Napoleon_Tanerite

I think the alleged race ended up as another tick mark in the "poor judgment" column that I'm sure factored into her removal. One incident may be a non-event, but a series of non-events can often establish a trend that can be hung around your neck. I know as much about this case as I have read in this thread, so who knows what else was at play here. I doubt it was just a few naughty words and an errant coffee mug though.

That's a tough call. I've never sat exec or really had a hand in writing packages for medals and awards. There's definitely something to say for leadership having a hand in the excellence of what their guys do, but I don't think acts of heroism by your crew dogs should automatically qualify their leader who never left the base for the same recognition. Hell, even if one of the guys in the back of the jet that I was actually flying finds something that turns out to save the day for a bunch of guys on the ground I don't think I would qualify for anything near the same recognition just by virtue of being on the same jet. I didn't do any of the work, I was just driving the bus. I don't see a whole lot of difference between a some DO or SQ/CC sitting in ops town at the deid putting him in for a medal for something his guys did in-country under fire, and a finance guy putting himself in for a medal for cutting the check to buy the gas that got the aircraft into country. The mission wouldn't have happened without either of their support and enabling, but neither of them were there actually making the effects happen and putting themselves at risk to do it.

So a little while ago we had a WG/CC call. Part of the show for the day was the presentation of two Bronze Stars. Both to LRS types. In neither citation did I hear one mention of enemy fire. The closest thing I could discern was that one guy might have been present in a mortar attack. This is not the first time I've seen and heard of the BS being awarded to guys who were not under fire from the enemy. Am I missing something, or is the BS becoming less of a medal for actual achievement, and more of another "thanks for playing" feel-good medal, similar to the Air Medal?

I'm in agreement with the rest of you that profanity is no big deal, at least from a crew dog perspective, but abusing and berating leaders in front of subordinates is a no-no. Any sort of leadership training will tell you this. Leadership should appear as one cohesive unit to subordinates, no matter how incompetent a piece of that leadership chain may be. If Sr leadership goes on a tear to your immediate leadership questioning their competence, what position does that put their subordinates in? You're left trying to decide who the real idiot is.... your boss who just got his ass handed to him by his boss, or his boss for being wrong about your boss. It's a breakdown in the chain of command and erodes the authority of leadership. This sounds like a good, clean kill for the Navy IG. This kind of person is poison to good order and discipline, and should never be in a command position.

sorry dude, but the "follow-on" thing is nothing but a suicide prevention bait-and-switch. Look at the mechanics of it.... right now they're hiring a buttload of Lts to fly these things. In 4 years those guys will be mid time Capts or so... so unless you want to create an epic leadership and experience void in the fastest expanding mission in the AF, there's no possible way they can let these guys go, except perhaps to another UAV. So are they making guys who graduate UPT and go to predators 11X AFSC with pilot wings, or are they making them 18X with UAV wings?

How is this thread on page 3?? Anyway, just showed up here. Had an email in my inbox that said the letter had been signed, and the beer is on the way. I've never seen the DEL so dead though. I wonder how the shoes are coping without such a large concentration of people to harass.

Anyone got a link to download the software itself? My SQ just issued me a reader, but it was JUST the reader, no install CD or any sort of reference on where to get the software to make it go.

hopefully they block the damn world of warcraft servers. that would double the available bandwidth instantly

Never did the process myself, but there are a lot of guys in my community who try to go down this road, usually FE or tech types, also navs and ABMs who occasionally try to get into the pilot world. The biggest piece of advice I can give you is love and excel at the job YOU CURRENTLY HAVE. Don't be one of those dudes who cruise around bitching about "coulda shoulda woulda" or talking non stop how you're going to be a pilot one day. The thing that seems to help the most is being shit-hot in the job you currently have, thus your rater and commander see that you have the potential to take on the greater challenge and responsibility of officership and being a pilot. You can know in your mind all you want about how good of a pilot you are, but if you're a shit _(insert current career here)___ who's going to believe you when you tell them you'd be a good pilot? And don't take no for an answer. As guys have said, there are several ways to skin this cat, and until you're too old or too broken, you're never officially out of the game. Good luck!

i haven't been in theater since early november, so I don't know how they're doing right now. They were downright dangerous when i was there.

see edit.... better?

here's your legit answer.... 1. This is (hypothetically) the last time this should be mentioned, for several reasons --You're (hypothetically) admitting to a felony, and (hypothetically) implicating your sister in a felony (hypothetically) --You're (hypothetically) not taking them anymore, and (hypothetically) have no dependence on them --If it's (hypothetically) out of your system (not sure how long that takes), nobody will know (hypothetically) 2. Delete this thread (not hypothetically) 3. Start a new thread with the pictures that have been demanded. (also not hypothetically)

So there I am halfway through T-6s at DLF. It's about 2am and I'm deep asleep in what's known in the non-cop world as "crew rest". Anyway, I hear an absolute POUNDING on my door, followed by ringing of my doorbell, followed by more knocking on my door. I grab my just-in-case device and go to the door to see if my house is on fire and someone is trying to let me know, or what of equal importance could POSSIBLY necessitate the near kicking in of my door. So I crack the door open and A1C Fvcknuts is out there, and as soon as he sees me he points at my car that's parked in the street. "SIR! Is that your vehicle??!" I reply in the affirmative. He then proceeds to tell me that it's parked opposite the direction of traffic and must be moved IMMEDIATELY. YGBFSM! I'm in MFing crew rest with a 6am show time, and you wake me up at 2am to tell me my car is pointed the wrong direction while PARKED on a residential street with almost NO traffic, and certainly not at that time of the night. I told him it would be moving in 3.5 hours when I got in it to drive it to work. He says "No SIR, you must move it NOW, or I'll be forced to write you a ticket!" AYFKM! I'm too pissed at this tard to argue anymore, so I moved the car. The next morning I go to my flt/cc and let him know what happened. Got word back from him reassuring me that the SFS/CC has said such things would not happen again. I realize I was in the wrong, but this is really one of those situations where a little discretion would have gone a long way, or just write me a ticket and get it over with! Definitely don't kick my door halfway in just to tell me to move my effing car in the middle of the night!

Just the standard stuff you get at any job. Like it or not, your job isn't to be a pilot. Flying is often a secondary or tertiary aspect of what you do. You will be farmed out to do some ground, be it scheduling, training (paperwork management, not instruction as a junior guy), safety, etc. It's really a standard 9-5 job, with all the associated office crap that goes along with it (See: Office Space). You'll have the normal 10% of the guys who pull 90% of the load, and 90% of the guys who do nothing but sit on ass until the commander shows up and they put on their "i really am a good worker" game. There's always some line-of-sight tasking to be done, and stuff like that. Rules are always changing (generally back to what they were before the latest change came about) and every new leader thinks they've come up with the next great idea, when in reality they're just doing the same thing that's alway been done, just with a different three letter acronym to go along with it. You'll have a lot of CBTs to do (computer based training) and there's always a new requirement for another half dozen CBTs to accomplish before you can do something. Every incident causes a knee jerk chain reaction that results in ass pain for everyone, regardless if it was just an isolated one-moron event (like a DUI). If you want to be a professional in ANY job, military or civilian, you will deal with just about the same crap. The military really isn't that different from any other corporate job, we just get to wear cool zipper suits and sometimes get to play with cool toys that someone else is paying for. My advice would to be to pursue whatever it is you want to do, fighters, heavies, recce, whatever. Guaranteed there WILL be queep, office politics and general BS to be had WHEREVER you go, so don't make any sort of career decision based on trying to avoid it. There are two kinds of people who will tell you about what their job is like-- guys who will tell you stories about queep and BS, and ######ing liars.

Because generally speaking, people who are not of your faith want to hear about your faith about as much as they want to be regaled by tales of the last time you clipped your toe nails. That in and of itself it probably not snapish; however, "I cant do that because I'm religious" and especially "i can't go out, i've got church in the morning" definitely is snapish.

Generally I absolutely HATE when someone throws rank around, and I try as hard as possible to avoid doing that, but if someone had the incredible gall to punch the red button on me and attempt to "berate" me as you describe it, they damn well better outrank me. If the person you are referring to outranked his berrator, he's a failure as an officer/NCO for not correcting that kind of lack of courtesy ON THE SPOT, and then informing the individual's shirt and squadron commander of their troop's lack of tact. It's one thing to politely correct someone on something like a shirt tail coming untucked, it's a whole other thing to do something like you describe. I think even if you are outranked by someone who does something like that, it's something to bring up to at least your leadership, if not theirs.

reality is a bitch sometimes. it's a sad state of things when a squadron full of aviators views flying as a bad thing because it takes away time from accomplishing all the queep shit they have to do for their ground job. I'm sure it's like this everywhere, but we're so short manned, even brand new copilots immediately have 2-3 jobs to do (scheduling + snacko + LOS taskings like putting together an airshow appearance). Not that some of that shit isn't a CP right of passage, but new CPs should be doing as little as possible that doesn't involve flying, learning the WS, and becoming better pilots, and THEN after a little while they can start to juggle.

I'm one of those athiest non-god fearing individuals.... what say you? I've got no problem with religion, and it alone is not a qualification for SNAP status; however, wearing it on your sleeve/proselytizing certainly is!

agreed... my last stint at the deid ended at the height of the rebellion. it sounds like it really has calmed down there, but we'll see. I think REMF was the best addition to this thread in the past 50 pages.

Seems a common trait among SNAPs is prior civilian flying time, and their willingness to let you know how things are different "on the outside". If this trait makes it all the way through UPT and onto the line, this person may be beyond hope. And being married prior/during/immediately after UPT does not automatically qualify one for SNAP status, and being single definitely doesn't exclude you from said status. BEING A ###### WHIPPED BITCH is what makes you a SNAP. If you need to call home to ask if you can go to the bar/establishment of exposed mammaries/other location of ill repute, you are a SNAP, regardless of your legal status to your apparent master. Same is true for guys who don't drink. No foul in that in and of itself. Lots of guys have their own reasons for it, religious, prior problems with booze, etc, and YOU'RE a dick if you try to force it on a dude if he clearly has a legitimate issue with it. What is not excusable is said dude using his desire to not drink as an excuse to bail on activities.

no reason to doubt him

You know the saddest thing on earth? When ABMs use that stuff.....

I enjoy the hell out of JSTARS, but every airframe really is what you make of it. There are lots of dudes here who are miserable for whatever reason. Maybe they're bummed about flying an old airplane (show me an airplane in the inventory that doesn't have continuous MX issues and I'll show you an airplane on a stick at the gate or in a museum). Or maybe they buy into the back-end vs front-end bullshit. Either way, I try to avoid the JSTARS hate, and I'm much happier because of it. It makes me VERY happy to realize there are a lot of guys out there who got dead because we found them in the middle of nowhere, and if we hadn't found them they'd still be humping camels to this very day. Plus having a full up galley and two full up shitters on the jet make a 12+ hour sortie a bit more enjoyable. Plus having a nav and FE make my job a LOT easier

I'm not advocating that he take it down, and if he did, he would be in an even worse position. The main point that I'm getting at is that it is pretty telling that "the crowd goes wild" when their leadership is publicly insulted like that. I can tell you that at my home station unit if someone said the same kind of things against our leadership they'd be greeted with silence, boos or an outright ass whipping. That's because we actually respect our leadership and an outsider coming in and publicly insulting them like that would simplt not be tolerated, forget cheered. Being a bag wearer does nothing for him. Poor leadership is poor leadership, regardless of what uniform is worn, or even what you did in a prior life. I know guys who went to pilot training when BG Wilson was the WG/CC at KCBM. They generally liked what the guy did there, and when he was announced to be taking over at AUAB, people were hoping and expecting a change for the better from the previous leadership there. Instead, things have only gotten worse and more queepy.

To answer your question sir, that was on the door of the Indy DFAC on or around the 15th of Oct 09 It had a matching cousin posted on the other door. I saw it with my own eyes. Once inside, the markerboard that normally displays the menu instead said something to the effect of "you will not be served unless you are wearing a reflective belt". Whether it was the policy or not, I know for an absolute FACT that people were being denied food by both USAF personnel and TCNs unless they were actually WEARING a reflective belt, not just demonstrating possession. If that was not the policy and it was simply being improperly enforced I do not know, but I do know that it sent shock waves through at least my squadron and I would assume the rest of the base. The impression was that leadership had finally gone off the deep end. That sign and the enforcement behind it are what I believe started the October rebellion leading to the now famous facebook group, article in AF times and other places. For many people, that sign became a tangible symbol of everything that is wrong with Al Udeid. If nothing else, it serves to demonstrate the disastrous effect on both morale and good order and discipline one errant policy, or worse, improper enforcement of a policy can have. I wouldn't say that Al Udeid is on the verge of mutiny or anything that extreme, but it should be pretty telling when some hack comedian gets on stage and shouts "###### THE VICE COMMANDER!" and the crowd erupts in applause and cheering.