Stoker

Don't blame anything but US foreign policy to explain why the North Koreans are going full-tilt in their nuclear program, consequences be damned. Gaddafi ended his nuclear program at our behest and he ended up getting stabbed in the rear with a bayonet and summarily executed, with our blessing. You think we'd have bombed Libya and let it get overrun by militias if they had nukes? Ukraine got the other end of the stick, giving up their nukes post-independence in exchange for territorial guarantees from Russia, the US, and the UK. How's that working out? The last twenty years or so have just reinforced the fact that there are two kinds of countries, those that have nukes and those that don't. The Kim regime is completely rational in pursuing them. The best way for them to ensure their continued reign is a dozen nuclear-armed ICBMs. They can't use them unless they want to be annihilated, but they take the conventional regime change option 100% off the table. No one cares enough about North Korea to risk ten million dead civilians.

This is probably something that could be answered by using the site search feature, or Google, but I'll bite. OTS (basic training for officers, basically) is eight weeks. Technical school is on top of that. If you're trying to become a pilot (this is a pilot-centric website), expect ~18 months of training.

Seems like they're trying to get away from scheduling OTS classes in a way that requires a break. Which, with the program only eight weeks long versus the thirteen it was five years ago, should be a lot easier to do. People who got this September for a class date and are Guard/Reserve are getting to do SERE in early December instead.

https://static.e-publishing.af.mil/production/1/af_a1/publication/afi36-2205/afi36-2205.pdf Section 1.1.6.

No, the age requirement is that you must start UPT by your 30th birthday. The worst cases of waiting for class dates is like 18 months, you should be fine to just apply for pilot.

Anyone know what the turnaround time is lately? I'm at six weeks and still radio silence, with nothing but a Lasik waiver to complicate things. Edit: Just got the call from my recruiter an hour ago that I've been approved. So just under 6 full weeks turnaround time.

Yes, it's waiverable provided you don't have a history after age 13. See page 83: https://www.wpafb.af.mil/Portals/60/documents/711/usafsam/USAFSAM-Wavier-Guide-170601.pdf Don't self-disqualify yourself by assuming you're out of luck. Recruiters might try to tell you something different but keep pushing.

Good lord. You probably scored literally as high as possible without any flight hours.

You're probably going to need to get your PPL before you are competitive for Guard/Reserve fighters. Your PCSM is absurdly high for someone with 0 flight hours, what's your 200+ hour score look like, 99? Don't sweat your GPA if you have a good explanation of why it sucks and why you're different now. The sports participation is a good check in your box for fighters, they like that sort of thing. If you want to fly fighters in the Guard/Reserve, you are definitely young enough to spend the time to visit/apply to units you want to join multiple times. Even if you get rejected in the first few boards, keep coming back to the same units and build relationships. It's definitely doable for you (provided, of course, that you aren't a tool).

All of the -10s have been announced as on the list to be replaced by -46s. Only some of the -135s are.

I just don't see it realistically happening. The KC-46 might, just might, get produced in numbers large enough to replace the KC-135 (though I bet it will be more like a 3:5 basis rather than 1 for 1), but I really don't see Congress funding that, and then the development and production of two more tanker models. They like things that are all-purpose and "efficient."

Given they've spent ~10 years already turning an already mass produced cargo jet into a tanker (when a tanker version already existed), I can see that "clean sheet" development program providing job security for Boeing engineers for decades to come. At what point does someone say, "screw the KC-Y/Z, just build whatever you've got" because the -135s are getting harder and harder to maintain? Better replacement KC-46s that work (presumably) now, than KC-Zs that are 20% better but take 30 years to hit the flightline. I feel like having the KC-46s replace the -10s for an indeterminate period of time really kills the argument that there's a need for a "large" tanker versus a want for one. If we can do without a large tanker for the 20 years it's going to take to get the KC-Z, do we really need one? Obviously less effective/efficient on certain missions, but if we can work around it somehow and also streamline the fleet into one model, is there a need for a new development program?

In this situation, isn't all of the (financial) risk on Boeing at this point? The amount the gov will pay for development has a hard cap, and Boeing's delays have cost the company hundreds of millions as it exceeds that cap. Buying two models might make sense if you have enough volume (or maybe something like we did in WWII, with multiple manufacturers building a common plan and competing on production efficiency), but does anyone really think the -46 buy is going to end up being nearly enough to replace the -135 in any significant sense? I doubt it.

I wonder how different the North Korean arsenal is from what Zhukov had at the gates of Berlin. Most of heavy equipment given to the North Koreans would have been PRC surplus in the Mao years (which means it was likely Soviet surplus the Chinese gave away when they replaced it with more modern stuff). My guess is that it's something like the situation we faced vs. Iraqi T-72s in 1991, where in theory the weapon system could be extremely effective, but defects in application due to it being a crappy locally made copy / ill-prepared crews / lack of ammunition for live-fire exercises / half-charges of propellant in the shells means they aren't worth much in a real fight. Again, not arguing that the humanitarian cost of North Korea firing 10,000 artillery pieces in the direction of Seoul wouldn't be disastrous, but I am highly doubtful of the "Sea of Fire / Seoul will be leveled / millions will die" histrionics. EDIT: Here's an article that sums up what I'm trying to say: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2017/4/25/1656090/-North-Korean-artillery-and-the-concept-of-flattening-Seoul-a-breakdown Just judging from the NK island bombardment a few years ago, they attacked a 2 square mile island from 7.5 miles away, and only half their shells hit the island. Of those that did, a quarter were duds.

I do wonder if the conventional artillery threat is perhaps a bit overblown. Seems like since the Somme people have tended to overestimate the effect of artillery. When the Soviets took Berlin in 1945 they had 40,000+ artillery pieces, likely of comparable quality but with far better trained crews, and literally took the city apart street by street over three weeks, and civilian losses only hit ~100,000. Obviously a Best Korea bombardment of Seoul will be terrible, but most of their pieces are limited to the suburbs and presumably South Korea would be evacuating civilians rather than forcing them to stay put as happened in Berlin.

Yeah, China has no interest in taking over an impoverished dumpster fire. They had enough of that in the Mao years. The PRCs real interest is that they don't want (in their eyes) a US-backed puppet state unifying the peninsula. They saw how that fared for the Russians re: Germany. So long as the US supports South Korea, China will feel obligated to support North Korea, to some degree.

Sounds like you think I was being intransigent when I was simply mistaken. OK, he flew the next day, my hypothesis was wrong (though that article doesn't clearly say he flew in combat the next day, just that he flew).

Perhaps I should have said, given the minimal losses and short duration of conflict with contested airspaces. CSAF was shot down a month before we stopped bombing Yugoslavia, I highly doubt he had time to get back into the cockpit before the end.

I know it was against policy to return to the same theater in WWII. The theory being that if you were shot down over France, for example, and the locals helped you escape, if you returned to the theater and were shot down again you could be pressed for information regarding the people who helped you. Given the minimal losses since Vietnam, I doubt it's happened since then at least.

I think AF Reserve / Air National Guard is considered "the best deal." You get to pick (provided they'll hire you) what aircraft you'll fly and where you'll be based long-term. No PCS every three years (which I'd say is generally a plus, maybe a minus if you're young and single but I think by the end of your ADSC it's 99% a plus). From what I have read the squadron atmosphere is more congenial in the Guard and to a lesser extent the Reserve, versus Active Duty. Lifestyle, you can go part time relatively early on compared to AD and go fly for the airlines, and every year sooner you get to the airlines is theoretically worth something like $250k to you. This is an Air Force -centered forum, you'd probably find better views on the Navy side of things at Air Warriors.

No one expressed a preference for PRK when I was at Wright-Pat a few weeks ago. I had LASIK and there was practically no concern. My guess is that while PRK might be somewhat less prone to complications, all things being equal, I bet the average doc does 100 times more LASIK surgeries than PRK (because of the drastically shorter recovery time) and that volume and experience makes LASIK the safer option. I considered getting PRK when I had my surgery done because I had heard it was less prone to trauma-related post-surgery complications, but where I was imagining getting hit in the head with a soccer ball and losing my vision, the doc said it'd pretty much take a stick in the eye to dislodge the flap created by LASIK. And I don't have the regs, but I could have sworn I read that the minimum wait before UPT was down to six months. Don't quote me on that, though.

From personal experience, you can submit your package to the AFRC board without having an FC1 done. You just need to have passed MEPS. So if you're unsponsored, I think the process would be MEPS -> Board selection -> FC1. When I left WP last week I still had a few tests without results, so I guess if I come back with sickle cell I'm screwed, but other than that yes, you generally know when you leave WP without any issues that you've passed.

Seems highly unlikely, considering how few Reserve fighter units there are and how many well-qualified people apply for their boards.

They didn't "reserve" a spot for me, rather there's a spot in one of the September OTS classes that could have my name on it, provided that I'm gained by the 340th by August 1. And I'm Reserve, not Guard, so no NGB for me.

Asking here because I don't think there's a better place for it, has anyone on the Reserve side sworn in before their FC1 was officially approved? Did my FC1 last week (unofficially passed, but still 3-6 weeks to official AETC-stamped approval). I talked to the 340th FTG today, there's a spot for me in one of the September OTS classes, provided I swear in before the end of this month. But I think the usual way things work is that you wait until FC1 is officially approved before swearing in. Anyone go about it differently?