F-16 Students skip Phase III

[matmacwc]

Who has the skinny on the F-16 RTU students who never flew in Phase III at SUPT and just did sims?  I hear there are 2 at Kelly, certainly we have a UPT or Kelly instructor on here to verify.  There is more to the rumor but it’s hard to believe.  It certainly would increase production quickly.

[xcraftllc]

Nope, I'm at Kelly now, not a thing yet. They're just talking about the prospect of there being up to 2 per class some time in the future. Lots of folks asking what it might look like and how they would do it if it were a thing.

[Jaded]

You know what was fun recently? Flying dedicated formation rides, in an F-16, at an operational squadron, because the student had passed the B-course without a basic proficiency in formation flying.

Stuff like this just kicks the can down the road.

[matmacwc]

Hope he wasn’t a Tucson grad, we usually don’t put up with that crap.

Edited November 22, 2017 by matmacwc

[Napoleon_Tanerite]

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.

Edited November 22, 2017 by Napoleon_Tanerite

[FishBowl]

Wow... the T-38 sims barely held a torch to what it was like to actually fly the jet. Phase II teaches you how to be a student pilot, while Phase III actually teaches basic airmanship. Where’s my popcorn?

[hindsight2020]

54 minutes ago, Napoleon_Tanerite said:

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.

Considering our week down here, the sheer irony of this statement does not escape me.

--break break--

I can't speak for the relative merits of the T-1 program, but as it pertains to the 38, yeah whoever suggests all we do in phase III is play patty cake for flight hours can go EABOD,  FTUs included. Col Jessup's infamous retort on A Few Good Men seem a fitting response to this garbage.

[Cyril Figgus]

I'll pipe in on the T-1 students we've seen at my MAF schoolhouse... They can't talk on the radio and generally lack SA. This has been most noticeable from Laughlin grads, where they did all their mission (tanker/airdrop) rides in the sim.

This leads to them running over taxi lights and overspeeding things, and generally taking longer in our FTU syllabus than they would otherwise.

It's a nuisance for us in a dual-pilot airplane... Can't imagine it's a good thing to teach UPT skills in an F-16.

[Boomer6]

Apparently there is a push to evaluate moving all of UPT to virtual reality training, or so goes the rumor. KAUS wouldn't be bad for upt though..

[ViperMan]

4 hours ago, matmacwc said:

Who has the skinny on the F-16 RTU students who never flew in Phase III at SUPT and just did sims?  I hear there are 2 at Kelly, certainly we have a UPT or Kelly instructor on here to verify.  There is more to the rumor but it’s hard to believe.  It certainly would increase production quickly.

 

4 hours ago, xcraftllc said:

Nope, I'm at Kelly now, not a thing yet. They're just talking about the prospect of there being up to 2 per class some time in the future. Lots of folks asking what it might look like and how they would do it if it were a thing.

Confirm what we're talking about is doing T-6s, and then prof advancing to F-16s? No T-38s whatsoever?

[LookieRookie]

Just now, ViperMan said:

 

Confirm what we're talking about is doing T-6s, and then prof advancing to F-16s? No T-38s whatsoever?

It's being discussed. And UPT expanded to Bergstrom or Alliance with a contractor esque deal ala Doss with AF QA

[ViperMan]

8 minutes ago, LookieRookie said:

It's being discussed. And UPT expanded to Bergstrom or Alliance with a contractor esque deal ala Doss with AF QA

By who? The staff?

That should be fun for me...

Edited November 22, 2017 by ViperMan

[LookieRookie]

10 minutes ago, ViperMan said:

By who? The staff?

That should be fun for me...

AETC staff yes. But who knows how far these ideas are along. 

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, LookieRookie said:

It's being discussed. And UPT expanded to Bergstrom or Alliance with a contractor esque deal ala Doss with AF QA

So they are willing to take a T-6 student to a fighter? And what other options are they exploring to cut corners?

 

.... a few months ago about 80ish dirty MC12 dudes and dudettes (a lot T-38 trained) went to C2ISR and droids in their final drop. 

[xcraftllc]

17 minutes ago, LookieRookie said:

It's being discussed. And UPT expanded to Bergstrom or Alliance with a contractor esque deal ala Doss with AF QA

KAUS man, that's baptism by fire! You better learn them radios real quick son, we ain't got time to fuck around! Either say it right the first time or just put yourself in a penalty container for the controller!

[Clark Griswold]

Good grief... are we that bad at running an AF we are really considering this?

Flew the mighty T-1 back in the day but I am guessing the T-38 Phase III program is about 75 flight hours + 15 sim hours or so, so at 10K per T-38 flight hour and just figure 2K per sim hour (WAG) that comes to 765K per 38 stud. 

Now let's say you fly them in the 16 at 22K per hour and just guessing 4K per hour on the sim and you give them half the time for dedicated basic airmanship / systems (37.5 flight & 7.5 sim) that is 855K. 

Will that be coincidental with the mission employment training and there by save some flight hours in total?  Maybe but my calculator, my experience and my common sense say probably not.  You're going to pay more per stud and wear out your 16s faster more likely.

Non-concur.

Flight hour cost ref: https://nation.time.com/2013/04/02/costly-flight-hours/

[ViperMan]

6 hours ago, matmacwc said:

Who has the skinny on the F-16 RTU students who never flew in Phase III at SUPT and just did sims?  I hear there are 2 at Kelly, certainly we have a UPT or Kelly instructor on here to verify.  There is more to the rumor but it’s hard to believe.  It certainly would increase production quickly.

Production of what? X and XX rides?

[brabus]

What we have right now is completely unsat, and the staff is kicking around ideas like cutting phase 3? Fuck you staff. I can't believe what were getting out of the FTU...not a spear at the bros teaching or the FNGs, but at those making the decisions that think this kind of shit is acceptable. I am truly concerned about dudes killing themselves, don't even get me started on combat capability. I've experienced what Jaded referenced; it's a trend across multiple squadrons, and will only stop when the ass clowns running this ship aground call a spade a spade and go back to valuing quality over quantity. 

[Boomer6]

6 minutes ago, brabus said:

What we have right now is completely unsat, and the staff is kicking around ideas like cutting phase 3? you staff. I can't believe what were getting out of the FTU...not a spear at the bros teaching or the FNGs, but at those making the decisions that think this kind of shit is acceptable. I am truly concerned about dudes killing themselves, don't even get me started on combat capability. I've experienced what Jaded referenced; it's a trend across multiple squadrons, and will only stop when the ass clowns running this ship aground call a spade a spade and go back to valuing quality over quantity. 

It's depressing the number of times I've heard IPs arguing against giving an unsat with the reasoning of "Is this good for the timeline." The standard at UPT, on the -38 side at least, has been on a sharp decline for the last year or two, because we're more concerned on graduating everyone on time so the masses can keep the "100% on-time graduation" OPR bullet.  We're sending SPs to fighters that can't fly TAC to save their life. UPT flt/cc's are sending dudes to fighters because "it's not their job to decide who is good enough to fly a fighter and who isn't, that' IFF's job." Then the studs that can't even fly TAC pass IFF and on down the road the can goes. 

[brabus]

Not a single line IP should say the word time line. That's for DOs/CCs to argue about, maybe. If the line IPs aren't holding the standard,  we're all fucked. There's a bar, either hold people to it or go get some remedial training on being an IP.

[Boomer6]

6 minutes ago, brabus said:

Not a single line IP should say the word time line. That's for DOs/CCs to argue about, maybe. If the line IPs aren't holding the standard,  we're all ed. There's a bar, either hold people to it or go get some remedial training on being an IP.

When the timeline or bust mentality is pushed by leadership the only people getting anything remedial are the "raving lunatics"  trying to push back and hold some semblance of a standard. 

[Danger41]

Is it difficult to wash a guy out of IFF/FTU? The fact that an operational F-16 unit is having to fly basic form sorties is ridiculous. 

 

[brabus]

6 minutes ago, Boomer6 said:

When the timeline or bust mentality is pushed by leadership the only people getting anything remedial are the "raving lunatics"  trying to push back and hold some semblance of a standard. 

I believe you man; leadership is horribly failing at multiple levels. But that's old news...

[xcraftllc]

37 minutes ago, Danger41 said:

Is it difficult to wash a guy out of IFF/FTU? The fact that an operational F-16 unit is having to fly basic form sorties is ridiculous. 

 

I'm not sure but what I can say is we lost one from my 38 class in UPT, one from my IFF class (about 5 months ago) and there was a washout in the IFF class before ours. Kelly washed out 2 B-Course studs a couple classes ago.

Edited November 23, 2017 by xcraftllc

[FishBowl]

They sent a stud to IFF on flying CAP. FY17 had bottom-of-their-class T-38 students going to fighters... Why? To let them get pushed out of the community and go back to being UPT or B-Course instructors?