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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

The gym is comically small for the amount of people we have here these days. On the plus side, there's a giant BX now that's filled with useless stuff. Who the hell is buying food and formal wear out here?

The Republic of China is AKA Taiwan. Both them and the PRC think they're the "real" China. https://www.flyingsquadron.com/forums/index.php?/topic/16608-u-2-dead-stick-landing-1959/

I'll preemptively vouch for the Hornet pilots. They deal with this limitation virtually every time they move through the Pacific. As req'd, they'll just map the runway threshold and fly their own radar approach as low as they like; at least lower than Cat 1 ILS. Some fields like Iwakuni have radar reflectors at the threshold to help out. At a place like Wake, there's just no other option for them if the weather guessers are wrong.

Screw that. I'll be damned if I ever fly on any jet that doesn't accordion fold their washcloths. Seriously, tri-folding? What am I, a farmer?

I guess having an ABM as SOF is ok as long as they're not trying to give vectors back to the field! We tell CP (or the ADO) our TO times. If the WX is bad, we divert and tell the ADO enroute. Maybe our EPs don't get that complex. Different perspectives, I guess.

While we're at it, someone explain why AWACS need SOFs.

I think this particular passage is extremely relevant: "I recall telling people about the job, and they would all ask what I studied in college to do such a thing. At first I thought they were being rude toward me, because the reality is that I was hired at the age of 25 with my only prior experience having been owning NYCAviation, which was only a small nerd site at the time. One day I’m a bouncer asking a friend to see if she could get me an interview at this charter airline, and weeks later I’m in the Middle East doing the payload math that will bring soldiers to and from war." Yep, that checks. Sketchy as hell. I'm sure the rest of the carriers have much more rigorous training programs.

Looks like the KC-10 continues to do more with less. Kick ass!

Wait, so do they actually hand out DFCs for avionics failures? Any crew that can't join up NORDO with another jet and follow it home to an uneventful landing should have their wings taken away.

I didn't know I could brag about this, now I'll tell my buddies in the DFAC about it after every sortie. Thanks!

Short interview with a former Air Force officer who's releasing a book entitled Bleeding Talent: How the U.S. Military Mismanages Great Leaders and Why It’s Time for a Revolution. It think he's spot on in many ways. Some significant quotes: "In my ideal Navy, Maverick would still be flying his Tomcat. Today, he’s either working on a spreadsheet or PowerPoint in the Pentagon basement, or he’s flying a 747 out of Hong Kong as a civilian pilot for United Airlines. and: "More to the point, Ike would have been rotated out of his role as Supreme Allied Commander in Europe in 1943 to give someone else a turn." Read more: https://nation.time.com/2013/01/21/why-cant-the-u-s-military-grow-better-leaders/#ixzz2IdOS3wm1

The losses were incredible. Considering the overly cautious nature of today's Air Force, it's pretty insane to think about sending a thousand dudes to engage in an airborne machine gun battle with no cover.

I just can't believe that this has all been caused by allegations in a lawsuit. The claims haven't even been vetted in court yet. Using this logic, every single female military member literally has the power to cause a lasting, historic effect on our entire service simply by spending an hour writing down any allegations they like. No evidence required, no one would dare publicly pressure them on it. Aren't these things supposed to go to court for a reason?

Alright guys, we need to get a curtain around this thing ASAP. John Ashcroft style.