Bigred

From the outside looking in it seemed like a sweet gig. 1LT and Capts flying all over the world, collecting per diem, and doing some pretty cool, also some boring, stuff. Can’t speak to long term prospects within AFSOC but I think it would be a fun assignment.

Never said squadron, and never said it was in the Air Force. I’ve been in the military over 20 years. My point about good SNCOs still stands.

I’m taking a swag and will assume you’ve been in ops squadrons most of your career? In my whopping 3.5 years in the Air Force, I’ve gathered that ops squadrons tend to have minimal to virtually zero enlisted. There’s not much need for an E-8/9 when there may only be 4-5 E’s running around. Contrast that with mx, force support, SF, and you have a ton of enlisted to few officers. The E-8/9 needs to be there Having run a maintenance department where I had ~200 enlisted working for me, a good SNCO was a godsend. E-8/9s definitely have a place.

Not only do you get a new kid, but an exciting new STD! It’s a win-win?

Navy allows the member to choose run, bike, or swim, regardless of age. That said, I always found it easier to get a high score with the run. The bike and swim are crazy easy to pass but difficult to get a good enough score to only do the PRT once a year.

Beats me, I just found something that said AAD are required for O-6.

AFPC still shows it as required on their site.

I should be surprised by these stories but unfortunately I’m not. It’s sad folks like that get into command positions.

Genuinely curious, do some commanders tell their folks there’s nothing good on the outside? I was on the fence a few times in my career and it wasn’t ever a conversation of not having opportunities on the outside, it was just a discussion of various options and the pluses/minuses of each. For me, I’ve stayed in because the flying is awesome. Surprisingly they keep promoting me but I’m still in the cockpit almost 20 years later!

The best part is California is further reducing the NEM credits for new customers in April. It makes sense from the utility’s perspective, the mandate for solar on all new homes, plus the encouragement for solar on existing homes, has reduced the utility’s cash flow. They’ve gotta make up for it somehow.

California requires solar on all new homes, but the builders tend to put the minimum legal requirement on the houses so solar doesn’t really 100% cover the usage. That said, as I’m experiencing first hand, my utility bill and solar payment combined is significantly lower than if I only used power from the grid. I’ve only had solar for not quite a year but so far it seems worth it.

The cynic in me says that it’s not that the Air Force can’t figure out how to do it, it’s that no one applied hence are physically unable to do it. In true Mother Blue fashion, they are kicking the can down the road vice admitting defeat.

You pretty much nailed it. The MEU, and the ARG/ESG by extension, doesn’t rely on any CV support. The concept that everyone’s job in the Marines, regardless of specialty or expertise, is to support the private with a rifle. That same mindset and focus doesn’t exist in other branches. Accordingly, the Marines organize and conduct themselves in a way to achieve that primary goal.

That’s pretty cool and that looks like it’d be fun to fly. Like how the carrier had to modify flight deck ops to accommodate the V-22, the amphib could do likewise for this. As you said though, that train has long since sailed from the barn. The Marines got stuck (or asked for) the -35B and the rest is history.

Great potential for an ‘interesting’ solo party…

I have a pretty good understanding of the MEU concept considering I used to directly support the MEU. The Marines need something capable of being able to provide air support to the ARG/ESG, both overwater and overland, natively from the amphib. The Harrier is getting long in the tooth and the only option the Marines have is the F-35B. Is it overkill for the mission? Probably, but what else is there? When it’s stated that the Marines use vtol to land on the beach, they obviously have no idea how the Marines use the Harrier and the 35. If the doctrine has changed I’ll gladly admit I’m wrong, but I doubt it’s changed that much in a few years.

😐

You obviously don’t understand the point and objective of amphibious warfare.

PM sent

I doubt it’s a cost thing because the Navy doesn’t require 10 years, and I doubt they have the WalMart brand F-18s just to save money. When I was in Navy flight school, after winging helo guys only had a seven year comittment, everyone else had eight. They changed it to eight for everyone around 2006-7. If I were to guess, the AF set it at 10 because they felt that’s what they could get dudes to agree to without negatively impacting accessions. I know if I was 22 and told I had to sign a 20 year contract, I have said hell no.

That just sounds like a copilot but with extra steps. If the AF was gonna go to the trouble of training and manning a squadron with a co-Nav, then might as well go ahead and put an actual copilot in the seat instead.

Something overlooked is the single seat vs crewed aircraft mentality. I’ve flown some version of crewed aircraft since 2007. This year I switched to a single seat airframe and I just finished a T38 qualification. The stick and rudder was fairly easy, however the part that absolutely kicked my butt was getting past 15 years of crew mentality. That included things like not having the other dude talking on the radio, setting up approaches, running checklists, dealing with emergencies, etc. In a perfect world, a single pilot can fly the -46 without issue. When shit gets busy, it’ll be sketch at best, to downright dangerous, for that pilot to deal with the issues happening with the jet, and this whole experiment is geared towards the SHTF scenario. Without a lot of practice, I’d hazard to bet the guy flying the -46 by himself will have some subconscious crewed aircraft habits creep back in, which could be disastrous. And no offense to booms, I’ve flown with some really sharp dudes, but a boom isn’t the same as a pilot. The boom can help but it’s not the same as having another pilot in the seat. TLDR; crewed to single piloted ops is not as simple as it seems.

Learning has occurred, thank you.

i was stationed in USAFE during the entirety of COVID and sat in on wing and UK level discussion about vaccinated airmen. I can say it was less about having folks vaccinated to prevent illness and more about meeting myriad restrictions on entering various countries. For a while, we only had a few crews who could go to any country and that was mission impacting. I say all of that because I would imagine a big part of the CENTCOM rule was so personnel didn’t deploy (assuming the HN even let them in country) and get stuck in mission limiting quarantine because they didn’t meet HN requirements.