jice

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.

Same here. Did 4 minutes of research and expected it to be related to WWII. Turns out it didn’t have to do with flamethrowers or incendiary bombs… After the war people started wearing clothes made out of plastic. Especially children, since vinyl and nylon became cheap ways to clothe baby baby boomers.

IF the incentive pay were the primary source of income AND human beings were rational actors, this would be a reasonable conclusion. Meet the min, get the pay, do other stuff… but very few are paying the gas bill with special pay from the RC. BUT human beings are not always rational actors, especially military members who are specifically excluded from most income/compensation studies for exactly that reason. Turns out patriotism/flying with the boys/guilt have a dollar value… that the military insists is a magic power rather than a form of compensation.

They didn’t consider military compensation in the context of folks’ overall compensation. If they had, RAND would realize that (in the case of AvIP) most folks are making an economically irrational decision to show up at all. Again, every A1 at every level should have a permanent labor economist on staff… but we’d probably pay just enough to find the worst ones.

Lots of HVAA caps. The world is a big place, especially that part of it.

Yeah, exactly. That’s the problem… we put our long range kill chain eggs in baskets that are being divested or halved, architectures designed in the 80s, and a great hope that space will make the vul. Armed is kind of a red herring. Im supremely confident somebody somewhere will know where the targets were and why force annihilation happened trying to find them, but that’s not super helpful for the dudes now fighting the war in one man rafts.

Rough math: 1.3 x square root of altitude in feet = radar horizon in nautical miles. Since the earth is flat, works at all altitudes.

I’m truly trying to think of one engineering (not policy) use case where optionally manned would actually be beneficial. I can’t, other than taking a deep sleep in the cockpit on the way to and from the mission area. That’s still a manned aircraft, able to transit without intervention.

Nailed it. The value isn’t in placing weapons, it’s placing sensors and then providing that data to shooters and weapons directly… not to a battleship sized crew of nerds.

11F here. Sign me up, with caveats: Make the radar point sideways as well as forward. Backwards would be great too. Optionally manned: This is the worst of both worlds. You have to build in the life support systems, and then don’t get the benefit of a difficult to hack EMC (electrical, meat, chemical) OS. “Risk reduction” due to no pilot doesn’t count when you can deny control and feeds for $0 (cyber/EW) preventing data from reaching people who might die without it. At least make the mission kill cost a million bucks or two. When you’re talking peacetime recce missions: when is the last time a third world country shot down one of the US’s manned recce platforms? Same question for droids is an easy answer. You’re not wrong. Also: Do (most of) it with an existing platform for even less. WTF is the plan for E-11 BACN other than BACNing? Seems like a massive waste of compute power and meat-based data fusion.

This insanity goes away with a bit of branding. Whoever called this “single pilot KC-46 ops” should have instead called it “augmented duty period, unaugmented crew operations (ADPUC).” That’s the use case, and people would understand that idea. If you’re launching on a long sortie after a tanker combat turn at a FOS, you can’t magically generate more aircrew, and people would get that. The whole conversation about reducing human risk and running out to jets is just dramatic chaff from clueless people.

Who made that product and how do I get them to teach my unit Intel how to Intel? (Some are great; many turn written words into sounds.)

Up front: I agree that we shouldn’t PA folks in UPT, but these aren’t good reasons for it. Instead of PAing them, offer additional challenges that the average student couldn’t hack. To answer your questions: If they fail after PAing: The same thing happens as when somebody PAs in the FTU, MQ, IPUG, TX, or ICRS and then ends up washing out… except no FEB to worry about. If there’s doubt in writing the gradesheet, don’t PA them. Else it’s easy to stand by the decisions. Not messing with a system that hasn’t ever been validated as a predictor of future performance is not a good reason to avoid adjusting syllabus flow to accommodate the student. Turns out the grades are subjective anyway; let’s just get comfortable with a subjective overall measure (as an option).

This, if implemented right now, also requires investing in over the horizon control of the droids that may or may not exist from night 0 to night X of the war. With a JADC2 architecture and AI enabled operations, you still are contesting basic control of the aircraft and may have limited ‘cognitive’ maneuver ability when the fight changes to a mode not contained in the model (potentially still true Re: aircraft control with a human operator present, but the barriers to entry are much higher, riskier, and likely to be discovered/countered.) Our fascination with unmanned aircraft was largely sold to the American public as “risk reduction” over the last 20 years. When the risk becomes “no gas = no fight = no effects on the enemy,” it is worth risking an American life to avoid creating center of gravity in the cyber and/or space domains. It’s marginal gains and an extreme example, but a peer fight will be a game of inches; you don’t get solutions like this with drones: https://theaviationgeekclub.com/the-story-of-north-star-the-kc-135-stratotanker-that-saved-an-f-4-phantom-over-the-atlantic/amp/

What do these words mean?

Yeah, 61.199 apparently isn’t specific enough to avoid the idiocy. That is heartbreaking; was hoping to find a FSDO that gets it rather than having to fight to execute law… maybe that’s too idealistic.

Thread revival, When reinstating an expired CFI using military competency, did anybody have issues reinstating all ratings? I’ve got an expired CFI/CFII, ASEL but my most recent mil instructor checkride was in a multi-engine aircraft. When I talked to the FSDO today, they told me they would only issue a MEL rating, but not renew ASEL or instrument instructor ratings… which is worthless and would mean taking two additional checkrides if I ever wanted to teach a kid to fly an ILS in a -152. Anybody encounter this situation before and figure out how to get the FAA to press the logic button? Anybody do this within a day’s drive of San Antonio who might have a more favorable FSDO’s interpretation? I would very clearly end up with CFI, CFII, MEI if I were to take an MEI ride with a DPE in a Seminole… why does doing it in a fighter jet mean that I never held a CFI/CFII? The guy actually suggested “just see if your command will run you through a quick single engine course.” [Face palm]

I’m just really stoked to explain to my 9 year old niece how to learn to stop worrying and love the draft. “It wasn’t us, we really had no idea how this would affect us.”

Is the intent to employ primarily as a single ship? I know this thing isn’t a fighter, but if there’s a chance of rolling in for strafe with machine gun (not cannon), I’d definitely want somebody else ready to roll in ASAP. Edit: looks like I was confused. No machine guns advertised on this platform. In any case, seems like two in the stack would be better than one.

The public (Textron amplified) announcement of the MTC for the AT-6 happened almost exactly 24 hours prior to their quarterly earnings call, in which the execs talked up the FMS potential and were ‘looking forward’ to the contract award.

Yikes. Hopefully eligible only for CSO-carrying platforms. Strong incentive to do good and not be a douchecanoe. I flew for 10 years without having a clue what made a good CSO in a war machine. Gonna be tough for that person to have a clue.

I wonder what percentage of the people picked up for this cost saving measure will end up doing just that… only to be forced by Air Force idiocy to go back through the UPT pipeline from the beginning. “Sorry, says it in the rules.”

Yeah… Congress and the services: “Unique jobs, camaraderie, quality of service… intangibles… the retirement” The free market: “I see your claims and raise you… the exact same job, same people, different intangibles (like a family), same quality of service, at 3x the pay. Retirement? Yeah, I’ve got one too; where do you dock yours in the winter?” I’m not saying staying active duty is dumb… but the market is drawing the line from A to B pretty clearly WRT compensation.

No. I’m saying the training has to be valid and valuable. My assumption is that they will be equally qualified (as an aviator in the mighty T-6 Texan II) to a FAIP. I don’t think the commissioning source has much to do with their capability to instruct. It WILL be entirely dependent on the training they’re provided (which I assume will also wash people out… since that seems to be some of ya’ll’s benchmark for a quality program.) Nobody is saying we should plop these folks down in a T-6 and have them start teaching. The assumption is that they would receive training adequate to perform to a standard. Re: Mil CAP: The civilian world has all kinds of names for “being kind of a sh1tbag” or “a disciplinary problem.” Humans aren’t imbued with super discipline powers because they went to OTS for six weeks. The training pipeline for these folks should be enough to weed out the people who lack the integrity/discipline/whatever to perform. It’s called having a job with high standards. I would expect these folks to graduate from a T-6 “UPT” and then PIT (if the training is less, that’s an issue with the training, not a hiring program). I know plenty of folks who were 0 hour pedestrians and became respectable T-6 FAIPS in ~ 1 year. If you’d ask them what they needed to become a better IP, I bet 69% would tell you “a job where the only expectation is that I fly and teach.”

No, I’m saying that with fewer green bags walking around we need to send other than bottom of the barrel guys to make sure the pipeline produces something we want. I’m not concerned about the quality of instruction from the GS hires just because they’re GS hires. As long as they’re provided with valid training, they’re likely to be better than a FAIP or bottom third aviator from any other community because they’ll be able to focus on their j.o.b.