FLEA

Wasn't meant to illustrate nKs travel habbits. It was meant to illustrate mortality is a dumb measure. Countries report their own mortality and do so by their own standards. It's more than likely not a priority of decision makers to save every last human being either. I don't give the President a pass on anything. But I expect peopled charged with making important decisions for our government should have a minimum of critical thinking skills. If you can't recognize that their are different social, cultural norms, testing procedures, kits, mortality determination criteria, or age demographics in a geographic region that are going to dismantle your criteria for measuring success you need to be called out for that.

Depends what your goals are. Do you think nK is doing the best job in the world at handling the virus? They have "0 casualties." I can give you a national strategy that would give you 0 casualties too. Everyone stays in their house. Noone leaves. You have to farm your own subsistence in your back yard. Everyone essentially goes off grid for the next year. There you go. 0 Casualties. But were you successful? What happened to your stagnated economy and factories that just went empty for a year? How will your children compete in an increasingly technical world when they missed an entire year of fundamental education during some of the most important development years of their life. How will you justify the importance of free democratic principles when you clearly made an argument that they are flawed and not always appropriate. How will your adversaries react to those actions? How do you fix the wealth gap you created as the stalled economy barely had an effect on the super rich but disproportionately effected the disadvantaged? Are you just going to keep paying people stimulus checks? Where is the money going to come from? Noones working. Who's paying taxes? What happens to your infrastructures? Interstate commerce? Exchanges? Transportation? Its a poor measure. You can certainly find limited value in it but it is not close to the best.

Ok man. You raise some good points but statistics and critical thinking. It should be of no surprise Florida will have a higher casualty rate than any other state with COVID. Let's look at the demographic mean of Florida and make some educated staff estimates. Casualties are a stupid metric to use in measuring the effectiveness in handling a crises. If that's tough for anyone on this forum to swallow they probably picked the wrong profession as military officers.

I hate knowing this but I think this is a battle we (pilots) are going to lose.

Remember when Democrats got pissed that Republicans beat them to the punch on a $1200 unemployment insurance check to curtail economic collapse for the economically underprivileged?

I think we are all aware of that but the accomplishment itself is a huge step forward. This is a lot farther than teaching a computer to beat a chess champion. A computer learning to navigate a 3 dimensional space is a pretty significant step forward.

And I would immagine what the drone lacks in sensory/data collection can be partially made up for in greatly enhanced performance characteristics. From what I gathered from the video the AI was flying another F-16? But a purpose designed drone without life support, pink bodies, ejection seats, glass canopy, displays, etc..... Opens up some advantages in airframe design for sure.

Actually looked myself up as well and it was 193 for me, went to Corpus for phase 3 and had a few BIT rides due to aircraft mx.

Might have been sooner than you expected because I only remember getting slightly more than 100 in phase 2 and 3 each before I graduated and they was in 2011.

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/512938-trump-asks-supreme-court-to-let-him-block-critics-on-twitter This is super interesting to me. It has implications beyond just the office of president. For example, the Army just faced a ton of backlash for using the social media platform Twitch to target their recruitment efforts towards adolescents who are into video games. They began banning users who started trolling the stream with comments about war crimes committed by the US military. This was found to be unlawful by several watch dogs as a first amendment violation.

Doesn't matter. You don't think Obama lied? Bush lied? Clinton flat out lied and was impeached for it. Boris Johnson lies. Merkel lies. The King of Thailand is about to lose his throne largely for telling a lot of lies. Noone uses the office of the US president as a credible source of information. If we did we wouldn't have fact checkers. Noone cares if a head of state lies. It's expected with the position. My point to all this is people are trying to illustrate a case that Trump is bad for the country because he is immoral and anti constitutional, yet the reality is those aren't things voters look for.

Hahaha. Yes, I read my initial response and it was completely senseless. Rather than try and piece it together, just call knock-it-off until my brain is 100% again. Anyway, my general opinion is any discussion Trump has of a third term is brought on by the Democrats. They made this an issue by literally handing him the justification with what we really need to recognize was their own election tampering in the form of inappropriately using federal investigation as a tool to damage an opposition presidential campaign. I would bitch too if I felt my entire first term was hampered by deep state political appointees who can't get with the program and realize the republic lawfully instilled new leadership and its completely immoral to believe you can sabotage national policy at the tactical level by hampering White House direction. They are all demons at the top and there are no moral actors. Trump was exactly right about one thing though. He absolutely could have walked in the middle of Time's Square and murdered somebody in broad daylight and still got elected. Joe Biden could do the exact same thing and guess what? His base is still going to vote for him. We need to filter out the discussion on corruption, morals, anti-constitutionality, etc.... because the reality is as voters, by and large, people don't really care. They are voting on the President for action and policy, not for moral judgement. Every discussion of "but he inappropriately said this" or "this photo came out" is white noise that really has no bearing on the candidate. Especially when both candidates are both god awful human beings. Trump won't get a third term because too many power hungry politicians at the top of the RNC will want their shot at office and they wont give him a third term nomination no matter how much he stretches the constitutionality of it. It really isn't important to pay any attention to his discussion of it. He will leave office because an entire working class of government officials including the Secret Service, under Hippocratic oath, will still do their part and ensure he leaves.

Edit: I'm drunk. I'll reattack when I'm sober.

GREAT point and why we should be evaluating against the vul 2s and honest with our grading. There is a bigger picture outside of one guy or gals career.

90% a noone cares but evaluators do talk and almost always sit on TRBs so it will help your consideration for upgrades. Also worth noting some communities hand these out more regular than others, which means if you apply to a for hire flying board like U-2 or B-2 they may be taken with a grain of salt, may not. Just depends how they are doing their hiring and who is reviewing the FEFs. I guess what I'm getting at is, it's great you got these! It means you are doing well, studying like you are supposed to and you should be confident in your ability to progress in your flying career. However, my overall point being don't expect these to be some mystical rocket ship that catapults you to special operations fighter pilot or general officer overnight. Take it more as a sign to continue what you are doing and you will be rewarded with more positive things in the future.

Are you talking about the MAJCOM course or the new AETC course. Because I've done the AETC one and it was phenomenal. It needs to be taught at ROTC, SOS and at least once or twice more in there. Summary of the course: "How to be a better human being to people."

Let's be clear, the important point to emphasize is the USAF is not just paying you to fly airplanes. We have Delta and United for that BS. They need you to take a plane and utilize it as a weapon system, which is going to be impossible without a little vault study. You're a military officer first which means your first obligation first and foremost is learning how to kill enemies and break their shit or resupply good guys and keep the fight going as long as possible.

https://edition.cnn.com/2020/08/12/politics/fbi-investigating-air-force-helicopter-shooting/index.html Discuss....

You would mostly be wrong on that assumption, but you should ask someone who's worked extensively there to fill you in.

Interesting thought but those missile attacks had a pretty definitive precursor. Funny that we would put families in Korea and not in Qatar.

Wtf is the reason for this. "Continuous reassesent of personnel needs" wtf is that supposed to mean? My guess is with shit winding down they no longer see continuity as important in the ME and they are trying to save money on PCS'ing families. Still, this is shitty. All those 365s the AF worked to get rid of are essentially returned now.

CGOs? Shit man I'm a Major and I still get concerned with any confrontation with a SMSgt or above. But you are right, we do put SNCOs on inappropriate pedestals. The whole base will stop for a MAJCOM or NAF command chief to come visit, its insane to me. But I did become a heavy proponent fo her advice on taking the classic "listen to your SNCOs" with a grain of salt and it is now apart of every feedback/mentoring session I do. "Hear what they have to say but make the decision you think is right. Ask other sources as well, including your peers and your predecessors." One problem as well with the whole SNCO mentality is it alleviates other officers, especially the commander, of their major responsibility to be involved and mentor young Os. You should be getting your most sage advice from those that have been in your shoes, not someone on a completely different career path who isn't privy to the adversities you are facing.

Had a non-aircrew friend who told me as a 2d Lt she firmly rejected the whole "listen to your SNCO's" advice because of shit like this. She realized at the end of the day she was the one in charge and SNCO's are notorious for holding grudges and also trying to exert command when they aren't commanders. Its not to say she didn't seek their advice but she was incredibly wise and taught me a few things about navigating the landscape of enlisted politics as an officer.

It's not whitewashing at all. All I care about is if the strike authority used discrimination and proportionality. In the case of the son, proportionality was applied but discrimination wasn't sufficient due to an inappropriate PID of the correct target. This is a totally plausible situation as PIDs are at their core a probability based assessment that the target is who you think it is. Totally plausible that the son was mis ID'd. Is it tragic? Yes. Is it sad? Yes. Is it a war crime? No, because the threshold only requires that there needs to be an earnest attempt to apply those criteria and from what I know of the Enterprise im sure that took place. We also have to recognize this dude's family was heavily ingrained into AQ and it shouldn't be a surprise to us that his kids are going to be found with their fathers friends and family members who were like minded and that puts them in circles that are high risk. For the strike against al-Awlaki himself, I personally found it to be wrong. The government did not have a strong enough argument to authorize a prejudicial murder of a US citizen without due process.

A tragedy for sure. His son wasn't targeted and wasn't known to be in the cafe when it was struck. Been mentioned multiple times. CIVCAS happens. If you think he is the only American or minor we've accidentally killed in an airstrike you would be mistaken. al-Awlaki's 8 year old American citizen daughter died in a raid authorized by President Trump in 2017. Shit happens man. War is ugly.