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I'm surprised this has taken this long for this to happen. When I went to nav school at Pensacola in the 97-98 time frame seemed like half of the Saudis were like, "This is great. Allah can't see me here so I can drink, eat pork, party, etc." But the other half, you could tell, were like, "Ima give all my pay check to Osama Bin Laden."

They, as well as the RAF, were already offered the B-1 from the ones sent to D-M in the early 2000s and they said no.

Be careful. Just bought one and the pistol grip didn't come with the screw to hold it to the lower.

They found people like us dumb enough to be CSOs/WSOs...

94 year group and I went to school (ROKAF ACSC) in 2009

Weird. In my year group in the Bone, we got 9-10 IDE in-res slots and out of those, 8 were WSOs (myself included, though how I got one is beyond me). Once again, timing is EVERYTHING.

I know a B-1 WSO who made O-5 like 4 or 5 APZ. I know 2-3 B-1 pilots who made it 1 APZ too. I also know a B-1 WSO who made O-4 7 APZ.

That must of have changed. When I was in the B-1 community (left in 2004), people who left, like me, didn't do as well as though who stayed. I left and wasn't able to get a squadron command and so got passed over for O-6.

Until the bad guys patch their systems...

While the process doesn't have to be as imperfect as the AF does it, it's not an easy process. One of my AFROTC instructors was a personnel type who was involved in creating the PRF and later changing from the OER to the OPR. He said they talked to all the Fortune 500 companies at the time to ask how they did performance eval and promotions. They answer they got back from all of them was basically, "If you figure it out, come back and let us know."

https://spectrum.ieee.org/aerospace/aviation/how-the-boeing-737-max-disaster-looks-to-a-software-developer Interesting article on the 737 Max and its software issues.

The Pentagon doesn't lack for money; what it lacks is the ability to prioritize between the must-have and the nice-to-have, which is in turn, exacerbated by Congressional meddling/vote-buying. People are so emotionally wrapped up in the nice-to-haves (which is why I won't give any specifics here) that we can't even have the discussion.

When I did a short stint as a security clearance background investigator post-retirement (before finding a real job), I don't recall having to ask anything about investments when I would "investigate" for TS clearances except for foreign financial interests.

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/02/22/supreme-court-retirees-can-be-court-martialed-crimes-committed-after-service.html WTF?

Alarms can be turned off.

I don't get it. What do Army dress shoes have to do with what's wrong with the AF?

Past indifference to the environment is going to haunt the AF (and the rest of the services) for decades. When I was getting my environmental masters, I did a project with base CE at Dyess. One of the folks I worked with told me how Dyess had a railroad tank car buried up to the tower for decades until the early '90s that the base used to dispose of motor oil, waste chemicals, etc. "It was great because it never filled up."

When I was stationed at Camp Smith I remember someone telling me that PACAF looked at building HASes for the E-3s at Kadena but each HAS would cost $1 billion...

The 1991 tornado at McConnell AFB, KS apparently just missed a flightline full of B-1s when it went through. I shudder to think of a F-5 tornado hitting Whiteman or one of the major depots (Hill, Robins, Tinker).

Anyone seen one of these or flown with one? Do you have to qualify on it? https://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2018/06/26/usafs-new-gau-5-a-aircrew-self-defense-weapon/

They are getting really bold. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5688095/U-S-complains-China-laser-incidents-Djibouti.html

A bigger issue is the fact that we are wasting airframe life on the B-1(and B-52s/F-15Es, etc.) doing CAS in Afghanistan when the AF should have bought the Tucano/AT-6 a decade ago to use instead. Or if you just want a coordinate bomber with long on-station times, we could have hung JDAMs on a 737 (i.e. Navy P-8) a decade ago.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/10/13/air-force-airmen-accused-vandalizing-historic-sc-church-with-satanic-graffiti.html WTF? Way to gain the support of the local community.

Agreed but unfortunately compromise isn't possible with the gun control Left. We could trade away bump fire stocks and trigger cranks as part of a compromise but that would just whet their appetite for more gun control, leading to their desired end game-total abolition of private firearm ownership. Like a Terminator, they will not stop until they reach that endstate. The sad fact is that elimination of most firearms would be fairly easy to accomplish. Once they have ownership lists, either by mandatory registration, credit card data mining, having doctors ask kids if their parents have guns, etc. then they can require you to turn them in. They don't need to send police or military to round them up. All they need to do is make turning them in a condition of any interaction with the government such as renewing your driver's license or license plates, getting a tax return, applying for unemployment, etc.

Two of three Navy Aggressor squadrons are Reserve squadrons IIRC.