ClearedHot

China is now deploying their ONLY carrier group to the region...

Exactly...Do I think we will see a force on force land war...no, but we will most certainly scrap in a way that will cause a lot of chaos. Yes out two economies are intertwined, and yes a conflict would do damage to both countries on many levels...that being said logic is often overcome by nationalism and bravado, history has proven that time and time again and I fear there is a greater chance that it will happen than it won't. Whatever it is, I hope it is quick and we bloody their nose just enough to keep them in check.

Yes and by 2020, we will be producing it along with all the other energy we have at our disposal...China meanwhile will be searching for oil, resources, and energy to import.

Peel the onion back a bit...As Vertigo pointed out we have been exporting certain types of oil (there are actually many), for years. Thanks to Fracking and a few other technologies, U.S. production has topped Russia as the largest in the world. With regard to crude oil we are on path to be completely self-sufficient around 2020. As I stated earlier, according to the the EIA, in the aggregate, Monthly crude oil production exceeded US crude oil imports by October. I recently sat next to a senior oil executive on a VERY long flight and it was his opinion that we will be there much sooner, especially if the Project 20KTM technology comes to fruition. The real impediment is regulation, both environmental and more unknown, laws that prevent the U.S. from exporting many types of oil.

You seem to forget that China is run by people over 45.

Load you have a very myopic view of China and their desires. I did not say China wants a war with the west, but her moves are certainly rolling that direction. Is China focused on China, yes, with such single-mindedness that on the current path it will lead to a major conflict. There are so many other factors in play, if you took a strategic look and mixed in some history, you might come to a different conclusion. First, China is facing a real economic crisis...largely ignored in the west. China has grown to the worlds second largest economy (many predictions on when it will exceed that of the U.S.), this government controlled economy coupled with a Chinese cultural predisposition to save have created the largest real estate bubble in history. You think the U.S. housing market meltdown was bad, just watch what may happen in China. The government has used near double digit growth as a weapon against the U.S. and internally against civil disobedience. It is easy to lose some of your rights when you have tons of cash in your pocket, but it is unsustainable and as the shroud slowly comes back people will be surprised just how fragile the situation is. In order to maintain that growth the government has allowed and encouraged developers to build entire cities...where no one lives. Skyscrapers...massive numbers of apartments, townhouses, and homes without a single resident. All in the name of continuing construction growth. Chinese citizens looking for places to invest their new-found wealth have bought these investments in large quantities. If you want to see just a peek of the situation watch the 60 minutes story (https://www.cbsnews.com/videos/chinas-real-estate-bubble/). Second, The country has a certified shortage of women. Thanks to social policy, in China, millions of baby girls were simply never born. While the one child policy is just now beginning to fade, the effects are readily apparent, 122 boys are born for every 100 girls. That simple fact translates into a lot of lonely, angry young men and has been kept in check only by a growing economy. If the bubble pops and unemployment spikes...look out, China will have 35 million extra bored men (roughly the population of Canada), with nothing better to do. In the past when this has happened history has corrected the situation in one of two ways...war or plague. Unless a new Asian Bird Flu wipes our a couple hundred thousand young men, china will have a real social situation on its hands. and one of the more popular ways to retain power in times like these it to focus attention outside. Third, one of China's primary drivers for flexing her muscle is to secure resources and energy. The situation would be much worse but as of last month, in the aggregate the U.S. is now self-sufficient with regard to oil production. China is desperately trying to secure energy and the routes that import that energy which is why India is such a threat. While making great friends in the Middle East China stills has to drive all that oil right past India on the way home. Additionally, Japan has always been an energy importer and thus a huge competitor to China in that regard. Mix in a territorial dispute and you have some great conditions for a fight...a fight the U.S. is bound by treaty to weigh in on Japan's side. The current actions by China represent the single most provocative actions taken in decades and in my humble opinion, the show is just beginning.

Right out of a Clancy novel...I've been banging the drum for years, right now it is the Japanese, but we will fight China...the two biggest kids on the block, at some point they are gonna scrap.

Our BX has decent quality Flag cases.

I had a far different experience with Ash, but your background makes a HUGE difference in your dealings with him...he has favorites. Hale and Kendall would be winners, Fox or Flournoy with be abominations...

You are a complete dolt! You are typical of the bashers that have never stepped foot in the the town but jump on the bandwagon. For the record, Clovis has a national blue ribbon school and some very fine teachers, including a lot of military wives, some who are national recognized reading recovery and reading coaching teachers. S 100% agree, the less than 1% that raised their hands and said, "send me", I honor the service and sacrifice. What I don't honor is the folks who pushed the button on word of mouth, who have never set foot on Cannon AFB but are willing to burn their bridge when they still have three-four years of commitment.

Nice to have the NSA working for you.

Disagree...General Chang is going to argue their are some real caveats to the so called shortage. Right now the seniors are publicly stating we have a shortage of 200+ fighter pilots that will grow to 700+ in the out years. What they aren't telling you is that ACC actually has the inventory to fill all the available fighter cockpits, what they don't have is the inventory to fill the available cockpist AND fill the staffs. Despite their bluster about flying, the fighter guys truly do care about the staff. Their concern is twofold...first, if you don't have a fighter guy in a fighter staff slot they fear poor decisions will be made by uniformed people...you need a fighter guy to make informed decisions about the fighter community...sounds reasonable. The real reason they care is far less altruistic, officer development. Like it or not you must send your fast movers to the staff at some point so they show depth and breath and can be competitive for BPZ and such...the senior fighter folks have a real fear they will not develop enough folks to reach the GO ranks and thus, maintain control of the Air Force. What the General Chang's don't want to account for is the accuracy of the forecast models and current inventory management practices. If the personnel types were worth a damn we would not be in this position...in reality we have mismanaged pilot inventory for nearly 30 years...look back to Banking, ReCAT, UPT direct to RPA, TAMI 21...there are numerous egregious examples through the years. There is a survey held close by the seniors that shows real fatigue in the force, and a building resentment, so while I agree there will be folks that "chicken out", there is a real possibility the projections are wrong. I would look at two factors in the next 12-18 months that will predict what is going to happen. First, how many pilots do the bigs hire and do they keep a steady state of recruitment. Many companies including the airlines are hoarding cash and getting as much productivity out of their employees as possible. They are not taking chances on growth...but if they do and airlines like Delta and Fedex hire the rumored 60 a month to start then settle to 30 a month each, there will be a lot of pressure placed on the demand side. In some ways the FAA compounded the problem by raising the ATP requirement to 1500 hours, seriously shrinking the pool of direct civilian hires. The other factor is the B Scale...if the demand does begin to stress the supply I would look to see how long short the B Scale gets...if it remains at all...I guess time will tell. I disagree, DoD and USAF have at times shown they could care less about publicity, when the problem becomes severe as some think it will, they will do whatever it takes in the name of "National Security". Realistically the only thing that will stop it if the conditions come to fruition is Congress. Anyway, what do I know, I'm just and old guy.

Just the tip of the iceberg...if airline hiring is half of what is predicted there will be a lot of empty cockpits, that is until stoploss drops. They question is how long will Congress let USAF stoploss you, especially when the war is over.

Maybe thats because some guys just worked hard, flew their ass off, supported their people, led and were promoted to O-6. The reward for all that sacrifice is to be treated like an indentured servant. I got it, most Col's have older parents, most Col's have kids in high school, needs of the Air Force....trust me, I get it. But why do we spend a lifetime developing a senior leader only to ride them like a wet dog? Sadly, it doesn't matter to most of them right now because they are staying in the USAF in record numbers...numbers so high they have force shaping and a SERB on the horizon...hell USAF even got the law changed so you can meet multiple SERBs. USAF is getting away with it right now because the economy is in the dumper...but it will get better and the only ones who will stay are the dirt bags who can't get a job on the outside. What is truly amazing is how the current system became so brutal under Schwartz. In 2009 the Command Candidate Board met with horrible results. At that point you had to raise your paw if you wanted to be considered for senior command, then you got a nomination to back it up. When the board met they did not have enough folks in certain categories. They went back and did some research and found that a LOT of people including 54% of their high-speed below the zone folks declined consideration for command. The results were so bad the service was having a tough time sending all their NDU grads to the legal required (50%+1), joint jobs. Facing this dilemma USAF made an interesting choice, rather than address the problems that were causing so many people to tap out (Ops Tempo), they changed the policy to the "All In Policy". Now every Colonel is considered for Command and if you decline you have 90 days to get out of the service...thank you very much! The problem persists today with some key career fields (Mx), critically short of qualified Col's. Some graduated commanders have been forced into a second command tour (several seven day opted), others are being asked to extend. Oh well, we will just make more.

There is a difference believe it or not.

Personally torn on the value of an AAD. I believe the intent has morphed into a completely different animal. Originally it was to encourage critical thinking, to help develop your thinking about things other than the basic mission. Should it be a box you check, absolutely not, it should be a purposeful program that develops your ability to think about things bigger than yourself and the future. Honestly, flying is a young mans game...There is an old memo From Tooey Spaatz...paraphrasing here, but in short it says pilots in their late 40's shouldn't fly at night or fly tactical aircraft...anyway, what I am trying to say is as a young major you are probably as good as you will ever be in the jet. Yes there are old high time Lt Col's who can fly the crap out of a plane, but we MUST develop people that can move up with the bigger picture. Its funny because a lot of the bitching on this forum is about the ancillary stuff, "I just want to fly"...well we need some people that just want to fly...but not a lot, there are lines of young people at the door who want to get in and fly. As our service gets smaller we also need folks who are able to think and lead from a strategic point of view. (Look at what happens we let the non-rated guys run the staff, they make some really uniformed decisions.) It probably matters not anyways as the fighter mafia has sold it's soul to preserve the F-35. The cuts we (USAF), are about to endure are simply staggering, ultimately we will only need 189 Raptor Pilots and a couple hundred F-35 pilots, everything else will be parked in the boneyard so we can all go to school fulltime.

Do you have facts to prove that? I've seen otherwise...folks are flowing out and assignments to return to fly are still dropping. Sad... I talk to folks all the time, never with the intent of trying to convince someone to stay, just want to understand the why and ask if they've considered other options. Recently I wrote two letters of recommendation for folks getting out so they could apply to guard/reserve units.

Liquid is correct on the APZ folks, promotion boards don't have a lot of time for each record so the sorting process is actually very simple..."DP"'s with no issues go right into the promote pile, "P"s with out PME go right into the do not promote pile. "P"s with everything complete (the majority), go into the big pile that have to be ranked. APZ records without a "DP" just don't compete. That being said, I personally know several officers who were promoted APZ (two on one board), and one of those was four above. It is true, the USAF is trying to save every penny and they are going to reduce the number of school slots. As for morale/motivation, I guess that is one way to look at it. Full disclosure here, I've done all the schools In Res, IDE/ASG/SDE, and that does not mean I was a better officer. I know of some very sharp folks who did not get IDE and went on to multiple command tours, sometimes the system just gets it wrong. Yes they will decrease the number of PME slots, but they will still need the same (approximately), number of folks for staff/command and such so it would seem they would have to turn to other discriminators (like job performance), when picking those folks.

The flaw is the guy that is two or three years above has had two or three more years to build a better record than the guy who is in the zone, how is that fair to the IPZ guy? Tossing a kick save to an APZ dude is not a small thing, are there cases where the system screwed up, absolutely, but each time the system corrects itself it comes at the expense of an IPZ guy. I don't think you are arguing from the perspective of "everyone has to be a winner", at least I hope not, more along the lines of the system overlooks someone who should have been picked up?

"The Boeing 777 was traveling at approximately 106 knots (122 mph) upon impact and at about 118 knots (136 mph) 16 seconds before impact at an altitude of about 200 feet; the recommended speed upon approach to the runway threshold is 137 knots (157 mph), Deborah Hersman told reporters."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D_cVgAexkQ

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Wow...Really M2? I can think of hundreds of very good reasons...Starting with having the complete SOF air package on the other side of the Atlantic (thereby reducing deployment time), habitually training with partner nation SOF, in a position to easily support three GCC's. Wow...just wow.

Kirtland was supposed to have the grand opening of their gun counter this weekend. I was told they had $400,000 worth of inventory to debut and that included a lot of ammo.