jazzdude

What we (as a country) spend money on reflects our values. If we're not spending money on it, then it's not a problem we truly feel is important or of a significant priority... As far as foreign aid, we are buying influence. Could be for access/basing/overflight, or for building a relationship to block China/Russia from the region so they buy american (or from our friends). This would in theory protect our industries and open (or keep open) markets. Education and healthcare are hard fixes, because it would involve a fundamental shift in the system surrounding both fields. For higher education, what gets cut when you lower tuition for the individual? If stuff can't be cut, how would offsetting with federal/state funding be monitored for value? Or would that money be better spent at the K-12 level vs college? How much of college is training vs education? Healthcare has a high bar to entry to practice medicine (expensive schools, limited residency programs) as well as high litigation/insurance costs? Most of the medical residencies are also federally funded already, so how do you increase the production of doctors without significantly increasing funding (which is probably why we see more nurse practitioners in medicine now)? How do you drive those costs down in a "free" market? A single T-6 sortie could feed a family (or two) decently for a month. A single C-17 training sortie costs about the same as the median US household income in 2019. Neither side has really cared about a balance budget. And most programs tend to grow in scope as time goes on, sometimes with good intents. Defense is no different. But to make cuts means first trimming the fat, then cutting into the meat and reducing capabilities.

Also speculation, but maybe the extra drag improves the engine response (more linear power response and less spool up at higher power settings while flying slow)?

I'd be willing to bet the reason for det cord over canopy jettison is requirement driven-specifically to attain a 0-0 capability and improve the overall ejection envelope while reducing weight to meet other requirements. Probably a lot easier to improve the ejection envelope by engineering "blow up the canopy in 0.1 seconds and shoot the seat through the hole" than figuring out how to jettison the canopy away (1 or 2 seconds? to clear the cockpit as ground speed zero, as well as all the other pitch/roll/speed combinations in flight) and then fire the seat. Problem gets compounded when trying to improve cockpit visibility by having a one piece bubble canopy- now you'll have a huge piece of glass to move if you want to reliably jettison the canopy in all phases of flight and on the ground. Or pay a significant weight penalty for whatever explosives needed to blow the canopy away compared to det cord. That weight penalty then affects other performance, such as range. My philosophy has always been that if I needed to use the ejection seat (in the T-6), I was in a situation where I was going to be dead anyways so it's a second chance at life. I was always a visor down/mask up/sleeves down/gloves on when in the seat kinda guy, but then again the T-6 air conditioner worked pretty well. But my experience with ejection seats has been in the training world, where you can work hard to stay at the center of the flight envelope, and there's generally no reason to push the bounds of safety, so my perspective is probably different than a fighter guy.

One time while PCSing, I stopped in at the Houston space center, and they had a "meet an astronaut" talk. The astronaut was a Marine fighter NFO/WSO, then went to med school, then got picked up to be an astronaut, and was only in his late 30s. Pretty incredible path/career. So yeah, those guys are out there, and I know I'm nowhere near smart enough to do two of those things much less all three

No worries, we (c-17 community) are be HUD babies, no doubt about that. But our jet was designed to use the HUD as our primary reference, with the best of 80s technology. Good news is our new HUD is pretty sweet. Not perfect, but is sole source IFR certified without limitation. And I think C-130J block 8 will give you gps approach capes. Just comes down to money/budgets, and drawing the line at where "good enough" is. Need good dudes/dudettes in A5/8 to make and defend those budget cases for the line flyers. The hard (worrisome) part is that our budgets probably not going to get bigger, limiting what we can but as far as improvements, and training is being cut on the front end in UPT, undercutting the ability to just "be a pilot and make it happen."

It just comes down to what you want out of life. If you want to fly military jets, realize there's a limited window to do that. While you can do med school whenever, realize that the longer you wait, the harder it gets as other commitments enter your life (spouse, kids, retirement/financial planning, etc). If you went the med school first route: Undergrad by age 22, 4 years med be school puts you at 26, and a typical 3-4 year residency program puts you at age 29-30. So technically feasible to go guard/reserve on the backside. But then you'll need to balance relevancy/currency in your primary medical career with being out of medicine for 2-3 years (likely with a pretty high debt load in the $200-300K range). This also assumes you get picked up for med school on your first look (my brother took 3 years to make the cut). Also, some specialties may be more conducive to gaps in your medical career than others. If you go the military flying route first and got hired right away: undergrad by age 22, UPT grad by 24, 2-3 years of seasoning at your unit puts you at 27ish. From there, going to med school would mean having a unit that fine with you completely min running participation and flexibility in scheduling for 7-8 years while you get through med school/residency. Or you put in the 10 year commitment with the flying unit, putting you at 34 starting med school and finishing residency around 41 years old before making any real money (again, with about $200-300k in debt at 41). It's attainable, but there's a good bit of financial risk (if you end up in family practice, you may not be able to unload that debt while saving for retirement without living pretty austerely. It's hard to do both; there are people that do and they are pretty exceptional people. Another option is the AF pilot physician program, where you become an AF flight doc first and apply for the program. But I think it's less than one a year that gets picked up for the program, but they go through UPT, and maintain basic flying currency while doing aeromedical research. Another option to consider if you want to do both is fly military, but go the nurse practitioner route instead of MD/DO. No residency requirement, lower bar to entry, less competition to enter programs, and end up doing a lot of the same day to day things as a MD/DO (at least for family practice and similar fields). I will say that if you want to go the military route, do it because you want to serve while also flying jets. And that you can also serve as a doctor as well if you end up choosing the medical path if you do desire. Best of luck to you in your decision. But remember, luck and timing are important as well, despite the best laid plans.

C-17 legacy HUD is certified as an IFR PFR, with the limitation of having an extra PFD up (essentially for unusual attitude recovery). It's not a VFR only or SA only device.

I'd be willing to bet that the jacked up attitude display (reliable full time horizon/attitude display) is probably one of the reasons the HUD isn't IFR certified. C-17 HUDs (both legacy and our new HUD that should be fielding soon) are certified for primary IFR reference, though our legacy HUD had a caveat for having a PFD/attitude info displayed on an MFD due to lack of full time horizon info at high/low pitch angles

Good discussion. I'm not trying to throw spears, or defend decisions, but usually there's a rationale that doesn't always make it back to the line. We (C-17s) didn't lose our chutes because they wanted us to stay with the jet (or else why would the B-2 have election seats...) but lost them for cost savings in return for a small increase in risk. Money was saved by removing them because it meant fewer parachute riggers required (helping manning), reduced supplies/time required to maintain the chutes, reduced aircrew training requirements, and "fuel savings." We still have a couple parachutes for army JMs for airdrop, but good luck beating that LM to the parachute if everything goes downhill. Agree on increased training risk-jury is still out, and hopefully we don't see an increase in mishaps, or worse, go to war missing proficiency in a needed skillset that was deemphasized. And also agree on low manning hurting the 11F community-what's important to you guys gets lost without someone to advocate for you on the staff. But that budget squeeze is real, and retention is nowhere where it needs to be, and it doesn't look like mission requirements will reduce in the foreseeable future...

Not at CHS anymore. I assume you're a viper guy. So I get the single seat mentality and wanting options. Scroll the map over and you've got Vance with barriers, and SPS down to the south has the same. TIK has about as much city around it as TUL depending on the runway. Also, TUL has vipers based there as well, so I would guess it would not be unusual for one of their IFEs to recover to home field. If a base needed to maintain a capability because big AF needs/wants it, it'll be tasked to the base. If not, then big AF just doesn't think it's important. Maybe the requirement was reviewed and deleted by the staff. If the HAF or ACC staff just missed it, well, that sucks. If it's a continuing ops issue, then up-channel the need up through your wing and to the staff. And if it's truly important, and really was only $100K, it'd be easy for money to be moved to fund it if ACC or big AF really wanted the capability. Agree that parachutes shouldn't be plan A/B/C, and that generally heavy aircraft have more fuel/redundancies/time to handle emergencies. But sometimes you don't, like wing fires (no way to put out the fire, and it has happened in the C-17 in the past) or cargo fires (may not have the capacity to effectively fight the fire or jettison the cargo), and it's a race against time to get on the ground. Stuff costs money to maintain and operate, and the AF (and bases) budgets are just going to get tighter moving forward. It sucks, and hopefully your community has good people on staff to defend what you need to hack the mission safely.

Bravo zulu to the crew for getting the jet down safely!

Most bases that host only heavy aircraft don't have cables. If big AF wanted cables at airfields that don't have fighters for emergencies, they'd fund it. Why should a base maintain equipment that they have no requirement for? (And that requirement could be big AF telling the base to maintain an emergency capability) At least you pointy nose guys still have parachutes; us heavy drivers for the most part lost ours several years back

Pretty sure there's at least 3 airfields within less than 20 min (10 min at fighter speeds?) flight time with arresting cables and/or barriers from that base

Will teleworkers get more BAH to offset the cost of having to maintain a larger residence that includes space for a home office (extra bedroom/den above what they may have been comfortable living in, plus office furniture, and increased utility bills)?

And the instructor's risk tolerance. A CFI using their only plane as an instructional rental is probably going to be more risk adverse than a larger school with several aircraft. Though 30 hours to solo does seem excessive... Either they are really risk adverse, or not a great instructor

If only there was an online program that covered the learning objectives of SOS in a distance learning type environment...

There's been a movement within DoD acquisitions to get faster and not keep doing things the same way. Dr. Roper is probably one of the more vocal advocates, but it's not just him. The basic DODIs for acquisitions were recently updated, emphasizing tailoring of the acquisitions process and giving more options for how to structure a program, aiming to get capabilities out to the warfighter faster. The irony of all of this is that a lot of what Dr Roper is pushing for is already out in industry as best practices, our processes have just been slow to adopt.

This was how it was explained to me before I signed. I guess that means finance is 0/2 so far on getting my bonus payments correct

That would also make sense, but wasn't how I understood the contract. Either way, I've got a finance ticket in so I can confirm.

What confusing is that the "E" prefix already was in use for aircraft and has been for a while.

Well, looks like I'll have to reach out to finance and fix this years bonus payment. Looks like they did deposit the whole $35K in one payment this year, but I took a lump sum up front so my annual payments should've been reduced this year.

I had the same problem last year. When finance loads the bonus, it defaults to $25K/year (roughly $19.5k after taxes). They've got to do something additional to bump it up to $35K. Talk to your finance office to get it fixed Edit to add: the bonus also pays out annually, not monthly.

I don't have any inside info, but I'd assume yes.

I wonder what a senior airman costs per year vs a GS-12 sim IP? Then again, the sim IP or contractor doesn't count against end strength. As for the SrA pilot jumping ship for the airlines; can't jump ship if all you do is log sim time plus 70 hours in UPT...

Fixed it for you.