ClearedHot

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?

My argument is for some innovative thought from our leadership (perhaps a bit much to ask). I don't see the current construct as affordable or effective. Again if I was king for a day I would use Scorpion (or equivalent), for the second half of UPT. Anyone going B/F would fly get 100 hours (or more at $5,000 per hour), to build airmanship and learn how to fly a more advanced aircraft. I would give the T-100 to the IFF folks and expand the program (at $20,000 per hour), to make steely eyed killers ready to fly advanced from and BFM in their 5th gen aircraft (at $50,000+ per flying hour). I am not on the Scorpion payroll, but I have seen it up close and personal. The performance, reliability and economics make sense (especially for a country $20 Trillion in debt and facing an endless war). I honestly think if you change the UPT construct you could train more pilots, with more hours and airmanship, for less money.

100% disagree. And no I don't work for Textron, but I can tell you first hand, the jet is farther along and has more capability than any of the other OAX applicants.

So lets stay with the same broken model that can't surge to the needs of a breaking force? The OAX experiment was an effort to help shape the purchase of 300 aircraft for Light -Attack...Congress is doing it at their own direction since the Air Force can't even seem to properly fuck a football. I would not be surprised to see that 300 morph into a mixed mission acquisition that provides light attack and a manned ISR replacement. EVERYONE on here is screaming for more flight time...buy a couple hundred of these for phase III UPT or light attack or manned ISR or fucking companion trainers. Fly the SHIT out of them at $5k per hour and build a base of pilots with flight time and air sense. So basic CAS and BFM (yes the new version of the Scorpion can do 7G BFM), put a 5th Gen OFP and build muscle memory...break the paradigm that is helping put the AF in this corner of the envelope.