Napoleon_Tanerite

Didn't see it posted yet, but just a friendly reminder that SWA hiring window opens on Dec 20th

"Noted" -Every salty terminal Major ever

Ugh, you're right. I had to spend a few days there passing through and got chiefed for having my sunglasses on my head. I was shocked at how much of a dump that place is. They've been there at least as long as the Deid, if not longer and they are worse now in 2017 than the Deid was a decade ago.

So I've been here about three months on my farewell tour (read: you seven day opted, so here's your non-flying 6 month gig right at the end of your ADSC). This place has changed a LOT. No required PT gear, no required disco belts, and mustaches reign supreme, although there seems to be a bit too much strict compliance to the Hitler rule. I've been rocking a Robin Olds throwback mustache ever since I got here and never got chiefed once. I finally got the "tone it down" from my boss who got the standard passive aggressive words from someone else to pass along to me. What BLOWS MY MIND is the people who still willingly wear PT gear with reflective belts. They're uncommon, but not rare. My buddies didn't get chiefed face down in the mud for these nerds to keep wearing that shit! Facilities continue to be in a state of decay. The remaining CC trailers are same as always, with thick black mold and rot. The BPC buildings are not much better. Their poor construction is beginning to show in the form of all the tiles being loose, large cracks in the concrete, and leaking during the rain. AC is also spotty in several of those buildings. The high water mark of insanity (October 09) appears to have receded to today's baseline of 6/10 on the dumb scale.

That's a point that doesn't get much play. Beyond the raw numbers game, the guys who are leaving are all the high time combat vets who carried OIF/OEF in the mid-late 2000s

The AF has clearly decided that persistent blood transfusions are the proper treatment for the arterial bleeding that they're experiencing. Sounds like a good plan to me.

In my experience as a T-1 IP over the past 5 years or so the guys coming in with prior experience tend to exist on the extreme ends of the bell curve, rarely the middle. Either they are able to adapt to the military way of flying and are able to leverage their previous experience to great success, or they possess the attitude of "I've got nothing to actually learn here, I'm just checking the box" and they struggle if not wash out. Prior experience and skill CAN be an advantage, but only when paired with humility and an attitude that is conducive to accepting instruction.

If you take a dude and drop them into T-1s without the conditioning provided by the T-6 program, I predict a road to failure. The T-1 program has this perception of being some sort of cupcake program, but that's not the case. Our washout rate is comparable and frequently higher than the T-38 side of UPT. It's a bit more big-boy than T-6, but there is still a strong expectation for guys to know how to color within the lines (a skill they learn in the T-6). If you take a dude from some pay-for-the-rating school and drop them straight in Phase 3, I think they will struggle regardless of their previous experience. I see regional airline guys (paid, professional copilots) struggle in the T-1 when they think they're just there to get another rating added to their license. It's not a matter of skills, it's a matter of adaptability to the environment.

WAG and maybe a bit exaggerated, but figure average T-1 class is ~12-18 and the average T-38 class is 5-7 (not counting international) and you're looking at anywhere from 69-85% of graduated pilots coming out of the toner, not counting the couple guys who tracked to Rucker.

Sims NEVER are a suitable substitute for the airplane. Even if they simulated the handling of the airplane EXACTLY, nothing can simulate the environment properly. You simply can't simulate a 12 jet overhead pattern, or getting vectored off a STAR going into a Class B primary in the WX. That's where you build airmanship. Talk to any airline guy. Those are some of the best sims in the business and I've never heard any airline guy describe their sims in much more favorable terms than we describe ours. They're good procedural trainers and will get you ~80% there, but it's that last 20% that makes the difference between knowing what you're doing and just hoping you don't get an opportunity to show what you don't know.

HA! You should know better. The guys who account for 15% of pilot production will ALWAYS be the priority.

Moving the preponderence of the current T-1 syllabus to the T-6 is viable, though not ideal (just like moving the majority of the T-38 syllabus would be). You could probably accomplish 90% of what is currently done in the T-1 nav syllabus using the T-6, and then the student moves to the T-1 and does basically the equivelent of trans to familiarize themselves with the handling characteristcs of a [preceptually] larger, faster, swept wing, multi engine jet. As it stands now not counting waivers the T-1 syllabus is 77.5 hours, 89.5 max. You could probably shift 50-60 of those hours to the T-6 with less of a negative impact than cutting 20 hours out of the current T-1 syllabus with no backfill on the T-6 side. Just spitballing here of course, don't take my opinion as anything but.

Disagree. We're seeing the fruits of that bear out with the T-1 syllabus being reduced. FTUs are reporting an overall drop in ability of current T-1 products due to the lack of flight time they're getting. I'll agree that the type of aircraft and even the type of flying isn't super important, but flight time in and of itself is precious when it comes to building the required proficiency. T-1 mission fam is of debatable validity, but losing those 16 hours of flight time is a big hit.

Interesting. This is 180 off from the plan I was briefed on. Previous plan was to consolidate the remaining T-38 fleet around IFF due to the lower throughput. The "IFF first" plan makes sense since the entire selling point for buying a new super-trainer is "to prepare students for the fifth generation fighters they will be flying". That argument loses a lot of steam if your grads AREN'T going to those aircraft.

Don't get your hopes up on this. Last info I received (>1 year old, so take it for what it's worth) is they're only looking to buy 350 jets at a 2:3 replacement for the SUPT T-38 spread out over a 10 year buy during the 2020s. No current plans for IFF replacement or replacement for other T-38s (adair, CPT, etc). Given the current budget and procurement forecasts I doubt this plan has changed much. This leaves UPT more or less in its current form. Even if there is the desire to go to a single track UPT, the iron simply won't be there to do it and that discussion won't take place until AFTER the T-38s are all gone some time in the late 20s or 30s. It then comes down to "do we go single track by buying more of a $20+ million jet, or keep it two track by buying another $5-10m off the shelf business jet?" The T-1 is already on its ass right now. Not only does it have significant MX issues, but also is in desperate need of an AMP to stay relevant, and the same argument (preparing students for the more advanced aircraft they will be flowing to) comes into play. By the late 20s/early 30s the T-1 will be 30-40 years old and students will be flowing into C-5Ms, C-17s (likely having received an AMP by then), C-130J, KC-46, next-gen JSTARS, etc-- all of which will have avionics and capabilities that far exceed that which the T-1 is currently capable of adequately preparing students for.

Yup. Top to bottom, every side. They can no longer rob Peter to pay Paul because Peter is flat broke too. Now if we were to cut down on dubious "war" requirements, that would help a lot, but so long as half or more of the AF population uses (or has used) "combat leadership" as a springboard to career progression that will never change.

Yup-- the system is self perpetuating and fucked from top to bottom. MX doesn't produce jets so Stan doesn't fly as frequently as necessary to build required skills Stan hooks the rides he does get to fly Stan goes to CR Stan points at frequent breaks in training as the reason he hooked rides Stan gets reinstated Stan graduates with sub-par skills I can't really fault Stan too much in this scenario. Maybe Stan was a weak-ish swimmer, but that is why the UPT syllabus is structured in the way that it is. Frequency of repetition is key to acquiring the skills necessary to graduate UPT. The half-life on flying skills is REALLY short at that stage in a dude's flying career, so if Stan sits for a week or two between flights, or flies the BARE minimum to avoid a syllabus defined break in training it becomes unreasonable to expect Stan to gain/maintain the expected proficiency. All these half cooked "increase UPT throughput" seem to be based on an assumption of iron the simply isn't there. MX is on their ass, and the jets that ARE able to fly are gaining hours so fast that as soon as MX produces a new jet, one of the beaten mule jets that has been carrying a disproportionate share of the flight hours vs what it was programmed to fly goes down and the cycle repeats. There are a LOT of chickens coming home to roost at the same time with the pilot issue.

This has bad idea written all over it. It's not even so much a matter of a particular skill that they learn in Phase 3, it's a matter of raw flight hours and the airmanship that comes with it. We are running into the same thing in the T-1 with the majority of the mission fam portion of the syllabus waived. WGAF about "airdrop" or "refueling" sorties. They learn those skills in the FTU anyway. The issue is the basic SA and airmanship that you can't teach in a sim. If they want to cut Phase 3, a second lap through the T-6 program would be more beneficial than just kicking them down to the FTU to fly much more expensive and unforgiving jets.

A close friend of mine runs this site. He's ALWAYS looking for patches. The collection is already willed to the Smithsonian when he passes away.

EEEhhhhhhh, this is OPR math at best. Too many variables to nail down "if we pay them X we save Y in the long run". I'm sure everyone has a certain dollar figure at which they would say "yes" but in typical AF fashion they think they can buy their way out of a problem they don't even have the financial resources to. Furthermore, until the root causes are addressed (the won't be) nothing will change. The thing that REALLY pushes people out are largely out of the AF's control anyway, particularly incessant pointless deployments, incessant PCS, and flying oldass broke-dick airplanes as a hobby while being rode hard and put up wet doing stupid shit.

See the thing is you think you made a mistake posting the article without checking the date, but you unintentionally proved the point. Aside from a few clues like the reference to a 60 year retirement and Fogleman, the article is EXACTLY what is being written today. Anyone who thinks the AF will change are fools. They will make token efforts to get the gullible to adopt a "wait and see" approach, thus retaining those individuals just long enough for the current crop of AF managers to finish their tenure, claim to have done something, and move on to lucrative "advisor" and "board member" jobs, handing the bag to the next manager who will attempt to do the same.

I would be shocked if the airlines automated people carrying operations. They could save some coins on pilot salary, but the first time one of those automated airplanes crashes and kills a couple hundred people, that company will be sued into the stone age, regardless if the droid was the reason the plane went down. Now, FedEx, UPS, Atlas, etc may very well go automated, but not likely within most of our remaining flying years.

Yup. Most interesting meeting I've ever been in that didn't involve discussion about blowing shit up. Refreshing to see a 3 button getting basically yelled at by a room full of crusty O-3s and O-4s. Some big takeaways: 1. He came into the meeting incredibly insulated from what is going on. His disconnect from reality was no fault of his own, but very clear. For example, he couldn't wrap his head around guys not wanting to be "developed" by way of ACSC and other PME. Also was unaware of some of the buffoonery going on such as Vance being dry, the elimination of additional duties memo being largely ignored, and the perception that the AF is at best incompetent in the way it handles people, and at worst malicious. It was obvious that the O-4s he is surrounded are the pickle shining types would would rather die than tell the boss bad news. We didn't have that problem, and he wasn't sure how to react. 2. "There is a plan in the work, trust us". Supposedly there is a 28 point plan of some kind floating around to address the retention issue. See point 1 for his reaction to our skepticism of it. 3. He doesn't even know that he is fed a steady diet of bullshit. He told a story of a great base visit he went on, and was dismissive when told to take everything he sees on a base visit with the biggest grain of salt he can fit on the jet he rode in on. He didn't realize that whenever guys like him show up, guys like the ones in that room get stuffed in a closet. 4. Stop loss is off the table. CSAF realizes that even IF they could get a stop loss approved (unlikely) it will permanently break any chance they have at retention. They'd get a temporary bump from locking guys down, but they know that as soon as that lockdown inevitably ends, EVERYONE leaves, not just the people who were on the fence before. So maybe we opened his eyes, but even if we did, points 1 and 3 above kinda indicate that at best he will be one more voice yelling at the brick wall. The AF is chronically averse to making the kind of changes necessary to retain pilots, and will continue to hemorrhage talent.

Implying there may not be PALLETS full of the fuckers in the back of a T-1 grad's airplane? Put your dick away, I'm not interested in a measuring contest.

Not to mention the innumerable stories of crews all focusing on one task and driving an otherwise good jet into the ground. Task saturation and loss of SA/aircraft control is never a good thing, but the consequences are far more severe in a large aircraft that can't recover faster than you can say "oh shit" and usually involves double or triple digit loss of life if you can't recover.