on other platforms stories. I did 4 months in Afghanistan in Herks and we’d hate on C-17 and tankers for the same thing and didn’t call in anything or get AFCMS except the plane that came back with holes in it, but we assumed all of the other dumb platforms who don’t know what they are doing were. Like the C-17 on short final into Kandahar 5 miles in front of me yelling on the radio he was taking fire while I was staring at him on nogs seeing nothing. Everyone else that doesn’t fly what I fly is dumb!

He’s either a troll or an idiot, why is everyone arguing with him?

Or the realization there is no point arguing with you in this.

Why would NATO sign that?

Solid it depends here. Top 5 or 6 in my class were all commercial rated before UPT. The #1 guy had 269 hours of formation aerobatic jet time. I’ve also seen the 2000 hour regional pilot that is bottom of the class.

This. Peacetime managers vs wartime leaders. Some people are good at both but many aren’t. 2 different skill sets and not being at war it’s hard to know who is actually a good wartime leader.

I think it’s understandable considering they probably started pilot training September 2001.

Yep. The fighter year groups from 07-09 are tiny, especially 07. 07 got ravaged by UAVs and backed up B courses making only about 1 fighter pilot per class across all three UPT bases. We just didn’t make any fighter pilots. Now everyone on staff throws up their arms like we never saw this coming.

Aren’t they inviting them back because it was congressionally mandated they invite them back?