DirkDiggler

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.

I think the promises made to take care of them were upheld for the most part, at least for the people I know that were involved with the program. I knew of an NSAV guy that didn’t command who made O-6 and an intel guy who was offered SDE and O-6 (he ended up retiring rather than take it). There’s also a current sitting MC-J Sq/CC who was an AFPAK hand. I haven’t heard of any Hands getting fucked over, though I wouldn’t doubt that it’s happened.

#Birdsaren’treal

That guy on the left in the dark shirt is either deaf or has balls of steel; bro barely flinches, then looks down at the guy on the ground like “oh shit your bag exploded, those oranges ok?

Probably not great news for airline hiring. https://apple.news/Aemtc9tftRHi2bhpy40ZTpA

The ham slice from the old MREs used to be the shit if you had a fire to grill it over.

https://theaviationist.com/2024/09/05/mc-130j-crews-earn-award/

Why are you being FEB’d?

https://apple.news/A0EFuyJoGRdGIsHzXMlfNDg Manslaughter charge for the Deputy responsible.

Exactly

I think the better way to state this is SOCOM/AFSOC aren't the main show in the high end near peer fight. This whole "identity crisis" or whatever you want to call it that SOCOM and AFSOC are currently going through is kinda amusing to me. For the from '01 to '21 SOCOM was the show, budgets were huge, and the command grew quite a bit. It was also made very clear to me a as young guy, when asked what our mission was while we were simultaneously supporting OEF/OIF/GWOT, that the correct answer was "to do what the fuck we're told to do", and your job was to find a way to make it happen. I've heard the phrase "maintain relevance" thrown around quite a bit by senior guys in AFSOC this last year. What they really mean is they're worried our budgets will shrink because we're not leading the charge on night one into China/Russia. AFSOC's part in the high end near peer fight right of bang is limited for a multitude of reasons. IMO, AFSOC will be in a supporting role, which historically is where SOF usually existed prior to 2001. There's absolutely things we can contribute to that fight, the discussion of most of them exceed the classification of this forum. But the idea that we're going to be a main LOE is pretty silly with our current equipment. We have tons to contribute left of bang, and the C-VEO fight isn't going away anytime soon. There's also a ton of smart, motivated people working to find ways for AFSOC to support the high-end fight. I think AFSOC/SOCOM needs to calm down a bit with the "identity crisis" thing.

Ukraine and the Problem of Restoring Maneuver in Contemporary War | Institute for the Study of War (understandingwar.org) Long but quite interesting read.

Almost as if there’s already a room (or thread) for this stuff.

Of course he did. You think a new Wg/CC is gonna say no to a LtGen that was just recently his boss? The only thing that would’ve stopped that is a full on war with China, and maybe not even then.

The Wombat returns!

🥃

That was an amusing discussion amongst the bros, that had the request happened a year later, there may not have been enough form qual'd pilots to do it. I guess they could've stayed 30 seconds in trail; that would've looked awesome/s.

Lotta really good/true words here. I just retired and am about to start the simulator contractor life at the FTU for my airframe. If there had been an opportunity to fly and instruct at UPT as a civilian (contractor or GS) I'd have been very interested (not interested in the airlines) but I'm not doing that at CBM/DLF/END. It's just not in the cards for me post-AF. I didn't mind being at what some would consider less than desirable locations while I was in but after retirement I'm looking for a good place to live in a location where my wife can travel easily for her career. None of the current UPT locations provide that. As a side note on this topic, I'm not sure if this is new to the AF but it was new to me. As my retirement date approached I kept getting emails from AFPC (think it was them) asking me to consider taking a GS job at Randolph teaching sims remotely. Apparently the AF is having trouble getting enough blue suiters to live in CBM/DLF/END that they're offering guys the option to work at Randolph and instruct sims via VTC to the students at UPT bases. I feel like that would be less than optimal training for the students but that's where we're at today.

He personally called the 27 SOW/CC to request (demand really) a two-ship flyover of MCs for his USAFA CoC, because with everything else we have going on, yeah sure, we've got the time and assets for that. Edit to add: my first question when this came down was "Does anyone care/does it matter that he got soft-fired?" Anyone, I'm the only one, ok I'll shutup now.

Footage of Israel discussing the last couple days with Hamas and Hezbollah.

Tough read. Another one with lessons for any aviator.

Question for any B-1 bros; is ~2K hours about average for an 18 year B-1 pilot?