HU&W

I was worried when Chang slipped up and was outed. This place never gets boring though.

So, what would you say intel does, other than being the supported unit for CE HVAC?

Persistence in queep. How many times you're willing repeat a quiz or activity that adds nothing to the mission, but advances your career. *correspondence

Mission planning software. It helps us blow up the stuff we want to without running out of gas or hitting mountains.

True. My bet is they put all of them in a single consolidated CSS to maximize efficiency and unity of effort. They'll probably locate the consolidated CSS in San Antonio.

I hope we never have another major war. With the way we treat our warriors, hope may be the only defense that remains.

They won't even tell the passengers. They'll just never open the cockpit door, and the pax won't notice a difference.

No, he wasn't. Early on, Gates needed Jobs vision, and Jobs needed Gates proficiency. Steve Jobs had a natural gift for connecting the dots, and for connecting Gates work to the average person's need. After they split, the readily stole/acquired/supplanted/and even subsidized one another's work for decades. Jobs is definitely a better model for visionary strategic leadership combined with tactical ignorance.

From the mid-70's to at least the mid-90's, Bill Gates brilliance in writing code spawned and then carried Microsoft. As he developed from a tactical leader to a strategic leader, the time and energy he had put into coding became infinitely valuable to him. It provided a bedrock of experience, enabling him to evaluate COAs developed by his underlings, and move the business forward. He may not have proficiency in today's programming languages (I don't know, maybe he does) but he's a master at the language of his profession, at leading and guiding the code writers that he once was. Barring a few crazy outliers, a person doesn't master the language of war without first having been a participant in combat, and not the 'everyone's a warrior' or 'I only had 3 beers a day at the died' kind.

I expected that response, and you are right, that's where we're weak. That still doesn't make large masses of people the AF weapons system, nor does it equate the background required to manage those large masses of people with the background required to win wars. It takes a whole lot more than learning the acronyms in ACSC to understand integrating airpower. Also, you can't just have the Air Force GENERAL officer delegate the portion of a war that involves fighting to his/her Combat SME that happens to be a pilot.

When I was a logistics 2Lt, I led a flight of over 200 people. I dealt with unbelievable discipline issues, a multi-million dollar budget, and complex daily issues regarding the mission of my flight. Had I remained in that silo, instead of switching to pilot, I would have been extremely well prepared to lead large complex organizations. I also would have been woefully ignorant of how to integrate and employ airpower at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels and do the mission our service exists to do. We are not the Army, where the weapons system is people.

DOD IG Hotline is how to file direct with DOD. https://www.dodig.mil/Hotline/hotlinecomplaint.html or 1-800-424-9098. Click on the big Online Hotline Complaint Form in the middle. Letter to Congress will generate a congressional, which will likely get referred to the IG. If you file with your local IG, the form is an AF 102 (note: check yes in block 8 to make sure they can maximize help to you). They will take the complaint, do a quick sanity check of the information to ensure it's not frivolous, assist if they can, and transfer to the IG of the organization against which the complaint is filed if they can't help immediately.

In those seven years, how many times has ACC/A3 accepted the blame for the outcomes of accepting the risk? How many AIB/SIB listed their risk acceptance as Causal? Once we start seeing risk acceptance -> outcome -> blame -> updated risk decision, it'll be more than just words.

Unfortunately, pilots are grossly underrepresented in ROTC and other commissioning and recruiting sources. If we were a presence, perhaps the information would be a little more accurate.

I was that young kid from the poor background. My parents had nothing to give me. I had $70 in my bank account when I enlisted. I completed my degree with TA during evenings on active duty. It took a few extra years, but I'm a pilot with no significant non-mortgage debt. It's definitely possible; you just have to strategically choose your sacrifices to obtain your goals.

Highlighted for irony. MQ9 guys spend more of their time doing the "Air Force's core mission of blowing shit up and killing bad guys" than almost any other platform.

I like the open architecture. That said, what does this contribute to the COIN fight that the MQ-9 doesn't? All weather capability? At what cost, though, both in money and risk to aircrew? I just don't see the juice being worth the squeeze.

You didn't miss anything. Just another scoobs.

TERA is authorized by Congress until 31 December 2018, at the discretion of the service chiefs. Our service chief isn't currently offering it.

fify

They're just lead-turning the pendulum swing. Right after we stop loss, they'll have to do another RIF; probably want to take three years of cuts all at once. I'm just hoping the horse bucks before 31 Dec 2018 so TERA will still be legally authorized by the NDAA.

Super Tuscans are an unofficial category of Tuscan wines, not recognized within the Italian wine classification system. Although an extraordinary amount of wines claim to be “the first Super Tuscan,” most would agree that this credit belongs to Sassicaia, the brainchild of marchese Mario Incisa della Rocchetta, who planted Cabernet Sauvignon at his Tenuta San Guido estate in Bolgheri back in 1944.

Will not happen. Hopefully, because few things could be worse for our nation. There is only one scenario that shakes up the culture of leadership: 1. A legitimate existential threat to the average American way of life that can only be solved by military means. 2. A failure of existing leadership to counter the threat. 3. A failure of their second and third tier like-minded replacements to counter the threat. 4. Great tactical minds emerging as strategic geniuses, who defeat the undefeatable threat and overthrow the previous culture. 5. They become the leaders of a revised military culture that is built around the problems of a new yesterday. 6. The cycle starts again.

For posterity.