DirkDiggler

Ha! One of my favorites. In my EWO days was on a TDY up to Bodo, Norway. Was Blue Air for a big LFE they had that week. We manage to get in and hit our airdrop without getting shot (lots of fjords and rocks to hide in, and our screen was able to keep Red off us for the first 15-20 minutes). As we're egressing, one of the Red Air guys regens, and proceeds to just blast straight after us. My aft jammer was tits up but like I said, lots of terrain to hide in, the front jammer was working, and there was solid overcast layer above so I felt like we had a chance. There were two Blue guys fairly close to me, I'm yelling that I'm spiked (Bitch give me some help!) but they were busy with another regen. Anywho start to notch the guy, GCI is giving me good callouts, I figure he's just gonna fly overhead cause of the overcast layer/mountains all around and then get shot by Blue. All of the sudden my LM calls "Hey I think I see....Holy Shit!!!" followed quickly by Pilot saying "Jesus Christ" and then "Fox 2 on Talon". Guy came right through the overcast, shot us, flew underneath us, then lights the burner and rockets right back up through the cloud deck. My pilot looks back at me and asks WTF was that. All I had was "Aaahh, yeah, they got us". In the debrief I asked the guy how he was able to get below the WX like that and he says he's been flying in the same patch of terrain for 20 years so he knew where all the high stuff was based on where the peaks were sticking up above the cloud deck. Can't notch that.

Well done sir.

This is a really bad idea, on every level.

That guy is just taking a magical hot air balloon trip; the camera cropped out his ride.

Great job by the pilot walking away from that, especially on a tail dragger.

The syllabus was expanded at KABQ for MC/HC-J training, especially on the sim side, compared to what it looked like in the legacy. Main reason being students in the legacy airframe used to go to KLRF for Phase 1&2 training (which typically took about 5-6 months) before they came through Kirtland, which then generally took another 5-6 months. For the J model students now come straight to Albuquerque from UPT/UCT/Tech school. So overall the FTU pipeline estimated duration has stayed about the same. Kirtland on the flightline has almost always trended behind in the 21 years I’ve been involved with the program, as both a student, FTU IP, and now sim CI. The reasons vary, but weather during the winter is a factor, manning on the AD has been a challenge lately (see the new airline thread) and since it’s AETC Kirtland is the last priority for parts. MX usually has manning issues, and the personnel here tend to be on the younger side. There’s also a lot of tactical incompletes given on sorties nowadays due to the decreased training guys/gals are getting in UPT (more on that below); this gives guys/gals additional rides to make up for the lack of initial training they’re not getting in UPT. Add in unforeseen events like 100% of your contractor workforce getting laid off for a month this year and you can see how they’re constantly digging themselves out of a hole. AFSOC (really just old Tony B) in its infinite wisdom decided the fix for all this is to just cut the syllabus by 47% and push a large number of tactical events down to be taught by the line units. The product we’re getting from UPT is much less polished (students coming through the pipeline now are T-1 sim only; the last time they flew an airplane was T-6s). The line units aren’t manned appropriately to pickup the slack and the IPs in the line units are getting younger/more inexperienced because we’re upgrading them quicker out of necessity. It’s a real problem that hopefully won’t manifest in a series of Class As. So far ACC hasn’t cut their FTU syllabus, which in my opinion is a good thing.

HC-130J FTU is following this model at Kirtland now.

What a crock of shit.

Apologies for the shitty picture but if you’re in the market for a PCC and you’re open to different cartridges, I love my Ruger 5.7 carbine. Bought it on an impulse buy post-deployment; super fun to shoot. Almost no recoil, very accurate, fairly lightweight, comes with a threaded barrel, and it uses the same magazines as the Ruger 5.7mm pistol (I own one of those as well though I don’t like it nearly as much). I put a cheap red dot on top of it and it holds tight groups out to 100 yards with training loads.

Going to Haiti = Bad Idea Jeans

https://www.dvidshub.net/news/484658/honoring-trailblazer-legacy-msgt-mona-lynn-howard-lives-howard-drop-zone?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTEAAR0QRnWYmJ-EbvU23L5J1RVzIUxu6HDmIK0TupBzPK9aVqiyVovo_VPNWng_aem_5FeGBA5wS4w4bZPOGmH-jg Lynn was a phenomenal loadmaster and person, glad to see this DZ named after her.

Random question since you've worked over there much more recently than I have. Poland seems to be buying every piece of ground military kit they can get their hands on. Is their Army making parallel efforts to improve the abilities of their soldiers, NCOs, and officer corps?

Nice. I don’t have any Marlins, will have to check them out. I did buy a Henry .357 lever action last year and really like it. I might go hog hunting in two weeks out in west Texas. Thinking about taking my Springfield Saint Victor AR-10 for it.

https://mwi.westpoint.edu/my-war-our-war-the-unfinished-business-of-afghanistan/ Worth a read.

Sad to hear.

Awesome. I have several Ruger Americans and enjoy each one; my favorite is my .308. About 9 months ago I also bought a Ruger Mini 30, love that gun. Would highly recommend picking one up if you get the chance.

https://apple.news/AcYPllCaNSP-3N_tyTSkP5g Another worthless sack of shit turned into fertilizer; Israel is on a role.

Tough place to go down, weather up there is rough a good chunk of the year.

I knew a guy in a situation very similar to yours; unfortunately he did not get picked up the year he wrote his letter. To echo Herkdrv's comments above, letters should be short, concise, and explain a gap that otherwise wouldn't be obvious to the board (boards are pretty good at seeing everything/seeing through fluff). The individual I referenced above did end up getting picked up on his next look where his last deployed LOE was visible/in the system (was in a DO role downrange). I know/knew far more people at the tail end of my career getting picked up APZ so I'd say the moral is keep working hard towards what you want. Best of luck to you.

Israel just blasted the Houthis this morning; they are not fucking around.

Not confirmed yet but a good day if Israel actually turned Nasarallah into fertilizer.

What’s your definition and or threshold for someone in the USAF to do things that matter or make a difference?

In my last assignment alone my sq was directly tasked with/involved in 3 ops to either rescue or recover Americans in harms way. If you don't believe things like that "matter" we'll have to respectfully agree to disagree. I understand and partially agree with what you're saying writ large about whether OEF/OIF/OFS/OIR brought us a better peace/world. I personally don't believe it was all for nothing but I definitely understand the viewpoint of those that do.

I'd venture a guess that this varies widely by location, command and MDS. I definitely didn't feel that way in MCs, either in the operational or FTU world. I probably felt that way through quite a bit of my time on staff. I think there's a lot of leaders (more so at the Wg/CC level and up) that don't do a great job of articulating to their formations why what the base/wing/command is doing is important, or how it ties into higher level operational or strategic goals. Especially for a lot of the support functions it's just another broken airplane, or another patient, or another customer at finance to deal with. If you're at a place where the ops tempo is crazy high it gets harder to keep people motivated/morale up. And if I'm being completely honest, some of the things the AF does probably doesn't matter.

Different strokes bro. I would never have personally volunteered for that program but some did. FWIW, I have lots of friends who found their Sq/CC time to be a highlight of their career. Sure it’s a shitload of work, but if you don’t lead scared and truly give a shit about your people over your career you can accomplish a lot. I also know a lot of guys that really enjoyed SDE. Maybe not AWC, but NPS, NWC, Eisenhower, NVWC etc are in good locations and some (like NPS) give you a legitimate higher education. I also personally was never interested in O-6 but I don’t judge people that are. We need good dudes/dudettes doing that shit. I was very very lucky in my career to, for the most part, have had very good Sq and Grp leadership. Towards the end the O-6 level leadership was starting to become uneven. Some of the people that were getting pushed at the O-4/5 level I didn’t find impressive either but some were genuinely great. I just retired so it’s not my problem anymore but I’m hopeful that the simple pendulum will swing back to the center. CAT 5 getting shitcanned in my command was at least a start.