brabus

All over the board depending on job, airframe, location. Some are home a decent amount, others are gone all the damn time.

Don't try to milk the govt out of a few hundred bucks on false pretenses...even if it logically makes sense you should be able to count the weight. Bring the applicable JTFR into TMO, tell them how you interpret and see what they say. If it's not the answer you want, then walk away and save yourself a potentially massive headache later. The money isn't worth it.

She's doing PACAF 13 Jan thru 13 Feb; so you'll have to wait until she swings on back to the other side of the world.

Remember Duke, if they have to ask, they can't afford it.

Boulder is an extremely liberal town, and so are many of the professors who teach there (at least in the Poli Sci/IR departments). Like I said though, at least I never experienced any negative effects on my grades due to my viewpoints (which most of the time conflicted with the professor's).

That happened in about 90% of political science / international affiars classes I took in college. Spent a lot of days being the only, or one of two, dude(s) on that side of the room. Naturally the professor didn't even have the decency to stay at the front/middle to moderate...they were sitting on the other side. It was pretty ridiculous, but while many of those profs were approaching nutjob status, I will give it to them they were relatively fair when it came to grades.

Same for me, but only specific pages (most recent pg 21 works fine).

Did you run all the transfer paperwork through Vanguard, or did you have to also work directly with USAA? I have money with another bank as well, so this may end up being a pain in the ass to transfer it all, but seems worth it based on my research.

Looking into opening an account with Vanguard...any feedback on them? A lot of their funds are enticing, especially with low expense ratios. Just looking for one last sanity check before I put a decent amount of money into their funds.

Nobody stops a man from thinking about BQZip's mom...nobody!

Shack. I was already suspicious of the "grandfathered" claim in the recent past, but this move just proved any military benefit, program, etc. is or can be on the chopping block with little to no challenge in Congress. The safe assumption that any rational military member will make is the 20 yr retirement will either be non-existent or a complete shell of what it was when all of us currently serving signed away years of our life. So now, what in God's name is my incentive to stay in for 20? Where will the AF find it's strong leaders to be SQ/CCs, OG/CCs and WG/CCs? The AF needs good leaders to stay in, but we've already seen large numbers of that group continuously get out ASAP; now the above precedent is set...what does upper management and Congress expect to happen next? Here's what I get if I stay in for 20: Pros: 1. Get to serve my country 2. I get to do the job I love to do (mostly...for now) 3. I work with great Americans, and I thoroughly enjoy the commraderie 4. The pay's not that bad 5. A retirement (but see Cons below) Cons: 1. A retirement that is less than what I was promised when I signed up to give at minimum 11.5 yrs of my life (and my family's) to the AF. 2. Several more moves (maybe to places my family doesn't want to live...but we'll sacrifice and go anyways) 3. YEARS more away from my family spent in the shittiest places this world has to offer 4. Being continuously treated like a child by shitty management instead of an officer and an adult 5. Every year facing more and more roadblocks to doing the job/completing the mission To sum it up, I can achieve all the pros listed above outside AD; I can certainly get at least 4/5. All while seeing the same pros on the outside, I can avoid most, if not all, of the cons listed. At least for me personally, I REALLY care about the extra 5ish moves and years away from my family. So I can suck up a couple of those other cons if need be. There are certainly smaller items that could be added to each list, but these are the big ones. Don't get me wrong, I love my job as it stands RIGHT NOW, and I have and will continue to enjoy serving my country. But, as things continue to go in the wrong direction, I see less and less reason for a person to stay for 20+ years. Sure this is my opinion, but it's an opinion shared by A LOT of fellow officers. It's also an opinion that's backed by facts and precedence; difficult to argue against. How about A1 reads the above, maybe 6-9 times for clarity, so they start getting a clue as to what is really happening outside the basement they work in. You all can blame the three glasses of Lagavulin for the long post.

We're your IPs such colossal d-bags that they actually cared what you wore while flying? I bet they would have been really happy to see 8 of us flying the next morning after a night divert in $2 neon framed sunglasses from the BX. It's called eyesight protection/ability to comfortably see (somewhat important when flying); safety should trump bullshit regs.

I'm pretty sure that applies to 90% of people in Asia in every facet of life and career field. "Flexing" to changes/non-standard is not in their lexicon.

Shaw is at the pinnacle of full retard...thanks a lot Bin Laden.

Shack. No idea what your chances are of success, but no reason not to try. Good luck.

I don't have the -1 in front of me, but pretty sure 600 kts was not "good to go" before HMCS; you were still well into the flailing injury/high likelihood of extreme injury portion of the chart. I don't think you're "in the green" until below 500 kts, regardless of HMCS. Out of control CAP has zero to do with helmet type, nor airspeed. Really the only numbers that are related are altitudes. Not sure what you're getting at here. Lastly, you are never forced to wear your HMCS. You can choose to wear a 55P 100% of the time. As they say, it's a BK jet.

Sure we do, it's called get to the slowest practical airspeed before punching. Got it, there's clearly situations where you don't have that luxury, and in those all we have is "risk acceptance," but nobody said flying fighters was low risk. I'm not advocating we should not continue to press for improvements to HMCS (for both capability and safety), but it's not a true statement to say we purposely wear a "helmet that will kill us" with zero risk mitigation.

I say we are less lethal. Not because we don't have the capability, but because the required training is increasingly stymied by politicians. You can't play the probation-regression-regression-RAP-probation,etc. game, rob the AF of valuable flag level training and expect dudes to perform well in the types of contested environments we only talk about. Give dudes the chance to actually train to that stuff and our level of success will be infinitely greater. I feel like we're heading towards the super bowl, but the general manager only allows the team to use Madden XBOX to practice and forbids real practices.

180 out from the CAF. Are good dudes just never given the chance to be EPs? It's mind blowing that apparently 90% of MAF EPs are some of the biggest cocksuckers walking around with wings.

Grounded for 30 days, seriously? How does someone think that's a logical response to someone not wearing a hat.

Heard the exact same thing...over a year ago. It'll probably happen, but believe it when you see it.

Are you really surprised Vetter? I'm not, but I still have to throw out the obligatory, YGBSM!

I'm with Dayman on this; if all of the "privileged" SIB info can just be used against you anyways by the guy deciding your fate in the end (in an FEB situation like this), then really I have zero incentive to tell the truth/give every detail during the initial SIB interviews. The whole point is "spill everything" in the SIB to ensure 100% of the lessons learned are had by the aviation community to avoid further accidents of similar nature. The AIB is where "the legal shit" should happen. If the two are not mutually exclusive (as I have always understood it), then fuck it, I have nothing to say to the SIB board if there's even a remote chance the AF could find me even partially at fault for something. On that note, I've been involved in two SIBs (one for me, one for a guy in my 4 ship), and both actually seemed to work how it should. In the end the SIB for the other guy found him totally at fault, but then in the AIB it was determined to be mech malfunction. Nothing happened to him and he went on his way continuing to fly in the AF. Maybe this is more a MAF problem than a CAF problem...I don't know, but the story above seems pretty fucked up (at least how it was technically handled).

AFN here wants to follow a pilot around for a week and make a documentary on "how the pilots contribute to the mission." Are you fucking kidding me, what we do IS the mission! Everything else (much of it very important) is supporting the end game, which is pilots killing bad guys and breaking their shit. On the plus side, I can't wait for this guy to work a 70 hr week and see how life is far from "fly for an hour and then fuck off the rest of the day."

Shack. We're really getting into some extremely unlikely scenarios here to support the argument for Marine F-35Bs. Lawman - I'm not on the 100% Super T boat, I get it that the Marines need something more capable/survivable in a higher threat envelope, but they certainly don't need something that's "kick the IADs door in." Perhaps some Super Ts combined with carrier-based hornets would be a good mix. The bottom line is if Super Ts/Cobras can't do what's needed AND there is zero time to wait for the CSG/AF, you have now entered "so you're saying there's a chance!" land. Not impossible, but very unlikely. Nsplayr pointed out your erroneous Korea example, but your Syria example is just as wrong. What do you think the AF is doing? When shit starts looking bad, we're there a lot of the times well before anything goes down (if it even does). The scenarios where Marines are the ONLY dudes there and need to act are the low intensity stuff like South America and Africa - places where Cobra, Super T, Osprey can do their thing at an acceptable ALR. Marines will not be going at sophisticated IADs by themselves, because the AF and/or the Navy already is in a position to effect those locations...hence if shit hits the fan in one of those places, you've got the AF and Navy to provide the capes/expertise on IADs degradation/destruction, OCA and DCA while the Marines execute their portion of the ops...the aforementioned is not really what Marine Air is there for.