Napoleon_Tanerite

No, I'm not saying that the day in and day out BS of the Air Force alone is what is leading people to kill themselves, I'm saying it isn't helping. Most people put a lot of effort into their job, and when they are rewarded with more queep and asspain it doesn't do a lot of good for their mental well being. Furthermore, the idea that you can just brief away the problem is simultaneously laughable and tragic.

https://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2012/01/air-force-suicides-rise-lead-to-standdown-013012w/ January 2012 has seen a record number of suicides across the Air Force. What does the Air Force do? Why, they schedule a 1 day stand down for additional resiliency training. How idiotic. This mindset that you can just brief away problems only causes more problems. So we have a one day standdown. During that we are reminded just how "important" we are. The Air Force can't afford to lose any one of its airmen (well, aside from the thousands they fired last year, and the additional ten thousand they are seeking to get rid of). Instead of a day off, we get another day of briefings. Monday morning we come back to more of the same. --More briefings about what needs to be briefed --More slides to create --More CBTs to accomplish --More "volunteer opportunities" --More reinvention of the wheel, and disregard of common sense --More mandatory "training" that has nothing to do with your job --More lectures implying that we're on the verge of driving drunk or raping someone (or killing ourselves) --More uniform changes and associated queep Guys who want out can't get out. Guys who stay in are constantly worried that putting up with all the queep will be met with a hearty "you're fired" from leadership that can't stand to lose you. I'm not saying anyone should kill themselves. There's always a better way, but I can understand how someone can get into a situation so miserable and desperate that the only way out that they can see is by killing themselves. Throw in some family stress that comes with multiple, endless deployments and it would be enough to push a lot of guys over the edge. The problem isn't that we aren't told enough times to not kill ourselves. Its that the root causes are never addressed. Guys aren't killing themselves because they don't know any better, they're killing themselves because they can't deal with the bullshit anymore, and they feel that nobody cares. This post may be a bit of a vent, but articles like what I linked to frustrate the hell out of me.

Standard Air Force practice-- slap the hand the waves the bullshit flag. I'm not surprised one bit. Is anyone surprised that the service is infested with yes men?

Unfortunately you can never teach someone to STFU, they always need to learn it the hard way, and most (including me sometimes) need refresher training from time to time.

https://www.militarycorruption.com/garynorth5.htm

Not sure how up to date it is. Lots of pics from back in 08 or so.

The world's most critical mission planning resource is BACK! This may be old news, but I found out from another forum that FBO Hotties is back!

Link Looks like the Air Force Global Hawk is being canceled in favor of retaining the U-2. This is interesting that a manned airplane is actually beating out a UAV. I wonder what this means for all the people recently hit with a GH gig but haven't PCSd yet.

Steven Tyler's singing made me want to defect. And as for the flyover-- FRED? Really? What's next, an E-8?

Not the first time I've heard of this happening, though not to this extent. Plenty of times where conversations about a pilot and "the cool shit he does" is overheard by the wrong person, and all of a sudden there's a guy standing in front of the Man getting his ass handed to him. Sometimes people need to STFU.... about as frequently as pilots need to have a "dumb shit" detector in proper calibration.

I should have said that winners never self identify verbally, because they don't have to. Losers always seem to tell you how great they are, and usually the better they say they are, the worse they really are. There's a difference between someone with drive, and someone who wants to convince you that they are good verbally instead of through their actions.

Maybe he really is shit hot, but more often than not people who speak highly of themselves are usually the biggest shit bags you can find. It's always the quiet or self deprecating guys who are actually decent at what they do. They don't brag because they don't have to.

Trucks don't even HAVE a G limit!

Don't forget the gheys have been able to shack up for some time.... so really, the only people losing out on this are unmarried straight folks.

Just noticed, but LtCol (then Capt) Jack Miller was my first instructor in ROTC.

JTFC-- What part of "it's a prohibited maneuver" are you missing out on? While I certainly think that equating me tucking my shirt in to how I fly is idiotic, I damn sure don't think it's idiotic to draw a few conclusions about a dude's flying based on whether he adheres to basic flight maneuver prohibitions. Is it safe? In the grand scheme of things, probably. Is it legal? Not one bit Is it your airplane to decide what you will and will not do with it? Nope.

I think you guys are focusing in too much on the MC-12 incident. You're all exactly right-- one barrel roll does not warrant an Air Force wide FCIF; however, it was most likely the "last straw" in a series of problems across several MAJCOMs, hence the AF wide FCIF. I'm sure the C-17 mishap and the T-38 flyover from last year played into it, as well as numerous other incidents that were less "high vis" but presented the appearance of a trend.

The only way to do that is to re-mask PME and AAD. Trying to tell a guy that he needs to focus on flying and that should be priority will always fall on deaf ears when so long as you pass your annual checkride (and don't hook a no-no) flying has ZERO bearing on your career progression. It's like the battle against firewall 5 EPRs-- nobody is willing to do it because nobody wants to take that first step and risk burning their people, and understandably so. I look like shit on paper because I flew the line and deployed my ass off for the first 3 years on station. Aside from some faster-than-normal positional upgrades, I've really got nothing to hang my hat on when it comes to shoe centered stuff. I haven't won CGO of the quarter, I haven't planned the christmas party, I haven't been an exec or any of that stuff. I'd be ok with it, if I didn't know that shitty pilots are in a better position because they have checked all the shoe boxes. It doesn't matter that they can't even tell you which section of the TO covers emergency procedures, they're the CGO of the quarter! The fact of the matter is that everyone is assumed to be a good pilot (even though that is clearly not the case) and commanders have come to rely on what should be tiebreakers to break ties that are FAR from existing. Thinking that PME and AAD are going to be masked is a pipe dream though-- the shoes will never allow it to happen. If the promotion board rack-and-stack were actually based on the contributions of the individual to actually accomplishing the AF mission, the shoes know they will continually be eating the table scraps of guys who have forgotten what the color green looks like. PME and AAD and bullshit meaningless awards are the only way shoes have a chance of competing with guys who make their living doing what they were actually hired and trained to do, and doing it DAMN well. Part of the "overmanned" fallacy is that all those dudes out flying the MC-12 are still on YOUR books. So if your unit is allocated 20 pilots, and 5 are out flying MC-12s, you are showing 100% manned on the books, while in reality you only have 75% of bodies on hand, before you even start to count DNIF, R&R, leave, etc. It's bad, and I doubt it's going to get anything but worse as the years progress.

Thats why I think the AF vs Navy comparison is idiotic. I've never felt limited in flying how I needed to to accomplish the mission. Thats why the AF has pilots, even for UAVs... we exist to fill in the gaps that simple regs can't cover. If you can't handle a "gray" situation as confidently as you handle a black and white one (and be able to defend your decision to anyone necessary) you probably shouldn't be a pilot, or at least not an AC.

I'd be willing the alleged MC-12 incident is more likely the straw that broke the camel's back after a series of incidents (to include the C-17 mishap and the flyover buffoonery)

Something tells me youre not actually an Air Force pilot. I've never heard a real pilot use that AF vs Navy line.

The point is a prohibited maneuver is a prohibited maneuver. Whether or not the airplane can structurally handle it is irrelevant. My car is more than capable of safely driving 150+ mph on public roads, but that is prohibited too... and that's a prohibition against me doing that with my OWN property. Don't forget that you're only borrowing the airplane from the taxpayers. Consider maneuver prohibitions as terms of the loan. Like was said before-- I don't think anyone is trying to make the direct correlation that rolling a King Air is one step away from Bud Holland, I think they are saying it's the mentality that accepts that kind of behavior that is the problem. Big picture-- if you want to do aerobatics, go buy or rent an airplane that you can do them in with the permission of the owner. The owner of the airplane I fly says I can't do aerobatics in it, so it's in my best professional interest to not do aerobatics.

Granted I haven't read 11-2MC-12v3 or the -1 for the airplane, but I'd be willing to bet there is some sort of catchall prohibition on "aerobatics" in there.

I couldn't agree more. Those guys implying that people advocating flight discipline are a bunch of poontangs probably need to spend some more time in their squadron's safety office. There is a long and bloody history of people who really pushed the limits of their airplanes. It's one thing when a fighter guy does it, because usually he just kills himself, but when you do it on a crew aircraft you just killed your crew because of your own stupidity. It's one thing to explore the flight envelope of your airplane; however, it's another to willingly violate TO and AFI guidance regarding the operation of your airplane. We've all had self-induced moments that we've looked back on (either immediately or some time after) and realized just how stupid and potentially dangerous they were. People who haven't fall into two categories, either they are brand new, and their time is coming, or they are genuinely dangerous and are unable to see how dangerous their actions potentially are.

You know, the sad thing is I had to decode the name before I realized that this is most likely a spoof. It would be much funnier if it weren't so close to the truth about that awful place.