MD

Not wise to get into the middle of, what is by all respects, a civil war. Where one happens to live there, pretty much determines where their loyalties lie. We've made this mistake too many times. This, at worst, is an EU problem that the combined EU nations should determine what needs to be done.....sacntions, diplomacy, military action, peacekeeping or peace enforcement.

AF trains it's own helicopter pilots in it's own training squadron, with it's own contract IPs and cadre IPs; all part and parcel from the Army training there. Just happens to be located at Ft Rucker.

And keeping the jet around (or any weapon system or base) solely to boost contractors or keep a metropolitan economy viable jobs-wise, is the exact wrong arguments to make to keep the A-10. Yet, these kinds of emotional arguments are many of the ones I hear around my area, rather than anything factual. Heck, it can't even really be factually quantified that "X number of troops will die if A-10s leave". What needs to be put forth is factual information of operating costs, life remaining, the mission it brings, etc; real things like that. So far as what contract is in the middle of occurring or not, that's moot too: In the late 90s, we were still installing some upgrades to F-111s just prior to sending them to the boneyard, stupid as that was. But that's not something that's likely to change minds, as its seemingly considered normal. The emotional arguments won't help keep an airframe around, and unfortunately may only serve to help it's retirement along.

Did the proposal to transfer two FTU squadrons from Luke to Holloman ever follow through?

I understand the 47th is standing up in the building and assuming the iron on the ramp; they have their own people, or is the 45th dropping its associate role and morphing into the 47th? Sorry to hear about the closure. Was a Dragons grad back in the day myself. Curiously, how was the Lobos picked over the Dragons? Any particular rhyme or reason?

I agree, I don't think anyone is calling BeerMan a wife beater; just referencing bad commanders who misuse things like service before self or who otherwise look down upon those who have completed their commitments and wish to part ways, as fitting that description. And to that, I would agree. At the same time, I don't decry or downplay BeerMan's experiences.....he's experienced what he's experienced, it's worked for him and he's been happy with it apparently, he's been in good units where BS has seemingly been kept to a minimum, and that's all good stuff. That should be a model for the rest of the AF, but unfortunately that has become the minority example anymore....an island in the sea of Big Blue. And that's kind of sad. AF has a lot of great things to offer, but as time goes on, the price to be paid for those offerings can become very taxing. Starting out at Willie was a great intro into just how fun the AF lifestyle could be, but maybe that spoiled me. Because as time went on, the changes that came eventually made me glad I only had the 8yr post-UPT commitment, rather than the 10 year. Well said, and I agree that's all you can really do: make your contribution, do your part, and hope you made some kind of difference in the small portion of the organization in which you personally impacted. While I can't necessarily say if we're at or headed still to the same hollow-force of the post-Vietnam 1970s, even then the organization turned around from that, and became what it became in the 1980s. Like you said, you can only do what you can do, and know that you did it with honor, and pride.

Well, I can say this at least regarding the air side; I work far less overall than was the 14-16 hours of squadron life, fly more than I did on average in the AF. Of course it's not a fighter or attack platform, but I do real world day-to-day mission work, both LE and rescue. The work is diverse and not just piloting, as I'm both a medic, rescue crewman, and tac team in addition to pilot. No PCS, based in my hometown, most of the agency BS is truly at paygrades far higher than mine.....at the regional and DC level, work overnights so there's few people and little overhead around, work weekends so it's double Sunday pay at all night differential pay, to include holiday pay. Is it perfect? No. Is it better and more fruitful work than the AF? For me, yes....and in a practical sense, yes; I work interior, AF and DOD work exterior. The AF training and experience certainly helped, no doubt about that; but there's definitely more mission focus here and less overall BS. Of course, that's how the AF was when I joined long ago, so anything is prone to change, for better or for worse; I'm not blind to that. But I do remember my first week in the job post-academy and follow-on training: was working on some training paperwork and study, coming up on end of shift. Supervisor asks what I'm doing, I tell him I'm finishing up some paperwork.....be maybe another couple hours. Am told (paraphrase) "...get lost, shift is 8 hours and you're not on overtime pay today. Whatever you're working on will still be on your desk tomorrow when you get here. Have a nice day." That was kind of a shock to say the least, seeing as to what I was used to....things like coming to work on a leave day.....to do work.

Just because you haven't experienced what others may have, doesn't make their stories untrue. I simply passed what my OG said. Makes him look bad, and dilutes the concept of service before self. Too bad that to some in leadership, that indeed has become a "do as I say, not as I do" line of thinking for them, and some have either bastardized what that phrase should mean, or have twisted it to their own self-serving ends. People experience what they experience, and its their right to feel the way they do. You have good units, bad units, and everything in-between. So while threatening to punch someone in the face and throw them out of your bar (or heritage room or whatever the hell latest retarded nomenclature is for it), while all Billy Badass sounding, isn't very productive and will serve to do nothing but get your ass VFR direct into pointless trouble, especially in todays AF. Live and let live. Not everywhere in the AF is the perfect place/wing/squadron that you've apparently been experiencing in your 15 years, so allow that there are actually different experiences out there, shocked as you may be to hear that, that run the full spectrum. As I said, there are good places, and there are bad places, and everything in between. For me, I looked at it like this: You have two buckets: the worthwhile bucket, and the bullshit bucket. Whichever one fills up first, will determine what you need to do, and it's different for everyone. In my case, the worthwhile bucket was hovering somewhere around 45%, while the bullshit bucket was overflowing. So, I made my desires known come assignment time with less than a year left on my ADSC. Offered to meet them halfway with assignments, but was at a point where just going to whatever craphole was just not going to work out for me after all this time of doing just that. There comes a time when the service can't be everything and all things. That sentiment wasn't appreciated, so 7 day was actually now an option. And I took it. Good experience, good training, but too much BS as time went on, having come in in the early 90s, to where it just wasn't worth it: the BS bucket remained overflowing. So, have a nice day AF. Our respective ends of our contract are met. That's how contracts work.

I got from my OG, 9 years ago: "....ever put any thought to service before self?"....after 16 years of just that and having 7-day opted a crap assignment. Thank you for convincing me why it was time to leave that shit show called AD.

Who really cares if it does happen, AF-wise? If you sell your car, do you wonder and worry what the next guy who purchased it does with it? IF this were to happen, the Army will either succeed or fail. That would be on them. Would this be impossible? Im sure there would be some pretty severe growing pains, but Army people have had fixed-wing assets as well as worked on ejection seats and egress systems with the OV-1. Insofar as the extensive weapons suites, that could probably be managed with some growing pains too. Interoperability-wise, handling their own fires short of the FSCL with this, fine. They'd have to play well more with others to do much beyond that. Possible? Anything is possible. Probable? Doubtful, only because like the OP, I heard this during Desert Storm for the first time, and it's reared it's ugly head here and there since. Should it be done? Depends. If the AF doesn't like or want the mission, then they shouldn't half-ass it and short change it at the leadership level. If that's all their going to do, then give/sell/lease/rent it to the customer who wants, IF they want it. Let them do the work the AF HQ-types don't care to fund correctly, take seriously, or want anything to do with. It will either work, or it won't.

Have some interesting stories, nothing class, just kind of neat stuff. Never did combat in that jet, all my combat time was in the Hog. I'll have to post the stuff up in another thread in the future here. Things like knowing only one guy to ever use the tailhook on the jet, but when he went to drop it on an aborted takeoff, it didn't work.....little did we know at the time that the same problem was on a number of other jets had they needed to do the same thing.

Cool thing about the 117, where you're essentially no more than a WSO with landing currency, was there was all sorts of time to screw around with things like cameras or other trinkets, while watching the jet do its thing enroute to the IP or on its way back home.

A few times a week in my work, I fly over the wreckage of a Willie Tweet that packed it into North Butte, east of Florence AZ in Feb of '70. Solo stud was returning low level from the MOA down the Gila River, filming with a camera as he was flying down river and in between two buttes, but impacted the North Butte with no ejection. Camera was embedded in the stud's body. Wreckage left in place. Granted GoPro's are hands off, but I'm always reminded of this particular accident.

When I got out under Palace Chase years ago after 15 in combined E and O time; the OG wanted to see me during my application. After asking why I was wanting to leave, and hearing my basic logic, his first question was "have you put any thought into service before self?" I figured he'd give me some logical reasons of why to stay full time and on AD. All he served to do, thankfully, was convince me why my decision to leave was sound.

Oddly enough, up to the mid-1980s prior to their being an Aviation branch within the Army; commissioned officer aviators (RLOs now, as Warrants are commissioned these days too) belonged to a combat arms branch such as Armor, Infantry, Artillery, etc. These guys would go to flight school, go to follow on training, serve in an aviation unit for a tour or two, and head back to their "owning" branch to work their career broadening stuff that had nothing to do with aviation. Hence why so many officers had such little total flight time. But yes, the AF isn't the Army in the sense that we don't have our primary flying functions being performed by WO's whose sole job it is to do.. Just an interesting relation to what you wrote, in that the Army once did the same thing with its aviators. Now that there's an Aviation branch, that changed. Agree; none of us are. It's not a hit on you, it's a hit on the AF that seems to never listen to those "in the know" who are making good suggestions. Look at the hit in pilots that was created in the early to mid '90s when the AF slashed pilot production starting in '89/'90 when they took away pilot slots from ROTC cadets who already had them, ran min-sized UPT classes, even allowing people to leave the AF directly from those upon graduation with no ADSC, and then the RIF. Took a good while to recover from that. Big Blue is just that train that moves at 10mph and will always move at 10 mph, whether you pull from in front, push from behind, or just ride along as a pax. And that's unfortunate.

Forgot to address this part... And this is correct. Going back to fire protection, at AFMC bases and the like (non ACC/AMC/AETC bases), the fire departments are 100% civil service GS, with no bluesuiters. So yes, in those cases, full civilian manning does indeed work.

Contractor, yes, depending on the contract. I was more referring to the GS civil service, which many of the positions in some support functions such as fire protection already are. There's where the problem will lie from the personnel/labor law aspect. Be a tough change to make.

Agree. Contractors you can indeed deploy, depending on the contract write-up; and yes, response time will be questionable. GS civil service, thats another story; and thats what all the fire protection jobs that are civilian right now are; good luck to anyone wanting to get that changed to contractor. Because the civilians are GS, there has to be military peeps there for the deployment aspect; and you're right, the current mix seems to work well. Been a good number of years since I was in the field, and times were different back then, but nowdays with more GS, it appears to be a good mix, but it needs to remain a mix.

The minute you think you are "needed" by the AF, is the minute you open yourself up for disappointment. The AF doesn't even know what it needs at any given time. Problem is, you're forgetting that many of those support positions are combat power, in the sense that you have to be able to deploy them to the bases where our frontline forces are in order to provide the needed support. You can't contract all fire protection personnel (or all CE, Comm, Log, etc) as civilians, because you can't freely deploy the civilians in civilian status to combat or combat zones; you need to have X percentage of military personnel in these fields for this reason. To make it easiest to deploy them, they also have to be active duty as opposed to Reserve. Even in the fire protection field right now, the vast majority of firefighters AF-widein all components are GS civilians, around 50%+ last I checked. And that balance seems to work well with having the rest available as military to be fully deployable, even at a moments notice. While it'd be nice to go civilan in many of these fields and there are many gains from it, there are also a number of legal limitations.

I thought the -60 sims up at Silver Bell/Pinal can be used for every other sim refresher? Or is that only for AFRC?

Would be interesting to hear the CVR of the UAL 747 taxiing up to the hold line there.

Yeah. Like I said in the other thread, everything old is new again. This same thing happened in '89/'90 when they needed to get rid of too many people being in ROTC back then.

A good piece of chaff to get a uniform nazi questioning himself for just enough time for you to evade. I made it up......straight out of my current AFR 35-10, 1 July 1977.

It depends. If it's after hat hours, you're fine. Usually coinciding with the EENT time for the particular day; so check your WX sheets to get a ballpark on when that time is. Same with BMET for the start of hat wear.

Depends who you talk to. It being more of a strike-fighter rather than an air-to-air bird similar to the F-111, as a ruse to throw off any Soviet spies, as a way to attract more of the best and brightest to be interested in volunteering back in the "black" days; any and all of those. There were ruse factors already with the program from the beginning, such as with the Bandit numbers for the pilots. In the same way there was an AIM-9 capability in the 117, but no mission for it; the plane could also carry B57 and B61 and had the standard separate weapons control panel for that, as well as still being able to recognize the two-digit codes for those weapons in the ACP, with further areas for data entry. But we had no mission assignment there either, didn't train for it, and weren't on PRP. That separate weapons panel was later modified to be the interface for the JDAM capability we gained in a modification a couple of years prior to the 117s retirement; everything before that being only LGBs we dropped and the one GPS/LGB we could carry.