pawnman

I don't think we've ever appended "heavy" ourselves, but ATC often appends "heavy" in their responses.

Somehow the squadron commander manages this risk while still showing up to these events. It doesn't even have to be a roll call, just have an all officer's call at the club on base, and hang around for an hour or two after giving the pre-written speech to talk to people face-to-face. Gen Welsh stresses over and over again to know your people...you can't do that via email and PPT slides, you have to actually talk to them once in a while, even if it means taking a risk. ORM is about accepting risks necessary to complete the mission. If a senior officer feels it's too much of a risk to be seen in a bar with CGOs, he's probably no longer accomplishing the mission. ORM isn't about avoiding all risks, it's about mitigating the ones you can and accepting the ones you must in order to complete the task. If aircrew viewed risk the way you are telling us our senior leaders do, we'd never fly an airplane.

So has the risk substantially increased in the last five years? The OG when I first got to Ellsworth was a regular at roll calls, and he would sit with the young pups and share the giant global vision he had for the Air Force, and why things that might not make sense in our tiny, cockpit-focused world were actually necessary for the health of the fleet, the group, the base, and the Air Force. He was the last OG who would regularly talk about this stuff in an informal setting. Have we really bred a group of senior leaders, even at the OG and WG level, who are so risk-averse that they can't even have a beer and share the real perspective without a speech writer and a 100 slide powerpoint? If so, we are in much worse shape than anyone here imagined.

Damn, they lifted the shelter-in-place...what a great opportunity to lock all of congress in a room until they produce a budget.

If I need an MFR explaining it, then apparently leadership thinks that I do. The real problem with the current leadership focus is that by queeping out on things like "69" and "STS", you cheapen the entire discussion. I think everyone is on-board with the idea that we should prevent sexual assaults and sexual harassment, that everyone, male or female, should be able to come to work without fear of being harassed or assaulted, that everyone should be respected...I get it, I think 99.9% of the AF gets it as well. But now, instead of thinking I'll learn something new in SARC/SAPR training that will help me prevent the next sexual assault, I'm told that I'm the same as a rapist for making a dick joke. In my last SAPR training, we were told that having sex with a woman at any level of intoxication was technically rape since she didn't have the ability to consent. So I'm not allowed to go out with the wife, have 2-3 drinks, and get romantic afterwards...no consent. When leadership goes way overboard in such a manner, it makes it much more difficult to sift through what is an actual problem, and what is queep. Further, when you preach it so loud, for so long, people just stop listening entirely. Then when you have a real point to make, you have no one in the audience that hears it.

Are we planning to rename the 69th Bomb Squadron so they don't have 69 on all their comm cards, letterheads, and other products?

I'm also curious. I know the 15E WSOs had the option for a bonus, but I don't remember seeing one for 12Bs.

We've lost faith because our leadership has focused on stupid things while we're trying to fight this war. Leaving aside traditions and the battle over the cultural shift in the OG, how about: Sock checks? You say to tell them to piss off...sure, I'm going to tell my 1-star WG/CC to piss off. That will improve morale around the base, especially my little corner of it. Morale patches on Friday? I'm not talking about the borderline offensive ones, I'm just talking about the heritage patches (what the squadron wore into combat in WWII), or hours patches, or even just a crew patch cooked up over in the Deid. Friday shirts? Gone. Then we went to the tan shirts as well. Here's one for you: gym bags. I was called out on my black gym bag, with a yellow Nike swoosh, because "the reg says they're supposed to be a solid color". Do you think that motivates me to work out at the base gym? Nope, it motivates me to get my ass out of dodge even earlier so I can work out somewhere people don't care about my gym bag.

Sign me up if I get to work with Catherine Bell.

I once had a SQ/CC brief us up that the AF actually has fewer assaults per capita than most major organizations our size, especially ones with our demographic (young people living away from home for the first time...like any major college in America). Unfortunately, we don't see presidents of public universities hauled in front of congress every time a sorority sister passes out at a frat guy's place, but one "so to speak" and the military are all classified as sexual predators.

Personally, I think this rapid cycling has shown victims that whether they have a real case or not, they can destroy the person they are out to destroy. No one wants to find someone not guilty of a sexual assault in the current climate, no matter how tenuous the evidence. Someone else said it earlier...the AF is essentially telling us they want to run like any other company, where people come to work, exchange mild pleasantries at the water cooler, and go home. I think leadership is going to be shocked when they realize how much they have destroyed the camaraderie that we used to have by taking away things like roll calls, naming ceremonies, hell, names. Sure, we'll all be more professional, and we'll all be much less inclined to stay after our commitments, to stay late at work PERIOD, to hang out in the bar and mentor new guys. Leadership wonders why people don't want to join the clubs anymore...well, they're about to wonder why no one is willing to stay late to wrap up mission planning for DACT sortie and would rather just min-run the upgrade programs until they can make their ADSC an work for an airline instead. You wondered aloud why the AF had to throw so much money at the fighter guys to stay, and I'm telling you loud and clear that this is one of the causes. I'm totally on-board with the idea we should do everything we can to stop sexual assaults...I just don't think giving guys LOCs for dick jokes around the squadron is solving the actual issue.

That's why we never change the checklists, right?

As I told you in the bonus thread, maybe you and the rest of leadership should be asking yourselves what policy decisions you are making that are driving away so many talented, experienced pilots that you have to throw hundreds of thousands of dollars at them to get them to stay, when they have a job 99% of Americans would give their left nut to do for free. If you can't fix the problem, do something you can show off to your boss instead. I'm curious...how are the numbers of sexual assaults looking two years into the great inquisition? Has the crackdown on callsigns and "so to speaks" reduced the number of real sexual assaults?

"Walker" is the term they use for zombies on "The Walking Dead" TV show.

Why would you take leave then go to work? If you're going to be at work writing OPRs and medals, don't go on leave.

Nah, they're good to kill people with conventional weapons. When they start using chemical weapons, then we'll get involved...writing all manner of angry letters and harshly worded press releases.

Well, the public doesn't have a very long attention span. Once we started talking about defunding Obamacare and going to Syria, most of them probably thought sequestration was over.

We're trying to piss people off about sequestration so that thy tell their congressmen to make it stop. Just like we can't support flyovers for a football game or NASCAR race, but we have the flight hours to do an hour-long IR route at 500' as part of a 7 hour sortie.

I'm not sure I see the problem here. We know the AF has said that as an institution, they approve of homosexual marriage. What basis would they have to deny a join-spouse assignment after all the preaching about tolerance and acceptance we've just had? I'm not looking forward to the AF having a public affairs field-day with this couple..."First gay couple to shop in the commissary", "first mil-to-mil gay couple to buy a house in SLC", "first gay join-spouse couple separated because one is deploying"...

When you're on the schedule at Ellsworth, you're actually going to fly. At Dyess, MX has turned your possibility of flying into a coin-flip.

Just appeal your LOC to the CSAF. Sounds to me like he gave us a direct order.

The update now says 4 killed, 8 injured, and one shooter "down" (it isn't specified whether he was taken into custody or shot). Here's hoping for a swift resolution without any more deaths or injuries to the folks working the Naval Yard.

Well hell, if that's the case let's just promote the people who go to SOS in-residence and eliminate PRFs for O-4 entirely. It's the same dicriminators, right? How much time, energy, and money would that save during the budget crisis?

This will be even more hilarious if, in the investigation, it turns out he was DONATING a pressure cooker to the USO to make food for troops while they waited for their flights.

So, now we have to side with the Syrian regime and bomb the rebels, right?