Hawg15

Formation landings are an unnecessary risk and have no reason to be done. They should be removed from UPT. When shit goes bad there’s very little chance of being able to recover from it. I have only done 1 in the CAF, and that’s only because it was on an old syllabus that no longer requires them.

I agree. There seems to be the idea that experience = good IP in the military. You can be the best pilot in your community, but that doesn’t mean you can teach worth a damn or train someone to be half the pilot you are. There are some totally awesome teachers in UPT, and many who aren’t. I don’t know what the environment is like now, but when I went through you weren’t a young copilot or wingman in the squadron, you were just some student they had to deal with. IFF was the first experience I had that made you feel like you were a part of the team. I just hate when people go around telling the LTs that UPT is the best time of their lives, because for many it’s not. When you're sitting in the suck and hating it almost every minute of it, while having people constantly tell you this is the best part of your career, its very demotivating. Why would someone willingly want to keep going, when you're telling them there is no light at the end of the tunnel?

I couldn’t agree more. UPT isn't a good time. If you find yourself thinking “wow this ing sucks and its supposed to be the best time of my career” like I did, just keep pushing on. Because, I don’t believe its anywhere close to the prime of the job. The people who I usually see saying that are a bunch of OFA who cant even remember if they turned in their 781 from yesterday, and definitely don’t remember 20 years ago. Sure, I made some friends that I still talk to, and had my weekends getting hammered by the pool, but I still do stuff like that. I feel like the people who say its “the best time of your career” just don’t remember the actual experience. Its basic stuff that I find incredibly easy, from the view point of a rated pilot for many years, who isn’t graded every time I fly, or competing for something. It is not easy for someone who is learning the basics, and you are always a few flights, and some FAIP who has no idea what ops is actually like, away from a commanders review. The best time of your career is going to be the LPA at your ops squadron while you’re flying around CT, no grade sheet, just your bros and some jets, actually employing an aircraft. My first month in ops I dropped multiple 82s, shot some $150k mavericks, and over 1,000 rounds from the gun, while my heavy bros were traveling around the world. UPT sucks.

I love planes and wish I could fly them all, but from a practical standpoint I don’t see the need of a tiny, slow, low payload, low range GA plane besides some congressman/general wanting yet another aircraft in their district/command. Cheap, and aircraft don’t go together. If it needs to be done on the cheap, then its not urgent enough to require air transport. Put it on a truck. If we are talking Air Force, C-130s aren’t really that large, and are significantly cheaper to operate than even a “cheap” fighter. As well as there being tons of vertical lift capability across all branches. If AFSOC wants yet another obscure, permissive environment aircraft to do something that doesn’t support the big fight then contract it out. We need to stop trying to structure our military to fight a guy driving around with an AK in his hilux. We have a problem with what our government constantly gets itself involved in, not our aircraft.

That wouldn’t have been very helpful for you now. It’s a good plan B if you may not end up serving in the military when you graduate. Companies don’t want to hire someone for a technical job, who hasn’t been working in the field, with a 10-20 year out of date STEM degree if you haven’t gone back to school. It’ll check the box to be “qualified” to even apply, but it wont get you hired. The only thing your standard officer brings to the table is leadership skills for management type positions. The science and engineering fields are constantly updating and changing. If you don’t start working in them out of college you are already significantly behind.

Organize your drop sheet based on what you feel you would enjoy doing the most after UPT. Trying to play the system or plan for beyond your first ops assignment is pointless and won’t end well. By the time you qualify for any of the weird, non standard assignments they may no longer be a thing, your life will have changed, you may no longer desire to apply for them. As much as I’m sure you and all your buddies in UPT feel you can stick it out for the long game, you will not be okay doing something you don’t enjoy for years, no matter how much you feel you could.

You must not be in the CAF. You’re a bit behind on current military capes, both US and near peer. That being said, the fire control decision won’t be given to a computer regardless of its ability to ID a target. That’s 3/4s of the reason F-35s are manned.

We don’t have the satellite bandwidth to support the current level of drone ops, or even provide all players with satcom, near peers can support jamming datalink and satellite at least in high value areas, and in CAS I can get better SA by looking outside at something than screwing with a pod a large portion of the time. But sure, the days of manned flight are over 🙄

I don’t get the issue here. When you are in uniform you represent the organization you chose of your own free will to work for. If you aren’t a chaplain, you don’t represent religious, personal, political, or any other beliefs while wearing it. If X individual can have a beard without tarnishing the uniform then everyone serving should be permitted as well.

If only there was an aircraft in the Air Force inventory that checks all the boxes, (besides loiter time, which a slick T-6 can’t even do) is designed purely for attacking stuff on the ground, has a significantly longer endurance than any pointy nose, with a proven track record dominating in the COIN and traditional environment. But lets cut their funding and scrap 44 of them. More armed drones sound like a much better use of money than a single engine prop plane that’ll have no standoff and realistically carry maybe 1 or 2 bombs to even make TOLD seeing as it cant AR after takeoff.

I’m not going to post privileged info on a public website, but if you have access or can get a briefing on what actually happened you should. The article leaves out plenty of details on what occurred. There are standard TTPs for a reason.

I like to be bitter and hate on the military like it’s my job, but I’ve read all the safety info as well as watched the flight data from the mishap. There’s plenty of mishaps where events outside a pilot’s control were the main cause, but we can’t pretend they all are. There was a lot of organizational faults that led to low currency and training issues and the crew shouldn’t have been stepped, but a decision to give the tanker a show caused this, not the AR. A standard departure would’ve resulted in everyone going home that night. However, everyone up the chain deserves blame and to face their negligence for how the organization was being run.

The Marine Corps has no room to allow any breach of flight discipline after the air refueling mishap, and they know it. Especially with a commander in public view.

A very holier than thou view you have there. I don’t know this guy personally, but you have quite the bias. I’m not saying he did no wrong, but you act like this is some easy black and white situation. There’s a lot of blame all around for him, the girl, and OSI/the military judicial system. 1. That’s not how possession charges work in the civilian world, and he’s not guilty until proven innocent in the a real court. A psycho bringing shit into your house (especially if you don’t know) does not make you responsible for said psycho. 2. You must’ve never had significant family issues go on, because most people will choose to cling to a turbulent family situation over the military who is also ing you every day (in a bad way) I’ve chosen relationship situations that weren’t necessarily the best course of action over the military plenty of times, and I wouldn’t expect others to act differently with the blinders people have for loved ones. 3. You bring up weapons employment. Have you ever been directly responsible for someone’s death? Ever listened to guys in a TIC begging for help get killed? I don’t know what he was going through, but I haven’t met many people that aren’t heavily impacted by death. They may cover it up with the joking around, but when you have a real heart to heart with the bros it’s acknowledged. I think you would be surprised at the coping mechanisms many people in the military who have those experiences develop. They have no other help that won’t destroy their lives as they know it in their eyes. I couldn’t imagine sitting in a box for 8 hours, killing some people, watching Americans you can’t help die, and then just going home to my family that night like it’s nothing. Especially when there’s family issues at home. The Air Force pretends that they are there for you, but will gladly take your job if you actually seek mental health help for combat experiences. We have plenty of example of it. And there’s plenty of data acknowledging how crippling it can be for veterans. The useless morons in OSI who entrap and crave convicting anyone for anything have plenty of blame in his death. They have no real job, and far too much power. They try to coerce false accusations and entrap people as much as possible. They even sit around at Nellis trying to get people to talk about classified info so they can get you for they. If they were real cops that found her drugs in his house, she would’ve been charged with it, not him for owning the house.

There’s always rank, especially for an O-6+. We can pretend there isn’t all we want, but this is the military and we all know that’s BS. But it sounds like the Viper guys roll around in bed naked together, so maybe they don’t have rank over there.

The military doesn’t want to fix it. You retain experience by matching the benefits they receive working outside the military and making their personal life easy to manage. Someone working a big contract doesn’t need to PCS, they should be paid a comparable salary, don’t send them on random useless TDYs, or live in the middle of nowhere, etc. I know people who get out of the military and then do literally the exact same job for a contractor except they make 2-3 times more, live somewhere great, deployments are half the length, and theres better overall benefits. It is literally impossible to keep anyone that can get hired by then to stay. You can only guilt someone with “service before self” for so long before self and family matters.

Don’t go active duty. Be a full time reservist or AGR. there’s literally not a single perk to active duty over that, it’s why big blue tries to hide them and downplay it. Active Duty

Disagree. The whole sim and VR can replace flight time mentality really bothers me. The sim has its place as an additional tool, but time in the air can never be replaced by it. The hawg community gives students 3 sims to learn how to start the jet and fliP some switches, and then sends them up for the first time because they realize this. From the instrument standpoint, not everyone flies around in glass cockpits, with coupled approaches, and 4 pilots all sitting around staring at the instruments. The first time I flew an ILS to mins on a stormy night with a shitty steam ADI and HSI was nothing like the hundreds of sim approaches, or the maybe 3-4 real approaches I had to take seriously in the jet. It was incredibly uncomfortable. I even forgot to lower the gear until well past the FAF. Now I always treat them as if they are real. I disagree even more that it can be applied to actual mission employment in a meaningful way over flying. Nothing replaces the experience, confidence building time, and feeling the jet and how it responds to environmentals. 90% of most MWS flying is done based on feel with fighters. There needs to be G, buffet, etc. The hours we give pilots in the jet is what makes them superior to other countries. Country’s who’s pilots fly in a year what many of our pilots get in a few weeks. I’m sure this can be applied to heavies too. The C-17 (who’s sims are crippling broken all the time) flies 300’ low levels and does air drop. Sitting in a box isn’t going to make you comfortable at 300’ with a 200’ wingspan, or jumping guys that will die if you do it incorrectly. Nor will it build any confidence landing on tiny assault strips. tldr: Sims augment actual flight time, they can never replace it. Decision making is learned from experience. Practice like you play. (In a real airplane)

In ops your job is to deploy and directly support the down range mission. It’s what we’re paid and train to do. In AETC your job is to train the personnel required to fill those ops positions. You can’t steal from your production ability to artificially inflate numbers on an excel spreadsheet without totally fing it a few years down the road. UPT is supposed to be significantly undermanned, being forced to increase production without increasing manning, and now told they’re supposed to lose more instructors to deployments? What a completely moronic decision. A group os 2LTs could plan the future of the Air Force better than these GOs. I suppose we could just replace them with a few more CBTs and syllabi changes. Oh and VR goggles.

It’s not. That is unrealistic and unsustainable. What we need to do is realize that it takes time and money to train people, and no amount of academics/sims/VR/video games will replace air sense and experience developed in the jet. There’s a reason every thousand hour airline guy who joins the guard smokes all of his UPT classmates, and it’s not because he catches on any faster than a normal person. Either fully commit to training these pilots or stop being yes men to the guy above you and pretending we can increase numbers without increasing money, time, instructors.

That’s “successful” from big Air Force, not the B course IPs. Also, those guys were all hand picked because the Air Force knew they would do well in UPT due to prior experience. They didn’t allow standard students into that round of PTN. Nothing can replace time in a jet. If something could we wouldn’t require hour limits for upgrades.

This. If it requires approval for the points it’s goes like this: “you feeling okay to fly?” “Yeah” “Cleared to step”

I have to agree with this. I’d much rather continue doing our ORM on a dry erase sheet than deal with a computer. Make an excel sheet and enter everything after the crew steps if they want it all tracked. Don’t make my job harder with terrible Air Force technology skills.

I’m talking more phase 3 after the basics of airmanship are learned in T-6s. However, I do believe not having an IP they know will save them helps develop some self preservation (it did for me). There’s a couple formation solos in 38s. I also think they need a nav/inst block containing solo O&Bs (chased by IPs). 38s are training single seat fighter pilots, so might as well train how single seat fighter FTU does. Model it similarly to vipers and eagles with their blend of dual/solo. People still hook in FTU for trying to fly into their flight lead, it just requires an attentive IP. They also do dumb shit like accidentally shoot rockets at their flight lead in the hold too. Students will always find a way to scare you. I don’t really have a problem with the RSU. I think trans should be flown to other local fields after setting the foundation on a few flights in the RSU pattern. From my understanding that’s how the T-1 side does things in trans and nav.

While I agree parts of the RSU pattern are a necessary evil, it is taken to a ridiculous level. When someone is hooked for turning half a section line too early. We do have an outside downwind kind of thing at DM, but it’s requested from tower if we can’t pull closed. Solo doesn’t mean they are by themselves. I see no reason why the majority of formation isn’t flown solo. They could have a few instrument rides dual and a few solo as well. Aft is the learning channel and instruction can be done by the flight lead. At FTU the student’s IP flies chase during transition (when not practicing formation) until they get a form 8. This could easily be applied to UPT. If it’s form they always have a chase, if it’s instruments/trans it can be a mix of both. If we want to make pilots we need to treat them like pilots, not hook them for being 2/10ths of a mile off the outside downwind track or perching slightly late.