Hacker

By "the OP", do you mean Gen Welsh? Seems to me that he's thinking more clearly than any other 4-star in the USAF in the last several years by even acknowledging the problem and actually asking for inputs from the rank and file.

"AIR POWER IS THE POWER OF AIRMEN" That is all.

https://www.armytimes.com/mobile/index.php?storyUrl=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.armytimes.com%2Fnews%2F2011%2F05%2Farmy-mission-helocopter-was-secret-stealth-black-hawk-050411%2F Current conspiracy theory, naturally, has to include Groom Lake...

This one was too funny and well written not to pass on to the rest of the baseops.net communuty. This could probably go in the "Leadership at the Deid" thread, or even the "I Hate Reflective Belts" thread, but since it is from Iraq and deals with combat showers, I figgered I'd piss the mods off and start a new thread for it. Names obscured to protect the innocent.

Well, it was a couple-year window at least ('03 to '06 ish, IIRC). For all the time that I've been in previous to that, it was standard-standard just like it is now. Yup, I was one of those dudes....I squandered a perfectly good AETC assignment where I could have been busting out ACSC and a Masters with relative ease, then when the policy changed I had to do both of those while in an operational assignment at the base with my MWS' highest OPTEMPO. FML. That was the point where I realized I needed some clarification on which of those 'vectors' from senior leadership I was supposed to follow and which I was supposed to scoff.

The policy was something on the order of, "if we want you to have an advanced degree (including PME), we'll send you to school to get one as your duty", not "we'll send everyone". Big difference.

The UK has been slowly gutting their defense forces for a decade...and with results that have positively reinforced those political decisions. Unfortunately, nobody stepped back to look at the big picture. Sort of like what the US is doing.

This was Jumper's strategy...but TMike erased that strategy. At least someone at the top thought that was the right line of thought enough to actually make it USAF policy for a little while. Long enough to screw some officers at promotion boards years later, at least, heh heh.

So, which academic institute of higher learning will not teach AF leaders that they have to crush AF heritage to move forward? Which one will teach them to stop being a bunch of PC pussies and allow the ACTUAL warrior spirit to grow instead of being beaten into their perverted warrior-monk image? That's where I want 'em to send our senior leaders after they close AWC. Serious note: which academic institution has any concept of application of airpower? As retarded as AWC might be, it's still dedicated to singularly producing airpower leaders. Although I'm sure ERAU, UND, and Perdue think they'd be perfect replacements...just ask one of their grads!

The flyby was planned. All the details that normally go into this Group's planning process for flybys (which that squadron does literally dozens of every year) were planned. The plan was briefed to the CC and the OG prior to leaving home station. Leadership did not attend the flight brief because it took place as part of a long multi-day cross country. Plenty of people "thought to ask" what the plan was. It's a big stretch to go from one of the flight members saying that #1 "didn't give them a target altitude" to your feeling that "it wasn't planned and there was no oversight". After the flyby, since the SQ/CC wasn't on the cross-country trip with the formation members, how else would you have suggested he ground them other than via telephone?

Like this is some kind of new thing? Go grab a doofer book from Desert Storm, or Vietnam, or Korea, and see what kind of world-class sport bitching there is in there. There's no more bitching and whining today than there was at any other point in USAF history; there are just more public outlets for it.

While I certainly understand his grief, anger, and desire to understand what happened, I have to shake my head at his ideas on how he is going to do that, e.g.: No, I don't think you're 'entitled' to that, sir, and knowing that information won't add to your understanding, other than to give you a person's name to direct your rage. The military can do a far better job of analyzing the error chain and helping prevent it from reoccurring than you can. Trust that they will.

https://www.freep.com/article/20110413/NEWS06/104130333/Michigan-dad-wants-answers-son-s-combat-death?odyssey=tab|topnews|text|FRONTPAGE https://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5guMfinZBAN37m9ioE9ubA4hlljqQ?docId=91916fa7c8ec4cbfb1177ab12856bc05

Good ol' Moggy. "I've got boiling oil, Red Leader." Great series, and came out at a time that I was just becoming interested in the Battle of Britain. Seeing all those Spits flying off the lawn of a French chateau was just simply magnificent. No CGI...no fakery....

I always figured you for a 'hit-me-on-soft-eleven' kind of guy, heh heh.

https://www.lakenheath.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123250470 Video link: https://www.lakenheath.af.mil/shared/widgets/popup.asp?url=https://www.lakenheath.af.mil/shared/xml/rssVideo.asp?mrsstype=3&contentid=123250470&contenttypeid=1&type=video&pos=0

SJ doesn't have a hospital proper (only a clinic), so any significant medical care will get farmed out to the hospital there in Goldsboro. Special care (like prenatal care and c-sections) can get farmed out to better facilities up in Wilson or Greenville, or even Raleigh/Durham.

While we're at it, bring back the Phantom and Skyraider.

https://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=defense&id=news/asd/2011/04/01/02.xml&headline=null&next=10

USAFE Safety down day in 3....2.....1....

Naah, it was in England. It was more like this: Note: Not a model or fakery -- Ray Hanna actually flying a Spit under the bridge for the BBC series "Piece of Cake" back in the late 80s.

This is still standard UK low fly. Still standard, 'Fighting Edge' rules. Squawk 11 and check six. Also standard UK act....Radar Information Service..... That's the point I was getting at in my post further up the page. We're not all THAT far separated from the days you're talking about, but we're at least 3/4 to one complete career-span from it. It's far enough back that O-4s and O-5s who are considered 'old craniums' in their ops units weren't flying when stuff like you're talking about happened, which leads guys younger than that to think it was ANCIENT history when that shit was occurring. I'm not old enough to have done any of that firsthand, but certainly guys who were O-4s and O-5s when I was a Lieutenant, and even up into my first fighter squadron did it, and those kinds of stories got dragged out at the bar.

I have to wonder just how long some of you have been flying for the AF, and what community you are from. I haven't been around the AF that long, but hearing about this kind of stuff doesn't seem to knock me off my feet as much as it seems to for some of you. This was probably more prevalent in the 80s, but I certainly heard about this kind of stuff when I was a Lieutenant in the mid 90s. Seems to have started to decline a little in the Fogleman era and be nearly completely gone by the mid 00s. We're to the point where we are now a whole "career" of pilots away from when these sort of shenanigans happened, and some seem to be astounded that it ever happened. There's an entirely new standard of what's acceptable and what's totally outrageous. Not that flying under a bridge was ever "acceptable", but it certainly didn't warrant the stoning at sunset that it would probably get today. As Rainman has indicated, it was more of an extended-ass-chewing-in-the-Boss'-office sort of thing. Grounding. Take a crappy deal or three. We have had a serious cultural shift in the AF over the course of my short career, and it's a matter of perspective as to if that's a good thing or not.

Man style.

Greater skill at what?