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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.

Closed with Travis Smith at National Bank of Kansas City for our second house/loan with them. As always, expeditious and the rate they gave us was .5% below USAA. Also, my real estate agent was surprised by how quickly NBKC was able to get everything done. As mentioned, this is the second loan we got through Travis and he was great to work with!

Doesn't seem like prices have fallen all that much however. However, I have noticed whereas I paid around $2000 for a Keltec RFB in 2013, they are going for about $1200 now. Doesn't seem like the top tier stuff has gone down in price at all though.

The one gotcha to Amazon is that you have to be willing to relocate to where they want you to live. Retiring AF friend of mine interviewed with them and during the 2nd interview round the first question was, "Are you willing to relocate to where we need you? If you answer no, the interview is over." I spent 23 years putting up with living in places I didn't want to live so Amazon was not for me, plus another retired B-1 WSO who I know got an Amazon ops manager job, quit after a couple of years because he said it was too many 12 hour days. I'd recommend any non-pilots looking for post-AF employment get a PMP program manager certification which can be had for free through Syracuse University Veteran's Transition Program as that seems to be a very common thing to have for transition into the corporate world. You can also take the exact same courseware on AF e-Learning but then you'd have to pay for the $500 test yourself. Got a late start on mine but I wish I had done it as a junior major as I learned a lot of stuff that would have been useful for the AF jobs I had. Hell, I think the AF would probably be better off replacing ACSC DL with a PMP cert course.

No, it's in a suburb of Atlanta. Thanks for the support though!

Hasn't been my experience. My wife has wanted to start a bar/restaurant forever and so we decided to go ahead and do it concurrent with my retirement. In preparation, I read a couple "how-to" start a business books and attended a Boots 2 Business course on base. Now I understand why many entrepreneurs say you have to fail a couple of times before you become successful. Running this business has been the steepest learning curve I've every experienced. I've also been floored about the amount of red tape and expense involved in getting business licenses, meeting code, etc. from the local government. For example, we rented a place that already kitchen equipment installed and when we went through the initial health inspection we were told the code had changed the previous year and we ended up spending an un-budgeted $20K on getting it up to code. I mean, FFS, the science in restaurant health and safety is so immature that such big code changes are necessary year to year!?! We also had delays getting licenses due to the slow pace of the city in processing them. I've also seen some unexpected things like the cops showing up repeatedly saying there was a report of a fight at our establishment. Probably our competitors trying to scare customers away.... Also, everything for business costs twice or three times what it would if you bought it for yourself. For example, deposit for electrical service for a business was $2000 and the monthly bill is $500 (1500 sq ft restaurant) and water is $450/month. It's also disheartening when you run into all of the rent seeking and rigging that goes on. We had to spend $500 for an alcohol survey to a surveying company to prove the restaurant/bar isn't within 500' of a school or a church. It probably took that surveying company all of five minutes to figure that out using a geographic information system (my undergrad degree incidentally) and I'm 90% sure they used GIS data from the city or county. Sweet deal for them... Also, only being allowed to serve alcohol bought through select alcohol wholesalers (was a real pain to get any of them to call us back to set up an account) doesn't help the bottomline either. Granted my wife picked the riskiest kind of business to start, but it's been 95% stress and 5% reward and we aren't even remotely close to breaking even after 9 months either. From my experience, if I was to do it again, I'd buy an existing business or I'd go into a business that catered only to other businesses as that seems like where the real money is.

And the whole fixation on ISR allows the intel types to think that they are operators, not support.

The north Koreans want nukes to effect reunification on their terms and it's far more than just an extortion racket. I was a Korea RAS/FAO and in my opinion these two gentlemen have the situation pegged light years better than any other academic or pundit; B.R. Myers (https://sthelepress.com/index.php/2017/07/03/north-korea-nuclear-armament-and-unification/) and Joshua Stanton (https://freekorea.us/2016/09/01/how-kim-jong-un-can-still-win-the-korean-war-part-1/#sthash.GxqDMieE.Hsc2HPHL.dpbs). Ignore the rest.

When all the existing services can pass an audit, then maybe we can talk about adding another one....

As a Korea RAS and a dude with a Korean wife, I can say this statement is categorically false.

I thought it was Congress who forced this all-the-services-buy-the-same-jet on us, not the USMC.