Lawman

Yeah but if I have to go spend 6 months on a liason team I'd much rather do it in Eastern Europe.

Yup, the boss is right always... right boss... Or I would say focusing your AF on getting a capability (or only a small amount of a capability) you probably don't need and/or in an amount that is not operationally relevant. 12 FA-50s will not deter China but 20 or so Scorpion Jets or light attack helos is a lot of capability to deal with Islamic insurgents in their backyard. Their country, their decisions though. You should see the stupid in their Anti-Sub program. Essentially their president made a speech saying we are gonna do something about these Chinese subs in our waters and the military is scrambling to buy anything anti-sub they can get their hands on because of it. Last I heard they wanted to buy 2x SH-60Rs and call it good to go, not realizing just how intensive actual anti sub operations are.

Small jump in ORM. Forgot to add to the blue light special list, the AIDC F-CK-1Ching-kuo. Never change that designation. Another in the 30 mil range and would have the side benefit of really pissing of China. But as you said, this will probably have the main benefit of being able to realistically handle something bigger (sts) later on but with a Pacific Pivot, this could/should fall under Building Partnerships, a core function now for the AF. It was but like so many things you can only lead the horse to the water. And the other part was the tail wagging the dog with how they wrote aircraft requirements to basically meet a particular aircraft before they ever actually had a company submit bids. Watched the Phil's do that with the light strike aircraft where they basically copy pasted from Super Tacano's website. They even had cool wooden models of favorite airplane's they we're looking at in their Air Force colors sitting in flag offices. Nothing crooked going on at all.... I think a lot of it for them and other nations like them is all about pride before sense and nobody will tell the emperor they have no clothes in their cultures. The Indonesians for instance have absolutely no need for 8 Echo model Apaches complete with radars. They could get two dozen 58Ds from our retired fleet complete with training and MX assistance for the same money and do a lot more for their combat ability and actually generate sorties and crew training. But Apaches have that new bad ass factor so like the Saudis and their 64s, who cares if it's too much plane and too little usable blade time we just have to spend this money. The other part is now since they and the Thai's are all getting E models everybody else in the neighborhood wants one. The Phil's asked on more than a few occasions about getting into Longbow and all I could do was shake my head at what they were asking to get into. 30 million dollar maintenance pig, yeah that's gonna work. These Air Forces are like cars in the bad parts of town. Haven't got the money for insurance or gas but it's got a really nice set of rims as it sits in the driveway of a run down neighborhood.

Nope - everybody has to pay the piper at some point and that time is coming... damn it... Unrelated to the post on 6th gen concepts but a question for BO.net - where is the US or European answer to aircraft like the JF-17, MiG-35 or F/A-50? Relatively inexpensive to acquire and operate 4th gen multi-role fighters (price around 30 million) with a per flight hour cost in the $7500 or less range? FMS are getting vetoed by the State Dept but having those relationships, supply-sustainment-training-etc... are key to building inroads. Other nations are taking advantage of this and moving into this market: https://www.defensenews.com/story/defense/air-space/strike/2015/06/16/pakistan-jf17-thunder-export-china-rafale-egypt-africa-south-america-argentina/28818897/ Why this matters is that it keeps your defense industrial base solvent without the need for a big ticket 5th or 6th gen new MWS program that's a budget buster to keep them in the black. We need to field a Freedom Fighter for the 21st century for our price conscious allies (Philippines, Columbia, etc..) not just for them but for us. Well in the case of the Philippines, FA-50 was chosen because the Phil's were more interested in the new car smell of the 8x FA-50 vice buying "used" Blk 40 vipers from us. At least Lockheed gets some cash out of the deal from KAI, but they only found out after the contract was signed all the stuff they weren't getting when they read on the Viper guy with the Liason team. Way to go JUSMAG, another great success. FMS is a bear to sell to those people because it's all about how many airframes they can park on their ramp so DCS is what they keep trying to go with even though their MX and logistics can't support it. I think FA-50 and A109 are both going to be eye opening failures for their Air Force. If they remember that though it will be good because they are looking at the next 4-4.5 gen strike fighter 10 years from now already to follow on the FA-50 buy. Frankly as much as buying FA-50 was a bad move tactically it was a good move strategically because they only have three (really 2.5) S-211 jet trainers left. So without FA-50 they would be taking guys out of a non turbo low wing piston trainer straight to an F-16... Nothing terrible about that idea at all.

That text, to me, is publicly F'ing a goat. How many people were on that group text? Surprised it isn't making more noise for her in a very BAD way! No idea. Like I said it went up on Facebook as a meme for a second, but every time I've watched somebody try to post it it'll get flagged and pulled within an hour. Still after seeing LtCol Baugh be relieved of her battalion command, been found with cause for relief by the investigating board, and then given back the same F'ing command, and a war college slot afterward.... Not really surprised by the sexism double standard anymore.

I think it would feel a lot like the flu...often, if you get my drift. In other words, a stop-loss pilot is probably frequently DNIF and/or non-current. Not sure about the RPA world, but in all the communities I've been in over the years it takes quite a bit of personal initiative, to include the occasional pencil-whipping of certain beans in order to maintain currency/RAP/CMR. And I can't count the number of times I've sucked it up and hacked the mish when I probably should've been DNIF. Now, if I'm stop-lossed into my job, what's going to motivate me to lean forward like that? Nope, I can't see stop-loss being a sustainable solution for our looming manning crisis. It just opens up a whole new can of worms. We are seeing that with the Kiowa divestiture. Guys who are basically being handed a shit sandwich and told to eat it at the table with guys having steak and lobster by comparison. Try motivating guys told "hey you're not in the top 1/3 o the OML and under 15 years so no transition to another airframe, we will get back to you with an ACAP date... By the way you have Brigade Staff Duty over Xmas eve." I'm honestly surprised more conversations with those guys don't end with, " Hey Schmitty.... Why are you pouring that gas can all over the office?"

Yup, But she's got a ranger tab in her DA photo for every promotion board so her career is on rails short of her publicly F'ing a goat.

Yeah. And this *insert derogatory term here* isn't even a full mission capable gun pilot yet. She's a non progressed flight school grad serving as a PL who went to Ranger School after graduating. Whatever she does from here out I hope this follows her because she disrespected some extremely good men. Cabby was a guy that would walk on/through fire for you, and there is a lot of rumint coming out of his crash (E model at Campbell) that it was a catastrophic mechanical failure that might ground the Echo fleet. She can stick her opinions up the aforementioned body part referenced in my previous post. On top of that Facebook seems to be doing its best to take it down anytime anybody shares it.

One of the first female Army Ranger School grads demonstrating the leadership gained from the prestigious school.... WTF Also I knew one of the pilots in both Apache crashes over this week that led to the safety stand down. So the word I want to use here rhymes with a practice of batting sometimes seen in baseball.

I'm torn because for every time we see examples of a major western country like Germany not spending anywhere near the required amount I see first hand a country like Poland punching way above its weight with actual guys on the ground in crapghanistan.

I thought that was just standard for that side of this argument. "You don't want women in line combat roles because of any number of legitimate reasons and my rebuttal is Sexism! Sexism!

It'll be the bullsh!t game between all the services to see whoever can make a Tier 1 female operator first wins. Seals, SF, PJ, etc. just find somebody/anybody and get them through the program. Same garbage game that gave us Kara Hultgren.

Crazy stuff. The only other country (besides Us) that has done something with anywhere near this level of complication or integrated was England launching the Black Buck Vulcan raids during the Falklands campaign. That says a lot for a country a lot of people continue too try and sell as the broken confused pile of garbage it was after the wall came down.

While this isn't going to have any A/C model implications... First full up flight student winged and heading to B models

That's because no factory or tooling to build A-10s exist. Fairchild didn't just stop building the plane, they stopped being a company. Nor does the engineering expertise that built her since most of them are retired/living in nursing homes/dead at this point. You would literally need to reverse engineer and then design a production line to produce more plans since there isn't a room full of filing cabinets stuffed with blueprints and plans.

And the band played on.... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Meh, you pretty much just described every FMS program ever. At least with Israel they are gonna buy enough copies of it to make it worth while in the long run money game. It's the countries that buy a token set piece of aircraft/etc to fly around the flagpole with FMS programs that bug me. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Anybody surprised by this hasn't paid attention to every other aircraft bought by the Israelis over the last 30 years. Look at a picture of a Boeing built AH-64D.... Then look at the Israeli version of it. It starts very quickly looking like a different helicopter. The Israelis have an outstanding domestic avionics and weapons development industry. They however need to keep that monster fed so plumbing jets with their own stuff just makes sense. They want to be able to stick their bombs/missiles/Python Vs not be subject to the changing winds of arms regulation. As for additional gas and EW remember The IAF doesn't have near the support capability that we do. I wouldn't be surprised to see Japan do the same thing. Again working with their 60s some of the guys from Sikorsky should take notes because they had stuff years before we were asking for it on the Mike models we are building today.

Yup. Lot of dumb lemmings parroting the phrase "be more like Europe" without having any clue as to how those countries manage that system. I wonder how he would have felt if she had been told at age 12, "no sweetheart you didn't qualify high enough so you aren't going to college." Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Bro it was a joke as to the negative trends in the lifestyle required by military service (missing meals, drinking rip it's every day, eating high carb processed crap full of sodium and going to bed because of ops cycle, etc) not a stab at the drone community to "suck it up." I don't know how many more different types of surveys and trackers (PDHRA, GAT, this one, etc) military leadership is going to need to do to understand the same conclusion... In general Military living is bad for you.

So similar to every non deployed service member ever... Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm not sure what they would do across service. In the Army you would give it to your S-1 for upload into IPerms at HRC. If you need a new certificate, I'd try calling the Brigade S1 for the school house at Campbell. I would look up a contact but I'm in the field right now typing this via cell phone internet.

Air assault is just a certificate since it's a pass/fail course. You don't get the 4 check block course completion report card like you would for other courses (flight school XXI for example). Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'm sure we can get that developed... After we integrate it. We gotta install it first and pay for it to find out how it works you know.

Somebody brought up a similar point at meeting on ADS-B integration with the Army. Basically his point was even stateside this could be a vulnerability. Basically this shows your hand. Like if say something like Panama was happening in the age of instant internet access and a potential country to be invaded could just watch air traffic way back in our national airspace system and suddenly see a whole metric butt load of C5s landing at Polk to pick up the guys due to jump into your country. Now instead of airborne shock and awe you're jumping into a defended and prepared site that expected you for the party.