jice

I mean, yeah. Jobs are different. 95% of SA is just knowing what’s going on around you.

This! And a lot of the skills military folks build and what gets them hired are not what shows up on the hiring announcement… I mean it could, but “ability to outmaneuver organizational stupidity and selectively admit to details of how something got done” and “comfort hurting feelings in order to win” usually gets scrubbed by HR before it goes out.

To any young guys reading who know this but want to hear it externally: If you were on the fence before about taking the bonus, it is not rational to take the bonus solely based on [alleged] scarcity. The value of the money and your time has not changed. (If you were going to take it but haven’t yet, scarcity is a rational consideration. So are continuing messes like this.) Sadly, somewhere, some flesh-peddling fvck is seeing this cluster as an opportunity to pump up his rookie numbers.

There’s a saying about a horse… You can lead a horse to water but you can’t stop the train wreck?

CH, if that’s the shape your condoms take, I’ll just leave this here: https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/peyronies-disease/symptoms-causes/syc-20353468

Ok, kind of an energy nerd here. “Texas windmill freeze” was more of a problem having to do with natural gas transportation, which accounts for far more energy production (3-4x) than wind. In Texas, those transport methods aren’t built for cold. Just like Texas houses. You are right though, wind is significant in Texas. If it were a country, it would be the fifth largest wind producing country. But! If wind had failed (as you’d expect in the winter), but gas had worked (as you’d expect anywhere with snowplows), that would have been much less of a disaster. CA rolling blackouts: You’re right Re: overdoing it on the green energy regulatory requirements, but the ‘energy debt’ in CA also largely is a result of their shortsighted ban on new nuclear plants. Haven’t done the math, but I suspect we wouldn’t see the same blackouts through the 90s and 00s if they weren’t removing those plants from the grid. Europe natural gas: the other option here is coal, which is not an ideal source for lots of reasons. The rest are cost prohibitive in the short term and work in the US’s favor (provided they’re actually done with Russia) in the long term. So, you’re right about how they got there and the disaster that it is. And! We should be working really hard (subsidizing) to get European money to the gulf coast and connecting infrastructure so we can sell them the NG we’re otherwise waste flaring in North Dakota fields, Canadian wasteland, and west Texas (though it is cool to see from the air)… plus, even Greta could get behind that one.

Life free or die, baby. Seriously, New Hampshire is awesome. Skeptical of government but with functioning schools. Plus, bleeding trees for a living sounds great.

Huh, guess I missed that part of the indoc when I moved there. Seems fine to me, with the usual caveats for a big city.

Can’t prove the counterfactuals but… Boston fvcking rocks. State politics are a bit weird. Dallas has had a Democratic mayor since the 90s (one exception). Dallas also fvcking rocks. State politics are also a bit weird, in the other direction. But seriously, the real problem in the union is New Hampshire. That place is horrific. Stay far away. Seriously, not just saying that so there’s more maple sugar trees for me. Really.

What’s the latest rumint from AETC about the future of T-38 Phase 3 and IFF? Heard some rumblings about a combined Fighter Bomber Fundamentals course replacing both, with an experiment running somewhere. Any first-hand experience or great insight on the board?

Which is why the whole proposal for early takes is such a tragedy. Take rate statistics and survey trend data including “reasons given for turning down the bonus at 10+ years aviation commitment” should be mandatory at all bonus counseling sessions. A mandatory statement of “this is indentured servitude” is not very far from the truth. People turn down the bonus because they don’t like what the Air Force is selling THEM. People take the bonus because THEIR with the Air Force is something they can live with. Kids at 7 years of aviation service just don’t have enough information to make an informed decision. They haven’t been sufficiently exposed to the Air Force Corporate structure to understand what opting into living it means.

Wow. That deescalated quickly. @HuggyU2 , I doubt he was talking to your generation anyway. We all really admire your efforts at the Meuse-Argonne and Vittorio Veneto.

Not pictured: 11Rs… just like the ‘21 bonus.

Anything is possible. People on this board have made similar mid-career pivots. The things that matter: luck, timing, valuable contributions as a pilot & bro, and playing the game well. I’ve seen U-28 guys end up in vipers, KC-135 folks flying Strike Eagles, and C-17 dudes fly fat Amy. Most pilots never change lanes (in that direction), though. Work hard, contribute, play the game, and be judicious in who you trust with your career. You’ll know if the moment comes. As an aside, I’m sitting here a little jealous of your clear road to an HC-130 (what a cool mission!) or EC-37 (fresh paint; big changes) Lots of neat options for you out there.

Nailed it. Hopefully those 6-9 year O-3s are also becoming aware that a longer time-scale and higher congressional authorizations provide a bit of leverage to the collective. Until Congress (draft) or the president (stop-loss) take action to make it free, nobody says lining up to risk your life needs to be cheap.

I enjoy this discussion. I also think this is not the place for it. Anonymity of any individual is questionable. Identity of the demographic is pretty certain. There are some quotable quotes here that could be misconstrued (obviously).

“Environmentally unsound” is definitely built for the European audience. Think they’re talking about the fuel dumping or the resultant littering and… littering and… smoking the Reaper?

Biden and those millennial SNAPs… who are starting to hit military retirement age.

Nailed it. The unappreciated factor here is that both sides have employed relatively effective air denial. With effective defenses against the air and surface domains from the surface and on both sides, maneuver warfare rapidly becomes attrition warfare. That doesn’t mean we should resign ourselves to that form of war (though we should probably invest more in air denial… https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/content-series/airpower-after-ukraine/air-denial-the-dangerous-illusion-of-decisive-air-superiority/). The human expense and geopolitics of surface mass alone are untenable if we intend to maintain the ability to win wars in all the places we intend to win wars. We should build our forces to achieve conventional overmatch through asymmetric means. That means enabling maneuver warfare on the ground by doing more than denial in the other domains. To massively oversimplify it: there are two options to prepare for when the balloon goes up: pay in cash and risk now or pay by consuming a generation of humans later. Against a peer, to win we’ll unfortunately likely have to do both.

You missed the majority of his.

There’s a lot of optimism about demographics Re: blunting China’s rise. The blind spot there, however, is that their economy is not the same economy of the 90s or 2000s. Education and an emerging (established?) service and tech economy means that fewer people can make more money with less labor. Hope of a natural decline is not a valid strategy; every time we fail to engage (as in Iran-Saudi or participation in international institutions), we should expect China to score easy points. Those international institutions are a BFD… let’s not forget that we set most of them up after winning WWII so we could pull the strings of global order.

That’s true, and totally agree re: the second point. But a CJO is better than absolute uncertainty. “You’re not the weird guy nobody will hire” is probably enough for a lot of folks who haven’t seen their kids in 6 months. Having a (conditional) answer to the wife’s “when are we going to be done with this BS and start the airline life” might be worth dozens of thousands of future dollars… depending on the wife.

And oh by the way… they’ve also got a CJO for you 2 years prior to your separation date… so, yeah.

So just to recap: A1 looked at the numbers and said “the only way we have a chance of making an effective bonus at this price point is to trick them before they’re old/wise enough to have considered the implications of their decisions.” A flat bonus is a blunt instrument and a small flat bonus is a small blunt instrument. If you’re coercively using small blunt instruments… well let’s just say that’s not operating in good faith. I hope this saved a shitty labor economist from mowing lawns, but the reality is I doubt any were consulted.

In fun: “a good man with a guy…” Seriously though: The only reason the second amendment matters is to guarantee the rest of our constitutional form of government. A constitution of only 2A is anarchy, where the ability to consolidate power and use violence reigns supreme. IR theory holds that the definition of a state includes a monopoly on the use of violence internally. In the context of the rest of the constitution, the 2A reminds us that that state and the monopoly on violence (internal to the state) is fundamentally the citizenry’s, delegable to organs of the state. So! @ViperMan that FU only matters because of the rest of the constitution.