Hacker

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.

Unfortunately, Rainman, I've seen the "blues as punishment" at use even in the fast-mover world more than I'd like to admit. Fighter culture has taken a massive amount of battle damage in the last 10 years and is a seriously wounded bird at present.

"Q-3-FEB"? Is there some link between the two in the RPA community?

This is part of the root cause of the clown act in the thread about RPA drivers gettin' no respect. There are a lot of young pilots right now who want to tear down established paradigms because they don't understand why they were developed. All many of these folks have ever known is operation in the permissive environments of OEF and OIF, and while their 'new' ideas may work perfectly fine for those scenarios most of the time these new ideas wouldn't last 5 minutes in an actual denied environment. The closest I've ever been to this is as a Sandy 3/4 rescort on a couple of A-10 WIC support deployments, so I have no real basis of experience to comment on the specifics. That being said, the CSARTF concept has been developed and honed over years and years of experience. A lot of very smart guys from many different platforms have been involved in determining tactics and planning and executing many CSAR operations. I would be surprised if a major paradigm shift like this hadn't all ready long since been considered and rejected.

Direct results from the "everyone is a warrior" mentality.

I don't think we can qualify or categorize the arguments that the CSAF and SECAF were making to the SECDEF in 2006/7/8 based on what we've seen in the public domain. We can read between the lines that Gates flat out disagreed with the USAF's position that we were responsible for maintaining capability in all aspects of air and space power (hence recapitalizing the fighter fleet). His stated opinion was that the USAF was more responsible for fighting the war on the table before us and supporting the needs for the overall Defense Department that he defined as SECDEF than we were for ensuring overall capability. It's not a secret that the SECAF and CSAF were fired because of this strenuous advocation for the overall needs of airpower at the 'expense' of providing ISR for the gravel agitators. None of that amounts to straw man arguments or any of the other logic fallacies that could be named in arguments being made in this thread. It wasn't that the USAF was crying like a bunch of babies who were being denied a new toy they wanted.

That's a big part of the problem: there aren't enough people to have this kind of manning. Even the measures that the AF has been trying for years -- TAMI21, extended/indefinite assignments, nonvols, re-tread Navs, Beta class, RPA-only AFSC and training pipeline -- still haven't been able to make it so that the AF can satisfy all the needs of the supported units in theater AND have enough qualified operators to make it a "normal flying job" in terms of hours and work week. Despite changes to the face of OEF and OIF, there is still an insatiable need for ISR. Without getting into specific numbers, the number of daily requests for ISR by supported units in theater outnumbers the total number of available ISR sorties (including all manned and unmanned ISR assets) over 6-to-1. It's an unbelievably big elephant to eat, even WITH the full-throttle press the AF has been involved in making RPA operators the last 5 or 6.9 years. Anyone who has worked with those supported units knows there are more than a fair share of those ISR 'requirements' that are ground commanders gaming the system or wanting ISR just as a security blanket rather than for a true operational need: IMHO there is a lot of fluff in those requests because supported unit commanders often don't know what goes into generating that sortie in terms of time and effort by the USAF (having spoken to a number of green-Army types, ISR is mostly PFM as far as they're concerned). The ISR cells do a decent job of filtering out some of this when they do the daily ATO matches, but there's still a lot of fluff (meaning a lot of time with ISR assets on station watching things with no immediate value when there are other taskings that would have immediate value to the commanders). Until the supported units can get their requests under control, this insatiable need will continue.

Did you develop this philosophy based on your own experiences prior to 9/11? I see them as the opposite, because that hypothesis certainly doesn't reflect the atmosphere of the ACC fighter world in those two 'eras'. I was raised in the ONW/OSW world, with Squadron/Group/Wing leadership who were all more or less DESERT STORM and ALLIED FORCE veterans. These were folks with a real combat mentality, and between 1995 and 2001 there was certainly NOT the same risk aversion and slavery to the PME machine (amongst the many ills that the AF is currently suffering) that there is now. Here's an example: the night before OIF started, my SQ/CC gave us all the standard motivational speech. At one point, he addressed how we might handle EPs while we were engaged in a CAS scenario: "If you leave troops that are actively engaged, you'd better fucking be on fire or need to bail out. Otherwise, I expect you to stay there and support those guys. Electrical failures...hydraulic failures...suck it up and do your job so those guys get home to see mama alive." These were leaders who had seen real no-shit warfare in ODS and OAF against actual threats which resulted in deaths and POWs from their squadron ranks. They expected their combat experience in OIF (and the previous year in Anaconda) to mirror somewhat those previous experiences where people had to face a real threat and show courage in the face of physical danger. Unfortunately, it is the post 9/11 era (really, the post Shock-and Awe era) which has brought risk aversion and other current poisons in to fashion. I'd even venture that it's the post Johnny-Jumper-as-CSAF-era that has done the most to usher in this current era of pussification. Jumper had a lot of very 'old school' views on how the AF should be run and thought/acted/believed like a young fighter pilot who'd been raised by grizzled Vietnam vets. Let's not forget that Jumper is the one who said, 'if we wanted you to have a Masters Degree, we'd send you to go get one on the AF's time and dime, otherwise spend your time becoming a better warfighter or with your family.' So, your theory is completely out-of-step with my experiences as a fighter dude over that time period.

How so? The most load-sensitive parts of the airplane are the engine mounts and the tail booms.

I certainly in no way suggested that such experience be a barrier to participation in the conversation. Obviously it is not. What I did suggest (and I am surprised that my post could be so significantly misunderstood) is that someone who did have such experience in person against a significant air-to-air or surface-to-air threat would not have ever made the comparison that Blair has in the first place. QED, Blair's combat experience in the Gunship during the surge, in which there was no air-to-air or significant surface-to-air threat, and later experience in the years of un-contested flying in the permissive environments in both Iraq and Afghanistan, incorrectly colored his opinion on what the actual threat to a manned combat aviator is. As a side note, unfortunately there are a lot of folks in the USAF who think that the "combat sorties" that have been flown in the permissive environments of OEF and OIF are typical of all combat air operations, and have let that color their opinions about what capabilities are needed by the USAF to effectively accomplish our mission. Anyway, I seriously doubt that anyone who has ever had to threat react to a guided SAM (or other such no-kidding life threatening experience in a combat AOR) would ever, ever have suggested there be any sort of parity between that and anything a RPA operator faces at any point in his duties, including the drive to and from work every day. That being said...."optically-guided RPG"? DId I miss an intel brief on some fantastic new capability that makes an RPG into a guided missile, or are they still, as the name suggests, just "rockets"?

It's been a few years since I've been in one, but in my last exposure to the fleet it was not, shall we say, aging gracefully.

Ahhhhhh, I see. So, he's never been shot at by something that was actually threatening (e.g guided SAM, aimed AAA) while in an airplane. That explains it. I'm still not seeing the "risk to bodily harm" for the RPA guy.

I think that chapter needs to raise some money for Snyder's family, repaint the rock, and do some community service for some disabled veterans.

Awww, c'mon Huggy -- you've been around long enough to know that it doesn't matter a lick what the actual impact of a certain decision is, it only matters how that decision looks.

I haven't even seen the "don't urinate on the dead" or the "don't have your unit flag insignia be the same as a notorious Third Reich organization" CBTs yet. These new ones must still be way down the road.

This is someone we clearly need to clone thousands of to replace the "warriors" currently occupying large parts of the USAF.

No, I'm not implying that the story was made up or that there was any intent to deceive. I'm saying that his perception of how the aircraft maneuvered differs from people who saw it from a different perspective (back at the ramp instead of holding short at the approach end).

FWIW, the NTSB's initial report is based on the testimony of that single witness -- a GA pilot who was holding short and watched his departure. There are a number of other witnesses who disagree with what was described in the statement.