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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

This.

https://m.billingsgazette.com/news/state-and-regional/montana/air-force-bomber-crashes-near-broadus-during-training-crew-ejects/article_ae05c864-4364-5b36-adb4-5dce07ffdd23.html?mobile_touch=true This article points to a possible cause if the eyewitness is to be believed...

https://www.ellsworth.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123360368 Crewmembers ID'ed; Maj Frank Biancardi II, Instructor Pilot Capt Curtis Michael, Instructor Pilot Capt Chad Nishizuka, Instructor Weapon Systems Officer Capt Brandon Packard, Instructor Weapon Systems Officer Thankfully they all survived. Unfortunately, Capt. Nishizuka lost his brother in the Afghanistan MC-12 crash.

Glad to hear the crew is OK.

When the DoD (specifically the General Officer corps) looks into the mirror and doesn't like what it sees, it blames the mirror.

Yep. https://www.tinker.af.mil/news/story_print.asp?id=123150506

The Korean press is going to great lengths to pin the blame on Boeing or the airport. Thus far it seems to be a clear cut case of pilot error but that would make Korea look bad, so they can't admit that (especially when the female flight attendants showed them up by doing their jobs better). Guess media anywhere is extremely biased... I would suspect that Korean culture has something to do with this ala' the KAL Guam crash of the mid-90s.

Just finished up writing a performance report on a USMC major and I've also written on Navy and Army types as well. Our system is definitely the worse of the four from what I can see. On the other hand, I remember a anecdote one of my ROTC professors relayed about the process the AF went through to switch from the OER (Officer Effectiveness Report) to the OPR (really dating myself here). He said they had a team that went and talked to most of the Fortune 500 companies about how they did evals and every company told them, "When you figure it out, come back and tell us." Performance evals will always be a hideously wicked problem to tackle and subject to human frailties. Of course, it'd be nice if the AF didn't screw it up worse than the other services...