war007afa

Anxiously awaiting the blotter note for the first time one of these is used “inappropriately”...

Been lurking a bit on this thread, but what I’ve seen over the years: - They’ll move more training and ability to log events to sims, but will refuse to find more sims or update them as the jet evolves. - Sims break (some more than jets) and can create a backlog when they go down. - Instructors: you either get civilians (WW-nam dudes who can’t evolve with TTP efficiencies or stop telling war stories long enough to actually teach how to fly the jet) or the IP bill comes out of hide, so your already-overtaxed line flier gets kicked in the nuts with sim duties. Either way, it’s painful. In the end, this seems to be the only true desired efficiency: they can replace green suits with blue and push more guys to the line...who will then have to pick up the training slack when the eventual product hits the unit.

Nope

NAFs became the place to hide personnel when PBD720 pushed hard on the staff cuts for the Pentagon and MAJCOMs. Most of the NAFs liaise with a COCOM (notable exceptions) which makes it easy to validate the billets when it comes time to slash some more flesh off of the bone, leaving them immune in many cases to losing bodies. Don’t a lot of the rated NAF positions still get to fly? In MAJCOMs or other staffs it’s rare to be able to continue to fly while doing the staff gig.

🥃

There's a ton of concern with the waist measurement because Airmen were going through such extreme measures in order to pass that a few actually died last year (forget the actual number, but it was >5). Apparently all of the parlor tricks used beyond diet and exercise proved fatal for some. Plus, the trend of laxing standards seems to be in full swing this year.

Hardly ever, and we pushed the HAF to create a standardized and streamlined process for them to do it. ”No” is a 4-letter word...

SWA jet landing in Austin took a human to the engine cowling as they landed. Pilot apparently “maneuvered” to miss? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/southwest-airlines-jet-plane-hits-kills-person-austin-airport/#app

So here's an interesting read from Task and Purpose. Dude refused to turn over his weapons after making threatening comments to his chain-of-command in an email. When they went to his on-base residence to take his guns away, he went full Code of Conduct on that ass. What I love the most about this is how his wife turned it into a team sport: "Injerd’s wife then opened the front door to their home, and the airman retreated into the house, shut the door, broke a back window, crawled out, scaled the base perimeter face and escaped into the woods. https://taskandpurpose.com/news/missing-airman-dyess-air-force-base

About 7 more engines! <cue drums>

Balancing of all the Palace programs, the VLPADs, Reserve activations, etc. against the people who elected to announce separations and retirements (this is the one that's likely holding everything up; people who were on their way out the door and had announced it 11+ months in advance looked out the window and saw the Wizard of Oz-esque shitstorm of employment opportunity due to the pandemic). They put a bunch of effort into backstopping things like Rated-required staff billets with a bunch of people who are put on short-term funded orders and now they're worried about being over end-strength DOPMA requirements. Sort of a shit deal for the Air Force to stop action on the flexibility of folks to change or remove separation dates. It pisses me off to no end how this organization stops giving two shits about caring about the people who comprise it as soon as they announce intentions to move on. People are expected to work all the way until their last day in the Air Force; why shouldn't the Air Force also be expected to work for them?

I was sitting outside on the balcony outside our AirBnB last night watching the world go by (which mostly consisted of some lady yelling at people outside a liquor store a few blocks away) and I couldn't help but reflect: how ironic is it that so many people have asked for things to slow down, more time with their families, less queep, and extraneous nonvalue-added requirements to slide off the plate, and when most of that is delivered (albeit in the midst of a fairly shitty situation and under less-than-ideal circumstances), all we want to do is bitch about it and go back to the way things were? Is this what transitioning to the airlines is going to be like? //S

Some bros returning from 365s or other deployments who already had accruals in the system (I have over 100 I had until 2022 to get below 30 before the authorization dropped).

Accumulation to 120 ends 30 Sep 20. Time to use said 120 ends 30 Sep 23.

This is my hell, right now (literally the exact same situation with HHG). We're rolling in an AirBnB until it we're cleared to go. Demand is down for lodging at the moment, so that's a positive we have going for us right now.

Draft shows 30 June.

Interestingly enough, this conversation isn't just limited to this forum. I offer the attached for your bathroom reading: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2007637

I’m certainly not the science guy to tell you how long this thing lives, but however long that is plus a few days should be mostly sufficient. Isn’t that what you do with radiation and chem? We’re living the slow gut shot version, where hope is apparently the strategy since no one is being held accountable except in extreme cases.

I'll concede there is definitely concern over determining the ground truth numbers of carriers driving the assumptions. Data sucks, but does that truly mean we shouldn't honor the most-dangerous COA during a pandemic? This is literally a life-or-death situation. It's the asymptomatic carriers which are the major concern here. It's the 14 days of symptomless spread which put us at the greatest risk and allows this thing to do harm to the greatest amount of people. And the longer we delay acknowledging these people exist and continue to vector the disease uncontrolled, the longer we'll have measures in place. Either the bullet to the head or the slow, painful gut shot: we have to pick which one we want to endure. Either way, it's going to suck.

Substitute fire for the virus. If you walk around dragging and spreading flames which are burning people to death instead of staying inside a campfire ring until the fire is out, you're negligent, no (especially if you've been told you're dragging fire)? How is this any different? Extreme, yes. But illustrates the point I'm trying to make. The worst part of it is, most of the people spreading the flames don't even know they're doing it but refuse to acknowledge there may be an inferno behind them. And yes, Duck, my wife is staying home (still) and I'll continue to basically decon every time I have to go grab food and potentially toilet paper, since for some strange reason the case numbers aren't going down here...

Look, I'm all for liberty like the next guy. However, where do we draw the line? I have the right to survive and protect my family. Should that right for my potentially-immunocompromised wife be infringed upon because some jackass wants to play disc golf with his buddies in the park down the way while coughing all over the place as he conducts a shelf check at Harris Teeter on the way there? This shit lives for days when it leaves your body; you may not even know you're touching a contaminated surface. The concept of letting local officials create local policy works, except we live in an open border society and there's no vector control. So without a uniformity on restrictions in order to limit the amount of movement of infected persons (who may not even know they're infected, it seems), hope of allowing this thing to die off wanes in the name of not letting the gubment take my rights. If I don't like the fact that Location X has strict disease containment measures, I can just hop in the family roadster and go down to Location Y where I can do whatever I want without regard to what harm I am causing to others. Every location has countless examples of people completely ignoring restrictions and infecting others (to include flippantly trying to spread the disease, in some extreme cases). No one I know wants to cede their liberties. But there are enough people out there who are literally killing others because they don't have the self control or sense of community to protect those they share a locality with by staying inside.

Here in DC, the ridiculous amount of people out and about unprotected like it’s any other day is staggering. Not to go to the grocery store or pharmacy, but people out picnicking or playing pickup games. And they can’t figure out why the rate is steadily increasing here. A ton of people are on the streets with just the “essential services and shops”. Now imagine if they opened up every other business and watch the herd or asymptomatic Karens run around more than they already are on their way to purchase those all-so-important whatever the hell it is they buy while spreading the Rona like BQZip’s mom used to sling the crabs. The “treat us like adults” mode may work in little America where the sense of community and caring still exists. In the shitty “I need to get mine” parts of America I happen to be stuck in where this continues to spread like wildfire, I’m grateful that where accountability isn’t happening, they at least reduced the places people CAN go to in some way make them not go out. Bad could be worse. And it has to be a national policy. The scary number of Empire State license plates on the streets of DC have a lot of folks in the area concerned, especially because of the mass exodus that occurred a few weeks ago leading to outlying areas developing outbreaks, too. Oh, almost forgot. They released all the prisoners who weren’t full on murderers because they needed to ensure social distancing. And basically no one actually gets arrested and jailed or fined for violating stay at home because of the economic impact, so hope is literally the strategy with regard to individual accountability.

We had a similar situation, but the dude took Mondays (due to Blues Monday and also because Fridays are slow unless you're on the Morale Line).

I subscribe to gloves, but in the opposite method advertised. The virus spreads by touching something bad and then an orifice of your body. So I do all my shopping and remain cognizant of hand placement (it's like I fly airplanes, for Christ's sake!). Then, when I'm done, I put gloves on after I'm clear of the high risk of contamination to ensure I don't risk any of the nastiness on my hands accidentally touching my face (trap the risk in the damn gloves). Then you can take the gloves off when you're able to finally be out of the environment and clean off. Of course, none of this means anything if you can't get any damn gloves (like in DC). But food for thought.

A cruise ship isn't an instrument of national power; a CSG just leaving port is a strong message to any adversary that shit's about to get real. Evacuating a few dozen sailors from a ship before combat effectiveness erodes is a prudent decision, and ultimately would have cost the Navy next to nothing (other than senior leadership having to actually demonstrate the ability to admit their first instinct was wrong and change their minds). Throughout my career, I've been flabbergasted by the hesitance of military leadership at multiple levels to take what could be deemed a tactical loss for a strategic win. "Oh, no! My boss will see I have sick people and will look upon me negatively!" seems to routinely override "I made the decision to take a quick pause, police my rounds, and get back in the fight sooner and with greater lethality because I didn't let my pride take out my unit and both of my kneecaps". Even ISIS seems to understand this damn point (re: ISIS guidance to avoid COVID-19 hot spots)! All that said, if you make your boss look like a jackass without giving him/her a chance to solve your issue at your level, not zesty. And for the classified/FOUO/sensative/etc argument: compilation is our largest vulnerability in today's day and age.