ClearedHot

https://www.lawfareblog.com/air-force-dc-employees-no-drinks-around-inauguration

So the memo is out, 40,000 Airmen assigned to and under OPCON of the AFDW are banned from consuming alcohol for 48 hours surrounding the inauguration. Air Force civilians are strongly encouraged to adopt the policy as well. All of the promises from Fingers made to look like a steaming pile of poo in one moronic action.

So glad I retired... In many ways it is sad to watch this happen, but in a twisted sort of way it is gratifying. I used to love the Air Force and serving, but a small group of spineless leaders sold their souls to get promoted when they could have fallen on their swords and sound the alarm. Who knows, the outcome might have been exactly the same. It sickens me that I put faith in some of these guys, Christ I flew with people like Rand and really believed the bullshit. I truly hope you guys and girls don't end up as jaded as I am. Now it feels like I am comfortably sitting on my front porch watching a kid poke the hornets nest when I told him 10 times what would happen and while I don't want anyone to suffer, I will feel a small bit of satisfaction when he gets stung.

The answer obviously is "it depends".... As well all know training is what makes the difference and some potential partners do not grasp that concept. As Americans we tend to think of ourselves as superior in both looks and intellect (I am after all a powerful and attractive man.) In reality the differences are based on cultural situations and the educational system in each country. Again flashing back on my own experience, when I went ot ACSC I had fighter pilots from both Canada and Mexico in my class. Both were superb officers and it was interesting to see the differences in the approach to airpower from our two closest neighbors. The Canadians obviously had F-18's (and are very good with them), they have a stronger educational system and at the time a stronger economy, that and their NATO membership drove them to a high-tech fighter. The Mexicans had F-5's and were looking to replace these aircraft with something newer. My Mexican Air Force classmate had just come from their AF HQ and shared the internal discussions which were centered on price but more important...maintainability. The logistical cost of modern fighters is always more than the cost of the aircraft and it also requires more advanced technical training, at that point the Mexicans were leaning towards Migs because of those two factors and they were going to refuse the gift of some HH-60's for the same reason. I think you have to take a short-term view in this arena, while it seems wasteful to send equipment to countries that won't maintain it or their skills over time, in the short-term it is still cheaper to gift and throw away some of there platforms if it puts out a fire in country X. When you get to higher level strategy these choices while difficult, really do revolve around money. As a senior commander I remember going after a HVI with some DVs watching and a wonk actually questioned shooting multiple Hellfires at one person. He had a very short-term view looking at the cost of an extra hellfire versus all the man hours, satellite bandwidth, fuel and brainpower it took to get to that one window of opportunity.

Well in the case of the DNC that private organization controls super delegates that did in fact determine their party nominee....I concur with your wishes for more informed voter participation, but I don't see it happening anytime soon. Thankfully on the RNC side, the voters did ignore the establishment.

Not very often as the collective takes up the slack...it truly depends on the crew position. One bad gunner and you likely won't notice as the lead gun while "deal with it." The real issue is having a bad Aircraft Commander or one who is a weak leader. On numerous occasions I've seen that second set of eyes make the difference in a key engagement, case in point I remember one engagement when the crew was focused on shooting two assholes who fire at our folks and were attempting to flee...they were running in a series of ditches along a wall, the other sensor just happened to be scanning from a wider angle and noticed a much bigger group attempting to sneak up on our ground forces. On another occasion we were finishing off a group that had just conducted an attack, I came of the HUD to reposition the aircraft due to high winds and noticed a vehicle hauling ass a good kilometer from the current fight and well outside the view of the sensors, we finished our engagement and went after the vehicle, turned out to be a big HVI. I am not trying to say one community is better than the other, just from a workload perspective I think a crew has more options and brain bytes in very complex fight.

A few points to ponder: 1. It is NOT a foregone conclusion that the Russians hacked anything. Shockingly the mainstream media is starting to push back on the administration narrative that it was the Russians...technically things don't add up and a lot of insiders have been not so quietly questioning the recently released report. I don;t give a lot of value to wikileaks statements but they do deny getting information from the Russians. There are also reports, suggesting it was a disgruntled DNC insider, I absolutely agree we need a bipartisan investigation to help shed some light on what happened. 2. I don't think anyone wants a foreign power hacking our "stuff" but it is EXTREMELY ironic that you are more upset about external criminal action that the fact that the DNC rigged the election. Truly that should be the story of the year, the DNC under Wasserman Schultz fixed the primaries in order to secure the election of a chosen candidate rather than the will of the people. 3. Where do you draw your foreign influence line in the sand? When expressing outrage that another nation might have tried to shape our election how do you response to Obama less covertly tried to hack the Israeli election, not just with words, but with a LOT of money and behind the scenes action. 4. I also find it extremely ironic that liberals are convinced the Russians hacked the DNC emails and are equally convinced there is no possibility they could have hacked HRC's bathroom server. Truly UNREAL! 5. We have been in a cyber war for years and expressing outrage over what might have happened seems to ignore the likely fact that we have done the SAME thing to many other adversaries...

Agree to disagree...having led a 13 person crew in combat, when it is working properly the crew construct can accomplish FAR more especially in a dynamic and often confusing situation. On more than one occasion I've seen a non-verbals completely change an engagement. I've also seen having another set of eyes and ears stop a potentially very bad situation from happening.

nsplayr did a good job of articulating the benefits...the key one being workload. The second major advantage was a selling point for other versions of light attack and that was the ability to fly with a host nation aircrew member. If you go back and read our doctrine it actually says we don't want to be in all these small fights, we want to build partner capacity to fight the small fights in their own back yard before the turn into something more serious that requires our participation. The "reattack" on lite attack in the mid to late 2000's was based on the construct that we would fly the aircraft to country X, spend a period of time training them to fly and employ the aircraft, then our folks would fly home commercial and leave the aircraft for country X to fight with. Another huge benefit not related to one or two seats is cost to operate. The A-10, F-16/15E, B-1/52 and Gunships are all great airplanes but they are expensive to operate. Scorpion and other versions offer 80% capability at 1/4 the cost.

In this mission set, two is defiantly better than one. As nsplayer points out there is FAR more going on than managing a single sensor.

Working with Marty myself to purchase our forever home, superb rates and service.

Two MV-22 incidents in Okinawa this week, one a total loss the other a major gear malfunction. A local captured some pictures of the water "landing"...I believe they all survived but looks a bit harder than a landing. Interesting series of pictures at this link https://mainichi.jp/english/graphs/20161215/hpe/00m/0na/001000g/1

AIB is out...ouch. https://www.acc.af.mil/News/ArticleDisplay/tabid/5725/Article/1029543/f-16cm-thunderbird-accident-investigation-released.aspx

The C-130 is an A model and all are gone as far as I know. The KC-135 is an A model and all are gone as far as I know. An argument can be for the B-57 as NASA still has three flying, but all the WB-57s are F models and the one pictures is an E model. If you care B-57E Tail #54244 is on display at Strategic Air and Space Museum, Offutt AFB, Bellevue, Nebraska. An argument could also be made for the BUFF, but that looks like a big tail and they are all gone. Fairly certain all the Tweets are gone, unless some dictator is South America or Africa has one in his garage. That leaves the F-86, several privately owned owns are out there and a company was using them to pull darts for you pointy nose drivers. Now you made me miss the early bird special so GET OFF MY LAWN.

Also interesting to note that one airframe in that picture is still serving!

You are gasconading about that fact?

Are you trying to say he/she is callipygian?

Sadly it is almost impossible to fire a federal worker. As a senior commander I had a guy who was leaving work everyday around lunch and would go drink at the VFW. He has a very distinctive car and the investigation documented over 40 occasions where he left work and went to drink at the VFW while logging hours on the government pay system. We did everything possible to fire him including pulling his security clearance which was a requirement for his job. He appealed the security clearance loss and we had to put him in a nonsensical job for 18 months while it was adjudicated. Ultimately, he won the appeal and got his clearance and his original GS-13 position back.

And you really think there are mass number of people willing to risk everything (including post USAF employment with the Airlines), to take such a drastic stand...no way. The government is REALLY good at writing one-sided contracts, then re-writing them when someone finds a loop hole. This situation is a giant zit that should have been dealt with in the early 2000's but 9/11 as horrible as it was, saved the USAF. The reality is things will get worse before they get better. It appears the Senate is not convinced the crisis is real or like some of the ignoramus senior leaders we've had the past few years, they think patriotism will somehow take over and we will magically meet our retention rates. My opinion only, I believe they will be forced to use STOPLOSS or some similar measure much SOONER rather than later but as everyone here recognizes, that is not a long-term solution and will likely make things worse. Unless there is a major new conflict, this goose is cooked and it will be served. As this situation continues to unfold like a slow motion train wreck, I am actually more concerned about the second and third order effects. The warning signs are there when you see policy letters that effectively water down RTU training and encourage maximum throughput. Watch the accident rates, watch the combat results, and watch the next group of leader who rise.

Flanker 69 request low closed...

I'm retired now so my view of the cards is dated. I tired to tell a LOT of senior folks this was coming and they did not seem concerned. Towards the end you could tell they were beginning to see how serious it was but it was too late for them to make real change. I heard lot of chatter from bros on the Airstaff and Stoploss was being discussed, but I don't know if they decided on a redline. Another previous MAJCOM commander commented that stoploss was a "viable retention tool"...he is retired now and I don't know if his views shared by the other seniors...obviously we all thought he was out of his mind, you can't stoploss folks until 20 years and the message it would send would only make the situation worse.

TT, VERY interesting numbers. If the MC-130 numbers are that good then clearly Cannon is not having an impact on retention in that community, although I am curious if any of those folks had secondary ADSC from moving to the MCJ. The MC-130H draw-down is going to create a very small community of folks at one location,it will be interesting to see their retention numbers the next few years. On the C-145...technically they don't do NSAV anymore, we retired the majority of the fleet, the remaining aircraft are now in the reserves at Duke. The 6th SOS has some great folks, but they have been continuously under-resourced by commanders who did not see their value. I was in the room when one past AFSOC/CC was openly bashing them asking the crowd to name one time, just one time when they opened a door in the recent conflicts...a lot of folks were looking at each ready to speak up for several examples, but it was clear it was rhetorical and he did not want to hear a response. The C-146 is the primary NSAV aircraft and they are moving from Cannon to Duke, the active duty folks will get a two year ADSC but I know several who are taking the ADSC but NOT the ACP...they are simply counting down. While AFSOC is not YET facing the same level of hurt as the 11F community, it is on the way and somewhat exacerbated by leadership. In the room with yet another AFSOC/CC when he was told about the looming problem of pilot retention, he replied...they will stay if they are patriots and if not we don;t want them, we will just make more...I was absolutely speechless. I will be very general to protect their identity, but there are several sitting SQ/CC's who are planning to bail when their current tour is complete.

I am very curious to see the end report as well. I heard the 32% figure from a very senior 11S just yesterday, perhaps he was lumping several key 11S career field together? With gunships at 25% someone else in the 11S community must have superb retention to get the community total to 50%. On the 4/17 gunship, as I recall 2 of the 4 who took the bonus already had additional commitment for going ACJ. Regardless, it takes a long time to build a Gunship IP/EP and losing 75% of a year group is going to have second and third order effects.