ClearedHot

A few questions that can perhaps be answered without bias? 1. Did Obama weaponize the IRS against 501/3 (C) conservative organizations? Yes...which at least plants the seed of believably that it was done with the FBI as well. 2. Did Hillary mishandle VERY classified information and was she given a pass? Yes and how Liberals can give her a pass is beyond me. How was the outcome memo drafted BEFORE they even interviewed her? She lost...so what, that doesn't mean you ignore the law...PERIOD FUCKING DOT. 3. Did Comey purposely release leak information to the press through a friend? Was any of this information classified? Yes he leaked it...was that legal? If ANY of these questions have an unbiased yes answer then there is at least the potential something nefarious happened inside the FBI. Despite the firings and resignations, the only guilty pleas appear to be related to lying to the FBI, ZERO evidence of collusion thus far....we shall see what comes out in the long run. IMHO the Justice Department IG investigation will be far more damning and telling than the Mueller investigation.

26 years and I would NOT do it again, but "MY" thoughts probably deserve an explanation. Did I have a blast flying, yes. Did I have incredible life experiences, yes. Did I serve with incredible people, yes. Did I leave the organization hating what it was and what it did to me, yes. There are truly some sick horrendous people in the senior ranks and it sickens me to see them in leadership positions where they have done real and lasting injury to families and careers. That being said, those people exist in all walks of life and for most the rewards of flying offset the negative. I passed on Med School to go to UPT and there will always be a part of me that wonders how a walk down that life path would have turned out. That being said, there is one thing I would not change and that is the relationships with the brothers and sisters I flew with. I continue to mentor many of them to this day...but in all honesty, late at night with a glass of brown liquor and the perspective of age, I sometimes wonder if it was all a waste. In the end I would recommend you follow your heart. Don't live in fear of the experience of others, make your own path so you are not sitting on your porch one day wondering what could have been.

Not in favor of the draft....right now...in times of national emergency is another discussion. What I do find interesting is that we as a country continue to discriminate based on race by requiring only young men to register for Selective Service.

The new AFPC Patch

Not exclusive to the Gunships...I think the entire AFSOC community has some brass ones. Epic fail set in motion by false thinking of one MAJCOM commander who wasn't a pilot and refused to listen to those around him about this and many other issues. Not just capes to protect the Eagles but capes that let you go tough places when absolutely needed. The H was old but it did have some capes that are missed including ECM...retiring the H left the U Boat as the only gunpig with ECM and guess what we are about to retire...the U Boat. The W sans RF protection will retire in a few years and it will be several year before the J has any substantial RF protection...WTF.

Based on your years of experience flying the H Model ALLTV? The set up on the H Model did have niche capability mainly because it was not restricted to a size-limited sensor ball so it was easy to strap on other capabilities to the same sensor platform. Next time your at HRT go look at 575 that is on display with a piece of plexiglass over the LLTV mount in what was the crew entrance door. MX-20 and MTS-B are fantastic sensors and I would likely choose them in a modern fight but the system on the H Model was fantastic and FAR superior to piece of junk on the U Boat.

The answer is training....lots and lots of training. The gunpig is not exactly a human factors ergonomic masterpiece. The AC-130H had the FCO and Nav on the flight deck but isolated form the pilots by a blackout curtain, the sensor operators and EWO were down stairs in a booth. The AC-130U has the NAV, FCO, EWO and sensors operators all downstairs in the BMC...yet somehow both platforms trained their way to excellence. I am not bashing the Buff...just one data point early in the war, I have a second data point but no need to dogpile. These are great Americans and they have since professionalized their contribution. In the end the thing that typically makes the U.S. military stand out from the rest is not the platform but the people and the training. Train like you fight and fight like you train...joint CAS can be a beautiful thing.

Non-Concur. I've seen good and bad. On the bad side I worked with a Buff crew very early in the war that was absolutely determined to drop even though no one could see the ground. I won't go into all the details but at one point he told me "We are going to mark the target for you"...ahhh no pal, you are going to mark GPS coordinates. I dropped under the weather and as I sorted out the mess I determined he was going to drop a of stick GBU-31s on a freaking village. #fail I will say this was not typical of other work I did with the Buff dudes. On the good side I worked with B-1s and these bros were absolutely dialed in...they knew the battlespace and had great SA of both the friendlies and the bad guys, they threw some serious hate with bombs that were right on target at the right time. Some of the best work I've ever done was while tag-teaming the bad guys with a flight of A-10's. It was a thing of beauty and one of the best missions I ever flew, although I am sure we pissed off a lot of virgins.

Any better when it is 6.9 degrees out?

Dave are you going to expand into any other products? Trying to find some nylon strips with name and wings to put on my luggage and backpack.

Shouldn't that tell the powers that be just how deep the organizational rot has gone? When CSAF and SECAF pull all the WING/CC's in a room and say "Knock it off" and it continues, that is not "Stovepiped thinking", that is a completely broken organization. USAF needs real LEADERSHIP...stand up in front of the room with a baseball bat and knock some sense into these pencil pushing duncewagons. Fire the first couple that don't listen...get back to being WARRIORS. I get it, we need a system to manage people, but when the system becomes more powerful than our ability to grow leaders and project combat power...something is seriously fucking wrong.

In many ways the organization has been permanently changed by years of mindless bureaucracy. Managers and number crunchers have been promoted in front of leaders and warriors which has chenged the core of the organization and what it values. Despite protestations otherwise the "machine" continues to select and reward the "administrator" class in a self-licking iced cream cone of atrocious leaders. There are exceptions, and some do thrive, but overall they are out-numbered by non-warrior yes men.

The impacts of these decisions will be paid in blood across all of the services. Our accident rate is already trending up and I predict a big spike over the next 2-3 years as we flood the combat forces with inexperience that should have been filtered at the RTU/Selection process.

"Oh I had to tap min burner."..boo hoo. Brother try a gunpig in AFG during the summer, hookup at 10K AGL and Toboggan down to 2K to get your gas.

We are checking our backup server located in a bathroom in Chinatown.

We are checking guys.

The story is getting more bizarre by the day. Supposedly there was team meet and greet that included the families. #1 and #3 get into a heated argument and punches were thrown in front of the families...

HuggyU2 Agrees, a pic from his recent inprocessing after returning to active duty.

Know a bro who came from the T-Birds a few months back. As he tells it this guy routinely busted min alts and other safety things like getting too close to the crowds. In addition, he was not open to any critique from the team.

The problem is not about production, it is CLEARLY a retention issue. If the AF produced 2,000 pilots next year, they would still be massively foooked. Look at the timeline, after a year of UPT (maybe less with the insane ideas floating around), Survival School, IFF, RTU...best case you get a crap ton of green barely qualified folks in 22-24 months from start date. How long to get them MR, seasoned...or would you just start throwing them into the fight like Kamikaze pilots in WWII. Retention is the issue up and down the timeline, you need seasoned folks to stay around at warfighters, instructors, and LEADERS.

Have to disagree, we don't need a flood of new pilots, in some ways that will make the situation worse. The dismal and sinking retention rate means we will be short seasoned combat pilots. The last thing we need is a flood of inexperienced greenhorns flying in combat. I know what you are trying to say but you kind of sound like Big Blue when they say we are going to "grow our way out of this."

Checks

It was announced this afternoon that the commander was relived November 20th because of his "Risk management Style" Nice move Tally...At least she is "personally grateful for his dedication to the 2017 season."

Fingers

The F-4 also had two afterburners...how'd it do at BFM?