Majestik Møøse

Pretty sure there was a KC-10 or 2 in with an extra 60-90K to give in RC-East!

How bout we just buy 1% less F-35s and use that money to keep flying the A-10?

I would be scared shitless riding in the back of a Chinese airliner during a cat 2/3 landing. Also during the subsequent taxi.

Damn this thing has a lot of features. The nearest function would be useful for us KC-10 guys. Will wearing this make us GATM compliant?

Uhh, I'm a tanker guy and even I see about 6.9 errors with this. 1.) AESA doesn't work that way. 2.) Everybody would be lost except the Raptors. 3.) The JASDF would shoot down at least 3 Korean airliners jets during their counterattack.

I think this is the biggest reason why many KC-10 guys are cynical. Cutting jets will just be a show; any leftover cash will eventually just flow to Boeing and Lockheed.

The vast majority of West Coast KC-10 evaluators are good dudes. But, much like the Sith, there always seem to be a couple of douchers in the mix.

Well damn you're right.

The 1st Amendment relating to military members has found its way to the Supreme Court many times. Here's an example ruling: "In 1974 the U.S. Supreme Court wrote, “While the members of the military are not excluded from the protection granted by the First Amendment, the different character of the military community and of the military mission requires a different application of those protections. The fundamental necessity for obedience, and the consequent necessity for imposition of discipline, may render permissible within the military that which would be constitutionally impermissible outside it” Parker v. Levy, 417 U.S. 733, 758 (1974). This quote from the Court sums up what is known as the Doctrine of Military Necessity or the military-deference doctrine." Read more until your eyes bleed here: https://www.firstamendmentcenter.org/military-speech. Basically if the military has a compelling interest to limit free speech, or any other right, they can IAW the UCMJ. What the UCMJ contains was determined by Congress per the Constitution, which says "The Congress shall have Power....To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval forces."

In July I was part of a mission which required 6 KC-10s at MTOGW. Good luck planning that with -135s. According to this data provided by the AF Comptroller, the KC-135 costs about $19K per hour to fly, not including about $6K of fuel. The KC-10 costs $21K (and burns about $9K in fuel). It's pretty much a 2:1 trade-off operationally, so it'll cost much more to use -135s to replace the -10 mission. Of course, some will argue that we'll cut the -10 and just stop doing coronets, too. Maybe so. Did it have something to do with screwing up the airflow over the basket?

From what I've seen on this forum, you can't let any argument go quietly. You also come across as a bit of an ass. 1&2. You're right, it's not impossible to move fighters & bombers around the world without us. It will require tasking about 120-150 KC-135/46s to fill the capability gap left by the departed KC-10s (or multiple-leg fuel stops). How many KC-135s would it take to support just 2x air-superiority fighters over a 5-hr flight with a fight in the middle? This won't be impossible, just really hard, especially considering how limited the ramp space would be throughout the Pacific should a no-shit war ever start up. We'll save short-term money by cutting the -10, but every -10 mission filled by 2.5 KC-135s will actually cost more in fuel and flying hours. 3. The new tanker will use our boom plus a centerline drogue and be receiver-AR capable, just like a KC-10, but smaller and for only $250m each. Sweet. We'll have 18 of them by 2017 and all of them by 2028, according to Boeing. I sincerely hope they can deliver on schedule. 4. Yes, tanking is easy. But so many still screw it up. 5. Agreed. Outsource the peacetime cargo. Overall you are correct, we could get by without the KC-10, as well as the A-10, F-15, U-2, B-1, C-5, and half the C-130s. Scrap them all, we'll figure it out like we always do. So what if it costs billions and our capabilities are reduced. What do you fly, for frame of reference?

It's not that incredible, it's because we have a flight engineer.

True, but it's not due to lack of SA, it's because our boom needs more beans for the quarter! Also, the tracks are small! And the radar was clear!

Well I suppose I've had the opposite experience during exercises and in the AOR WRT airspace SA. I'm sure we both have examples of buffoonery from the other side, and we're sticking to them. I'll just say I haven't been impressed with multiple deployed operations run by -135 guys (patchwearers included) compared to my own brethren. Not sure what you mean about our displays not being able to show airspace borders, they absolutely can if they're programmed correctly. I'm curious to ask for a little more detail, PM if you'd like. Our opinions as a receiver are reinforced often. I'm sure there are plenty of -135 crossflow dudes that have been receiver pilots before, they must be the good ones. There are also some absolutely heinous guys that would never fly the way they do if they'd ever tried to hang onto a boom in a heavy jet.

Alright, I'll engage. The -135 has some advantages over the -10: they have a datalink, they've got their GATM upgrade done, and there are 6 times as many, so they've got a lot of booms in the air. Otherwise, here is why the KC-10 remains the best tanker in the world and why its crews are so damn proud of it: 1. We're the only tanker (existing or planned) that can support a real long-range fighter movement capability. Considering the future Pacific shift, this is vital. If we're ever going to try running an air war out of Guam (IAW the RAND analysis from a few years back) we'll need some pretty gigantic offloads to move a 2-4 ship of large air superiority fighters 3 hrs west and back. Boom sequencing won't be an issue. Ref 1986/2011 Libya ops. 2. Global strike and airdrop require even greater offloads. KC-10s actively train for and execute these missions; moving large aircraft across the world nonstop will be greatly degraded/impossible without us. 3. Every KC-10 can refuel any allied jet on every mission. Any future conflict will be joint AF/USN/allies and real-time flexibility will be required. This is why the same capes are being built into the KC-46. 4. Every KC-10 Aircraft Commander is a fully qualified/current receiver and formation pilot, and we're good at it. Not only does this give us a lot of operational options (again, on every mission we fly), it makes us better at tanking because we know how much it sucks to be snap-rolled into the sun or weather. Fun party trick: we can boom-check our own formation members to ensure the systems work before the users show. 5. We're cheap to operate: $21K per hour, not including fuel (add another $9K for that). I doubt there's any jet in the inventory that can move as much payload for so little cash. There's a reason FedEx still uses this airframe. And as far as the avionics upgrade cost, it's less than the cost of one KC-46. Pretty good value, I'd say. 6. Yes we can haul a shitload of cargo, almost as much a C-17, just not the oversized stuff like MRAPs. But if you have 160K lbs of gold bricks that need to be in Japan tomorrow, we can get it there quicker and cheaper! Also, there seems to be a perpetual myth that since we carry a lot of cargo, we must be inferior tanker pilots. This myth is dumb. Flying cargo around into non-tactical environments is easy it doesn't detract from other skills. 7. What Boom Control Unit issues are you talking about?

Do you have experience refueling as a heavy on the boom or as a fighter on a drogue?

It was pretty apparent that this story was bullshit from the first look. How foolish can you be to reprint a story from the NY Post without doing any fact checking? Plus the comment about the hats looking too "French" shortly followed by a criticism of the Army's decision to take the Ranger's special beret away...

Holy shit, well ok then.

https://www.osha.gov/pls/imis/AccidentSearch.search?acc_keyword=%22Ring%22&keyword_list=on Basically about once a year some factory worker gets his ring finger caught on a bolt and amputated. At some point Air Force SE guys heard this info and banned aircrew from wearing rings, because apparently we're always touching lots of bolts. At some later point, it became a popular gee-whiz debrief item for low-SA doucher evaluators. And finally, it became a popular bitching topic on Baseops.net, and thus it has made the big time.

On the KC-10 side, all of the good dudes I looked up to when I first showed up have jumped ship. All of them. Reserves, airlines, other jets, or just plain quit. The active-duty leadership in 6-9 years will be made up of the uncool kids who decided to hang around, bolstered by a few senior captains who know what they're doing. Not a good outlook, IMHO.

Nah, weather's too nice.

Sweet, we'll never get into a ground war again! We can axe all of the regular infantry and tank units, too, that'll save a ton of cash. As long as the Army has armored vehicles and dudes walking around on patrol, the A-10 will have a customer.

Quiet you're hurting my property value!

It's also impossible for us to crash seeing as we have both an engineer AND a boom in the cockpit.

- C-17s are newer and nicer with lots of trick avionics and a HUD. KC-10s have mostly original 1977 avionics with a few upgrades and a few more coming. The C-17 is fly by wire with a lot of weird modes that seem to make guys lose their hand-flying skills a bit. Hand-flying the KC-10 is like any other traditional plane. - KC-10s have a very flexible mission. On a typical desert sortie, 2/3 of our ops are figured out on the fly. This gives us a lot of opportunity to use SA to make things better (or worse) in real time. We can refuel any jet in the AOR including ourselves which gives a lot of operational possibilities. C-17s fly the magenta line from point A to point B, but they sometimes get to fly it at low level with NVGs to an assault landing. Both can be fun in their own way. KC-10s fly formation on every local and on many operational missions. Operational C-17 receiver AR is really rare. - C-17s seem to have a harder life on the road from the outside looking in. Their fatigue level is reflected in the incidents they've had. - There are 2 KC-10 bases. Your follow-on assignment options will be to go to the other base or to UPT/UAV then to the other base, followed by whatever path you choose in life. I have no idea how C-17 follow-one go. Edit for stupid small iPhone buttons