hindsight2020

Of course, always with the punching down threats to the little guy saying the quiet part out loud. *yawn* It also doesn't surprise me we got the memo last week to usaf_All reminding us all serfs of article 88, 92 and 133, 134. Like clockwork. No better way to boost cohesion than threaten me with the gag order, already implicit to this all-volunteer so-called service. Wait until I get 7305 points. Substack and youtube here I come. 🤣 How the heck does Gabbard get to command a battallion while appointed to such a definitionally partisan appointment? In light of such glaring violation of all manners of opsec, this is rules for thee not for me run amok.

^^^That's correct. All this hopium talk upthread is chaff. The IPT direct to T-7 is DOA, on both sides. The IPT side will fail for quality control reasons that are self-evident to those of us who have done the flight training thing on both sides of the military base fence. The T-7 side of that COA will fail for the reason you've highlighted already. And yes, the fallback will be mobility bounds direct to FTU. People will die in continuation training with increasing frequency, though it wouldn't be out of the realm of possibility to also see an uptick in intermediate pre-qual training losses. Plausible deniability will ensure no flag officer goes to prison over the programmatic decisions that caused them. So I guess my macro point in all this is, everybody take care of número uno... and I don't mean flight lead.

ah yes, the marriage of prudes and hypocrites. I'm more left leaning on all of this and also think adultery being a crime is wack. But let's stipulate that one aside. Even Frat rules in present formulation are wack and long overdue for reform. Ironically, things were actually more progressive and sensible before 1996. Can't make this stuff up. In 1995 most of the non-adultery-involving instances of frat being discussed in recent times wouldn't have been an issue, so what are you puritans on about. The reality is this pruddish reflex just muddies the water and distracts from the real malfeasance and dereliction at the senior management level. To say nothing of serve as cover for the "see, we did something visible" bad faith actors who defend the status quo by that very ineffectual performative proxy. ORI anyone? These firings do nothing for material improvement of issues of import, or were even a prerequisite for it. But by all means, let's focus on the pointless pursuit of the warrior monk virtue signaling. #dont@me #hottake #sportofkings

yessir. I'm sponsoring my wife through NP school for similar end-game motivations. Schedules are more important to me than money; lord knows I've been taking a paycut for the last 10 years on account of that life preference/priority. The reality is that, if it hadn't been for clown FEHB costs and the joke that is FERS (thanks CSRS boomers...) for dual-status people, in all honesty I should have become a career ART. CASS is the only remaining inducement, but that too is a temporary stage, once my aging parents pass in situ or agree to relocate closer to me (the former is unfortunately more likely tbh). People always going on about regionals being a poor play because of "whipsaw and base closures". Sure, and and base displacements/no-hiring periods forcing multi-year transcons commutes (a real treat for family/marital longevity) aren't a thing at the majors/LCCs. Oh wait... Yes, if 121 is your primary payer and you got or want a 30 year work horizon, yes majors make sense over FFD 121....but that's not everybody's circumstance/work horizon. Which is where I see people start talking past each other on said topic. On the RV front, boi I kick myself everyday I didn't incur a 2-airplane cost pre2020 and snagged the RV; now inflation got me sidelined when the certified lawnmower kablewy inflight back in '23 lol. username checks 🤣. I still hope to snag one during a wage ecessionary period, hopefully before AD retirement.

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".