Majestik Møøse

The suit is definitely weird at first; you first fly with it on ride 8, and it feels like a brand new jet again. Like you’re in a cocoon and disconnected from the world. Then it becomes normal after a while and you don’t really think about it. The tolerance for this varies among U-2 guys. It seems proportional to your mass; some taller or wider guys complain a bit more about tired backs and shoulders. And some are totally ok, it differs from person to person. Go figure. The good thing about the suit is that it was designed to accommodate an 8-10 hour single seat flight as well as could be expected given the constraints. The methods for eating, drinking, pissing, and temperature control are pretty well sorted. I’d guess that the 6-9hr missions that some fighter guys are doing in the desert can be less comfortable. The worst part is being on the ground when it’s hot/humid. Cockpit starts to swelter pretty quick, and the suit air doesn’t get cooled on the ground. The U-2 doesn’t like being anywhere near the ground. It likes to go up. Once it’s going up, everything is as it should be.

Probably? When I was at Travis, it was queep only. Straight from the slides, the #1 Wg priority was OPR/EPR timeliness. The Wg/CC himself was editing 2Lt OPRs to get rid of white space, literally working through the night to do so. Every Sq had to submit full-up 1206s for every possible award (think Blacks In Government, Airman of the Week, Verne Orr’s Wife’s Award, etc). By the time I left, there were 18 quarterly awards categories in addition to the 69 bullshit stand-alone ones. Each was boarded at the OG, with nominees showing up in service dress to the board. Of course, it didn’t matter if the nominee personally kicked bin Laden in the balls, because the squadron with the best copywriter/secretary/chief editor (aka FltCC/Exec/SqCC) combo who were most in accordance with the mandated “Brown Bag” (yak) bullet writing style won anyway. Additionally, every Sq sent up weekly mandatory “Weekly Activity Report” bullets to be run up the flagpole. We’d send up deployment successes and one-off first time mission stuff, but the only things that ever made it out of the Wg were volunteerism bullets. I kid you not, in a Wg with “AMC’s Largest Ops Gp”, well over 95% of what they chose to report to the NAF was decidedly non-ops. They may as well call themselves the 60th Mission Support Wing. The only two Weapons Officers worked as the Wg Exec and Wg DS. There was no mission discussion anywhere; our Sq didn’t even have a room certified to discuss classified information. This was a place where the guys returning from AETC white jet tours were the voices of reason.

No one is arguing that we haven’t done good work. Lots of good guys alive; lots of bad guys dead. The argument is whether or not it was worth the financial cost or the loss in ability to wage/deter a war against a peer enemy.

And people can’t understand why some guys like the T-38A better.

If you think of it from an opportunity cost standpoint (the cost of the opportunity forgone), you’re essentially paying $1m to stay in the AF. Then it becomes absolutely about money.

Are they hiring?

A-model vs C-model is a false choice. The correct answer is the A-model with an extra radio and ForeFlight! But seriously, a little TOLD help would be nice.

Well, I’m not cool enough to know where my secret local organic free-trade hipster hardware store is. Luckily I noticed today that Amex has a special offer on Home Depot gift cards through June: $100 for 8k points. HD is usually 10k points, which is pretty good already; most of their other $100 cards run 14-20k points. Combine that with the military discount and/or the Memorial Day sale and you might walk away with some good stuff. That is, of course, if your dignity can take the hit!

Best comment: “Horton’s, here’s a poo!”

Do it, Huggy. Make Recce Great Again.

I see a difference between discounts that don’t affect anyone but the seller (Lowe’s, Epic Pass) and ones that allow me to gain an advantage over regular Joes (overhead bins and seat choice).

...I’m ok with this, yeah. Allowing Lowe’s to sell you something for $50 less is much different than cutting in front of weary travelers.

Yeah, there’s plenty. A lot of U-2 guys have extended their UPT ADSC by a few years to fly here. I don’t know any that wished they hadn’t, though that doesn’t mean they necessarily want to stay in the Air Force longer than one U-2 tour. Several are, however. At the same time, I don’t know why anyone would stay in the Air Force after working at a UPT base.

He’s not a USG civilian. He’s a civilian civilian.

From the testimony: “This budget boosts pipeline capacity, expands pilot training and addresses experience shortfalls, continues incentive pay and bonuses, improves administrative support at the squadron level, and funds flying hours to executable levels.” Continues, not increases. I refuse to believe that Air Force leadership doesn’t understand market capitalism. I also refuse to believe that they can’t see the immense cost savings involved in not having to train replacements to backfill departing pilots. I really think it’s as simple as bureaucratic pride and not wanting to cede organizational control and influence to the line pilot peons.

As much money as that looks like, it’s way less than training their replacements.

I thought C-17 guys could land in the dirt? I’m guessing they could park in the dirt too! What’s the PCN of dirt?

Nobody’s going to build a F-23. Ever. Stop wishing.

They’ll conclude that it’s because of old planes so they can justify an increased budget. Then they’ll give it all to contractors large and small while continuing to refuse to pay you even what Congress has already authorized. I don’t even think they’re getting kickbacks or post-retirement consultant jobs. They’re just myopic bureaucrats set in their ways, which is even harder to budge.

War is Boring are such fools. Flying Nightmare, GMAFB.

Peanut Gallery observations from 6-9 years ago: “Seems like totally shutting off fighter drops to UPT for a couple of years may have compounding effects down the road.” “Wow running a simultaneous RIF/VSP/TERA seems like a bit of an extreme way to downsize, especially since the airlines are hiring again.” “OK, so I understand why the Air Force hates the MC-12 - being an effective & cheap COTS solution and all - but I think they’re jumping the gun by giving them all to the Army before we’re done with Afghanistan.” “Huh, we’re drawing down Afghanistan again? Last time we backburnered that the Taliban took full advantage and gained a lot of ground.” “It’s pretty obvious that everyone in the Battle Royals hates ISIS, but I bet we’ll have big problems when all of our bedfellows want to kill each other after ISIS is gone.” “We can get rid of the A-10 because the US is planning on buying 2,400 F-35s? Just like we were going to buy 132 B-2s and 750 Raptors?”

Who gets the cash?

Are you at Travis? This sounds like Travis. File a complaint with the 18AF IG. Or just send this to JQP. Maybe your Sq/CC could say “unable, here’s a laundry list of real-world reasons” and cc the world.

Is this the DRAM thing? Several years ago Travis AFB declared that every flying squadron wasn’t allowed to pour beer in the bar unless everyone was trained to recognize when somebody was drunk. Seemed to us at the time to be an obvious plot to get people to drink in their shitty combined club. The OG recognized the bullshit ploy, but was made to enforce it anyway. He held a special CC call and told us the bad news. Then, after watching a 5min video used for training Applebee’s waitresses, he declared the entire OG to be “DRAM OK”, pulled back the curtain to reveal a bunch of kegs and solo cups, and gave us the rest of the day off. A great piece of theater, and the only cool thing he ever did.

I think they do that because of the seriousness of losing COMSEC, but all it does is squarely place blame on the airman when it’s misplaced. It does nothing to actually prevent loss of control. The time filling out that form would be better spent looking each person in the eye and saying, “if you lose one of these books, you’ll get an Art 15 and everyone in the Air Force will have to get new books. Don’t fuck this up.”