Disco_Nav963

Deptula crunched just that number in this White Paper. (I haven't read it yet, but I saw it sitting on a colleagues desk a few weeks ago.)

He went to Texas Tech. He's a bomber guy. What more could you want? (Okay, I see where one of those things might be a problem for the single seat guys.)

"Two." I dropped one jet in nav school for the location and had to work hard to crossflow to another one for the mission. The result was what would be considered by any thinking person to be a location downgrade. I'm still much happier.

The AFSOC MC-12 variant will have a CSO. So I imagine you'd be set either way.

2. I can honestly say I wouldn't be where I am without CAP. I also wouldn't be where I am without my ROTC detachment, but both contain a lot of elements that look uber-silly in retrospect. Basically taking queep way too seriously.

11 year thread bump. (Is this the right place?) CAP is going even more full retard aping USAF PA style press releases about shoe clerkery.

I don't see it. You know what sucks about being in AFGSC? The nuke exercise/inspection schedule. NOREs. NORIs. DNSIs. Something every 6-9 months with preparatory wing-level exercises sprinkled in between. We could really get a lot of good training done if it weren't for all of the inspecting. But none of that will affect the B-1 dudes in the slightest. Other than that, I've been pretty happy with the leadership in AFGSC... People mostly from B-1 backgrounds by the way (Kowalski, Wilson, Vander Hamm, Clark). [Caveat: I've been at Minot for 69%+ of my time in the community and missed the Mike and Andy Show at KBAD.] The B-1 wings are not going to be any less of a priority for AFGSC/A3 than they were for ACC/A3, and I'm guessing they will be a significantly higher priority for AFGSC/A4 than they were for ACC/A4, which could only be a good thing. It's not like switching MAJCOMs is going to put a firewall on their phone lines that keeps them from crosstalking with (say, as in your example) the F-15E dudes about data link standards/TTPs while they're figuring out SB16 integration. And I for one would be thrilled to have more dudes with a conventional focus peopling the staffs at 8 AF and AFGSC/HQ. I guess the proof will be in the pudding.

On the other hand, Barksdale is close enough to Dyess maybe they can get a few more flying staff jobs... Just reimburse them for mileage.

Huge "Two" on that one. Dehumidifiers come standard at Al Dhafra. I don't know why the Deid is too cheap to put them in all the CC rooms.

"Opportunities." Yes, if you are a rated officer you are liable to do an ALFA tour at some point... That could include being a CSO instructor at Pensacola or being an ALO somewhere (I know strike guys were preferred, but as of a few years ago they were still taking people from anywhere... to include E-3/E-8/RC-135). F-15E/B-1B WSOs can also do tours in the Growler, but it's extremely limited and I don't know if it gets you ALFA credit.

Whoa whoa whoa... 53 year old jet. Huge difference.

I heard someone in my squadron say that your AFPC functional is like a squadron scheduler that doesn't have to look you in the eye every week. Sounds about right.

Ironically, our own BQZip made the list despite having separated several years ago...

One related field you could consider is airline dispatcher... Low-ish starting pay (high $20Ks I think?) but good benefits (including non-rev travel) and it can get up to the $80Ks after a couple of decades. Not a great job by itself probably, but in conjunction with troughing for your unit it's probably a good deal.

And B-52.

Would your selection then carry over to the Reserve component, or do you have to recompete at the Reserve board?

More like 6 months... "Free" food is available at the Andersen DFAC, temporarily relocated inside their officer's club while they do major repairs. The quality of the food leaves much to be desired. For my most recent deployment they didn't have a short order grill at the temporary facility (since rectified), so you didn't have the bread and butter of deployed dining (omelettes at breakfast and "midnight meal"), and you'd routinely see things like ants crawling on hamburger patties and a lack of condiment options. One of our Electronic Warfare Officers actually got salmonella eating there (don't believe me? it's in the 8th Air Force Bomber Force Improvement Program report). They got a 0% satisfaction rating on their own customer surveys. Most people did cook for themselves or eat out, using the $3.50 a day per diem that is standard for OCONUS incidentals when lodged on base. The thing you have to understand about Andersen is that we deploy there for 6 months, but the base is barely resourced to support its own permanent party airmen. True... The last B-52 OEF deployment ended in May '06. Of course, no one knew that at the time. Steady-state CAS ops had been supported by both BUFF and BONE squadrons on a rotating basis out of Diego Garcia for several years, as had the deterrence mission against North Korea based out of Guam (initially in response to specific DPRK provocations in '03 and permanently starting in '04). The B-1s were able to start operating out of the Arabian Gulf starting in '06, which requires one less air refueling to provide the same amount of time on station and they could carry more J-series weapons (the BUFF can only carry 1760 weapons externally until we get our 1760 Improved Weapons Bay Upgrade in two years), so they've carried the GWOT mission and us the Asia-Pacific mission ever since. Additionally in late '07 we had the "unauthorized transshipment of nuclear warheads" from Minot to Barksdale, so we shifted focus (painfully, but necessarily) primarily to the nuclear mission for a few years... In '09 the B-1s got the Sniper pod, giving them a Bomb on Target (BOT) CAS capability that we lacked (outside of our Reserve squadron) for a bit longer. So, long story short, lots of reasons we haven't been in the GWOT fight for some time. I wouldn't make a drop night decision based on this though. For one, the Afghanistan CAS mission is inevitably going to wind down at some point and you'll start to see the B-1 get phased back into the Continuous Bomber Presence rotation to gain experience in that AOR. For two, my personal experience, I was an AWACS nav before I came to the BUFF... When I dropped the mighty E-3 in '07, we had been out of the desert since '04. Less than 18 months later I was flying OEF sorties out of Al Dhafra. Stuff turns on a dime. Well, other than Guam and England, we periodically go back to Diego Garcia to check things out and make sure the taxiways haven't shrunk. We also go to Darwin, Australia about once per CBP deployment. Being a "Global Strike" platform we train in a lot of countries on long-ass sorties thanks to air refueling. My OEF "combat" sorties in the E-3 were all shorter than many of the training sorties I've flown in the BUFF doing CBP (and a few out of CONUS). Cons: Lack of immediate combat deployment opportunity. Compared to the F-15E and B-1B, a lack of opportunity to employ weapons right away, since you have to progress from the Nav seat to the Radar Nav seat. (You come out of the FTU technically qualified to occupy both seats, but our Vol 3 restricts performance of left seat duties by an Inexperienced Dual Seat Nav, er WSO, when carrying weapons to only doing so under the supervision of an Experienced WSO or instructor. In the ops squadrons this basically amounts to the "traditional nav/traditional radar nav" program, except with a local upgrade.) It sounds like this may change in the near future per the discussion above (I got independent confirmation from a former B-52 Sq/CC this morning), but who knows... They literally dropped the nomenclature change on us (Radar Nav --> WSO) in the dead of night last week when the new RTM came out, without really explaining or hinting at a long term plan for rewriting the crew CRM. Additional Cons: PRP/Nuke mission. I'm honored by the responsibility, and I think it's neat to have my name on a letter saying I can accept custody of nuclear weapons (only ACs and Radar Navs can say that), but the number of exercises and the amount of preparation for them take away from proficiency in the conventional mission i.e. the one we're a lot more likely to actually have to do. Also less opportunity to crossflow out and try other things once you have a Nuclear Experience Identifier (NEI). Pros: One of the few platforms where a CSO can employ weapons. A lot of upgrades and new weapons coming down the pipe (1760 in the bay, OAS CONECT updates our bomb/nav computer system significantly allowing for BLOS retargeting of standoff weapons and Link 16 messages via JREAP-A, Laser JDAM, SDB, JASSM-ER, LRASM, some tweaks to our EW suite, and down the line, a new radar... potentially an interim strapon radar pod along the way too). For the Electronic Warfare Officer, they get to be a lot more man-in-the-loop with jamming than the B-1 DSO does (if you're a "pride in your art" kind of guy). CSOs of both flavors can upgrade to Mission Lead and eventually Mission Commander (usually only the Weapons School dudes that do the latter). Neutral: Location... Depends on your preferences. Out of the FTU I wanted to stay at Barksdale, but I got Minot and I'm glad I did in retrospect. I love it here. There's a higher level of camaraderie and esprit de corps in the ops squadrons here, and I really fell in love with the town and the region. Barksdale obviously has the advantage of being relatively close to Dallas, New Orleans, Little Rock, etc., but I hated the summers there more than I hate the winters here. For the B-1 dudes, it seems like the opposite is the case... Most dudes want to go north (to Ellsworth) and not stay south (Dyess). I've played it both ways in my career... Initially picked E-3s largely for location, and I indeed loved Oklahoma City, but the nav doesn't hold a lot of mission responsibility in that community and is being phased out over the next decade. Re-picked B-52s for the mission, and while I would never see myself choosing to live long term in Shreveport or Minot, the advantages have outweighed the disadvantages. So wherever you go, I recommend you drop based on mission rather than location.

Sweet Mary... Didn't we try that in the 1970s? Is this their solution to Pensacola CSOs struggling with basic navigation/time control? Let them gain their airmanship in the *left seat* first? I wouldn't believe you, except I know you're in AFGSC and the fact that they dropped most of the degraded ops currencies in the latest RTM makes what you're saying sound strangely plausible.

Damn you Butters.You made me look.

Coming from the other multi-specialty crewed bomber, but having watched a BONE AC prep for a single-ship Mission Lead upgrade sim at Pawnman's former squadron, the B-1 guys are doing it right. In the BUFF we don't have a single ship ML qualification, so on single ship training sorties (mind you, we train primarily to employ in formation) the AC nearly always fills that role by default (barring the occasional uber-passive AC losing the Darwinian charisma contest to a more experienced Radar Nav) relying on training of widely varying quality. I've seen it go both ways: sometimes you see ACs with the "the squadron is a flying club" mentality (vs. "we're here to get better at employing the jet as a weapon system") lead mission planning as basically a set of meetings ultimately driving toward accomplishing the required motherhood and having a basic plan to go up and run some checklists, configure the right switches, and simulate the right weapon releases to log the right RAP bean... the offense team and the EWO plan in a vacuum between these meetings, and on execution day the Pilot Flying honors the calls of the compartment (offense or defense) that yells the loudest, rather than honor the ALR/threat plan/commit criteria. It isn't 5 people working toward 1 plan; at best it's 5 people with partial SA on 1 plan, and at worst it's 3-5 different plans. I've also seen ACs who set out to learn something, plan target back, and actively "push the noodle" toward everybody doing their part in the common plan. And actually, I'd say our FAIPs usually fall moreso into the latter group (because they show up ready to learn, with something to prove), while those that started as co-pilots are more of a mixed bunch. But the bottom line is we don't do them any favors by not consistently training them up in a ML role until FLUG... And even after that, we usually don't qualify people on the LOX as MLs (multi-ship ML that is) until they are in WIC spinup, which has a number of perverse effects including (1) we ask our CSOs, the EWOs especially, to start talking and leading way too late in their first ops assignment, and (2) it reinforces a perception that tactically-focused continuation training is for patch wannabes, not the squadron as a whole (mind you, this perception probably wouldn't exist if we hadn't been out of combat and mainly nuke exercise/inspection focused for the last 8 years). Bottom line: In a crew aircraft, someone has to push the noodle and know the *entire* plan, not just their crew position-specific piece of it... Whether that's the prior FAIP AC or FL dual-hatting as ML or it's someone with CSO wings doesn't matter. They just need to step up and do it (and have the requisite training to not muck it up).

Heard a rumor the other day that the brass is thinking about moving CSO training back to Randolph... Based on fewer good weather days at NAS Pensacola, advertised cost savings never materialized because the Navy pulled out of the program, and the Navy wants their buildings back. Anyone hearing the same? I find this fascinating as the B-52 community is about to end its 6 year experiment in dual qualifying n00bs as navs/Radar Navs (never fully embraced in the ops squadrons), which added to this Randolph talk is proof that if you wait long enough, everything old is new again.

Don't have a number, but anecdotally from my last Sq/CC (who had come in from being on staff at STRATCOM) "you'd be surprised." Apparently the demand for O-6 staff officers exceeds the supply of graduated squadron commanders. I imagine it's harder to pull off though.

I'm guessing their T.O. describes describes the wavelength detectable by Sniper but omits the wavelength of the IR strobe used by the ground dudes. At least that's the case for the BUFF.

Heard from one of the B-2 bros deployed out here that they staged a flash mob at the Andersen BX food court the other day... SMH.

I'm jumping the gun a bit, but the info I found on the write off on the IRS website specifically addressed writing off mileage expenses. Is there a way to write off actual airfare, or do I just claim the mileage as if I drove even though I didn't (i.e. does the mileage have to be "actual mileage," or is it more like the standard mileages DTS computes)?