VMFA187

In the Marine Corps Hornet community there are single and two-seat squadrons. Our East Coast Hornets and now all going to composite single and two seat squadrons. This is not occurring because of a better way to manage flight time on the few flyable airframes, but simple because there are not enough company grade officers to fill all of the ground billets so WSOs are now going to squadrons where there will likely be no jets for them to maintain currency simply to do ground duties. Picked up my DD-214 this morning.

The tail hook being extended on short final corroborates the stories I’ve heard saying it was initially a single engine approach. Taking a trap is SOP anytime we’ve lost an engine.

Years of overuse and a replacement that is over a decade late...

I think it has something to do with general work ethic. We have had the same lady work at the front of the simulator building for probably 20 years and she generally has a pretty decent read on all the students. She was talking to a few IPs and mentioned how she's noticed a significant decrease in practice time that studs are putting in when they're not hard scheduled when compared with just five and ten years ago. That being said, I do think the students have more to learn than I did only seven years ago. Most of my A/A syllabus was notch-to-defend with a brief into into drag. For PGMs I had one flight devoted to GBU-12s and 38s. They're introduced to significantly more than I was at the same point in my career.

That’s about the performance levels we’re seeing at our fighter fleet replacement squadrons, or FTUs. Performance markedly lower all around than what was typical 6-10 years ago.

I need to know this as well.

That article went viral in USMC fleet squadron ready rooms. Our leaders are either manipulating facts to a point rarely seen or just straight up lying. We have a fleet F-18 squadron deploying in less than three weeks with an average of 2-3 hours per pilot in the last 30 days. They had a single flyable jet Friday. Flyable, not mission capable.

I'm surprised you guys haven't begun to target separating Navy and Marine Corps fighter pilots. There are a huge number of dudes with gold wings dealing with all of the problems you guys are, who get zero bonus and average about 3-5 flight hours a month. I am by no means trying to say you guys don't have it bad, just bringing to light that there is an experienced pool of dudes many of whom would almost certainly agree to transfer to a similar platform if they simply got to fly more, let alone got a (small) bonus.

I agree with you. Its not worth the cost when you evaluate what you must give up for VSTOL capability. But it does give you some nice flexibility in very specific circumstances.

No argument there. We would've prevented the massive decrease in flight hours across the board in the TacAir community which has occurred since 2012 if we had purchased the Rhino as a stop-gap - Could have picked up some additional nice capabilities as well. We went all in with the F-35 and the Marine fighter community is getting absolutely decimated with retention issues because of the resultant delays. I know the AF has their issues, but if you combine all those with the fact that dudes are flying four to six times a month on top of all the other "Every Marine a rifleman" garbage and its not hard to understand why dudes don't want to do this anymore, or at least in this uniform. Concur, the F-35 does provide us a significant increase in capabilities... As should a plane that is decades newer than the ones it is replacing. It just could've been "more" without VSTOL. Doubtful. I don't think the USMC has nearly enough influence on the Navy for that. That being said, there is an advantage that will hopefully never be realized in having the ability to stage fifth gen assets on something other than just the big deck carriers with VSTOL when our adversaries are proliferating ASBMs like the DF-21/26.

Still disappointed we didn't just opt to buy As and Cs and leave the B completely out of the project. I don't know anyone who has placed B > C when they've put in their request for TX.

Saw this posted elsewhere. Anyone able to vouch for its accuracy?

Springer, she sure is cocked up at that speed. Can’t imagine she liked a 1C fight very much, but I bet it was a hell of a lot of fun.

... As long as the ejection seat works.

I'd take the chance. ... Or were you referring to OBOGS issues?

Would've killed to have flown fighters at any point from the '50s through the '80s.

Piss away. Everyone pull out your #skyart and let's get to measuring. While I agree, the benefits of training to A/A are magnitudes greater than any other type of mission set when it comes to developing all aspects of a pilot in fighter aviation. So while some communities may be on the B-team (or C-team if you look at USMC legacy Hornets) when Chinese hordes launch, training to that level and mission set has immeasurable benefits.

I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but it’s an easy item to cover in the brief - “Don’t use your ing left hand to fix your position.” And they’re pretty decent about it. Sure, they’re always 800-1,000 lbs below lead, but that’s more on account of sawing the throttle throughout all phases of flight. The Navy has 10 or 15 tacform flights in the T-45 devoted solely to... Tacform. The geometry is the same in the Hornet.

Throttle management should be a discussion for classes, chalk talks, and briefs. Every F-18 Cat 1 knows not to select Max to fix a sucked position, and they’ve never flown in an aircraft with AB prior. A trainer doesn’t need AB, awesome to have, sure. But certainly not required. I’d rather them get trained up on a synthetic GPS based radar to learn the proper division between form, sensor, and comm before showing up in a true fighter.

Sounds like something from the first of the series of Matrix movies. Would love to know more how they plan to do something like this with an 18 year old. Playstation and XBox involved?

Of course.

Last I saw it was closer to $10 million to get a dude to show up to a fleet squadron as a wingman not even qualified to fly into combat. Granted, that’s in an F/A-18 but it can’t be too significantly different. I’d say you’re overestimating the number of fighter pilots you get for $600 million by a factor of 10. Which makes your argument even stronger.

It'd probably be cheaper, easier, and more effective to give the CAF dudes more incentive to stay. The result of this, if implemented, will have a terrible effect on the fleet gun squadrons (or whatever you guys call them).

Forgive me if I don't have this correct, but the premise is that high performing dudes in T-6s will go straight to F-15/16/22/35? What about the dudes who perform well in initial flight training only because they have a ton of flight time? I know countless dudes who selected tailhook (T-45) based on that premise and attrited because they didn't have the capacity to do the basics required in fighter aviation. I can see all sorts of issues with this approach if it comes to fruition. We're already seeing a decline in capacity of our average Cat 1 Hornet pilot showing up to the RAG compared with five years ago. I couldn't imagine what it may look like for you guys with this implemented.

I think the link was on Pinterest or Etsy in our Tac Chat.