What's wrong with the Air Force?

[one1]

6 hours ago, tac airlifter said:

 

And I don’t blame politicians, I blame our generals.

The military objective was to dismantle AQ in Afghanistan and deny the opportunity to use Afghanistan as a safehaven for attack planning against the homeland. We won the war in a few months.

The problem is when politicians decided that democracy and a strong central government was important in Afghanistan. That is not an objective that can be achieved with warfare alone. Any general that thinks that is a reasonable objective is more politician than military leader.

 

Edited November 10, 2018 by one1

[frog]

6 hours ago, one1 said:

The military objective was to dismantle AQ in Afghanistan and deny the opportunity to use Afghanistan as a safehaven for attack planning against the homeland. We won the war in a few months.

The problem is when politicians decided that democracy and a strong central government was important in Afghanistan. That is not an objective that can be achieved with warfare alone. Any general that thinks that is a reasonable objective is more politician than military leader.

 

This.

And this is very much a war to the other side. You can't consider it "not a war" just because the enemy doesn't play to your strengths. They are most definitely using violence to achieve political objectives. 

[Prozac]

As long as the American public allows themselves to believe that the current conflicts cost them nothing more than an occasional “thank you for your service”, nothing will change. 

[MooseClub]

4 hours ago, Prozac said:

As long as the American public allows themselves to believe that the current conflicts cost them nothing more than an occasional “thank you for your service”, nothing will change. 

^exactly

Stuff in the Middle East couldn’t be further from the minds of typical Americans. My assumption is most politicians (and honestly prob many generals) are more than happy to keep their “wars” by in large out of the public eye. Status quo and keeping the machine rolling is much easier that way. 

[Danger41]

19 hours ago, one1 said:

The military objective was to dismantle AQ in Afghanistan and deny the opportunity to use Afghanistan as a safehaven for attack planning against the homeland. We won the war in a few months.

The problem is when politicians decided that democracy and a strong central government was important in Afghanistan. That is not an objective that can be achieved with warfare alone. Any general that thinks that is a reasonable objective is more politician than military leader.

 

This is where the military worship throughout the nation has unintended consequences. We should’ve gone hard with the diplomatic solution over a decade ago and doing the FID type missions to augment it*.

The government doesn’t want to ever just tell DoD “no”. Problem is that the military is a hammer but we need to paint a portrait. You can use a hammer to construct the picture frame, but at some point you need to use a brush.

*If you want to kill your way out of it, commit to that. I personally don’t think that’ll work but have a clear end state and put resources towards achieving it.

An interesting book on the subject is “War on Peace” by Ronan Farrow. The book worships diplomacy a bit too much in my opinion, but it’s very interesting.

[war007afa]

Food for thought today...

 

[Guest]

Food for thought today...
 

Accurate. In my career I’ve had two great Sq/CCs and four who’ve ranged from piss poor to adequate. I’ve always laughed whenever a Lt has told me “we have a great commander!” Never listen to an Lts recommendation on CCs, beer, cars or Strip Clubs (or anything else for that matter).


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[DirtyFlightSuit]

Lts view of strip clubs.... Oh Wild Child's 

[M2]

Worth a read for those who weren't around 20+ years ago...

Quote

 

Criticism Over Blast Leads Top Air Force General to Retire

The top general of the Air Force said today that he would retire early, in part because he believed one or more Air Force officers would unfairly be held responsible for the terrorist attack in Saudi Arabia that killed 19 airmen last year, lawmakers and Pentagon officials said.

The officer, Gen. Ronald R. Fogleman, said he would step down by Sept. 1, a year before his four-year term expires. General Fogleman, a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff since 1994, would become the first Air Force Chief of Staff to leave voluntarily before his tenure was up.

General Fogleman, 56, a highly decorated Vietnam-era fighter pilot, has told associates in recent weeks that he would leave if Defense Secretary William S. Cohen punished Air Force commanders for failing to prevent the bombing, at the Khobar Towers housing complex in Dhahran.

In a statement issued today, General Fogleman said his decision was intended to ''defuse the perceived confrontation between myself and Secretary Cohen.'' The general added, ''my values and sense of loyalty to the troops led me to the conclusion that I may be out of step.''

(Rest of article at title link)

 

[HarleyQuinn]

If I wear my authorized parka with my ABUs will the shoe force come after me? They stripped me of my leather jacket with a fleece liner made by no other than Mr. Kim in Songtan. I must stay warm. #GP/CC #Hatespilots #Haterade

Edited November 14, 2018 by HarleyQuinn

[ThreeHoler]

You an wear your leather jacket if you wear blues.


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[HarleyQuinn]

35 minutes ago, ThreeHoler said:

You an wear your leather jacket if you wear blues.


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Good point! You are the freaking man! I didn't think of that at all. This is why I love this forum. That will definitely get underneath the GP/CC skin. Maybe he will come at me just like a spider monkey.

Edited November 14, 2018 by HarleyQuinn

[pawnman]

7 hours ago, HarleyQuinn said:

Good point! You are the freaking man! I didn't think of that at all. This is why I love this forum. That will definitely get underneath the GP/CC skin. Maybe he will come at me just like a spider monkey.

Blues, leather jacket, wheel cap.  Go old school.

[Orbit]

Be careful if they have a UOD defined then you might get in trouble for not wearing it.  Which is crap, if these damn army flight suits become mandatory I'll just end up wearing my blues all the time.  

[BashiChuni]

Manchester. 

[Orbit]

Did it before when they forced us to wear ABUs if we were not flying until I got shut down for not wearing the UOD.

 

[Guardian]

They make you own ABU’s? Why?

[Yaweh]

Reminds me of doing FTAC and not being able to wear my flight suit, but secfo were allowed to wear their berets. Cant wear the flight suit because it makes people feel left out. Cant wear the flight suit because everyone else has to wear ABU's, but secfo can wear their berets because they earned it. I thought wearing your leather jacket with blues was normal to cover up the lack of effort to keep ribbons up to date and the potentially missing name tag.

[JeremiahWeed]

7 minutes ago, Yaweh said:

 I thought wearing your leather jacket with blues was normal to cover up the lack of effort to keep ribbons up to date.....

🤔 When did officers (pilots, to be more accurate) started wearing ribbons on their blues?

Edited November 15, 2018 by JeremiahWeed

[Yaweh]

4 minutes ago, JeremiahWeed said:

🤔 When did officers (pilots, to be more accurate) started wearing ribbons on their blues?

That was an example during my Enlisted Aircrew days. Mostly a holdover because I never took them off the shirt. 

[ThreeHoler]

When did officers (pilots, to be more accurate) started wearing ribbons on their blues?

When they started going to FTAC?

[dream big]

8 hours ago, Yaweh said:

Reminds me of doing FTAC and not being able to wear my flight suit, but secfo were allowed to wear their berets. Cant wear the flight suit because it makes people feel left out. Cant wear the flight suit because everyone else has to wear ABU's, but secfo can wear their berets because they earned it. I thought wearing your leather jacket with blues was normal to cover up the lack of effort to keep ribbons up to date and the potentially missing name tag.

SecFo “earned” their berets? If having the lowest ASVAB score amongst all AFSCs and checking ID cards makes you think you are badass then it’s no wonder other services make fun of us.  There are grunts our there who do god’s most dangerous work and have legitimately earned those berets.

 

[SocialD]

7 hours ago, dream big said:

SecFo...

...Side bar...

Standing at the ops desk last month with a fellow pilot...he has 20+ years and I'm at 17+ (both prior-E) and neither of us had a fucking clue what the ARMS A1C was talking about when mentioned calling SecFo.   Makes sense now, but that was the first time we've heard that term.  We're both life long guard guys, so maybe we're just sheltered.  

 

...Back to your regularly scheduled programing...

What's wrong with the AF/ARC, is that they talk like they have a crisis on their hands but they won't, or are way to slow to, institute logical changes.  On the ANG side, we also get to fight "optics issues" wrt to solving this manning problem.  Anyway, do we have a fucking crisis or do we not?  If I were a tin-foil hat guy, I would almost think they're purposely dragging their feet to justify stop loss.

[YoungnDumb]

Just a young and dumb guy's thoughts but it seems like the AF deals with a lot of paralysis thru analysis and a lack of people willing to pull the trigger and accept the consequences, either good or bad, on solutions, i.e. we know we have a problem but we need to do 69 surveys on it and once we dream up a solution no one is willing to sign off on it as they're afraid of the consequences.  

Edited November 16, 2018 by YoungnDumb
grammar

[Hacker]

20 minutes ago, YoungnDumb said:

Just a young and dumb guy's thoughts but it seems like the AF deals with a lot of paralysis thru analysis and a lack of people willing to pull the trigger and accept the consequences, either good or bad, on solutions, i.e. we know we have a problem but we need to do 69 surveys on it and once we dream up a solution no one is willing to sign off on it as they're afraid of the consequences.  

Part and parcel with one of the cancers that has been growing in AF leadership over the last 10-15 years: nobody wants to make a decision, lest their superior disagree with that decision and it reflect poorly on them.

So, we have raised an entire generation of "leaders" (really "managers") who have to "run it up the chain" for absolutely every decision.

And this attitude is reflected, now, by the superiors themselves, who expect this kind of "mother, may I" out of their subordinates.

The grand result is that nobody is really empowered to make any decision, and few commanders have the balls to just make a decision <gasp> and risk their bosses not liking it.