Lawman

One more going I was thinking about, watch your bill vigilantly. Every so often some scam will come around and they've been known to go dipping into weird fees and scams on Servicemen with contracts. The big one that went through a couple years ago they were selling your info to 3rd parties outside of Germany and those parties were sending you adds via text... Telekom was then fining you for whatever didn't count as free in their contract. It took JAG action to get the notification to knock that shit off for a few of our guys.

There are literally 2 phone company's to get a cell phone through in German, T mobile.... And whoever the hell else the other one was because nobody had it. Euro cell phone policies are stuck in e early 90s states phase where somehow the whole of Europe is one big batch of roaming zones by country borders. Sucks ass when you take leave and go to say Italy because you either shit off your phone and do it old school with a map and a guidebook, or pay ridiculous fees. Know some guys who forgot to turn off before crossing borders or making drunk calls... Cost serious cash like hundreds of dollars. I wouldn't worry on unlocking your old phones, whatever TKS store on post is selling phones hey will have a contract special on either the new hotness iPhone or droid for as cheap as buying the SIM card to work on the euro grid. You can do internet through TKS as well, makes bills easier. One thing you will need to do is set up with the on post bank because Germans want an in country bank to set up payments from. Internet is interesting dependent on village. A lot of smaller villages have limited port numbers for their population so it's not nearly as fast as it should be in the 21st century. Then again you'll also find lots of dead spots for cell service the same way. 4g is non existent and lots of areas just drop out especially on the train to either low 3G or Edge which is butt ass slow.

I'm thinking somebody found some stock photo of one and just ran with it. I don't remember seeing anything on Syria getting Flankers.

Somewhere on F-16.net.... A thousand Flanker fanboys cried out and then were suddenly silenced.

This is where your tax money goes.

Fulda Gap in the era of Power Point.... Russians will be having Crepes in Paris before we get the damn slides for the counter attack AMB revised for the 7th time. The XO says we didn't use the Brigade standard format.

In a good number of places, especially those without open carry laws, wearing a real gun in that manner could be construed as brandishing a firearm or public menacing depending on local and state statutes. Other element to this is we have no idea what the 911 dispatcher actually relayed from the original report. Look I get 2nd amendment shall not be infringed and all that but seriously it's not like this guy was arrested and charged. Officers went on e side of caution as is trained and standard when a firearm is suspected in any call these days. Would you rather some dispatcher question the report and say "nah doesn't sound valid we don't need to roll a unit." And seriously the guy got a tattoo of a gun so it would look like he had one tucked into his pants. Bitching about this is like being the guy that gets the Hindu symbol that just happen to look like something else at a glance and wondering why everybody assumes your a Neo Nazi.

Yeah one is handed out to every First Sergeant who spends his deployment driving around the FOB in his own truck and doing no observed work.... He other is pretty much never approved or automatically downgraded....

That's kinda why I'm focused more to the guard aspect of it. I'm not sitting around trying to leave the Active Army like some guys, I'm just not ready to sell the whole ship yet on this if I can do a job in a useful capacity and not have to spend it living the dirt poor Army way just because I refused to look at other options. Don't get me wrong moving doesn't bother me, but no different than the guys that go Active to Guard/Reserve whether AF pure or some other combination, there is a definite bullet in the plus column if knowing your kids can grow up in the same schools district and wife have a job etc.

Wait me or him? My reasons are mostly family oriented. I've still got enough time till retirement (13 years) to be useful to any service whether I stay where I'm at or reset elsewhere. Plus the way Warrant promotions are going it's getting very difficult to retire in this job without having had 6-8 years of enlisted time to eat up some of that clock. I have to make CW4 to retire, and now days promotion rates for that are approaching the teens and not looking to get better any time soon. Biggest thing for me is being able to buy a house in my 30s and actually live in the damn thing. Or telling my wife we aren't moving in 2.8-3.5 years just because the Army says so. And allow her to use all those degrees we paid for her to get so now she can get an actual career and not some job just to keep her busy.

When you say criteria for Guard UPT, any idea what those are? All honesty the idea of staying in Colorado is looking very tempting.

Out of morbid curiosity.... Would CV-22 count as Rotory wing to the Air Force

In all fairness it's not just you guys in Blue. The Doner stand in Bad Windsheim has a whole wall of awards from every Brigade and Battalion commander going back 15 years..... But it is a really fuckin good Doner.

Agreed I can only inagine the screaming that would ensue the first time somebody handed an Alice pack for the 18th Airborne annual ruck requirement to one of these "grass is greener AF guys." Whatever job you have something will suck and we as humans will bitch about it. If there was an MOS whose job was to receive handys all day while shooting guns and drinking beer that guy would bitch he had to load his own magazines.

Stay flying is a pretty broad term. Technically you could stay in Aviation units of your type your entire career permitting you to maintain a FAC status where you stay on the schedule just at reduced hours compared to a line company pilot. Or you could be the guy that is always drawing the shitty straw and doing staff jobs that keep you out. Luck and timing, YMMV

Entirely dependent on the unit and how much of a "made man" that WO's particular position makes him. There are guys who are almost never at work and seem to get away with it but for the most part it's more myth than fact. I've been at work earlier and stayed later than a lot of the RLOs just because I had a job to do. Good example is all the additional duties one pulls in an Army unit. I was the unit movement officer so for 3 months before deployment I was pulling 12-14 hour days being a combination of a logistician and a carpenter/loadmaster because I had to get our shit loaded for deployment. Meanwhile somewhere there was a safety guy pulling 4 hour days because we had no aircraft and enjoying family time.

13 years of non doctrinal permissive environment, combined with every Brigade in the Army having Standards guys (super IPs) writing SOPs. Kinda like how nobody even reads the SPINs or complies with them because ###### it. But hey the plus side to not knowing our own doctrine is the enemy will never be able to predict our course of action.... *insert fuming anger and a desire to strangle people here*

But thats what I'm talking about. 60s in the Army (especially assault units) are big on the insertion profile and tight formations set in particular ways to fit an LZ. We fly much more dynamic. Great example would be pink team, the only prebriefable point of that is I will be higher than the scout in protecting, beyond that my position is dynamic. Where is the sun, where is he, where is the likely avenue of threat, etc. But when we get told hey fly 3-5 disks apart line abreast it looks like a circus of stupid. And yeah trucker comm is a good way to put it. Every time I bring up joint brevity I get looked at like I have a dick growing out of my forehead, that's just Army aviation as a whole. After 13 years of continuous ops where all we worry about while home is how to get ready for the next op everything has fallen by the wayside.

Just curious are you strictly wanting the viewpoint of Army 60's because that's only a narrow portion of Army Aviation. I'm an Attack guy and many of the things we veiw as critical to your development as an aviator are ignored by their field and vice versa. Example they are very big on formation flying where as we have no tactical necessity because it prevents weapons employment in an offensive manner. Meanwhile we suck at deliberate planning as a community right now where they are very focused on it. Different takes for different flakes.

You won't even talk to the Army side at Mother Rucker. Closest will be watching them bus out to other parts of the flight line at Cairns. Heck I'm here TDY right now and it's the first time I've conversed with AF flight guys and that was at teasers.

Nsplayer, I think he's making the point of this administration having no credibility left to be taken seriously on an international level. Brinkmanship is easy when you know the other guy will back down. For 6 years this president has shown that he and key members of his party/base believe the worlds problems are because the US hasn't thought about it from everybody else's side. Hence the criticism of all things Bush, the world wide apology tour, disbanding plans for the missile shield, etc. We have been appeasing Putin for 6 years an he knows it. We have gone out of the way to either ignore Russia (unless it's about gay rights) or try to somehow give them something in the hopes they will reciprocate. So now Putin knows he can pretty much do what he wants. NATO doesn't have the ability to fight him an we don't have the will of leadership even if it was in our interest.

Your arguing whether is means is or is means "is" on this one. I've read the document but hey since Russia isn't obeying their side we can not obey ours right? It goes through the UN which is pointless since the country being aggressive has veto power and is a permanent member. In the end what the treaty flat requires vs implies isn't important. If we support the Ukrainian sovereignty and recognize their government we will not allow the Russians to simply strong arm them into letting the old president come back like nothing happened. What level of commitment that's gonna require is up for some debate but we definitely aren't coming out on this in our favor if we sit back and watch. And more importantly this incident will serve as a plain and clear message to every other nation we have signatory agreements with on any level. Will we come to Taiwan's aid if the Chinese get aggressive... Well let's spend a few months defining aid before it's all over anyway. Currently the administration is standing on the international stage hiding behind the theory that it's all gonna just blow over and no hard choices will need to be made if we just wait long enough. That's the political equivalent to a 5 year old hiding under a sheet hoping the monsters go away. What's funny is if their ousted president hadn't been elected Ukraine would more than likely be a MAP member of NATO despite Germany and France's objections.

Probably isn't helping that after 13 years of continuous deployments we have a very vocal group of isolationists on both sides of the political isle now days. People simply don't want to get involved right or wrong, which disgusts me since we are by treaty bound to come to the aid of Ukraine if they called for it. But hey the Oscars are on and I heard Jared Leto made a really important comment about AIDS.

Anybody got a spare Air-Land Battle Doctrine laying around?

Never ask a question of a Lt in a 3 Shop unless it involves something like how much are the tickets to the ball gonna cost. Also when asking questions of Cpts confirm PC status or confirm answer with a CW2+. And I cant tell you how many times Ive wanted to strangle somebody over the issue of crew rest. Bullet heads dont get it and will come up with some goofy ass ways to get around it. I had a night where I spent 13 hours from start to finish physically in the aircraft with it at least APU on. But because I only spun blades for 6 hours of it (granted with a big long ass sit in the middle occasionally firing them to cool the transmission) we were within legal.