Pooter

100% agree and I'm not bashing the dudes that want to stay in. If I was on the golden path for school and some joint gig in DC my calculus might change too. Because I'm fairly sure the #1 guy at my base doesn't have to worry about getting sent to Laughlin. But my point is if the AF wants the bonus to actually do anything for retention it needs to be very convincing money in the short term targeted squarely at the dudes getting out in droves. For the guys on the fence about getting out, taking on an additional 10 year commitment is a literal joke.. for any amount of money. You solve the retention problem by targeting the middle 50% of dudes and convincing them it's worth their while to stay another 2-3 years.

It's wild because the dudes taking the 12 year 50 k extension were probably staying anyway. So now big AF just has to pay them more. The actual crux of the retention problem is the 90% of 2nd yr majors drowning in queep who are non school selects.. reading the tea leaves that a laughlin tour or bullshit Africa 365 are in their very near future. So maybe getting paid more to fly at the airlines with precisely 0% chance of a deployment and 0% you get domiciled in Laughlin is pretty attractive. If the Air Force is actually serious about fixing retention, they need to offer stupid money in the first few years after the ADSC ends.

Not sure if there's already a thread for this but.. How is this story not getting more attention?? https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-retrieved-non-human-craft/ Also anyone got any good UAP/UFO flying stories? I honestly thought it was a bunch of navy dweebs seeing things after a little too long at sea.. till it happened to me.

That's wild. I wonder about the navy and marines.. maybe being on a boat mitigates some level of queep.. at least that's what I'd hope

I am sure it is the few loud fringe voices as per the usual arrangement.

Pulling out of a loop at 900 AGL in a gigantic helicopter JFC yeah that's gonna be a no from me dawg

Lolol call me a F2F nazi all you want but I don't think figuring out a ratio between two numbers should be a task beyond our student pilots. Its pretty telling that your paragraph comes off as an impossibly difficult joke now but you basically described a standard instrument check profile from 10-15 years ago

There are plenty of fighter wash outs doing good work in global strike and carrying far more weapons and gas than they would have had in fighters🤫🤫. Seen dudes move on to squadron command, TPS, WIC, you name it. A solid attitude and work ethic will serve you well no matter where you end up.

Countless times, all over the place, on bro level CT sorties. Never with a student or a bob. Can confirm the plane flies fine upside down and did not spontaneously explode

Facts. Even more than the applicability to gps/alien doomsday scenarios, solar storms, raim issues and internal electrical malfunctions can totally hose GPS and moving maps.. I've seen the little airplane icon on the moving map glitch around or move backwards more than a few times. In those instances, control and performance instruments + a legacy navaid are basically all you've got. But even more than that I just believe if you can't figure out how an HSI works you have no business operating an aircraft. It's like learning to make your bed in boot camp. Shows you have the wherewithal and aptitude to master basic tasks before you get bigger more relevant tasks. Why should I trust you to manage an autopilot coupled approach to mins in a state of the art aircraft if you can't figure out two needles and a DME readout.

We haven't had an aircraft acquisition this century that hasn't been an unmitigated disaster. Huge cuts to the F-22 production run, endless delays and capability problems with the 46, they're prematurely gutted the F-35 order and it was plagued with problems. B-21 first flight is a year late already (don't worry though we rolled it out of a hangar for 30 seconds!) We desperately need a new BVR AAM and hypersonics but the best we can do are embarrassing flight test fails with ARRW on the buffs resulting in program abandonment. And the T-7 which is supposed to be the simplest of these is somehow the biggest poop show of the lot. https://theaviationist.com/2023/05/22/what-we-know-so-far-about-the-u-s-air-forces-next-generation-air-dominance-platform/amp/ And now the Air Force is saying NGAD will start replacing raptors by the end of the decade. I couldn't write a funnier joke if I tried.

😂😂😂 such a good edit but actually.. fix to fixes, while completely outdated and illegal, are a pretty good litmus test for whether you have the aptitude to learn basic instrument flying concepts. If you can't get reasonably close on a F2F, you probably don't have a good grasp of where you are in time and space, or what the course and bearing needles are trying to tell you. We're quick to throw basics away these days because they don't directly translate to the ops world anymore, but we do new student pilots a disservice depriving them of basic aviation building blocks. The same idea as why you teach kids arithmetic by hand before using calculators.

To name a few: -The relatively common occurrences of airframe mounted gearbox failure -wings de-laminating -extreme susceptibility of the engines to birdstrikes -century series fighter era TOLD on runways that are irresponsibly short -low altitude compressor stalls which PMP was supposed to fix

Carry the memory Stuck and Trojan with me as well. The 38 is well past it's shelf life and I would do anything in my power to avoid flying that death trap. Up to and including answering a few choice PHAQ questions honestly for the first time ever.

More and more, what decides who moves up in the AF is about who is willing to stick around, kiss the ring, put up with the abuse, and accept life/family thrash. So it's really a self-selecting pool. Majcoms that subject their people to high amounts of life thrash and abuse will naturally elevate the people willing to put up with it. And those people once in power will, in turn, inflict it on others.

FAIPing, while not nearly as bad a dick punch as drones, causes very similar resentment and near-universal 10 yr ADSC punch outs. Join the AF to fly jets and see the world! Or alternatively.. Spend the first 5 years of your career flying around the flagpole in one of the 4 sh!ttiest towns in the country, probably single too! Experience the best squadron, group, and wing leaders their respective MWS communities didn't want to keep for themselves! Get strung along in a 4 year rat race with your friends who were all also better than average in UPT only to get a drop list measurably worse than average! Then finally show up to your MWS as a senior captain to get immediately relegated to queep centric jobs because your tactical knowledge/experience is far behind pipeline dudes in your age group. But one time a FAIP became a general so it's probably an honor and an amazing opportunity

It's a hilarious Air Force non-solution to a problem they created.. you could just release the list and still have the Maj selects close out on the Capt SCOD date. The Capt SCOD is before the fiscal year ends so no one will have pinned on yet anyway 🤷🏻‍♂️ literally the end result is the same without keeping everyone in limbo. I don't know what I expected to happen, big AF has a knack for choosing the dumbest possible COAs

100%

Cool.. east bum-phuck Africa didn't have a vax mandate. Curious, what round of anthrax shot is your buddy on? Deployments are to other places than Africa and in my community I directly witnessed people go non deployable

Yeah you can do what you want until it starts to negatively impact others. That's where my libertarian limit ends. People want their daughters to get a fair shake in sports not dominated by records set by biological dudes. It's pretty telling when a male swimmer barely in the top 1,000 "transitions" and becomes a record setting destroyer of worlds, obliterating the competition by entire pool lengths and immediately claiming national titles. Ffs democrats created title IX to carve out an equal space for girls sports in the first place.

The right honestly needs to do more of this. Republicans identifying as silly nonsense is not only fun, but a good way to expose leftist intersectional lunacy. I think we've been trying to reasonably debate this stuff for a long time with people who can't be reasoned with. Maybe turning their own rules against them is the way to go. Imagine the dem conniption that would ensue if trump retroactively identified as a trans, lesbian/demisexual, black woman, with xe/xzer pronouns for the duration of his 2016-2020 presidency. Then claim every intersectional "first" for the presidency imaginable. And then when they accuse him of faking to make a point he can just shout them down for denying his truth. I so so badly want this to be a thing

@Josephohhumble these days deployment timelines are unpredictable in most communities. Gone are the days of a stable, predictable dull roar in the Middle East. The best gouge is going to come from your IP corps at your UPT base.

Probably valid, but it made you non-effing -deployable because no other country on earth would let you in

Just my 2 cents but there is very good tactical flying to be found in many heavy and afsoc communities with the added benefit of not destroying your neck and back with g's. My advice, go embrace whatever community you end up in and do your best. If you spend your career with one foot out the door trying to scheme your way into a fighter slot, you will be embarking on an exercise in futility, and it will torpedo your performance and focus for your actual current flying job. Nothing short of being an astronaut will beat the allure of flying the fastest, shiniest new toys, or the cultural cool factor of being able to call yourself a fighter pilot. But it's also clear that allure wears off over time because fighter pilots separate at rates equal to or higher than everyone else.

I was going to ask the same thing but it's kinda not worth engaging. Claiming it provides "zero protection" while being "very harmful" based on a number "he heard" is the kind of quality, evidence-based reasoning that lets me know it's probably time to put the phone down for the night. Funny part is my point has never been about the jab itself. It's always been about having the awareness to know what you signed up for and go in eyes wide open. I'm a big believer in worrying about the biggest and closest alligators to the boat, which, in terms of service member health risks, are: 1) long term ailments from on-the-job hazards we've completed normalized 2) dying in some interventionist boondoggle halfway round the world ... ... ... ... 67) drowning in Tumon bay 68) actual alligators 69) covid vaccine side effects Which is why this whole outrage seems a little manufactured, out of proportion, and strangely coincident with a red-to-blue presidential admin turnover.