Hacker

Direct link: https://www.1041thetruth.com/podcast/harris/160961985.html

I guess I'm the retarded one here...what does this shooting have to do with PYB?

Maybe if the OP had a couple air-to-air kills to his name, he could work that too.

One is a TDY and the other is a PCS.

I guess it shows Syria, after years of incursions from other countries' aircraft (hmmm, who could that be?) in which they were either too slow to respond, or scared to respond, have actually gotten their act together enough that they could shoot down an unaware Phantom.

I agree with Learjetter -- if you look at the history, I think you'll find that the data supports an institutionally-run screening program significantly more than it supports a civilian-run IFT-type program that builds GA experience but does zero screening.

The reality for anyone in the military is this: any school that you can attend part time while being a full time officer in the military doesn't have a pedigree good enough for those jobs, regardless. Guys who get wrapped up in the relative quality of their online degree are missing the bigger picture about what the name on your Masters really means to potential employers.

What would posess a guy hiding in Sweden to marry a Thai girl?

Again, it all depends on your whole rationale for getting your Masters. For the vast majority of AF officers, their decision to get a Masters Degree is almost exclusively linked to their desire to progress in the ranks, and there is simply the added benefit of building their resume for their post-blue civilian carrer. In this light, it makes absolutely no difference. All of the things you have mentioned are peripheral issues that mean absolutely zero. As has been mentioned in the other thread on advanced degrees, most civilian firms that are going to hire you after the military are going to do so based on your military experience, unless you have a specific advanced degree from a specific range of schools. In that case, it still makes absolutely no difference based on the pool of schools we're talking about.

It's moronic that academic degrees have anything to do with the promotion process anyway, so feeling that there needs to be some sort of dick-measuring relative merit between any of the places GIs go to get their square-fillers is even more retarded.

The best thing about TUI's entire program was that it cost the same as TA covered. I thought their business plan was fucking genius -- charge the service member absolutely nothing, have little "scholarship" programs that allow guys to keep taking classes even when they've maxed out TA for that year, make the classes super military-friendly (in many different ways), and rack up the big bucks from guys filling the squares for promotions. By raising their tuition even $1, they've 86'd the biggest advantage they had. They're done.

The guy who made it, Maestro, actively goes after it apparently. He wrote me a nastygram after I uploaded it a couple years back in an attempt to keep it alive.

The no-touch-and-go deal has to do with saving tires only.

The best part is that she was fired over a hair appointment.

Or an LCPA in the squadron.

Good reading comprehension though.

I believe this is one of Moon Doherty's daughters -- he's the outgoing Wing/CC that Tally is taking over for.

Personally, I say 'mind your own business'. If you are bent (or, worse, have a 'major problem with it') that the airplane clapped for him (some 'undeserved' recognition in your opinion), you need to refocus your priorities on stuff that actually matters. He was probably downrange, too, which makes him more of a contributor to the war effort than 95+% of the US population.

It's an idiotic saying that is just another symptom of the overall loss of focus in the US military. We're in the military and our job is to fight wars. Mission is first, period. When time and effort allows, then everything else. And, yes, like Cap-10, I have been on deployments (like OIF in 2003) where people had to miss the births of their children so the squadron could go to war.

Is this a sarcastic comment, or do you really believe that the priority is "always" family? That's like the "safety is the priority" discussion; if safety was really the priority, we would never raise the gear handle. If family was really the priority, we'd never leave the house to do our jobs.

What's interesting is that, even though the "Dear Boss" letters deal with an individual symbolically tellling the leadership why he, personally, is not staying in, the letters have ultimately not been inspired by pilots who suddenly realized that Big Blue did not give a shit about them. Although we're all sold this bill of goods about how well we're going to be taken care of when we're in our commissioning sources, I think that anyone who has been around the block long enough as the authors of these letters have has all ready long since lost faith in their romantic notions the the AF cared about taking care of them as individuals or as part of the team. From my perspective, these letters have always been about losing faith in the AF's execution of the mission and not what it was doing for the people attempting to execute that mission. These letters are from pilots who once believed that the AF cared about the mission, and are realizing that, via the actions described in the letters, that Big Blue really doesn't. The letters complain about the symptoms of a service that is losing it's ability to execute combat airpower, and furthermore doesn't really care that it is. I obviously can't speak for the MAF guys, but as a fighter dude I can say for me personally that the realization that the AF organizationally doesn't actually prioritize execution of combat airpower is heartbreaking. It's a huge letdown. It creates a lot of serious cynics. Now I know why, when I was a punk Lt and Captain, all of the Majs and Lt Cols running around the squadron were perpetually pissed off and crusty. I can see for some folks, that realization would cause them to write letters like this out of frustration.

Anybody else read the comments on the Small Wars Journal page? Mostly a lot of "boo hoo USAF guy, cry me a river" from the Army types who populate the page -- it strikes me that it's this perspective that is the precise reason we're in the position we're in (and obviously inspired this latest Dear Boss) -- people who fundamentally do not understand what the actual unique capabilities of the USAF are with respect to National Strategy, and because of that lack of understanding see advocacy of that position as out-of-step with the current wars. It's the very reason that the SECAF and CSAF were fired.

So, what do you guys actually think of the new "Dear Boss" letter? I hadn't heard about this letter at all, outside of seeing the link in this thread. It's not making it's way around the bro email network in my sliver of the AF world -- is it causing discussions in your squadrons? Certainly the 2009 letter DID spread like wildfire through the email chains, and I even remember the 1997 letter getting pretty good distribution, even being posted in the O'Club bar bathroom at Nellis back in the day, and being printed as front-page news in AF Times. So, what's up with this one? Personally, I think this 2012 Dear Boss is a bit different than the previous three letters in an important way: this one's primary complaint is with the Senior Leadership Management in the USAF, and focusing on the post-Buzz Mosely-firing kotowing the USAF has done to the SECDEF, the other Service Chiefs, and the other Secretaries over our role in the current US national defense strategy. The previous letters focused on the squadron- and wing-level problems from the Captain's point of view; how changes and decay to the way the USAF was operating had compromised the ability to conduct combat airpower at mostly the tactical level. There was the occasional swipe at the Strategic level, but it was never the main focus of the reason the authors were deciding to get out of the USAF. I also find the frequency of these letters of interest; 1974, 1997, 2009, and now 2012. Is it that Gen X officers are just more pussified, needing to write a new, different letter only three years after the previous one because it didn't have enough of an impact? Or is it indicating a real significant sea-change in the last 3 years that warrants its own separate series of complaints? The real funny thing is, we haven't yet seen the fighter/pilot/officer exodus promised by the frustrations in the 2009 letter. Sure, we know it prompted our next CSAF to take a look at the bro-level problems, but there sure hasn't yet been enough of a giant-sucking-sound (sts) of officers walking out the door to put a punctuation mark on either the 2009 or 2012 letters. Real crises are the only thing that the senior level is going to respond to....certainly a letter in Small Wars Journal, that doesn't seem to be making waves at the bro level that I've seen, isn't going to have the least bit of impact on decisions and attitudes at HAF. It's all just crying wolf if there's no action to back up the words, and so far, I haven't seen any tangible reason why the senior level would be inspired to change course based on the "threat" of departure leveled in the last two letters.

I don't doubt that is true. Back when lowfly.net was in full swing a few years ago, there were also some posts from photogs who posted things that could have been interpreted by USAF brass very wrong. I remember seeing threads titled things like, "Lakenheath Eagles Air Show For Photographers in LFA 7!!" Which ones are you talking about?

Maybe another uninformed OSI NCO can produce a brief on it, like the one they ginned up to try and roast Dozer for doing his job.