Dupe

Sure, the need for this thin presently exists. The reality is that there's no way we could test and field this contraption before the 2014 pull-out date. It becomes a complete white elephant if we decide to pull-out early (sts). It pisses me off to no end that we would even consider going forward with a vehicle that will never have any mission systems on it.

There is currently one non-TPS grad in the Roadrunners. The mission is test support flying C-12s and T-38s for any test that comes to White Sands. It can be flying pre-scripted lines for a new Patriot radar, flying chase for the next big foot-print weapon (things like JASSM and MOP all get tested at WSMR), or flying against the new software in F-22s. I know both the current and future DOs well and have had much interaction with the squadron in my time in flight test. PM me if you want more data.

File joint. The only reason to file separate is to screw your spouse...there's a couple key credits and exemptions that aren't available to those filing separate. Your tax status at the federal level need not be the same for states. You can go joint at the federal level then separate for your respective states.

Definately all the position moves at that level are political. I just think the political driver is a hard-line stance on acquisitions ability by the SecDef and all of OSD for these positions vice gender politics. As an example, there are quite a few rated O-6s & O-7s in AFMC who can't go to become Program Executive Officers simply because they don't have the program manager experience to fill those jobs. OSD is unwilling to write waivers for these guys, and they're too far along to officially get that experience now. Rather than claiming "Affirmative action is still alive and well! She got this job in part because of gender status!" we should be asking "Why isn't there someone with operational experience that can do this job? Is it acceptable to have the AFMC commander not be rated?" How long does the "First female Air Force 4-star!" sound bite last for the American public? Two minutes at best? I at least hope that the administration believes that putting the wrong person in such a critical position isn't worth the two minutes of national coverage that this appointment garners. We all know budget battles will continue to rage through at least the end of this decade...AFMC needs a person who can reform the Air Logistics Centers, who can squash the infighting among all the AFRL directorates and DARPA, and who will not reward contractors where their programs are clearly not meeting cost, schedule, and performance criteria. Agreed.

I'm not arguing that running AFMC takes technical skills. Hell, at times, I think a labor/contract attorney could do it best. I'm saying that AFMC is a very unique command that really takes some understanding of all the different 'lanes' of the organization. Getting the right person to run this mess is key to getting the technology developed, systems aquired, and products maintained through the next decade. The previous two AFMC/CCs have been guys with a long operational resumes and only time working AF level requirements as a GO. Why now the vector-change to have a non-rated MAJCOM/CC with a bucket-load of acquisition time? In this case, Wolfenbarger was picked not because she was a "she," but because the SECAF thinks she's the best person to improve the dysfunctional family that is AFMC.

The scary reality is that there simply isn't a rated dude with combat time, the experience in acquisitions, and the logistics / MX exposure to handle all of AFMC right now. Would I like to see more operators become AFMC program managers? Hell yeah...but those kind of jobs fill no squares for bros. The complaints from the CAF can't both be "Stop filling so many jobs with rated guys where others can do it" and "Send more guys to staff."

Music doesn't mute or decrease with a radio call. Right now, my TTP is to shut it off when I need to talk - that's why the switch is pretty big for a simple audio widget. It'll take some work for me to figure out the auto-mute feature.

Eh...Big Safari can be f-ed up in its own special way...

Once traveling to one of many horrible meetings, I watched a rather large guy give up his first class seat for a young enlisted kid in exchange for a middle seat back in the cattle-car section. I offered him my aisle seat, but he wouldn't take it. These are the Americans I think of when I suffer through yet another awful meeting with the Program Office to agree upon what we've already agreed upon.

I've now had the spare time to build up a patch cord with a plastic case and an on/off switch in it. I sell the widgets on EBay: https://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260848927288 If you buy the thing, I'm always looking for feedback on how it works and what you'd do to make it better.

https://news.yahoo.com/netflix-shares-surge-customer-grows-002907371.html Netflix has shown some decent positive swings this last quarter. They're certainly not back to their peak, but I think they've executed a solid floor transition.

One thing I'll add that nobody else has: after about a month in, go buy an Ordnance Survey map of your village and go for a walk to a rural pub. Britain has a wonderful system of walking trails and they've mapped their country to a ridiculous level of detail. There's something fantastic about taking a walk with the dogs to a small local that has probably been serving ale longer than the US has existed as a nation.

If you can easily come with with the standard 20% down, then a VA loan wasn't really designed for you. It was build to get vets into home ownership without them having much cash on hand. It beats the pants off of FHA loans and probably anything requiring PMI. If you can put up 20% down, then you're pretty much of the market for VA loans and really should just be looking at the myriad of private institutions. There's a few other limitations to VA loans that I've run into: 1) you must occupy the property, so you can't use a VA to fund a second home / income property (though you can refinance your current home to a VA then use that available equity to fund a second home) 2) The home must be in the US...sucks if you're still OCONUS. 3) The VA loan can only be funded up to about 103% of the home's value...so you can't buy an undervalued home (read: one in need of many improvements) and roll what ammounts to a construction loan into it.

It should be that way, but you and I both know it's not. Hell, passing on lessons learned from similar programs with the same prime is hard.

Look at what the Air Force ended up with: we're getting a new tanker on a fixed-price contract with industry fronting most of the development costs! I can't think of any other MDS acquired in such a way....KC-46A is a hell of a deal for the Air Force. The KC-X program sure has a decade's worth of lessons learned as it morphed from a lease deal that put a major acquisition official in the lock-up to a sorce selection where the winner was selected based on requirements that were very different than what the request for proposal asked for. We delt with the ensuing protest and finally got it right on the third attempt. The Chief is right: this program should serve as a "What to do and what not to do" guide for future major acquisitions. At this stage, I think the KC-46A is a win for the Air Force and a win for Boeing.

Every city in Europe that wasn't absolutely destroyed in WWII.

A technical degree (to include physics or math) is required for anyone entering TPS. For the record, I'm a F-15E WSO. However, TPS grad CSOs exist from most platform backgrounds. Granted, the NSA and U-28 pipelines are too new to have a guy go to Edwards yet...which really means that the need is great in that area. TPS-grad CSOs are mainly systems experts. We test all the new systems early in the devlopment cycle. Finding a problem or suggesting a certain path early in a system's life is key to cost effectiveness of the system. As an example, I was the first WSO in the Air Force to fly the F-15E's new AESA radar. A good TPS grad knows the system he's testing, how a requirement generated up on high becomes an aircraft capability, and he understands the fundamentals behind any system (be it a radar, TV/IR imager, weapon, datalink, jammer, or some combination of those). Here's the good deals up front: 1) Test Pilot School is a really really fun year. I got to fly 29 different aircraft including the Grumman Albatross (think Jimmy Buffet's Hemisphere Dancer seaplane) and a trip to Sweden to fly the Grippen 2) TPS grants you a Master's in Flight Test Engineering upon graduation. I never worked on my Master's outside of work and now I'll never have to. 3) With a TPS background and a good reputation, you can find a job very fast. The combined knowledge of how acquisitions programs operate and how your specific system works is a combination that few have. If you have a technical background and want to start paving the long-term roadmap for your platform vice just operating it, then Test Pilot School may be for you. PM me if you have deeper questions. Edit: grammar

Mins to apply for TPS as a WSO/CSO/EWO/Nav are 500 hours or Instructor. With the spin-up / deployment pace being what it is for most airframes...most guys are eligible after only a couple years MR and don't realize it. If TPS is your goal, apply! There just aren't that many back seaters / back enders with technical degrees that are elligible to apply in the first place. A technical master's and being an instructor (provided you have 500 hrs) are nice to haves and certainly not requirements. I had neither when I was selected. A couple AFSOC CSOs and I will be giving a quick roadshow brief to the CSO school at NPA here sometime in the next few quarters just to turn guys onto the career. Lots of folks don't know the 12E career field exists, and the test community has decidedly noticed the decline in applications over the last several years.

Actually, quite a few people became millionaires by using low interest loans. It's called leverage. The BLUF is to use low interest funding to invest into higher yielding opportunities. Used right, the ultra-low interest starter loans are a hell of a deal. Used wrong, they're financial zip-ties instead of hand cuffs. Here's a good reason to go with the a career starter loan: Say you want to buy a house right out of school (feasable if you're not rated). Since the career starter loan interest is less than what you can get a lender to give you for a VA, it makes much sense use a career starter loan to finance the first part of your house then use a slightly higher value/loan ratio to earn you a lower home loan rate. Alternatively, you can use your career starter loan to pay down your first year's Roth IRA ($5K) then invest the rest wisely. At the minimum, pretty much any corporate bond fund should net you greater than 3% annual yield with a low risk. A horrible way to use the loan is to get yourself a motorcycle, a new flat screen, and a pad full of trendy Ikea furniture.

Definately a PR nightmare with the split pricing, then split company, then recant it all act. At the same time, I think Netflix is right. They fundamentally sell an electronic product, but distribute it through the one of the most antiquated logistics systems in America - the US Postal Service. In 10 years, I don't see anyone taking red envelopes back and forth to the mail-container like we have done for the last few. I compare this whole thing to the iMac back in the late 90s. I remember the translucent plastic blob and all the uproar over how the thing didn't have a 3.5" floppy drive (you had to buy that as an external option). Two desktop models later, the 3.5" floppy was useless. Netflix probably leaned a little too far forward on this one, but they were on the right vector. I'm pretty sure that my home movie watching in 2020 will be electronically delivered. The real question is who will be the content delivery company? Will it be Netflix, Hulu, Blockbuster, the media giants like Viacom or Time Warner, or even Google? I think Netflix is still best positioned to be that provider, but I wouldn't be surprised if Google is looking to fill that gap. Edit- punctuation

TA cuts had to happen. Between the implementation of 100% TA in 2002 and now, the number of new degrees awarded under TA didn't change much. However, the TA cost to the Air Force nearly doubled between 2001 and 2010. AF TA has been caught under the massive inflation of college programs. From the macro AF level, given the choice between maintaining/expanding combat capability or a quality of life tool whose cost are rapidly outpacing its utility...I'd pick combat capability.

In my unit, we get two per year as the going in argument. It seems to work out right, as that's about the number I have to trash in a year. Flight suits come out of your AFE shop's O & M money, and I don't think there's a reg that dictates a set rate (as different MDSs and crew positions burn through gear differing rates). However, the more flight suits your unit goes through, the less boots, gloves, NVGs, etc you can buy that year.

That logic works both ways, you know....

I think it's desirable for Air Force officers to see what makes a company work and what doesn't. At the same time, there's a fundamental flaw here: the Air Force is not a corporation. We're a war machine. The just-in-time logistics process that Walmart uses will lead to severe capability degrades if we adopt it. As generations past learned: TQM is great for making Toyota...not as great when your product is aircraft availability or # of pounds / gallons airlifted. We're in the business of flying, fighting, and winning...that business leads to what corporate types would call "inefficiencies." Sometimes, those "inefficiencies" are actually buffers against shocks to the system (what staticians call war)...like the number of pilots we have employed, the number of GBU-38s we keep at each base, and the number of redundant systems we build into each airframe. Here's my pitch to the next generation of Air Force leaders: there's lessons to be learned from corporate success or failure. At the same time, we're not a corporation...frame those lessons appropriately.

Here's my version of the standard patch cord: https://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260848927288&ssPageName=STRK:MESE:IT $50 including shipping. Expensive...I know. However, most of the cost is in the parts that I have to buy. If you're able to send me the parts, I'm happy to negotiate. Eventually, this will grow into a version in a metal case with an on-off switch, volume control, and a seperate jack for recording audio.