hindsight2020

T-50 by a mile, then T-100. Both offered full suite logistics and simulator support COTS. Plug n play.

Asked and answered brah. The T-50 was the "T-16" COA. It's circa an 80% replica. Boeing cheated (again); we all lost. It's over. But hey, do not despair, piston CFIs are going to save military aviation... if they're not too distracted updating their regional ehrirlineapppps on their phone. And if people think I'm being hyperbolic with the latter, then that tells me they don't have a fvcking clue what the operating and quality control realities of part 61 (even some 141) are. I cut my teeth in that morass before I touched a single .mil airplane; I know the rot in that pay to play, blind leading the blind environment. FAFO doesn't even begin to encapsulate the hubris of senior AF management in proferring this IPT imprudence with a straight face. What's insane is that the USAF/USN doesn't even recognize Army wings as real. But regional aspiring thumb-suckers is A-OK for .mil flying fundamentals, straight into a gazillion/multimillion dollar PL1/PL3 asset? And I'm the imprudent one here? Orwellian, this whole clusterfvck of dereliction.

I'm not personally aware of any, not to say there wasn't. Certainly nothing like what was publicized wrt the Rapid City Bone landing class A, and nobody died on that one mind you.

Correct. Furthermore, Boeing purposely underbid the contract in ways that would be considered malfeasance on the part of a customer, in trying to legitimize it. Some may go farther and imply collusion in said decision, but that's for another thread. Point being, COTS was maliciously handwaved away here, and some people [have already, and] will die for that capitalization fraud. That is really the start and the end of the conversation right there. That is the only thing that moves the needle in an enterprise that is otherwise considered soo scutwork and small fry for Big Air Force, they're willing to equivalence away our experience to that of sub-ATP, low time piston CFIs. There are so many layers of plausible deniability baked into the training pipeline, they'll always handwave it away as something else. You can't debate in good faith with these self-preserving shapeshifters. @Ant-man assessment from the FTU perspective is absolutely correct. They WILL rationalize the increasing shit product, while gaslighting all of you into believing the dilution as an innovative reformulation. And when people die, they'll sacrifice-lamb direct local leadership at the unfortunate ops squadron (see Shaw Viper class A, an undergraduate student of mine btw). But don't you dare look an inch backwards when investigating....

@Clark Griswold On your question: TLDR: version. Asked and answered COA, failed. Admits two inconvenient truths: 1)no capitalization is forthcoming, and 2)the bodies are not there on the 11F side to pay the bill. Latter which itself is a combination of numbers reality, and 11F mutiny against the AETC mission (don't shoot the historian here, not my fault we don't PCS like regAF and can call out failures with full 10 year receipts). Longer, uncle hindsight storytime version: Funny you should ask. That COA of yours of making the "intermediate" phase adjacent to the MWS has been proposed before! It was peddled by none other than everybody's little instagram tyrant himself, Willie Boy. The CONOPS was called "Reforge", and it's oooold news at this point. Read here for the whole evolution, again note the 5 year old date. So many nuggets of irony in that one, my personal favorite being the attempt to use COTS for the proof-o because they didn't have T-7s! Unironically, they actually said that on the record... 5 years ago. Read that again, slowly, if you're not tracking the punchline. So many nuggets of self-own in that article, thank you for bringing it up, I had almost forgotten about reforge. Today the 69th watered version of this sophistry is called FBF, and largely accepts the logistical defeat of what anybody down here in the trenches could have told you 5 years ago: "No Buck. No Buck Rogers". I know some of the authors of this thing well; I personally knew and flew with him (quoted on the article), he was the DO during my first stint through one of the garden varieties. Decent enough dude while I crossed paths with him, and knows better than most what it's like to get fired for other people's sins and having to fall on swords for lesser men, aka RegAF standard. The story ended well for him: he landed on his feet. Reached check o the month some years ago and now flies the friendly skies for an airline that stands together. ....and the T-7 is still vaporware at this point. 😄 There's a lesson here kids, which I'll let the fighter2airline religious Order of the CJO Cross go on and pass the pamplets and prosletyze on (after all, I'm 121 agnostic lol). And to keep this thread back on topic: The actual real world answer is they'll do what they've done before: NEEDS of THE AIR FORCE. Yup, that means you can get your happy ass re-assigned out of the promised fighter you competed for and it's been done before. The 38 trained T-6 FAIP assignments in particular have a big problem right now. The T-6 wait times rn are so atrocious it might impact their promotion timelines in a significant enough way they could plausibly recat to 11M, since they won't send them to IFF for the same reason (backlog). I knew people who went U-28s in the early 2010s due to the Viper backlog being sufficiently on their ass. Nothing new under the sun. Everybody has to come up for air at some point, and pay the bills after the Air force chapter has passed, if flying is what you got into this game for. Good luck to all the kiddies.

Oh they know all of that already. They don't care. In any event, the answer to your question is, as always, "more than currently". And they're always flirting with finding that line. The injurious part is of course, you know, the pawns of the innovation experiement who will die for it (and have died already since 2018).

Further effects of the divestment, some GS [now former] toners at P-cola are scrambling for T-1 sim jobs at the garden varieties in order to get a touch n go to apply back to their own sim jobs down there. That's how saturated that market is, and how much location is an inducement for these AD retiree types. Some folks would bag groceries as long as the wife doesn't have to hear we gotta leave the redneck riviera. In fairness, I know Allegiant pilots in the same boat (vis a vis legacy 121 et al), so the dynamic is not unique. After all, it's why most people (HoH with dependents) get out of RegAF for, statistically speaking. On our end, not everybody wanted to flow to T-6s, T-6 PIT is more than 12 months backed up, it's a mess. Some sour faces across AFRC regarding the divestment (Toners were always the easiest to fill due to the airline job gateway it was), and people looking at having their AGRs invol-curtailed short. It's a mess for sure, yai morale and loss of experience. But fif gen and big pork programmes are capitalized, so it's all good. /s

correct, sim only, there's no tails on the ramp anymore (DLF). And those (the sims) too will be divested. It's just paid for, so it's being used as a front to distract from the backlogs the herbie FTUs are having themselves. Deck chair re-arranging, nothing of substance here, it's just a failure to admit they didn't capitalize properly and now the chickens came home. Don't fall for the "innovation" spin.

yabut the capitalization malfeasance is the elephant in the room here, and should have been congressionally investigated decades ago. Who are we kidding, it's Congress the one fometing it in the first place. At any rate, you can't handwave that away just because one thinks you have to coddle these careerists' balls in order to get anywhere. This entire situation could have been solved decades ago with COTS solutions that don't impact national security. But industry is a grift machine, and they get in the way every time. Our Country has turned (especially since the 2020 M2 theft, some could argue TARP in '08 was the first mask off moment) into merely a trans-national Economic Zone for arbitrage and exploitation; our Nationhood strikes me as specious these days if I'm being honest. The T-7 dumpster fire is not the bug, it's the FEATURE. A cohort of people, civilians (veterans even) with very little skin in the game otherwise, are getting paid very well for that thing to fail upwards, is my point. Meanwhile the rest of the world laughs at our worn-out infrastructure. Attempting to distract with "psychology of learning" sophistry will not get us to where need to be. You mention not dismissing COAs out of hand. Care to ask that of these uniformed politicians? They sure have a penchant for shooting down COAs left and right, even cost-neutral ones. The biggest one being retention as a stated goal. Nope, never that. Rather surrender to Putin than allow the chatel any discretion in how they keep their home life intact while doing what 99% of the civilian US population deems an occupational choice only fit for "suckers" or economic refugees/people without a better option. 1x addtl base worth of production. That's it. Could even make it a tenant wing of an existing installation (Moody) and still get there. But that requires COTS on the capital + homesteading/QoL/$-equivalent incentives on the personnel side. The T-7 is a poison pill to that COA, as are the whiny competing MAJCOMS that bitch about production and quality control, but won't pay their share of the bill either. I can already hear the shrieking by the FTUs over remediatory training if and when this brain dead idea of future regional pilots setting the military flying fundamentals is ever allowed out of the lab in Wuhan. And they'll try to blame PIT/UPT IPs for that too. *shrugs* I prefer not meeting fiscal end-strength manning, over fraticide in the name of political expedience. Call me a bleeding heart. I'll close out my comments on this thread by adding that, as I round out my sanctuary zone into check of the month IDGAF land, that's really my only personal COA left: try to impart as much flying life hacks onto these kids before they get sent over with not enough hours and air sense as I was afforded. To each their own and all that shit, good luck to all. Cheers.

You'll never be able to make personal/moral appeals to these political appointees. Besides, Congressional pork is higher than even their pay grade. That out of the way, let's address that "shitting on" stray bullet you threw in there. If you're talking about my criticisms, you can tone-police my delivery all you want. That's just "Tuesday" in my life/put it on my tab type of thing. The point is that the premise behind all that pick-me coding, hoop-jumping passed as "innovation", is that you can't lobby for the money for the proven solution in the first place. Don't get it twisted, and let me bold the answer for the reading comprehension challenged, as I see the question of root cause keeps popping up. The ENTIRE COA is couched on the private knowledge that the enterprise has been so undercapitalized for so many decades, they can't meet production quotas. And that became an inconvenient boo boo when the airlines stopped sucking again for a fart and a half after 14 years of constipation. Period end of story. Rest of their pitch is as I said, sophist ballwash, I don't care what overpaid cRafT contractor, or civilian 121 job chasing, lawnmower-time builder that offends. Again, for the johnny come lates in the back: This isn't about "efficiency". That's just a bullshit plausible deniable premise that keeps polyannas appeased, and which powerless Generals glob onto as a notch until they can get their revolving door NoVA civilian follow-on. What this is about, is Exodus 5 (vers 6-9, no shit). It's so obvious to the peanut gallery, even illiterate Bronze age goat herders managed to finger paint it on a book of effin' parables JFC. Pun very much intended. 😄 So with all due respect as I sincerely enjoy your brainstorming sessions on here, spare me the ingénue "we just trying to train the kids here man" all-hands-on-deck pep rally. These are politicians (yes, even the uniformed ones) working from a position of dishonesty and career self-dealing; these are not honest-broker problem solvers. Go get mad at them for not having a spine. Don't cast me a malcontent just because I display umbrage about unnecessary O-2/3 deaths at the altar of quality control dilution and political expediency, while being told I'm part of the problem for demanding no more resources than what was afforded to me when I was in those now dead O-2's flying experience position.

*yawn* more sophistry. I'm already on record, I only timestamp these rants on the interboobs so the forensics can go back in 10 years and go "yep, we knew". We've been through this all the way back to 2018 fam; it is a dilution of quality, definitionally. Tell your bosses to put down the hopium pipe and grow a back bone, and tell their SES overlords at the Puzzle palace to tell SecAf no buck no buck rogers. Kids need new MILITARY trainers and hours with their brain behind their ass at .7M+ and no automation, herbie drivers too. I was a CFII before I touched a single military airplane, let alone instructed in one; I can speak 61/141/135/121/one-WGAF. I was also in academia before the military; I know ballwash pseudointellectual fodder for paper degree issuance when I read it. Hell, I used to teach it! 😄 To the degree which civ-only folks don't understand the historical rigor behind undegraduate USN/USAF military aviator accessions and initial traning, it is also true that many mil-only folks really don't understand the quality control morass that is 141 (forget 61). I won't rehash the dissertation on here, the BLUF is that abrogating our military pilot accessions to 141 is to admit defeat. Considering the US record as a combat operational loss leader for the past 50 years, I guess losing at pilot training is par for the course too. Empire in decay, happens to the best of 'em I guess. Honestly, I'd be more on board if they just cut the shit and 1) admitted they can't effectively lobby Congress for more cowbell for the UPT enterprise, and 2) admitted they have to send it to the civilian prop schools just to pad the logbook with negative transfer hours of little import. Heck, by that cockeyed COA's order of merit alone, again just cut the shit and go full up MPL (Euro standard, sim only) for your copilots (3/4 of pilot accessions for the USAF) and put their money where their mouth is. Padding the 141 with excess federal pork is the only thing this will accomplish anyways. Excess crew deaths down the line in grey jet initial/continuation training are on them though, not on us dinosaurs "getting in the way".

I can't not read that without spongebob voice inside my skull lol. Well done. Also reminded me I'm so effing old I can still remember these threads. Oof. P.S. I need better hobbies than internet trolling, but Powell stole my life's purchasing power parity, so 'tis all I can afford. Digressing.

Not the totality of the dynamic, but the main issue is an accessions/compensation chasm, like everything else in life. No buck no buck rogers. As an employment demographic? No, I don't think you're working with the best psychologically suited for the job; giving some of these types lethal force legal arbitrage is a poor bet all around. Frankly, the compensation situation in some jurisdictions is so bad you attract the exact wrong temperance for the job, as a Hobson's choice. Everybody loses in that deal. Just like educators, you can't afford the people you presume to want. The thin blue line stuff is also caustic and tribal. I argue if jurisdictions paid and thus had the ability to accessions-discriminate to the standard needed, the qualified immunity issue would be moot. #hottake

The irony of that post is gold. Pretty sure it was a United crew that almost Asiana'd a triple siete out of Maui.

You're not new, you know this song and dance already. They have a retention self-created "problem" due to crap QOL post-UFT ADSC and people becoming older heads of household. By proxy that becomes a production problem, because they decided to fill the gaps with new accessions instead of addressing the original self-created problem, full stop. The real problem for them is that they also don't have the political capital to make undergraduate pilot training (an enterprise already scoffed at as scutwork by many within the combat coded echelons, ACC/11Fs in particular) a capitalization priority, but the Pharaoh demands more brick. Boeing being a malicious MIC grifter doesn't help matters on that effort. This thing should have been COTS solved 5 years ago (and it would have, both COTS solutions were plug and play and operational for DECADES). At any rate, in the absence of political capital, all you can do is kabuki dance. So in comes the sophistry: "CRAFT""VR""UPT NEXT""Innovate!". Then the secondary effort to strawman objective critics of the obvious, as anachronistic malcontents that are getting in the way of progress (that's yours truly and company btw). That's how you get the current status quo. An enterprise dead set in fixing a retention problem they created, by digging themselves into a production problem they can't control, via diluting the quality control of the product and insist you don't dare say publicly they are. Then wash their hands when the core competency and loss rate of the grey jets become too public for the senior management in the DC swamp to stomach. Since this COA exceeds the median VML cycle, it's plausibly deniable. None of this is conjecture, it's my lived experience since oh say, fiscal '18? Through all the jokes, the meme witchhunts on instagram, the non-judicial punishments, and all the banter on here about the leadership changes you highlight, they have been the most emphatic about never tolerating the utterance that these SGTO evolutions are a dilution of quality. Most RegAF just doesn't have that corporate memory because they PCS too frequently. But Pepperdige Farms (AFRC) remembers. The all-contractor wet dream they've always had is also DOA, because Congress won't let them touch the pork earmarked for the aforementioned localities. So we're stuck in this morass, and more young guys will end up dead for it, before somebody finally tells HAF to KIO and addresses the capitalization of this enterprise with the gravitas it deserves.