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So I'll engage in a little sport bitching here; I just got hit with a $17K bill from the gov't from my recent deployment. After looking at my voucher, the lodging portion of the flat rate per diem had been removed by the local finance people. So I went VFR direct to ask WTF and the SrA said flat rate per diem only applies to PCSing and that you always have to provide lodging receipts. Is it too much to ask for the Finance folks to know the Joint Travel Regulation which explains the flat rate per diem and says lodging receipts are not required for that? It was a different airman than the one that changed my voucher so it was not a single instance of a clueless airman. I was amazed to have to explain their own regulation to them. Why aren't their NCOs teaching them that stuff? The SrA said he'd never heard of flat rate per diem for deployments.

A scaled-up Rutan Ares (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scaled_Composites_ARES) might make a good A-10 replacement.

@Beaver, the way it was explained to me is we teach Spanish, Talagog, Korean, etc. because so many of the native speakers can't get SCI clearances for whatever reasons. Also, the LEAP program is designed to get you to a translator level which most native speakers aren't at so hence the pay even for common languages AFAIK.

Yet another good experience with National Bank of Kansas City. I worked with Travis Smith for our mortgage and he was very patient, responsive, and helpful. I got a better interest rate than USAA offered and was able to close faster.

Part of the problem is we operators need to do a better job educating the support folks. Granted you'll find a lot who could care less but still. Back when I was a young captain and the squadron EWO (insert nav joke here), I took some of the defense avionics troops into the sim so they could kinda see how we use the stuff (would have loved to get them a flight, but crew chiefs should go first and not enough flights to go around). They were really jazzed about it and the senior guy was a MSgt who told me he'd been working on the B-1 for 15 years and this was the first time a crewdawg had taken him into the sim to explain how we use the equipment he worked on. Did the same thing for the radar maintainers and got the same response.

Add to that the large percentage of Iraqis (or other Middle Easterners for that matter) who marry cousins. Some studies I found on Wikipedia (I know, I know) put it at 30% of Iraqis (about the same for Afghanistan) married to 1st or 2nd cousins which after generation after generation has got to induce some health issues, mental or otherwise.

One person's paradise is another person's hell. While TDY in Singapore, met a SMSgt who said she hated Singapore and couldn't wait to get back to Holloman. I was shocked as Singapore looked pretty cool to me. I just spent 3 years at Camp Smith while living at Hickam and I'm glad to get away. Great place to live for a while but the traffic, high costs, and island fever started to wear after three years. My favorite place to be assigned was Randolph and least favorite was Goodfellow (I liked Kunsan better than Goodbuddy).

I was always amazed when I was in a flying squadron how many dudes bitched about pme, AAD, addition duties, etc. and claimed they just wanted to fly and yet they didn't even take the flying part seriously. Maybe it's just the aircraft I was in but I saw plenty of pilots and WSOs treat it like a flying club and seemingly could care less about employing the jet as a weapon. Never saw those dudes in the vault studying and they knew just the bare minimum tactically to get by a checkride. I can think of a dozen guys like that of the top of my head that I wouldn't get in the jet to go to war with. I didn't like the queep anymore than anyone else but I sucked it up and did it. And I also spent lots of time in the vault and sim trying to be better at my primary job. I'm with Liquid; from what I've seen over the last 20 years the promotion system is by and large fair but one must recognize how much luck and timing plays into promotion. From what I've seen that's like 50% of the equation right there. Also, remember you don't get promoted, your records do and if they don't paint an accurate picture because you had poor writers for raters...

At my last assignment we had a former 11M who become permanently DQ. He then cross-flowed into logistics and is now managed by the logistics careerfield (plus he just got picked up for RAS so he gets dual-managed).

The B-1 won't be traded for the new bomber because we won't ever get a new bomber. However, the B-1 is next on the chopping block and I give it no more than five years. With the looming massive increases in entitlement spending due to the baby boomers retiring en mass, there is no way we can afford a new bomber given all the other priorities (and Air Force preferences). I'd bet an entire year's salary that we never get it. Of course, the Air Force will make a show at getting it so as to keep the Navy fighter fleet from getting too much money but in the end, it's toast. I'd also be shocked if we end up with more than 500 F-35s.

PLAAF trains monkeys to do bird control on airfields. https://theweek.com/article/index/261082/speedreads-china-has-a-small-contingent-of-trained-monkeys-protecting-its-air-force-base

Col (ret) James Kasler has passed away. Three-time Air Force Cross awardee who started out as a B-29 enlisted gunner, F-86 fighter pilot in Korea (and ace), F-105 pilot in Vietnam, and POW in North Vietnam also was awarded 2 Silver Stars, 9 DFCs, 2 BSMs, 2 PHs, and 11 Air Medals. Wow!

The article's title is also misleading. OEF Philippines has been going on since 2001 and at its height, ~600 people were deployed and we're still there (though a reduced presence). So it's not a re-opening... We've also lost some folks there in accidents and VEO attacks. See OEF-P case study here link. When I went to Manila on that TDY, I was astounded at the size of the VA hospital there.

I got be on one of the AO-level negotiation sessions with the Phils a couple of years ago for all of this. What a goat rope. It seemed to me that the Philippine officers in the meeting were first and foremost concerned about how all of this could benefit them personally (Oh the Yankees want to do some Exercise Related Construction there? I got a cousin who owns a cement company there...). Like HercDude said, this agreement isn't for permanent basing which is prohibited by their Constitution. It's all about rotational presence. The catch is that most of their bases we'd like to use require a lot of work to make them really usable.

I remember some Boeing engineer telling us the Radar Display was over capability to begin with. It can display far more resolution than the radar was capable of since it was built to be a display for a FLIR as well(which was never bought). Apparently SAC did pour a lot of money into the radar display. I would assume because of this, it wasn't a high priority for replacement.

Sounds like a great deal for the Taxpayers...

Slightly off-topic, but has anyone else noticed the amount of different firearms magazines (the periodical kind) on the market now? Last time I was at the BX, must have seen nearly two dozen different ones. I can't remember seeing that many before. Twenty years ago it seemed like Guns & Ammo, Shotgun News, plus a few others were it. But the citizen control types assure us gun ownership and interest is on the wane in the U.S....

I was reading the Best Defense blog and a guy on there had a brillant idea to fix all of the general officer issues the military has been having. Simply this- if a flag gets fired for crimminal acts such as fraud, sexual harassment, etc. then not only does the flag get fired, the service also loses that flag officer billet. That simple fix would finally motivate the services to do a much better job at screening and oversight.

My unit's Chief of Staff is a Navy O-6 SEAL and he told me his biggest regret is not being able to get into Navy pilot training. Actually said he kinda feels somewhat like a failure because of it (he loves airplanes). Really!?! O-6 SEAL and you feel like a loser!?! Grass IS always greener on the other side.

This article is a classic case of this: Michael Crichton once mentioned something called the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect. "Briefly stated, the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is as follows; you open the newspaper to an article on some subject you know well. In Murrays case, physics. In mine, show business. You read the article and see the journalist has absolutely no understanding of either the facts or the issues. Often, the article is so wrong it actually presents the story backwardreversing cause and effect. I call these the 'wet streets cause rain' stories. Papers full of them. In any case, you read with exasperation or amusement the multiple errors in a story, and then turn the page to national or international affairs, and read as if the rest of the newspaper was somehow more accurate about Palestine than the baloney you just read. You turn the page, and forget what you know."

How about Bomber, Prowler, and Compass Call guys? Those platforms put out tons of 'trons as well. I've know a couple of bomber guys who've gotten cancer in their late 20s or early 30s.

https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/finding-strategic-balance Long article but points out the folly of using our high-end assets in Afghanistan-type operations instead of LAAR. Astounds me that the AF can't figure that out but I guess buying LAARs would be a threat to the F-35...

Great article! Well, worth the read if you are interested in the counter-argument to the Army's assertion that Air-Sea Battle is misguided. https://warontherocks.com/2013/11/the-war-over-future-war-repelling-a-ground-assault-on-airsea-battle/

Farewell and blue skies brother.

RIP