FLEA

Lol. Heard that plenty from guard bums. Regardless, I do not miss those days (all UAV's / AFSOC) I chuckled a decade later when the AF was suddenly hurting for fighter pilots at the FGO level. I mean like.... they did it to themselves. This is true, but remember that's minority of UPT students who are usually in their early 20s, at the bud of their career, and making decent money for the first time in their life. The last thing they want to do is think about a family, and the dating scene in Omaha isn't for everyone either.

11Rs generally struggle to gain relevance in the flying community. They are continually relegated to bus drivers with little buy-in to the mission, very little tactical mentoring, and low opportunity for career broadening. They also tend to get pigeon holed into assignments because according to AFPC there is 0 transferability from an RC-135 to a KC-135. So unless you really love Omaha you really don't have a lot of future to go anywhere else.

Just curious, asking hypothetically because I was in a very similar position to you with ACSC when I decided to get out as a Major. What would it take for you to do SDE? My personal thoughts were the academic rigor of ACSC online were so abysmal I found it insulting to be asked to expend time on it. I did maybe 1/3 before I decided this was a waste of my time which could be better expended elsewhere. For me personally, I think if the program actually had merit and actually offered meaningful improvement on my understanding of leadership and air power, I may have spent time on it. Some way to enforce completion during duty time would be nice too.

This isn't new. I remember a Su-27 got in a turn fight with an F-22 over Deir ez-Zor back in like 2016/2017. If I remember right, the Raptor pilot tried to call a knock it off by flying straight and level and doing a wing rock but the Su-27 used that to take position on his six and the Russians claimed it as a PR victory that the Raptor wasn't what it was cracked up to be. Stupid fucks. Don't even realize they wouldn't have seen the Raptor if the balls on that pilot weren't brass enough to prevent a global war.

I remember this too but being older and wiser now I'm wondering how enforceable that really is. In other capacities of service you can't actually tell a service member what they can and can't do during personal liberty so long as its lawful. Not saying its not true but part of me does wonder if it was just smoke.

This dude clearly graduated from an advanced level of SERE. Look at this pose 😂 https://fb.watch/kcYC3A7-BB/?mibextid=5Ufylb Everything You Should Not Do In An Interrogation!.mp4

But now I'm rereading your post and I'm wondering if the video is even neccessary...... What if the cockpit stood in the center of a blacked room and only relevant data was transmitted back to the pilot. An artificial terrain floor could be rendered via gis database, and then you could use air to air sensors and data links to generate other players. Ill have to tool around with that idea.

I looked into it before. It was prohibitively expensive due to telecom limitations. Of course I only looked at one way of doing it. Possible someone more engineering minded could figure out a better way of doing it. Basically I imagined using an array of 6 wide angle lenses that would capture a 360 degree view around the aircraft and stream it back with the normal video off the sensor ball and forward tv. The problem is the resolutions that would be neccessary to not create discomfort on the human eye were quite high and bandwidth for streaming video increases exponentially. I don't remember the numbers I ran for but long story short it was going to take like all of the Ku bandwidth in a given geographic area to transmit enough data for a VR headset to stitch a complete picture that moves receptively with a pilots head movement. And that was just for one aircraft.

Honest question but did you mean AR here or VR? Those two are distinctly different but I'm having difficulty imaging how AR would work for ground training by simulating flight. At first I thought you meant maybe they were using AR to produce red air targets or something for fighters but then you said less actual flight time so I got confused.

That was the path CQB followed (7AF->PACAF->CSAF) but its a bit of a jump to suggest that experience as a PACAF or even a USAFE CC yields a thorough understanding of the theater logistics. Under US doctrine we decouple most of the logistics functions from the geographic elements under geographic combatant commanders. So why Ramstein does have some USAFE C-130s at its disposal, their nesting is designed more to support commander priorities that would be otherwise ignored by TRANSCOM who is planning at a global level. So for example, if you are going to perform a JFEO as the USAFE Commander, you would probably want to use your C-130s rather than petitioning TRANSCOM to add it somewhere in their list of priorities--to which you would get a response that's something like: "we will deliver 1/4 of your troops next week, and then a few more the week after, and then the rest the week after that." Well that's not really how JFEOs work..... so clearly that's not really useful. When hiring at the executive level, competence becomes less of an issue because almost all of our O9/10s are probably competent to lead HQ AF. Heck, probably even a few high speed O8s. They have decades of experience in organizational leadership by this point. So a more important facet that comes into play, in my opinion anyway, is suitability/fit. Who is the right commander to lead right now? Specifically, who has the expertise to solve a pressing problem, and be able to articulate that problem to congress in a detailed enough manner that they can secure money for it. At the end of the day, the CSAF's role is to get money. That is really all he/she is--a sales person.

I graduated in 2011 and when I went through you could only use the cockpit mockup pre final contact phase without a flight commander signature. After your mid phase a flight commander has to sign off on it which was shitty because it was actually a great instrument trainer. They weren't inclined to sign off unless you were really struggling. Screened displays were definitely a no no at any point outside a syllabus event. The conversation was basically about equity because not all students had equal access to the sims. Was totally stupid.

Interesting. When I went through UPT sim usage outside a syllabus event was considered a deviation. Glad someone got over that horse shit.

I worked under Wilsbach while he was 7AF commander actually. Going to be honest and your experience may vary.... but I wasn't particularly impressed.....

I've been noticing outlets like CNN and MSNBC are starting to turn on him. Lots of coverage lately about his age. I think the Democrats are probably almost as concerned with Joe Biden running again as they are with Trump running again.

No worries mate and sorry for the mix up. I agree everyone loves a blood thirsty war dog when going to combat, but I have no doubt that a solid ACC commander can pick up the slack from a motivational standpoint while VO works on lobbying congress to get some much needed money to the right programs earlier than another candidate might.

Honestly, I think this matters very little. Van Ovost makes A LOT OF SENSE. A robust knowledge of SEAD isn't going to win the South China Sea. That is literally the smallest problem set there and I'm certain any given weapons officer at any given F-35 squadron is more than capable of solving that for any given MPC. What is much more problematic, and why VO makes so much sense is the logistical problem in the Pacific and the fact that we have a smaller tanker and airlift fleet than we've had historically while planning to fight a war in 5 years thats going to take place over a greater geographic area than any war we've fought in the last 70 years. In in 99% of that geographic area, there is 0 ground lines of communications, effectively incapacitating 1/3 of the entire logistics enterprise. (In reality much more since ground transport can move more stuff cheaper than air or sea transport) Never mind the fact that on any given day any of those key islands we might rely upon for solving that logistics nightmare might just be not there thanks to China's latest advances in missile technology. I know you're a fighter dude and love blowing shit up, but lets face it--if we leave that problem to a Viper dude, there's likely going to be several hundred other fighter dudes sitting on an alert ramp with no gas and no weapons. It would literally take a year and a half for a CAF guy to even get caught up to understanding the problem, much less being able to put any foot forward on defining a solution. Yes learning SEAD and weapons is cool, but what I really need someone to know is what are the primary lines of communication, how many tons of freight can they move, how quickly, during what times of year, how much staging is needed for every single supply depot, what is the capacity at every supply depot before overage and need cargo forward.... Theres an economics side to it, what does it mean when a major port in Singapore puts down a paddock for renovation? How many other supply nodes does that effect on the first, second and third order? I'm not saying any of it is hard and a fighter guy couldn't pick it up. Its not even a tanker versus fighter thing since I'm almost certain most tanker bros cant speak to this. Its more the fact that VO is leaving TRANSCOM and has already spent years untangling the requisite knot in her own head space. If we accept that China is the next big war, and its happening in 5 years, which seems to be on repeat among senior staffs now--then positioning of WRM needs to start happening now and that's not something I think another CQB could handle. He did his big effort which was bringing on the whole AGILE Wing thing. That was a great move to lower the logistics burden and apply some redundant C2. But I honestly think VO is in the best position to solve the next big problem and why a COCOM/CC would be tapped for a Chief role rather than even the AMC commander.

Well, you might be right, I am getting old. They were brand new when I got there 10 years ago. So I guess they'd just be over 10 years now. Either way, in terms of building life, that is not old.

I generally agree with you. But I pivoted into the tech space after the Air Force when it became clear an airline career wasn't going to work well for me, my family situation, host of other factors. I work in a big data and AI space now for a major firm in the US--and I work with some REALLY REALLY BIG BRAINS. One of my new Bobs is a former quant and has a PhD in Data Science and a MSCS in AI/ML. He was the one that told me one day that AI by its nature learns exponentially. Two years ago he was at a University lecture everyone thought the capability of ChatGPT 4 was 10 years away. They were all stunned this year when the latest language model dropped. Its going to come faster than we are ready for because we cant actually grasp in our human minds how fast the exponential learning curve is. This is why you have technophiles like Elon Musk warning that we need to slow down until we can actually understand what that curve looks like. Crazy insights.

Here's Fox's for comparison. Notice the difference in presentation with size and language. Fox also placed Tucker's story higher on the page above the first ad-line which is also telling.

A picture is worth 1000 words.

Yeah for sure. And I know the feeling. My dad was a race car driver. Wild I know. I talked to him a while back about automation, Tesla and self driving cars. Of course he's old and grumpy so he hates the idea. But he concedes that it is a better future. Less traffic accident, faster transportation, no more worrying about drinking and driving, no speeding tickets. Automation will be a traumatic hurdle for us fun loving guys but it will also be an amazing step for humanity. Maybe somewhere in the southwest desert in 100 years they'll have some car amusement parks where you can drive around an old antique by yourself a bit, who knows. BTW, I'm not sure it will even be 100 years. A lot of people believe we've already approached the cusp of AI singularity.

I just remembered Chris Cuomo went out recently (last few years) as well. Is it possible our society is starting to demand journalism integrity via the market? Gasp.....

He was clearly ousted. I wonder what responsibility he bears for Fox's lawsuit. Obviously I know what was aired but how much of what was said was Tucker responsible for? Fox's guilt was implicit with the settlement even if the agreement was partially sealed. Also a bit serendipitous Don Lemmon was fired recently as well. These were two of the most polarizing voices in media. It would be nice if they both permanently lose platform.

Yup. Good range access as well. Also, AMARG will keep DM there for a long time to come. Still plenty of space to fill on the used car lot. And EC-37 transition happening now, ensure basing for foreseeable future. The ECG buildings were all constructed in like the last decade. I don't see them picking up anytime soon.

Its more of a general statement that this pattern of allowing local business committees to lobby pressure on congress to sustain unneeded basing is why you have shit holes like Cannon to begin with. Yes, it is a concern for the local population, but from a national strategy level its a big "not my problem" and maybe you shouldnt have thrown all eggs on your economy into a risk decision as volatile as DoD basing. Bigger picture, this attitude is preventing the DoD from streamlining infrastructure which is definitely needed to control spending.