JarheadBoom

Stupid question time: If the NDAA passes with that language in it, we'll be dealing with the lowest-bidder version of Comcast for our base networks 2 years later? Nothing good (for DoD) could possibly come from that... It's almost like they're actively trying to break the military.

Based on his Air Force Cross citiation and several things I've read and heard over the years, SrA Jason Cunningham should have been, in my opinion, one of the first (if not the first) OEF Medal of Honor recipients.

That's WAY MORE fucked up than a football bat. Way to go, ANG "leadership". At least our no-end-in-sight partial mobilization (12302) counts for reduced retirement...

Heard of it; hadn't actually seen it. I guess my age is showing when I hear about all those dating/hookup apps and I just cringe.

What the everloving fuck is that?

As a Traditional Reservist, there's no way I can keep a .civ job at a 1:2 or 1:3 dwell rate, USERRA or not. I can't imagine it's any different for Traditional Guardsmen. If NGB/AFRC roll over on the dwell rate issue, in short order the only Traditionals they'll have left are troughers & bums and the chronically unemployed. EDIT: Punctuation, words.

I haven't heard anything about changes to Guard/Reserve retirement WRT the current military retirement "reform" discussions.

Interesting. Probably not a good choice to take through airport security, or New Jersey...

Thought this was appropriate here: Massachusetts National Guard honors airmen killed on duty to them all.

Or doing an FMS 791/AMCART exactly as directed by the very specific instructions in the G2 cut, then having the WRDCO email your Chief Boom a few days later telling him how fucked up you are. Back on topic... I was wondering how a rudder issue would cause a com/nav failure/shutdown. I guess Aviate-Navigate-Communicate worked out well for Quid, but not so much for the more-rabid British planespotters.

Never heard of a customer "owning the rights" to a particular aircraft configuration. Is this another LockMart way to extort more $$$ from protect their customers?

It's unfortunate that there's an element of truth to this...

Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the WAR room!

Didn't think that at all; from the outside looking in (with a bit more knowledge of the subject than most, but an outsider nonetheless) I thought the Lakota program was pretty much a success story after they got through the initial "growing pains", especially given the current state of DoD procurement.

How big is a Huey crew at Rucker? I've personally seen .civ medical-configured EC145s in a 2-pilot operation, carrying 2 med crew and 2 patients with half a bag of gas. I don't know the particulars of the UH-72 cabin configuration, but a fully geared-up .civ medical cabin adds several hundred pounds to the basic weight of a .civ EC145. Concur with ugly.

Nice. Eventually I'm gonna do an A2 clone for the other lower I have.

Correct me if I'm wrong here, but LUH came after Comanche was canx'd and freed up all those dollars, yes? The LUH program, from the start, was never meant to be combat deployable. It's entire purpose was to do CONUS/permissive environment work, freeing more 'Hawks to be utilized for deployments and no-shit assault support.

Until I saw the X-32B on static display at Pax River two years ago, I had managed to forget just how ugly that thing was...

Precisely. That fuckery is how we get E-9s who think they're in command, rather than the commissioned officer on G-series orders.

Ugh. Makes me want to puke.

"Closed, to serve you better!"

7 Marines killed in helicopter crash I didn't know SSgt Seif; he joined the Corps long after I was done and gone. But the news of his death (and the deaths of 6 other MARSOC Marines and 4 LA ARNG soldiers) in this crash hurt me as if I had known him. I don't know why it took me so long to post this. Rest In Peace, gentlemen. Capt Shaw MSgt Saunders SSgt Bawol SSgt Blaylock SSgt Flynn SSgt Kemp SSgt Seif ------ CW4 Griffin CW4 Strother SSG Bergeron SSG Florich

Not F-35 - specific (of course), but a related data point: Here at WRI, I had a long conversation last quarter with one of the check airman sim instructors about the subject of networked sims (our sims are in the midst of upgrading, to network with sims outside the building). Big Blue's intent is to network ALL sims together so every MDS can sim with/against each other as one big happy family, but when the sim folks ask questions like "How is the scheduling of all these networked sims going to work?", or "What happens when the sim instructor in one jet/crew position in the network needs to take a few minutes to "reset" a student - does everyone else have to sit there and wait, burning their valuable training time doing nothing?", Big Blue's answer is that they'll figure it out later. I asked those two questions myself, along with several other questions related to networked sim scheduling/ops, and every response was a shoulder shrug and "We don't know because they don't know, and they're in no hurry to figure out an answer." Our sim instructors know it will be a scheduling nightmare just with the C-17 sim across the parking lot, much less a sim 3-4 timezones away... It's a cool idea, and I can see it being an awesome training tool for everyone involved, but I can also see it being one scheduling error away from being a total clusterfuck/waste of time for everyone involved.

Here's a no-shit FLIR Systems hand controller from a 380HDc install I worked on last year. There's two triggers where you'd expect them to be, and several additional buttons on the sides:

Lesson learned: Don't rely on 9mm.