FLEA

https://www.defenseone.com/business/2020/07/us-may-need-nationalize-military-aircraft-industry-usaf-says/166894/ Interesting proposal, or more so, the problem set. The F-15EX was highly argued for on grounds to keep Boeing in the fighter game but what happens if they drop out an LM becomes the only supplier?

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/07/14/airman-died-after-his-chute-opened-while-he-was-still-plane-says-new-report.html/amp "In addition to improper parachute assembly, the head of Air Force Special Operations Command said deficiencies and lapses in judgment across the community contributed to the accident. The command "prioritized operations over in-garrison training and predictable deployment scheduling, resulting in stressed units across the command and leaders accepting unnecessary risk for the sake of mission completion," according to a news release accompanying the report." W--T--F--??? I feel like that is a cop out by Slife. Was he really going to promote the next squadron commander who said he had no troops to deploy to a billet because they were tired and didn't have predictable schedules? Yeah ok mate ...

I think his point was there is a difference between "joint" and "Joint". I've heard similar, that less than 1% of officers will get vectors for JCS, other joint staffs like a sub unified command or COCOM are not as highly viewed. When people say you want to shoot for Joint they often confuse this but they mean you need to shoot for big J, not little J. Commanders use the same language on push lines. If joint is written lower case its an indicator to the reader. Anyway, not a commander and not on the path, so just repeating what I've heard. I've also heard In certain communities staff in general is rare and having any staff is a definite positive anymore, even if just NAF or MAJCOM.

Even with things like the DCGS, that is an Enterprise architecture that is equivalent to a group of wing. In combat they would ideally be nestled under the same operational control and the combatant commander's air component commander owns and directs both of them. With the U-28 it's tricky because SOCOM is its own combatant command and AFSOC has their own DGS as well. However they could be organized under the air component of a JTF also. I guess what I would forward going forward is removing NAFs or NAF functions that soley exist to fulfill an administrative role and in the rare case they exist they should exist to provide an Air Force GO to a combatant commander who needs that because his Air Forces are large enough to warrant it.

I would say the NAFs that coexhist as a component command of a sub unified command probably have a small purpose. Korea is a good example where there just needs to be that regional specialty with the OPlan and culture to really make things work. But the vast majority could nicely find a deep grave IMO.

Worth noting that Space Force immediately dropped Group and NAF level their coand echelons. Granted they are very small at the moment but I am sure they anticipated growth when they laid out the structure.

It's why I firmly reject the idea that we are the world's greatest AF. And I'm not saying that in a void. I've worked extensively with 22 partner nations now. Some of the most phenomenal officers I've met were Korean, Australian, British and Italian. We may have the most powerful AF but I think that speaks more to our industry than to us as an organization. But I think its a stretch to say we have the best trained, best mentored, most well managed talent. I think globally, officers in the USAF are probably only slightly above average.

This is the truth and you don't need to look any further than PME options, many of which are only exclusive to fighter pilots and have high vis follow-ons at a specific staff billet. Fighter pilots also have more command oppurtunities and other big stepping stones to promotions. It sucks but your trajectory in the AF is largely determined by your flying performance in year one of commissioning. Edit: Surprisingly I don't actually care and I'm not bitter about this. The longer I stay on the AF the more disfunctional I realise it is and I don't really have the desire to stay on and help unfuck it anyway. So it's probably better I'm shooting for BTZ to civilian.

C2ISR got several bloats. The first was accepting fighter washouts without altering their UPT graduates, hence they have 2 sources of new Copilots. The second was the MC-12 sunset which dumped a couple of hundred pilots into the system without a home. Despite this, they believe their is an impending shortfall any day and therefore the powers that be at AFPC refuse to release anyone to crosstrain outside of 11R except very rare circumstances.

Shack. Aircrew (not just pilots) are the war fighters of the AF. Could you immagine an Army staff with 0 infantry, armor or artillery expereince. A lot of people disdain staff but in all honesty some people really love and thrive in it. For the first time in your military career you get to think big picture/strategic and you can help shape some very large plans across an Enterprise. Definitely not for everyone but for the people that are beat to death from being line IPs year in and out, it offers a welcome change of pace with a new an enhanced skill set. Is it for everyone? Probably not. But when has reducing the number of oppurtunities in a career field ever helped that career field thrive. We need to keep doors open not close them. The pilot retention crisis isnt about people wanting staff, not wanting staff, not wanting RPAs, wanting more UPT jobs, whatever.... The key thread to all of this is that it's really about people wanting a wide array of oppurtunities and a slight a bit of control to vector themselves to where their own interest lie.

Big difference between a quad copter and an MQ-9 or GH. I'm not sure the skill sets are comparable. I would take the RPA position as it overall broadens your resume but have a plan to regain currencies/flight hours in the future. Then you have fall backs.

Colin Noir did a pretty good response on the McCleosky debacle above and what was and what was not within their rights.

I don't think I ever made it past the first verse sober....that's my excuse.

I did. Sorry didn't have the book in front of me. Its just what you said made me realise we fall into completely different schools (in the book you do a quiz at the beggining to determine your closest school of thought) so we are unlikely to find agreement on some of these issues.

Prozac your post reminded me of a book I recently finished. If you get the time check it out. It's called Super Power: Three Choices for Americans by Ian Brenner. It's a non partisan discussion about why our foreign policy strategies are failing us right now. In short, the author outlines 3 schools of thought on FP. The strategy I subscribe to and I think more and more Americans are subscribing to is the best way to garner world influence is to put our own house in order and be a stalwart example of a moral state. But there are faults with this approach and the author does talk about it. The two other strategies are Moneyball and Indespensible America, which focus on calculated advantages or using force to project American values/morals on the rest of the world. The whole point of the book isn't to suede people one way or the other but to present the 3 approaches and get people to pick one because for 30 years we've been trying to do all of them and we are finding out that is impossible.

We dont have a lot of moral high ground on this though considering we did the same thing times 1000X in the 1980s.

Dude that person needs to go eat a bag of dicks. If its on UPT base property, it's 100% fair game!

That made my fucking day.

Have always had respect for most of the people that talk on this forum. I've met very few officers/aviators who are ignorant. Most people have different points of few but I find it heartwarming that there are still some corners of the world where we can have thoughtful disagreements without blocking each other or calling each other racist. It reminds me the world is in good hands still, despite the occasional fuck ups that sometimes rise to authority. Bless all you all!

My friends in Europe are telling me that interpretation is a nightmare right now. Apparently if you go on leave your departing area and your leave area have to be green. But you can travel 8 hours on a 4 day pass. Well no guidance on what rules apply to a pass so they've been using the loop hole to go-to other countries. What gets crazy though is some EU countries don't recognize your SOFA status as EU residency, so they've tried to deport a few dependents back to the US instead of letting them return to Germany, the NL or whatever. It's an utter shit show.

Noone here has forgotten the whole lesson about US involvement in European instability. However, that lesson is receiving heavy scrutiny now because of its cost. And it should receive scrutiny. There are no "natural laws" or "rules" in geo-politics. We should always be adjusting our thought. First off, I'm skeptical anytime mentions US foreign policy and "track record" or "history" in the same sentence. 200 years isn't history. Its a sneeze. China has seen continuous governance under a unified identify for over 3000 years. Sink that in a for a bit because its a bit amazing to think about. Sure they've had overthrows and invasions that took power, but they always remained predominantly identified as a single people (disregarding discussions of sub cultures like the Han, im talking specifically, how long has there been a "place identified as China"). So building trend data off of two events that happened only 20 years apart probably isn't prudent global planning on our part. Second, saying that a secure "Europe" is better for American prosperity is a bit dishonest. Europe is a geographical feature that says nothing about where the global balance of power lies. Pre-WW2, many of those powers happened to be conjugated in Europe. Today? Not a single European player (outside maybe France in the UK as notable exceptions) has global influence. The center of power has shifted dramatically from Western Europe to the Pacific. The top 6 military power centers in the world on the Global Firepower Index all have borders on the Pacific Ocean. (8 if you count Britain and France's Pacific holdings) 6/12 of the largest economies are on the Pacific, including the Top 3, the US, China and Japan. The problem with the above philosophy is it puts WAY too much importance on how much influence Europe has on the world order in modern terms. Third, we tend to have a lens that puts too much emphasis on the WW's as what happened in Western Europe. We forget, that they were global wars, and especially in WW2, most of the fighting did not take place in Western Europe. I promise you the Chinese don't frame their historic perceptions of WW2 as something that mainly occurred in Europe. As our #1 adversary, that should be something that we take important note of. Fourth, having the basic premise that a continent cant organize their shit so we have to occupy and pacify them for our own successful aims just doesn't sound like a good long term strategy. We invest 320K DoD personnel in Europe. That is literally 1/4 of our entire military, on one foreign continent. The largest military in Western Europe is the US military. Think about that for a minute, and then think about what your squadron could do with a 33% manning boost? To quote your terms, why are we spending "on peace and prosperity in Europe" when we should be spending on Peace and Prosperity in the United States, the largest threat to which, is in Asia. I totally understand and hear your point of view. But I find it outdated and irrelevant with what is actually going on in the world right now. I think there is a growing crowd of skeptics that question if Europe is "worth" our investment.

I went to University of Toledo and definitely saw some heavy liberal indoctrination in SOME of my classes. I think most professors are just too tired to give a shit though. But there were 2 classes I hated going to one quarter while in ROTC because the professor would always see me in my uniform and start railing on Bush and the wars in the Middle East knowing that I can't say anything. Was super annoying. Since Toledo was a cross town school and the upper classmen were pretty chill I ended up just not wearing my uniform until I went to lead lab. Worked out ok.

Everyone wants to blame the cops but these aren't problems cops can solve. The largest change needs to come from politicians and city leaders.

Pshh, bro, do you even lift?

Dude absolutely go all in if it's what you want to do. I've been exposed to other AF jobs while doing staff and they certainly have their appeals but I LOVE being a pilot. I love calling myself a pilot. I love that I get five free points of credibility when I walk into a room simply because I'm wearing a flight suit. The AF was built by flyers. Our heritage is flying. Our future is flying.... Well maybe for a short time longer, damn drones. Anyway, being a pilot in the AF is incredible. I've gone more places, met more people and have seen more things than 99% of Americans. You will see a lot of bitching and moaning and people getting out as soon as possible. They are NOT getting out because they hate flying. They are getting out because other aspects of the job degrade their life. All careers in the AF have that issue. As a pilot you are better off because you have a transferable skill set that actually gives you a promising option to get out. Last note, it's possible some people advising you were just trying to manage your expectations, and they are not wrong. Pilot slots are extraordinarily competitive. You should be prepared for a path in life should it happen that you can't get one or qualify for one physically. That said, definitely go all in until that point where you are told it's never going to happen.