nsplayr

Agreed that iPhone rules...got mine a month ago and like McDolands, "I'm lovin' it." Just to clear it up the 15% discount is on your monthly bill, not the price of the phone itself

I'm getting ready to head out to SERE in a few weeks and just finished up an appointment with the eye doc. I was asking him about extended-wear contacts, assuming I could get some and wear them for the field portion of SERE (as changing lenses daily in the woods isn't really feasible). He told me no go on that and that most people wear glasses/prescription sunglasses while at SERE. Does that check? What have other people done? My main problem is that the prescription sunglasses I have (the issues ones) blow and I've never felt I can see as sharply in them. Also, they're not wrap-around and I'd never consider them for wear in a snowy environment where there's lots of glare from the ground. I've got very light eyes so it kinda makes me picky about sunglasses I guess... Was thinking about getting some prescription Wiley X or ESS glasses since they'd be useful in the future as well, but they're not exactly cheap and after Christmas I am kinda cheap. Any advice on what others have done in the past? Thanks

Not to defend the guy, but the answer to that is in his bio, posted like 2 pages or so ago. "...including one semester at the National Military Academy of Afghanistan." Other than that he's clearly a sheltered non-rated guy who decided to speak up and advocate an unnecessary pay cut for pilots who are out there doing the damn thing while he teaches at the zoo...not a smart move sparky...

What the liberals would think of that? I wonder what Americans would think of that? I don't think anyone wants to see our citizens treated poorly by their own government but neither does anyone want to see American criminals executed while foreign criminals are let free. Honestly, I don't think it would come to that because not very many people are executed compared to the number of people in US prisons.

I think the difference is that these guys are coming to DC hat in hand asking for billions of dollars, and did so in private jets that are expensive to operate and maintain. Government officials that use VIP transportation aren't begging the government for emergency money, they're using money that was already appropriated for air transport. The second time the auto execs came to DC they drove hybrids form Detroit and it was a whole thing...

Just for irony's sake, don't those "shrieks" at the Times and Post live in the very two cities that were attacked on 9/11? And what exactly is a shriek used as a noun?? I'm not one to argue that the dudes at guantanamo should be treated like kindergartners, but taking a stand against torture and open-ended detention with no exit strategy sounds fine to me. Charge them in military tribunals and then throw them in maximum security prisons...send them back to wherever we got them if there's no evidence...drop them on a raft in the middle of the ocean...just figure out something. I don't personally know what to do with these guys now that we've held them for so long in a kind of grey area in the law and especially since their intelligence value is shot, but that's something our leadership should have thought of before we captured these guys and brought them to to gitmo. I'd also draw the line at US citizens...if you're a citizen then you should be afforded the privileges of a trial by a jury of your peers...hard to argue against that one in my mind.

Nice...yea, if you have a PPL you should not have to go through the ass-pain of Pueblo...especially since navs don't exactly get a lot of stick time where the skills learned at Pueblo would be useful

Yeah...forgot about that. The two reserve guys who were in my flight did IFS at local flight schools near their unit.

Not to thread-jack too much but I'm just surprised by some of the stories on here about UPT. I completely agree with the sentiment of not getting too close with students if you're an instructor and vice-versa and giving higher ranking officers the proper respect and etc, but I guess it was just a different environment down here at RND, even among the 3 different squadrons I've flown with. In that kind of situation, I think the stud's response was completely fine and there's not too many instructors down here I know that would disagree. If the student said something like "you bet chief," then sure, stand him up and make sure his sh*t is straight. But saying "sorry sir, we'll quiet down" or something to that effect when an instructor pokes his head in your room and tells you to shut up seems reasonable to me. Instructor-student relationships should not be too friendly and err on the side of professional, but there's no reason it needs to be adversarial either. If it was the squadron commander or another O-5 or above, I'd stand up for sure and address him/her a little more formally. But among CGOs and espicially aircrew (or future aircrew in the case of students), even between instructors and students, I've just always believed the relationship should be one of respectful camaraderie. Instructors who had that kind of attitude (i.e. tact > ego) tended to get a lot more respect than the ones who would chew you out for having your zipper 1 inch too low... But I suppose on day one it couldn't hurt to start students out on the right track either...

Yeah, your Col. isn't really up to speed I guess (mine wasn't either when I got my nav slot...and he was a nav!) You won't skip any training at nav school b/c of civilian flight hours...I had a FAA commercial pilot in my class and he did the same syllabus as us. In terms of skipping part of IFS at Pueblo, I'm not sure b/c I went through prior to Pueblo so not sure how things work up there. And while it's true that the new school at P-cola will have shiny new and upgraded training, the current "nav school" is really CSO school. We've been CSOs since 2005 according to the AF and your certificate when you get your wings definitely says "Combat Systems Officer" on it. If you have any more questions and what to try to get accurate answers PM some of the guys on here how are navs. Good luck and don't screw up before you graduate b/c nav/CSO is a good assignment worth being excited about. That's correct...everyone goes to Pueblo now.

Right on that. Could be going to the new CSO school at P-cola when that opens up like BQ said, but that depends on timing since the school isn't even open yet. The new syllabus is supposed to be slightly shorter than the current one at Randolph (not 100% sure on that, based on a brief I go more than 6 months ago), but it's not that big of a difference. Never heard of "accelerated nav training" the way you speak about it.

"In order for us to accept a check image, please ensure that it is: A grayscale image with resolution of 200 dots per inch (DPI), and that it is saved as jpg or jpeg. Learn more about changing scanner settings." Quoted from the screen I get when I do deposit@home. Seems like grayscale is what they specifically want and I've always done it that way. I'd say give them a call & they can probably help b/c their customer service rocks.

Awesome definition...good find!

Good advice from firemission. Short answer is you can take leave for Christmas even if you don't have any yet and yes, you have to use leave any time you leave the local area. NIFT is the right place to call, but with an inspection just finishing up and Thanksgiving, people aren't at their desks all that much the past few days. Check your PM and feel free to ask me any other questions. PS - probably a good idea to delete this thread now and ask questions one-on-one

https://www1.va.gov/opa/pressrel/pressrelease.cfm?id=1609 As of yesterday, all veterans and active military members can render a salute to the flag and during the playing of the national anthem while in civies. USA

This thread = T & A...and occasionally humor I'm casting 1 vote to move political discussions to other appropriate threads. Hell, if I register with ACORN I can even cast 2 votes...;)

Yes, I'm pretty sure he would veto such a bill becasue he's specifically called for an increase in the overall size of the Army and Marine Corps, a large number of troops in Afghanistan, and has explicitly said he wants to keep defense budgets at least steady for the time being.

https://www.miamiherald.com/979/story/740853.html I think all of us need to take a deep breath and evaluate the claims in the first link before we get our panties in a wad over losing pilot slots. Barney Frank is not running for President last time I checked. Here's an article with a decent, quick analysis of Obama's positions on defense spending compared to McCain's. Full text with highlights: BY NANCY A. YOUSSEF McClatchy News Service WASHINGTON -- Barack Obama and John McCain each promise that as president they'd continue to transform the U.S. military into a bigger, more agile force that can tackle insurgencies and help allies thwart terrorism. The candidates differ on what role the armed forces should play in global affairs. ''The Department of Defense has been the preemptive force of the last eight years,'' said Col. Michael Meese, a professor and the head of the department of social sciences at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. Whether Defense continues in that role -- or the State Department, with the U.S. Agency for International Development, picks it up -- is a question for the next administration, Meese said. While there may be big differences in how the presidential candidates would use the military, they generally agree on what kind of force the country needs. ''Temperamentally, senators Obama and McCain are very different on defense. But when you read the details of their defense positions, they are remarkably similar,'' said Loren Thompson, a defense analyst with the Lexington Institute, a conservative public policy organization. ``Both want to bolster intelligence, focus on counter-terrorism, reduce big-ticket weapons systems and crack down on defense contracts.'' Both men call for rebuilding U.S. ground forces, whose troops and equipment have been exhausted by seven years of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan. The next president will find a military still struggling to balance training for counter-insurgency and maintain its ability to fight conventional wars. McCain would like to enlarge U.S. ground forces -- the Army and Marines -- by 150,000 members to roughly 900,000. Obama supports a Pentagon plan to expand the Army by 65,000 and the Marines by 27,000 in the next decade. Obama and McCain also have said that they're concerned about the shortage of noncommissioned officers in the Army because so many mid-career senior enlisted men and women are leaving, exhausted by multiple tours in Iraq or Afghanistan. Both candidates want to add more military civil-affairs units, which are battalion-size units of roughly 600 troops designed to work with local governments in the wake of conflicts. Such units could help the United States rebuild Iraq and Afghanistan, but neither candidate offers specifics on how large a military civil-affairs force should be. Obama says the National Guard needs better equipment and healthcare and has called for it to have a greater role. McCain has made veterans issues a priority, promising to get veterans better healthcare. He also has supported increasing the $1,200 monthly education benefit for veterans to $1,500. Both men support missile defense, although Obama has called for more testing of the systems, while McCain has said he wants to deploy them as quickly as possible. Both candidates have called for more transparency in how the Pentagon grants defense contracts. McCain, who led the fight against a huge Air Force tanker contract, has promised to review defense contracts and opposes emergency bills to supplement the defense budget. Obama has said he would trim supplemental bills for defense spending and that overall defense spending would remain steady. ''Whether we get Obama or McCain, we will get a bigger military. They will have different attitudes on how it is used,'' Thompson said. McCain, a former Navy pilot and prisoner of war in Vietnam, has suggested that the military can be the face of U.S. engagement around the world. A NUCLEAR IRAN He has called for U.S. troops to remain in Iraq until victory is assured. His campaign has said the surge was such a success in Iraq that the U.S. military should apply the ''surge principles'' in Afghanistan, suggesting that he'd send more troops there. He also has called for more training of allies that are combating terrorism within their borders. McCain also has said that Iran can't be allowed to develop its nuclear arsenal, suggesting that he'd use force if necessary to prevent that. ''There is only one thing worse than a military solution,'' McCain said in July 2007. ``And that . . . is a nuclear-armed Iran.'' Obama also has said that a nuclear-armed Iran is unacceptable, but he has put more emphasis on trying to reach a negotiated settlement with Tehran. In fact, Obama has made it clear he thinks robust U.S. diplomacy could substitute, at least in part, for the Bush administration's reliance on the military to carry out America's will in the world. The Democratic presidential nominee has vowed to end the war in Iraq and to bring U.S. combat forces home over 16 months. He would shift some U.S. forces from Iraq into Afghanistan, which he calls the real front line in the war on terror, and where the 9/11 attacks were planned. HUNTING BIN LADEN Obama also has pushed for the U.S. military to enter Pakistan, unilaterally if necessary, to go after Osama bin Laden. McCain has criticized Obama's stand, saying he's announcing his plan to the enemy and inviting Pakistani resistance rather than cooperation, but McCain also called Pakistan ``a failed state.'' ''Both have an appreciation for the limits of military power. But they must decide: Does the United States want to be involved in nation building?'' said Jake Kipp, the deputy director of the School of Advanced Military Studies at Fort Leavenworth, Kan. For all their plans, the next president cannot fully predict how he'd use the military. ''There are things that cannot be controlled by the new president. A lot of times, he will be responding to events,'' Kipp said. ``As they say in the military: The enemy has a vote.''

I remember reading about this a few years back...not sure if that counts as weaponizing space (I'm sure other countries would say yes...) but it would be a sweet capability. So marines who ride on this thing get "space wings?"

New article I saw on af.mil https://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123116821 Selected quotes: Battlefield Airmen will soon receive a new equipment item that will improve their ability to execute their combat duties. Further down, The developers stressed the ABE is considered a personal protective ensemble and not a uniform. The ABE will be unit controlled, issued equipment and will only be worn by select Airmen based on their assigned mission. The Air Force will issue an ABE only if it is needed. It will not be for sale in the military clothing sales stores. So it's not even a uniform, it's PPE... The airman battle ensemble is comprised of the coat, pants and battle shirt. It is basically a tactical fire resistant adaptation of the current ABU. The ABE is the core of the ABS-G. Battle shirt? Really? Can I wear my "battle" shirt while I stroll down the "combat" sidewalk? Pockets were configured for access while wearing full body armor, including shoulder and side plate protection. Each layer of the ABS-G has identical sleeve and leg pocket configurations. So it's got a lot of the features people asked for in the ABU? How did we screw this up so bad that airmen outside the wire need new additional "equipment" rather than their "Airmen Battle Uniforms?"

Like others have said, you can get U-28 from either nav or ewo side and you sit the same seat/do the same job operationally. It's tight lipped/classified on what that is exactly but I'm hoping to find out soon enough since that's what I wanna drop. Your right...didn't mean to come off in a derogatory way to any other career field. I agree that there are way too many flyers who think they are shit hot when they really just piss everyone else off. I'm just happy to get in the fight one way or another and feel lucky that I'll get the chance to do that in the air vs. on the ground/sea. As other people pointed out, I forgot in include MC-130s on the list. From what they told our class, you can drop MCs as an EWO but not as a nav anymore. Apparently they don't want to take stud navs from the pipeline anymore on MCs after the crash a little while back. We're probably getting 1 MC-130 for the EWOs (our #2 guy wants MCs) and none for navs. We've heard from Buff instructors on both nav and EWO side that they're moving to a model where radar nav, the regular nav, and the ewo are all qualified to sit each seat. Not sure if it's happening right now but for guys who want to go Buff were told to expect it in the future.

I'll try to answer the best I can as a current nav school dude (i.e. based on briefings we've gotten, etc.) There are still plenty of platforms you can drop out of nav school as it currently stands. Everything will be getting a major overhaul when nav school moves to P-cola in the near future, and from what I've heard people graduating with CSO slots as 2009 college grads are getting orders to P-cola, not Randolph. The way it is right now, there are still two "tracks" you can pick from/compete for, advanced nav & ewo. All of us are called "CSOs" but that doesn't really mean much right now until the P-cola syllabus can get up and running. Everyone gets a little electronic warfare training, everyone knows how to operate the radar, but in practice you're still either a "nav" or an "ewo," with implications on what aircraft you can select and what jobs you will do in the real air force. Airframes you can get as a nav: slick C-130, AC-130, EC-130, HC-130, RC-135, B-52, AWACS, JSTARS, KC-135, U-28 Airframes you can get as a EWO: AC-130, EC-130, RC-135, B-52, U-28 Airframes you can only get out of P-cola as a WSO: B-1, F-15E Like I said above, once everything moves to P-cola it will change and students will be able to compete for any of these aircraft in theory (however they are starting to get rid of traditional navs on KC-135s and AWACS, but it's a slow process and they're still dropping currently) So you did leave off a few aircraft you can fly as a nav. But your point is taken that, yea, they are getting rid of traditional "tacan & radar" navs on some jets, but that's why a new syllabus is being developed and implemented at P-cola. Graduates from there will be the first real "CSOs" in my opinion because anyone training at Randolph is not getting fundamentally different training than anyone who came through here in the past 15 years (other than the navs experiencing a little electronic warfare intro in Ops phase). In terms of the difference between Navy vs. AF lifestyles as a CSO/NFO, I have no idea. The navy dudes in my class always said AF was gay and were always spouting off with things like "bulkhead" and "aye skipper" etc., so take from that what you will :) Finally, whoever made this thread originally should be shot. For real...Combat Support Officer?? As a (soon-to-be) rated officer I'd tell anyone who says I'm in a "support" role to eat it. CSO stands for Combat Systems Officer, since CSOs run "combat systems" such as tactical comms, weapons & navigational radars, jamming pods, ISR systems, etc. It's almost like calling a pilot a bus driver on accident...party foul

sounds great to me...more manned platforms = good, actual flying jobs near DC = even better

There's been talk down in the 563rd FTS (EW squadron at Randolph) about E Dubs from all types of airframes having a potential future in AFCYBER. No real information, but just a lot of talk that E Dubs/CSOs in general need to know their shit about electronic warfare b/c AFCYBER is gonna be a place with lots of money to spend and lots of billets to fill in the future. How that effects getting screwed out of being able to fly again, no idea...