ClearedHot

FWIW...when I was in the building, the man was absolutely committed to the new tanker and CSARX. His new exec, a 60 dude, will give him an earful everyday if he does not honor his word.

Great, glad you are here to contribute.

That is what is so disturbing about Johann's "Farce" comment. He must have him skull buried in the sand.

It is.

Navy again delays Blue Angels crash report By Zachary M. Peterson - Staff writer Posted : Friday Sep 7, 2007 12:52:44 EDT The Navy’s investigation into April’s crash of a Blue Angels F/A-18C Hornet that killed one pilot was completed in June, but the Chief of Naval Air Training in Corpus Christi, Texas, has now twice delayed the public release of the mishap inquiry. Lt. Cmdr. Kevin Davis, 32, of Pittsfield, Mass, was killed April 21 when his jet crashed into a wooded residential area near Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort, S.C. He crashed as he attempted to reform in formation with his five squadron-mates at the end of an air show. Witnesses said metal and plastic wreckage — some of it on fire — hit homes in the neighborhood about 35 miles northwest of Hilton Head. William Winn, the county's emergency management director, said at the time that several homes were damaged. Eight people on the ground suffered injuries that were not life-threatening. The Navy originally said the public release of the Judge Advocate General Manual investigation report would be in August. However, in August, the Navy said the report would be out by Sept. 1. Now, Lt. Sean Robertson, a spokesman for the Chief of Naval Air Training, says there is no “fixed date” for the release of the report. “We want to be right as opposed to quick,” he said. The 709-page report, including all enclosures, has to be hand-redacted, proofed and sent to the printer, according to Robertson.

Please don't take this the wrong way, but are there any psychological issues influencing your life right now. I am in no way trying to imply that you are unstable, but we all have stress in our lives and sometimes events can lead to things like insomnia. I mention it because it appears your are trying to treat the symptom rather than the issue. Is this a particularly hard (STS) semester in school or is there something going on in your family that has diverted your attention? I dealt with insomnia when my mom suffered an aneurysm. It coincided with a very stressful job as an exec in the puzzle palace. I too thought about Ambien, in fact I asked the flight doc who did not want to give me any (separate issue, my buddy was an exec and having the same issue and the other doc gave him a crap load of Ambien which prompted me to ask). Regardless, as my Mom got better things returned to normal. I mention this because you will find yourself under a lot of stress in UPT and learning now to identify your stress, the issue that is causing it, and a few mechanisms for dealing with it, will help your overall performance. I wish you luck.

Ladies please pardon Beaver's hostility, he is upset because Fighting Falcon pilots have to squat to pee, while real men....err "Herk Dudes" stand to pee.

Not a crime that he got promoted... the crime is that he got promoted MULTIPLE YEARS EARLY, in front of other dudes that did not plant a Viper in the dirt in grand style. Props for putting any LGPOS in the dirt.

Yes...and now promoted early.

An AMAZING factoid reference that picture...the pilot pictured was just promoted BPZ!

Ya think?

I am reasonably certain the brown one was at some point shortly before the crash, hit by a gray one.

Just like the "Gunship Flares" comment when there were no pictures of Gunships dropping flares, he posts pictures of Talons and Slick 130's crashed, but no pictures of a crashed gunship... Thanks for proving my point for me. Ignorance is bliss. BTW - When you drop hints to this thread in another thread, calling it a pissing match, remember, YOU called "fight's on".

Yup...they all look the same.

I don't know of any other pictures of the AC-130H dropping flares, especially one with the ALQ-172. I guess when you are looking at the same picture of the LGPOS, all airplanes begin to look the same.

I actually flew this very plane last Wed. We even had the audacity to report initial for 13R at Tyndall with a line of Raptors and Eagles waiting in the EOR.

Most of the F-16 Pilots I know are referred to as "Douches", "Raging Arseholes", and "Wannabe Gunship Pilots", but never Fighting Falcon Drivers... It is possible to be a major select at 26...if the guy in in the Guard or Reserve...not probable, but possible.

A very close friend is a very good freelance photographer here in the US. He gave me the same speech about shutter speed and motion on the rotor. When I have a chance I will set the program to slow the shutter speed and hopefully do a better job next time.

A very close friend is a very good freelance photographer here in the US. He gave me the same speech about shutter speed and motion on the rotor. When I have a chance I will set the program to slow the shutter speed and hopefully do a better job next time.

I have enough trouble remembering that pushing the yoke forward makes the houses get bigger...

I use the Canon D30 and have had "Great Success".

Actually...DON'T READ Lambeth's new book. I was one of his biggest fans until this book was published (I even gave copies of the Transformation of American Airpower, to my Marine colleagues at SAW). The book is at best a farce and a worst a direct insult to the AF. It was PURPOSELY removed from the CSAF reading list because of the way he refers to an incident that occurred during OEF. He based his research for certain incidents solely on reports from CNN and the Taliban...yes the Taliban. He refuses to acknowledge CENTAF reports with regard to civilian deaths. When he was challenged by his colleagues at RAND and the USAF he became very defensive and belligerent. Subsequently, his book was removed from the CSAF list.

Steve, The book you mention (I won’t), is a very one-sided and partial explanation of the facts as the author understands them, not necessarily as they occurred. I will not look back and say the USAF was perfect in it’s employment during Operation Anaconda, but the charges the book and others in the Army like General Hagenbeck make are ludicrous attempts to shift blame for their own mistakes. Let me attempt to address some of your questions from my uninformed perspective. Un-true and the report lists the actual number of sorties and strikes that were flown. Part of the problem was that Army planners and leadership fail to understand that the AF actually flies to a target and that we cannot overcome the time space continuum. Strike assets were flying very long distances (many F-15E and F-16 sorties were over 12 hours), and you actually do have to take some time to load and fuel the jets…I digress. I don’t have first hand knowledge, but in my opinion, the tactical problem was not something that Fast FAC’s would have solved. Yes there is the story of the resupply truck that the AF could not seem to strike, but the real issue in my mind was how to deconflict all of the strike assets that were trying to operate in a very small piece of airspace. To illustrate how simple some folks that that process is let me share a quote from the Army perspective about deconfliction; The GFAC on the ground literally goes all the way back to the source of airpower to the CAOC, by-passing any kind of natural hierarchy that we build and structure into Army, Air Force, air-land battle. There was no hierarchy at all. That system and part one of the war actually was quite effective because you have a large land mass, a lot of air space, little bitty airplanes with a lot of bombs. Everybody’s a bad guy, everything’s basically a target. With very small U.S. forces, it’s a wonderful way to do it. There are no restrictions to air whatsoever. All of the airspace control measures that you would normally have to worry about in terms of air/ground relationships are not there. All you basically have to worry about is that airplanes don’t run into other airplanes. AWACS does a great job of that. None of the battlefield deconfliction was necessary… This is perhaps the most maddening accusation of the entire encounter. In order to answer that accusation, I would ask Hagenbeck why he left his TACPs at home. Yes, he deployed without the folks he had been training with for years and only when it became obvious that he needed TACP support did they rush TACPs from other units forward. We preach joint training everyday, we have a constitutional amendment that requires we train together so that we are a more effective fighting force, yet the ground force commander decided to deploy his forces without his integrated AF personnel, only to turn around and complain that the AF did not support him. Unconscionable! What makes his accusations even more laughable, is that instead of TACPs he took AIR DEFENSE to fight the Taliban. YGFSM!!!! To take it a bit further, read what Hagenbeck did when the questioned why he was not taking his TACPs; Originally they did not take their TACPs that are normally embedded and lived with them at 10th Mountain. We argued that they made a big mistake. I personally told General Hagenbeck it was a big mistake. He took more air defense. I said, “Sir, the only people I am aware that you are going to shoot down,” I said, will be those aircraft that say “United States Air Force, United States Navy on the tail.94 Simple answer Steve, the jet is so slow that they left when the war started and were lucky to make it before the war was over. Actually, I can’t answer that question. The A-10 like the AC-130 is a purpose built CAS machine that would have changed the calculus of the fight. I cannot speak to the decisions and situations that delayed the deployment of the Hogs. Partially a function of the distances that were being flown and they types of support assets available and to some extend a lack of understand of AF employment. At that point it was not common for assets other than the A-10 to stick their nose in the dirt and do night strafe. That being said, some dudes did an INCREDIBLE job and put it all on the line to help the guys on the ground. In the post Anaconda days, the AF has placed increased emphasis on strafe. In fact, there is a bit of a renaissance with regard to strafe not just from Anaconda but from OIF as well. Don’t be surprised if you see Albinos rolling down the chute some day… Not true. I understand the perception, but a major contributing factor was the close proximity of SOF teams to each other and to conventional ground units. SOF teams were competing against each other to get support and often calling strikes down within lethal distances of other friendly positions. Had the AF been told of the size and scope of the plan they most certainly would have increased the size and capability of the SOLE. Shack! That is what happens when you bring the Air Component in at the last minute expecting them to overcome the time-space continuum. Let me share a quote from that report that places some perspective on how well the Army brief the AF on the plan; ”Although working level coordination was under way, the CAOC Director, Major General John D. W. Corley, U.S. Air Force, first learned of Operation ANACONDA during a routine nightly conference on 22 February 2002. “I was horrified to discover that by the time I had been briefed, the OPORD had already been published without what I thought was the CFACC’s knowledge.”66 “I became a little pessimistic about it when the A-heads [senior CAOC staff officers] at the table were not aware of it either,” General Corley reported. “That’s where I sought to immediately make General Moseley aware so he could engage on it.” There is in fact an unclassified report on the subject, General Jumper was so mad when he read Hagenbeck’s article that among other things he insisted on an investigation that led to Operation Anaconda, an Airpower Perspective Finally, I will throw a bone to the AC-130 folks that flew in Anaconda. The gunship is mentioned a few times in the report, but their munitions and sorties are not listed in the official report. Probably not an overt omission, just a reflection of the fact that they were tasked under SOCOM, not the CAOC. However, they, like others that flew in Anaconda, did heroic things that most will never speak of.

From https://www.centennialofflight.gov/essay/Ex...tinger/EX31.htm The next year, Kittinger set two more records, which he still holds. On August 16, 1960, Kittinger surpassed the altitude record set by Major David Simons, who had climbed to 101,516 feet (30,942 meters) in 1957 in his Man-High II balloon. Kittinger floated to 102,800 feet (31,333 meters) in Excelsior III, an open gondola adorned with a paper license plate that his five-year-old son had cut out of a cereal box. Protected against the subzero temperatures by layers of clothes and a pressure suit--he experienced air temperatures as low as minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 70 degrees Celsius)--and loaded down with gear that almost doubled his weight, he climbed to his maximum altitude in one hour and 31 minutes even though at 43,000 feet (13,106 meters) he began experiencing severe pain in his right hand caused by a failure in his pressure glove and could have scrubbed the mission. He remained at peak altitude for about 12 minutes; then he stepped out of his gondola into the darkness of space. After falling for 13 seconds, his six-foot (1.8-meter) canopy parachute opened and stabilized his fall, preventing the flat spin that could have killed him. Only four minutes and 36 seconds more were needed to bring him down to about 17,500 feet (5,334 meters) where his regular 28-foot (8.5-meter) parachute opened, allowing him to float the rest of the way to Earth. His descent set another record for the longest parachute freefall.