DirkDiggler

That was awesome!

Agreed. It desensitizes people to things that are actually important. About 7ish years ago SOCOM was on a big push to reduce the over-classification of things, the justification being that it was making it difficult to share and coordinate with our joint partners. The SOCOM DJ3 at the time was an Australian exchange officer; it was fairly ridiculous at times when he would have to leave meetings or SVTCs for things that were supposedly NOFORN. It's easy for any staff guy to slap NOFORN or no caveats on something as opposed to actually doing the work to classify something at the proper level.

WICKR (the CUI app) is more cumbersome than Signal/Whatsapp but not overwhelmingly so; it’s better than it was a couple years ago. If a tech retarded guy like me can make it work anyone can. The SIPR options aren’t hard. I had access to them as a peon O-5 staffer (on a little j staff). I’m sure at the NCA level they’ve got some pretty gucci shit. It’s just in this case, for whatever reason, people chose not to use them. I don’t disagree with your point about people becoming complacent when handling classified. Unfortunately it seems the higher in rank/position some people get they feel the rules don’t apply to them. Anecdote: I once had a boss who we were fairly certain tunneled into an SVTC in the middle of an international airport with a jacket thrown over his head and the laptop.

There are currently multiple options for individuals with the need/requirement to access SIPR outside of their normal work spaces; they've been available for years. There's also an app /program that's available for that can be installed on your personal phone that's cleared for CUI level info.

I briefly spoke to this in my reply to Viper. There is concern amongst AETC leadership about whether students will be able to handle the transition from a light twin straight to the T-7 (should the program ever get going) given the big disparities in performance between the two. There's no mass historical data that exists for that. Expect in the next few years the AF will send a couple of SGTOs from IPT to Italy to fly the M346, which supposedly has similar performance to the T-7 IOT get data on how students perform. Now if the bulk of students can't handle the transition, I don't know what the AF is going to do; I doubt they have a plan for it yet.

Current plan for IPT is Private, Instrument, and Multi ratings. I doubt this will change. Flight schools involved in the program must provide the same instrumentation across all the platforms students will be training on.

This is the Bobs' long term vision, at least for now. There's some concern about students being able to handle going from a Diamond or Piper twin straight to a much higher performance jet. Expect in the next few years for a couple UPT SGTOs to go to Italy and fly the M346 to see whether students can handle the transition.

Interesting article. The Russia-Ukraine War: It Takes a Land Force to Defeat a Land Force

You're thinking of a different Liquid. He doesn't come onto the BO forums anymore.

Glad to see that most, if not all survived.

Glad they got out, that thing came down fast.

Little long but hilarious for anyone that's had to do Cyber or Security training.

The SMPs are worthless pieces of shit. It's actually kinda shocking how badly that program has come along/matured but we're still stuck with it. About ~6 months before I retired the company that builds them sent a roadshow to all the MC Sqs to address all the concerns/issues everyone was having. Their basic pitch (I wasn't personally there, was deployed) amounted to "turn them on in this order, we know they don't work correctly right now, there's nothing we can do about it, but trust us when we say they'll work great in CR2". Embarrassing.

Unfortunately this problem isn't limited to just AMC, it's infected other MAJCOMs as well.

The AF, in their infinite wisdom, split the contract to maintain the T-6 in two, one for actual MX on the jets and one for the parts sustainment/sourcing. Once the health of the fleet started to decline, it didn't take long for the two companies involved to point the finger at each other when they couldn't make their contract metrics. As LookieRookie mentioned above, the fleet has a pretty serious DMS problem (which is kinda wild given that the aircraft themselves just aren't that old) that is having a huge impact on tail availability. My buddy at 5/8 told me all the UPT bases are suffering, but CBM is in the wort shape. They have about 90 something T-6s and on any given day only a third are flyable.

The problem right now (and the one AETC 5/8 is trying to work around) is that the T-6 portion of UPT is fucked/is the bottleneck right now. The T-6 fleet is in bad shape, it's getting worse, and there's no easy or expeditious way to fix it. The T-38 is well past any reasonable service life, and the T-7 is obviously delayed. This IPT concept is the latest attempt to get to the 1500 pilots/year production goal that the AF can never achieve. Believe it or not but the money issue for IPT was actually one of the smaller issues getting the program started.

I really enjoy shooting my Ruger 5.7mm PC Carbine. Just a really fun gun at the range. I don't like my Ruger 5.7mm pistol (both were impulse buys so I have no regrets, as M2 said above I've got several guns in my collections that I bought and was not impressed with for various reasons). I don't use either of them for home defense. My buddy has the same Ruger PC Carbine chambered in 9mm, it got a tad more recoil but he pays about 50% less than I do per round so if cheap plinking is what you're looking for the 5.7mm probably isn't it.

Tab 2 - Jan 25 CSAF Update to DAFI36-2903.pdf I usually try to give people correcting uniform wear the benefit of the doubt since it aggravates me when I see people who look like a bag of ass in uniform. That being said, I didn’t think I’d ever see the CSAF pushing official guidance on gig lines. We really must have all the big problems in this organization figured out if this is what the top dogs are focusing on…..

Yeah I don’t think that’ll buff out. Glad the pilot punched!

#4 on the flyover gave me a chuckle. Even one of the civilians at my local asked, “why is that one plane so far from the others?”

I think I saw on LinkedIn a couple weeks back that he was taking a job at HTeaO so I think he may be retiring. Not 100% sure though.

The 193rd in PA with MC-130Js and the HC-130J Guard/Reserve units in Long Island/Patrick/Moffit/Alaska (probably one I'm missing) still have CSOs; might be an option for you if the UPT thing doesn't work out.

So what do you do with the remaining 33.8 seconds?

@Shaft34 I hope you guys are staying as safe as possible given the horrific conditions out there in CA. Also hope you guys are able to start rolling those fires back soon.