nsplayr

I hate to rain on the sport bitching parade, but where did you see this? Checking the website here, it says you have 18 months max to complete the program. Nothing about min time. It's still 3x tests and a 4-week online class, so total time depends on how quickly you take the tests. The program looks unchanged from the one I completed a couple of years ago and I finished in about 2 months trying to max perform the tests while deployed and then completing the 4-week "class" while on terminal leave from AD (good story there!). So I'm curious where you saw the 12-month figure...

I have personal experience with the Scorpion jet's systems and work with three individuals who have flown it, including my boss (retired AFSOC pilot). Their assessment is that it is definitely not a piece of shit, and I would tend to agree based on the capes it will bring once operational. Hopefully will get to fly it myself sometime in the future. Obviously every platform has pluses and minuses, and the Scorpion isn't some silver bullet by any means. Then again neither are any of the aircraft we've discussed here nor is anything in our current fleet. Still curious though what would prompt that "POS" conclusion, even just based on seeing it on paper and youtube videos.

What makes you say that?

Copy, let me be more clear. Swimming is not required in the Air Force beyond passing the Water Survival SERE course at Fairchild AFB. When I did ejection-seat water SERE, the only real swimming was about 1-2 minutes in the Pensacola bay before I hauled myself into my one-man raft and took a nap until I was "rescued." But that's post-getting-your-wings so I'd focus on near targets right now.

You have to pass basic aircrew water survival, but beyond that there's no specific swim test. Check out more about the course at the link below or using some quick google skills. https://www.aetc.af.mil/News/Features/Display/tabid/5155/Article/635352/sere-water-survival-preparing-airmen-for-the-sea.aspx

At those interest rates I'd probably pay them off although it's a close call. IMHO, the way you should look at it is maximizing your expected return. Paying off the student loans, you're guaranteed a return of 4% or 5.88% respectively. Investing in the market you may or may not do better than that depending on the performance of your investments. If you think you'll do better in the market, invest. If you want to lock in that 4-6% return, pay off the loans. Another factor is how you feel about it, i.e. would you get additional value by gaining the "peace of mind" of having the loans paid off, etc. People aren't robots and you should do whatever brings you the most value, rather that's purely on paper or rather it helps you sleep at night. Cash flow may also be something to think about, although if you're talking about investing as much as you are, it doesn't sound like you guys are hurting for monthly cash flow. Good luck!

The gun on the A-10 is phenomenal, as are the guns on the AC-130s. That being said...what percentage of today's kinetic strikes are direct-fire weapons vs PGMs? I don't have hard numbers (sts), but I know what I've seen on numerous deployments. In a true CAS situation, there is a ton of value in direct fire...when it's HVT whack-a-mole in a permissive environment, it's not really needed or even desired in a lot of situations. Advances in PGMs plus the nature of the fight over the majority of the last 15 years has led to the overwhelming use of PGMs. 6K of hard points is plenty of bang per sortie, especially if using lighter weapons like Hellfire, Griffin, SDB, or even newer systems like SGM or APKWS To me, the potential advantages of the Scorpion, if it's executed properly, are fairly significant. Better FMV sensors than current fighters for ISR and PGM delivery. Long legs for a fighter without needing AR, especially if you use external tanks. Plenty of internal payload for other intel packages that are key in the process of finding HVTs. Enough speed to sprint toward a fight, but stability to fly at very low airspeeds for the endless "Wheel in the Sky" ops. Looking at it for the ONE mission is something I've heard tossed around since it can perform basic intercepts and patrols over CONUS at a much lower cost the the Viper. Obviously the low-intensity fight is what it was designed for, for all the reasons above. Competing in a future T-X, especially with a modified swept wing, is also something I've heard as a possibility. And those are just options for the US. Foreign sales are a primary consideration and some of our allies need the type of capability this jet offers at this price point even worse than we do.

I honestly don't see the advantage of the "optionally" manned platform. Jack of both trades, master of neither. Design the RPAs to be RPAs, with zero life support/windows/etc. and therefore extremely long legs and add good sensors/datalinks/comms/weapons options. Let manned platforms be manned and take advantage of 1 or 2 pink brains that can use all those neurons to yank and bank and support the friendlies in very dynamic environments. Trying to merge the two, I don't think the juice is worth the squeeze, mostly because making a manned platform "unmanned" is wasting a lot of the advantages unmanned has by inherently maintaining a design that works for humans. If we stopped burning train cars worth of money during the acquisitions process we could afford to buy fleets of Scorpions/AT-6s/Super Ts/OV-10s/whatever and a next-gen MQ-XX.

Agreed. If the bonus had adjusted for inflation, $25K in 1999 dollars would be ~$35K in 2015 dollars, so $60K would be a pretty dramatic increase. That being said, agree with the above...for critically manned fields, we shouldn't be afraid to go to full mil-power and throw all the money authorized at the problem. That likely still won't move the needle as much as frankly much cheaper QOL factors that the AF could change, but it probably wouldn't hurt.

Detector CB reset.

Protip for life right here. Bonus: keeping your felt neatly trimmed helps make your deck look bigger too from what I understand.

I once got chewed out by an O-6 for making a similar statement...he was adamant that the U-28 was an NSAv platform and questioned how it was possible that I didn't know that. He was a kind of a dick about it and good times were had by all. Anyways, to most people including me and everyone I knew who flew the U-28, NSAv meant light/medium SOF airlift in civilian-painted aircraft i.e. PC-12, Dornier 328, Skytruck, etc. Which is a vastly different mission set than manned tactical ISR done by the U-28. FYI to the OP and any other curious youngin's.

Pretty sure scoobs meant NSAv i.e. Non-Standard Aviation platforms. Not the NSA i.e. National Security Agency. Also, scoobs, go with quals.

I would argue that some AF units dedicated to SOF support already excel at what the author is calling for with BAI. Despite his robust background in the subject (-15E WSO patch, DARPA fellow, etc.), he may have never really seen that side of the coin before. Not that air guys supporting SOF didn't get dynamically re-tasked often, but I personally didn't feel like "detailed integration" was missing all that often between myself and the ground forces. Other air players were a different ballgame - fighters would routinely blast into the stack right off the tanker and be tasked to gets effects on the ground very quickly, which I'm sure is not an easy task. BL: Being centrally controlled and bounced between numerous conventional units on a ad-hoc basis produces a far different experience than being directly chopped to a TF and working for the same people day-in and day-out, rotation after rotation. This BAI-like experience already exists in DoD and the author can get hooked up with some of the guys who are writing the book on it. Edit to add: my response above was apparently to this article: https://warontherocks.com/2016/06/how-afghanistan-distorted-close-air-support-and-why-it-matters/ Somehow got my wires crossed... Others nailed it re: the OP article. CAS in a high treat environment, to me, is a zombie requirement that needs to die a real death. If we're doing CAS or have ground forces in those environments for that matter, we've ticked up massively already.

https://www.pcmag.com/news/345702/ai-program-wins-dogfight-agains-usaf-fighter-pilot So basically strap a Raspberry Pi in an F-35 and we're all out of a job...

This link has pretty much all the relevant info about how AD time in the Guard/Reserves impacts when you can start drawing pay. It's pretty extensive, otherwise I'd just copy-paste. BL: If you serve on AD for at least 1x 90-day chunk during an FY while in the ARC, you can backup you're retired pay date by 90-days x number of chunks. No longer needs to be 90 consecutive days. Training counts. See link above for full details.

One of these places already has an RPA squadron operating. Good ideas re: distributed across time zones, although there would be a lot of legal issues conducting strikes from foreign countries. The US has enough territory spread out with the proper mil infrastructure already in place that it shouldn't really be an issue. Guam/Hawaii/CONUS/Puerto Rico covers GMT+10 to GMT-4 which should be sufficient to eliminate mids for everyone worldwide. Get some practice on doing a PHO between ops units rather than ops-to-LRE and call it a day.

Work work work work work work... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HL1UzIK-flA

Dude, are you just a shitty algorithm hosted on AFPC's computer network? Talk like a f-ing person. We (pilots/navs/E flyers, etc.) are not curious, foreign creatures "enamored with flying" that populate your spreadsheets. There are real god damn human beings out there risking their lives to protect our country. Treating people like cogs in a vast faceless machine is a big part of the problem, and you exemplify it perfectly the way you address everyone here on the boards. "We may have to eliminate some of the extraneous additional duties at flying squadrons or authorize more civilians to help. So be it." SO BE IT?? You make it sound like a bad thing...this is one of the many solutions that would alleviate actual pain points for your front-line operators. Stop loss being used means you all f-ed up at your job so badly that you have to basically go to the nuclear option. Congratulations. Edit to add: lol... -1 reputation point from General Chang. I'll take it.

I agree with much of what you said above, except this. What's your rationale for not rebalancing your overall portfolio at least once in a while? To me, it's straightforward - you set targets for asset allocation based on your goals and risk tolerance. When your portfolio falls outside those targets by a certain amount, you correct course.

Big blue has zero incentive to save service-life hours on the 4th gen fighters. We need to "use them up" in order to justify the F-35.

Anyone know if Syracuse is experiencing the same kinds of delays as Holloman? Can't believe it's 7-8 months for that course!

The entitlement generation indeed...yeesh!

Which is too bad. Honestly all of the software and interfaces in the boxes are awful but GA controls the thing from tooth to tail so there's no really a big rush to make things better. Would love to see that contract opened up to competition so better solutions that already exist would be fielded. It also seems ridiculously obvious that one avenue to help with the manning crunch is to get that interface right i.e. having a single crew controls multiple aircraft. Not sure why this is not more of a priority - it's easily feasible during long transit times especially.