Blue

Sicario: Day of the Soldado was disappointing. Uneven pacing, plot holes, and all-around kinda crappy storytelling.

GI Bill. Several states have veterans grants that provide money in addition to the GI Bill (assuming you go to a state school) Or, to get creative, if you don't have any immediate plans to get out, go find a couple of like-minded people who are also looking to learn to fly. Pool your money, buy a used 172, and find a CFI willing to instruct on the side.

There just is nothing low-cost about General Aviation anymore.....

The "model" changed with the so-called "peace dividend" of the 90's, and the associated waves of consolidation in the defense industry. Whereas previously you had many realistic competitors for any contract, post-90's you're down to just 2-3 companies competing for any business. This lack of competition stifles innovation, and drives up costs. Hence $45M for a capability that could realistically be accomplished for a fraction of that cost. It'll never be perfect, and we'll never have a defense-industrial base that's free of all waste and inefficiency. However today, we have a monster that consumes more and more treasure, while producing less and less for the national defense.

"A degree of waste and inefficiency" is one thing. Paying Lockheed ~$45M for a capability than can be had for ~$1M isn't "a degree of waste and inefficiency." It's fraud, and it's obscene. If we were actually concerned about keeping the defense-industrial base healthy, we'd be deploying those $1M sims, and using the $44M of savings on other things. What military capabilities could we have added with that extra money? How could we have expanded our industrial base, instead of just feeding the bloat at a few behemoths (Lockheed, Boeing, etc)? If we're really concerned about keeping the defense industrial base healthy for a near-peer war, we would be a lot better off spreading the money around to different, smaller companies, rather than shoveling it all into Lockheed's cash furnace.

Please identify these vehicles that "cost just a few thousand dollars (or much less)," and also have the safety and reliability of a new car?

T-X Program winner to be announced this week (supposedly, although not holding my breath). My money is on Boeing, if only because the .gov wants to keep Boeing-St Louis in business...... https://www.forbes.com/sites/richardaboulafia/2018/09/24/were-about-to-learn-the-winner-of-the-air-force-t-x-trainer-contract-four-things-you-should-know/#72c3065b33e2

From the article: The number of aircraft has not been specified. Any thoughts as to how many tails 1.8 bil gets you?

I downloaded the FlightRadar24 app to my phone. You can zoom in on Oshkosh to see traffic. The below is from about 8:00 Central time this morning. Large mess of folks holding over Green Lake and Rush Lake to the SW of Oshkosh (in addition to everyone over Oshkosh itself).

https://www.liveatc.net/search/?icao=kosh Scroll about half way down, click on one of the options for: KOSH Fisk VFR Approach. Also using the free FlightRadar24 app on the phone to watch the lineup of airplanes coming in. Seems to have calmed down over the past hour. There was a big crush of airplanes this morning, but it's thinned out.

Through the wonders of the internet, I can listen to the Fisk VFR approach while sitting at my desk. Action, adventure, comedy, drama. Can't beat it.

Equalizer II: Meh. Supposedly, the Equalizer saga is going to be a trilogy. I thought the first one was really well done. A great action/vigilante movie where every scene kept you engaged. Equalizer II? Still fun to watch, but not nearly as engaging. Some plot elements that didn't really go anywhere. Felt like a mish-mash of scenes, interspersed with Denzel Washington kicking ass.

Sounds like Sierra Nevada took a proven design and bolted on a bunch of extra stuff (some needed, some not), with no thought to the challenges of integrating it all together into a working system.

Damn. Didn't realize that. Always seemed like the A-29 was marketed as some "off-the-shelf" solution. Didn't realize Sierra Nevada had changed the design so significantly.

Making sure the money gets spent. That's it.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-post-iii-8922ab127/ As of Sept 2017, he's a "Senior Adviser" to BGI LLC. Guess the calls from Lockheed and Boeing never came.

Since they couldn't retire the A-10, they're just going to fly the wings off them, while slow-rolling the wing replacement program. https://www.pogo.org/straus/issues/weapons/2018/air-force-leaders-deliberately-slow-rolling-a-10-refurbishment.html

Always did wonder--what was it about the F-2 that made it so damn expensive?

Link?

I would love it if they were no-kidding fired, and walked off of the base with cardboard boxes in-hand. Previous experience has shown me that SES folks are never exactly "fired." They're just given new, less visible jobs elsewhere on the base.

Am I the only one shaking my head at all this? When OBOGS problems first cropped up, the very first thing that should have been looked at was the maintenance interval of the individual components. Based on the above, this all sounds like the Air Force is the proverbial idiot who never does any preventative maintenance on their car, then bitches when their brakes fail, or the engine blows. Firing some folks in the T-6 SPO sounds like a good start. As a next step, how about finding someone to do some tracking of the performance of the system after parts are changed? The airlines all have robust programs monitoring reliability of various systems, and making a cost/benefit decision on what should be replaced proactively, and what should fly-to-fail. Someone at the SPO should be doing this going forward.

Ehh....., always thought the shoulder punch was kinda dumb. And every now and again someone would actually get hurt.

I don't have a dog in this fight. However, the above sounds like "Normalization of Deviance." Lots of stuff out there on the web. From one link: https://pressblog.uchicago.edu/2016/01/07/the-normalization-of-deviance.html The sociologist Diane Vaughan coined the phrase the normalization of deviance to describe a cultural drift in which circumstances classified as “not okay” are slowly reclassified as “okay.” In the case of the Challenger space-shuttle disaster—the subject of a landmark study by Vaughan—damage to the crucial O‑rings had been observed after previous shuttle launches. Each observed instance of damage, she found, was followed by a sequence “in which the technical deviation of the [O‑rings] from performance predictions was redefined as an acceptable risk.” Repeated over time, this behavior became routinized into what organizational psychologists call a “script.” Engineers and managers “developed a definition of the situation that allowed them to carry on as if nothing was wrong.” To clarify: They were not merely acting as if nothing was wrong. They believed it, bringing to mind Orwell’s concept of doublethink, the method by which a bureaucracy conceals evil not only from the public but from itself.

Quoted for truth.

USAF may be screwed, but damn do they make some good-looking powerpoint decks!