Pooter

Not to mention all the civilians we hired to alleviate additional duties now all being offered paid separation.. and their positions will not be able to be backfilled. I'm sure that will be a boon for morale. But I will say, I think we can find some room in the budget if we can be honest with ourselves about our biggest, dumbest, and most expensive mission: the collective delusion that we would actually fight WW3 against China over control of Taiwan.

The VR and pilot training next stuff wasn't originally a problem in and of itself. If you added VR sims to the legacy UPT syllabus us old hats are familiar with, you would end up with a better product. Full stop. I'm all for trying to modernize sims/chairflying and I'm all for auditing the syllabus to make sure we aren't wasting time on things that don't matter operationally, like fingertip takeoffs and landings or serially hooking kids on ELPs. The problem arose when the brass started using the VR and PTN/UPT 2.5 syllabus cuts to mask the fact that they can't generate aircraft. That's when all the newfangled VR and syllabi basically became a trojan horse to cut hours while keeping slides green.

Caveat up front: there are good/bad/disciplined/undisciplined pilots in every community and this is not geared toward any individual. But I'm gonna be the asshole here. In my experience, the army rotary wing community ranges anywhere from lackadaisical to outright dangerous WRT instrument procedures, airspace and traffic awareness, and flight discipline. I've witnessed a 5-ship Army Apache mission brief take place in the lobby of the San Angelo FBO that was basically: "Alright dudes, we're gonna take off, head east, 200A, everybody fall in. Questions?" "Sick. Step complete." I've been in control of a T-6 pattern full of solo students and had to send them all breakpoint straight through (half of them didn't even know what to do) because we had a 4 ship of army black hawks blast perpendicular through our pattern while talking to precisely no one on the radio. The second I saw the news out of DCA my first reaction was "goddammit some army rw clowns got everyone killed." Then I felt bad for jumping to conclusions and not waiting for the report. But after a few weeks, each new piece of data points right back to them and I'm back to being pissed. Why were they off altitude? Why are they dicking around at night in the approach corridor of a major airport? Why are they not on VHF? Why was this even an approved routing for them in the first place? Why were 28 different agencies permitted to fly helos in close proximity to DCA? These were not one-off, swiss-cheese-holes-aligning, mistakes. This was business as usual, proven by the fact there had been multiple near misses at DCA in the recent past including a helo-caused airliner go-around the day before. Obviously an airspace/procedure re-design is warranted, but I think we need to take a look at community-wide culture that was comfortable operating like this in the first place. @busdriver said it best that these procedures are "no-step stupid." The problem with that is if you've been raised in a community of hot dogging and "we'll do it live" you're probably not equipped to make a good risk assessment.

I have zero issues whatsoever with the army response. There wouldn't have been the need for the Army to withhold the name to give the family time for damage control if Trump hadn't painted them into a corner with his completely out of line comments. Everyone else is still trying to get the facts straight and pull bodies out of the Potomac, and we have the leader of the free world talking out of his ass in the least possible productive way during a crisis. DEI is toxic, but even more toxic than that is blaming a crash on DEI less than 24 hours from the accident when you have zero facts to support it.

The O-6's I interact will fully agree all this uniform revamp BS is dumb and a waste of time.. behind closed doors. They just can't publicly say that, so they have to fall back on the tired "get the basics right" refrain

I think it's actually really simple. The GOs see that the air force is falling apart and they know real solutions will be painful and risky to their career advancement/political ambitions. So they focus on things they can easily control like uniform nonsense, and pretend that's the "real" root cause of our issues. Same thing happens in politics. Can't solve any of our real problems.. just do some dumb shit that makes it look like you're addressing problems, like re-naming Fort Bragg or the Gulf of Mexico

Heard recently that the parts contract for T-6's is so f-ed right now that a small fraction of the fleet is flyable. Can any UPT bubbas confirm?

I literally said people are in hysterics online.. it would be ridiculous to expect there not to be. But I couldn’t give two shits what some blue haired gender studies major posts on IG about the election being their own personal 9-11, because there will always be people like that on all sides, and ultimately they have no power in the national conversation. The people who actually do have the power on the left sent an important message: accept the results, and we aren’t going to tear the country apart over an outcome we don’t like. Did they only concede because the results were so definitive? Maybe. Did they only concede because they’re starting to realize they burned all their credibility? Also maybe. But I don’t think we would’ve gotten the same reaction from Trump/Vance had they lost, and I think they primed their die hard supporters to dismiss any election result other than a win as fraudulent. Understandable as that sentiment may be, after decades of democrat fuckery, that attitude is a truly dangerous one for the long term viability of the country.

I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised with how the dems have taken this absolute ass whooping. Lots of hysterics online and on the talk shows, but the people that mattered respected the process, conceded in a timely fashion, and honestly did a lot to de-escalate and re-instill trust in our election process right now. Honestly I’m really thankful for this outcome because I’m positive a trump loss would not have garnered the same reaction from republicans, and it would have gotten very bad. The left has shown a shocking amount of maturity and done something I think most of the maga crowd is incapable of right now: accepting election results that didn’t go their way. Having said that.. I’m fully prepared to be proven wrong by the dems as soon as they regroup enough to concoct the next grand conspiracy about the right, probably involving them all somehow being nazis.

I absolutely think the conditions at the time could have drawn tens of millions of extra voters to the polls. -Covid was the first thing for a lot of people where government policy directly impacted them. -how many rioters were there? Idk like tens to hundreds of thousands in every major US city.. seemed like a lot of people to me when it was happening Trump jumped 11-12 million votes from 2016 to 2020 which was a huge anomaly as well. I’d be a lot more suspicious if one side had insane turnout while the other remained basically the same. But both parties had a massive jump in 2020 which tells me something really big in the zeitgeist was happening at the time. … Or somebody faked 1/6th of all of the votes to the tune of 30 million ballots, did it for both sides for some reason, and we still don’t have a single shred of evidence of the largest voter fraud conspiracy in American history.

If you look further back Kamala’s turnout numbers aren’t the anomaly, they’re a reversion to the mean. Hillary got 65M in 2016 and kamala got 68M this year. This just shows how much of an anomaly 2020 was. With the George Floyd riots and covid bringing out tons of low propensity voters and TDS at its peak, 2020 was always going to be a record year for Dems. 20M is a crazy number but it just shows how insane the country was at that point. Everything felt like it was on a knifes edge

I don’t think the B-1s were ever doing SEAD/DEAD in the traditional sense, but if you’ve got 24x 31’s, and you’re going in the MEZ anyway, and a few of them aren’t spoken for, whats a few extra bombs between us friends

problem is he isn’t going to undo shit because he isn’t going to win. 60-70% of voters thought kamala won the debate and trump is only trending more petty and more unhinged. He also doesn’t have coherent policy stances other than: “Weren’t things great in 2016-2019!!” and “if I was in office that never would have happened” Cool dude, Both true. But how are you gonna deal with the problems we have now.

The problem I have with the right these days is they will continually complain that their party is hijacked by an incompetent buffoon… ..and then keep voting for that incompetent buffoon. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the only way the trump cult dies is if people stop coalescing around him. Sure his MAGA base will always be there. But every time a moderate Republican holds their nose and votes for him as the perceived lesser of two evils, it prolongs trump’s stranglehold on the party. Republicans are in a hostage situation entirely of their own making. Between Biden and Kamala weve had the two most beatable candidates in a generation. But somehow, in a move defying all the odds, the right is about to extend their losing streak from ‘20 and ‘22, to a 2024 3-peat. The left is so insane these days that if the right, dumped trump and their fringe abortion policy madness, they’d cakewalk into the white house for at least the next decade. But they won’t because the party is far more stubborn than strategic. For any moderate or center-right person looking for a viable Republican Party in the future, I think the best strategy this year is to vote 3rd party. Counterintuitive, but It would detract from trump’s legitimacy and force him into irrelevance sooner.

Not that it’s to the extent of Biden, but Trump seems to have really lost a step too. Like lost his ability to think on his feet and flex quickly to the situation like he used to. A prime example from the debate: Moderators to Trump: “you said Kamala just started being black, I thought she was Indian” what trump should have said: “that’s called a figure of speech. Ever heard of that? What I mean is She’s being fake. She acts black around black audiences and she changes her accent to suit the situation. She plays up or plays down different aspects of her race for whatever is most beneficial to her at that moment. She’s a phony politician trying to be all things to all people.” what trump did say: incoherent ramblings that honestly made him sound more racist

Conspicuously quiet here the day after a major debate.. Anyway, here are my takeaways: Kamala: still as off putting and uncharismatic as ever. The media pushing her as some sort of “joyful” generational talent will never not be weird to me. Moderators: hyper biased as per the usual arrangement. Teed up Kamala for multiple dunks on trump and never once fact checked her BS. Fact checked about 50% of the things trump said. Trump: stepped on rakes literally all night long. Honestly a disaster of a performance. Hopefully this will put to bed the nonsense narrative on the right that trump is this galaxy brain media manipulator who can bend any media situation to his will. He was good at debating compared to Biden and that is about it. To recap: ✅ baited into a crowd size pissing contest ✅ quadrupled down on the stolen election conspiracy ✅ baited into more foot in mouth moments regarding Kamala’s race ✅ some wacky intolerant shit about immigrants eating peoples pets ✅ weirdly complimentary comments regarding Putin which set up Kamala for more dunks on him ✅ never addressed Kamala lying to the American people about Biden’s health ✅ baited into post birth abortion sillyness If the goal of this was to appeal to anyone other than his most staunch supporters, it was an epic fail.

Exactly

Dude abortion is a 70/30 issue these days. If it’s intentional then he’s intentionally being an idiot. The right wing religious types skew older and generally turn up in good numbers to vote anyway. Going hard on abortion buys you absolutely nothing. The people he’s firing up and driving to vote are on the left because he keeps handing talking points and OBGYN horror stories to the Dems on a velvet pillow. Outrage over the abortion issue already neutered the red wave that was supposed to happen in 2022, how many times do these guys have to lose to figure out it might be time to change strategy

The right could probably take advantage of these crap numbers if they were running anyone other than the current ticket.. But instead we have trump floating insane race-based attacks reminiscent of the Obama birther conspiracies, while Vance sticks his foot in his mouth over abortion on an hourly basis.

Since I posted the link with zero context.. BLUF: the Tony Carr (formerly JQP) rips the B-1 AIB a new one. Specific issues he brings up: -Sq/cc’s being criticized for manning shortages entirely out of their control -strange contextual omissions throughout -potential conflict of interest with the board pres being in direct career competition with the people he’s investigating -does no root cause analysis on why aircrew CRM/GK/experience/skill level were low enough to result in a crash -OG/CC firing timing looks to be directly the result of AIB backlash and done reluctantly, Potentially indicating daylight between the SIB and AIB -alleges deep culture problems but bends over backwards not to implicate anyone above the squadron level

https://open.substack.com/pub/radarblog/p/bone-of-contention?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

I don’t think you’re in any danger of eating crow. Name a time programmed UPT syllabus hours increased at any point in the last decade. I’ll wait. And if anyone thinks that’s gonna happen especially when we have a shiny new trainer that’s more expensive to operate, I would love to have some of the drugs you’re on. More likely is they’ll send heavies to a sim only track after the contractor IFT or whatever the hell it is, and the 38 track will have hours cut based on some stupid argument that the t-7 training is higher fidelity somehow.

I’m not trying to excuse the crew. There are numerous cut and dry things they fucked up. It’s important to take those, debrief, and get better. If one person in a squadron doesn’t know or understand the things this crew missed, that is a foul. But, for anyone who has read an AIB before you know that they often tell half truths with one eye on the facts and one eye on the eventual public release and how that will reflect on the brass.

I’ve got a question. How many night sorties do you have to get to complete the T-6/UPT syllabus these days?

100% And I think some of the highly experienced flyers in these forums should know better. Random question for the group: You’re king for a day and a crew in your command crashes a half-billion dollar plane. You need a scapegoat. Is it more politically convenient to: A) acknowledge HAF and MAJCOM-level institutional problems like chronic undermanning and low flight experience B) blame it on “culture problems” at the squadron level