Majestik Møøse

Yes of course it takes a lot of work to prepare to fight China, thanks for that insight Brabus. Train/equip as if it’s likely? Sure. Is it actually likely? No, and I already have a nice bottle of whiskey bet placed on an over/under date.

“He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone…”

Most Dangerous War vs Most Likely War. I think the problem is that the most dangerous war will also include the most likely war.

So less entrenched, more punching requires less CAS?

The people that do CAS care about CAS, there’s zero doubt there. Do the visible or invisible hands of acquisition, budgeting, and rhetoric care about CAS? I just don’t see it. Leadership only talks about the first day of a peer conflict. CAS barely makes it into LFEs. Green Flag is an afterthought. The POGO paper referenced earlier. So you’re saying that USAF and Navy air actions are required to win enough control of the air to be able to move ground forces in (totally agree), but then say that chopping ATO sorties to CAS afterwards is a poor use of resources? Unfortunately I think you’ve hit the nail on the head: everyone actually agrees with that, which is why the services with CAS requirements aren’t going to make forces available for the Air Component to send them 800 miles downrange or crossrange to their FLOT just to service 1% of the day’s JIPTL. Not to mention you might not get the jets back afterwards. Would you as a Marine 1-Star let your meager amount of F-35s and Hornets be chopped to an AOC process that’s 6000 miles away, disconnected, and working on perpetually old information for where the FLOT even is? I would recommend absolutely not to, because the AOC will burn them up either mechanically or via attrition on not-CAS to satisfy their (understandable and required) objectives, leaving you with not enough air support later. The same goes for your organic airlift and AR capacity; be very cautious about giving that away for other components’ tasking. So scoping out more: when the Air Force said years ago that they would always provide CAS for the Army and Marines, I can see a very logical reason for those other services to be wary of that. Not because of the lack of commitment from Hogs, JTACs, MQ-9s and everyone else doing CAS (because they’re clearly committing their life to getting it done), but because of a perceived lack of commitment at the institutional level.

Well this whole discussion proves why the Marines feel the need to have their own Air Force. If I were them, I wouldn’t trust the other services to help me whatsoever. I’ve said otherwise in the past, but now I get it. Trust no one.

The Air Force is locked into throwing jets into the “survivable” or “not survivable” bins as a justification to promote them or delete them to congress. The Air Force actively promotes the KC-46 as “survivable” and the scoffs the A-10 as “not survivable”, even though who is going to get shot at and when is dependent on lot of stuff.

🤡

Strange things happen in a nation when you start losing a shooting war

Tough problem. This forum has lamented “every airman a warrior” before because the perception was that services were just as important as Ops. Perhaps a shift to “if the jets you see taking off and landing can’t find and kill the ballistic missiles, they will kill you and your friends, so we need to make sure the force generation is smooth and efficient” might work.

Pilots succeed at things because that’s how they became pilots in the first place. Take the top 40% of USAFA guys, the top 20% of ROTC/OTS, keep stratifying them through track select and drop night, re-flow the FTU washouts, give the remaining top 6.9% millions of dollars of high speed decision making skills, knowledge, and experience and then spend more millions to upgrade the best ones of those to IP and Patch…and then let them separate and fill their old staff positions with the aforementioned bottom 60-80% guys. The Air Force spends $20M each to produce guys that have survived 12 years of stratified tiers and is willing to let them walk away because they think they can replace them with non-pilots. Incompetence at best.

I have a theory that a lot of our problems are due to a wrong perception of how things degrade. A lot of people think problems get worse on a continuous slope, kind of like flying an ILS. In reality, it’s an exponential degradation that’s not particularly detrimental for a long time, but by the time you realize it has failed the cost to fix it becomes astronomical. Think of a shingle roof, car paint, the back deck boards, even your personal health. They don’t degrade by an even 5% every year, it’s more like above 90% for 20 years, then 85%, 65%, then falling apart. That’s the same with pilots on staffs and experienced pilot manning overall. We’re at the 65% part of the slope. The USAF telling itself that it was “good enough” for the last decade is like ignoring the worn patches on the roof just because it hasn’t leaked yet. Shortly, there will be a dozen leaks and the whole thing will need replacing along with fixing the rotten trusses and moldy drywall. That costs more than just paying to replace the roof before the leaks started. Modern aircraft programs take 20 years to develop, and if your best guys that would’ve been the program managers, strategists and tactical leaders all left from 2015-present, then you have medium-talent guys in a lot of big spots. Getting back in front of that curve will cost way more than if we’d never let it approach the cliff in the first place. But it didn’t look so bad at the time, so those CSAFs don’t look like they caused it. The $50k bonus is hanging onto the tail and patching leaks. To correct the problem, double it at least, and your best guys will start staying. Most pilots I’ve met with mission-focused drive love doing big things for their platform and America, but have doubts when the USAF forces a financial decision to do those world-changing things. I believe that a war vs China will also degrade for one side or the other on that same curve above - and that the degradation is extremely dependent on air power, so I’m not sure how our country can accept anything less than keeping their best pilots both operational and on staff.

Clearly it’s the Dolphins, but they have no intention of warning us. They live the best life on Earth and are happy to keep us at >0’ MSL.

Army Patriots will kill you without a thought because the right light turns on or doesn’t turn on. They do what they’re told and critical thought is discouraged because they’re punished for mistakes. Stay TF away from them. The USAF should own their own air defenses.

That would be an amazing parody skit. Imagine the perpetual second place guy scrambling to get his cut off in a slapstick way, bursting into the room to make the announcement, only to find out the careerist already being congratulated on the transition and awarded the job

Ain’t no Burger Kings in Fairford, fortunately

A lot of guys want to command and fly at the highest level of operational war fighting, which is arguably the squadron. Edit: the other half of the thought: but no one in their right mind signs up for O-6 without a cultural change in the Air Force.

Oh yeah, haha.

Special pay for extra quals would be pretty easily tied to your AFSC prefix, W-, Q-, K-, S-, etc. If they want to pay FTU instructors more, make up a new code for that. Easy. In fact, add B- and C- code special pay and it’ll start to make a lot more sense. Taking on commander duties deserves a lot more cash than being a line Lt Col.

Unfortunately there are no backwater AORs when you’re dealing with China.

Can’t figure out why someone that has Ferrari money would spend it on that. Same with that Lamborghini Urus. Looks like a Lexus, but with Italian reliability.

The difference is that the Chinese spy balloon was visible to civilians on the ground across America. It was first seen by a Billings radio DJ before the military said anything.

I would be astounded - and honestly proud - if there were an organized plan that unified the efforts of NORTHCOM, the NSC, and the intelligence agencies. The more you deal with the Big IC, the more you realize that not only are the disparate agencies independent, they’re fiercely competitive with each other over budgets and opinions. At all echelons - sometimes down to the individual - people work to do what they see is the right way while actively notching around any guidance contrary to their worldview.

What do you mean by this?

When do you choose that over a high key?