What is next for the UPT-Next graduates?

[Majestik Møøse]

“Why do we have to train this way? This isn’t how we do things in the desert!”

[Danger41]

I talked to some of the Kelly Viper guys and they said the PTN studs there did great. I’m sure you could talk to another IP in the squadron who thinks those millennial cucks are worthless, but that was the info I got.

 

[di1630]

So we can rely on only PGM and BOC in all our future conflicts? Weren’t you one of those who said we didn’t need more F-22s too?

Nope, I’d have built 690 more F-22’s.

My point is that technology has changed the core competencies of being a fighter pilot. Time to stop training like we did in 1975.




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[war007afa]

5 hours ago, Sprkt69 said:

So we can rely on only PGM and BOC in all our future conflicts? Weren’t you one of those who said we didn’t need more F-22s too?

Does EVERYONE need to focus on the future conflict, or can we rotate units through prep routinely while the other guys focus on today’s fight? Isn’t this why the Flags were developed?

AEF has been (in practicality) dead for some time. But maybe we can actually let dudes focus on a particular near-term way ahead as opposed to everyone preparing for Folda Gap 2.0 while also preparing for the ‘Stan.

If everything is important, nothing is important. 

[JeremiahWeed]

5 hours ago, war007afa said:

But maybe we can actually let dudes focus on a particular near-term way ahead as opposed to everyone preparing for Folda Gap 2.0 while also preparing for the ‘Stan.

If everything is important, nothing is important. 

I think the dudes preparing for Folda Gap 🤔 2.0 are going to be really surprised if the balloon goes up............but that’s not important. 

[Blue]

1 hour ago, JeremiahWeed said:

I think the dudes preparing for Folda Gap 🤔 2.0 are going to be really surprised if the balloon goes up............but that’s not important. 

Well, how else are we gonna beat those dang Rooskies?

[brickhistory]

9 hours ago, JeremiahWeed said:

I think the dudes preparing for Folda Gap 🤔 2.0 are going to be really surprised if the balloon goes up............but that’s not important. 

Took me several tries and I was about to ring the nurse for my meds when I got it...

 

 

[Pooter]

A few things about PTN:

- PTN is not a watered down version of UPT with fancy toys.  Because UPT is already a watered down version of UPT.  If you look at programmed syllabus hours per student right now in UPT, it is 20% less than it was 5 years ago.  That's across flights, sims, and academics.  So the question should not be "why has PTN cut all this time out of pilot training and trying to pass it off as okay?"  Instead it should be: "the time cuts are already happening at an institutional level.  What can we do to maintain some semblance of quality?"  We can b*tch about timeline guidance that comes down from on high until we're blue in the face, but that won't change anything.  In my opinion, PTN is the only part of the pilot training enterprise that has that has actually made PROACTIVE attempts to maintain quality with reduced timeline.  

- If the students were handpicked, how is this experiment valid or scaleable?  Valid question, and I'll do you one better.  The instructors were handpicked too, and I'd argue that's even more important.  If your entire squadron is made up of experienced spec ops, fighter guys, and high time faips, the quality of instruction is going to be better.  The youngest instructors at PTN had 600+ hrs, which would be considered medium to highly experienced in a normal UPT squadron.  UPT is having a crisis of instructor quality right now, and it absolutely needs to be addressed if/when this gets scaled up.

- I hope people can recognize that PTN doesn't need to be declared an absolute victory or an absolute failure.  The air force seems to be airing in the direction of absolute victory while everyone else (mainly online) is in the schadenfreude failure camp.  If we're mature about this we should realize that there's a mixture of good and bad.  We should take the good and scale it to UPT as a whole, and also be willing to call a spade a spade and not cling to the stuff that didn't work.  

- The opr system is broken

- We should have bought more raptors

- I'm not that drunk.

 

[MechGov]

“Why do we have to train this way? This isn’t how we do things in the desert!”

Man if I had a dollar every time I heard someone in the squadron say that. ‘Cause your 2-3 deployments to OIF/OEF/OIR is the only war will be fought. Gtfo.

I was reading about the debacle that was Allied Force. Dudes going into a pretty robust SAM MEZ daily, and the AO was fairly small too. And that was only 2 years prior to OEF.

[Sprkt69]

2 hours ago, MechGov said:

Man if I had a dollar every time I heard someone in the squadron say that. ‘Cause your 2-3 deployments to OIF/OEF/OIR is the only war will be fought. Gtfo.

I was reading about the debacle that was Allied Force. Dudes going into a pretty robust SAM MEZ daily, and the AO was fairly small too. And that was only 2 years prior to OEF.

We also had a lot more experienced pilots making sure they got the job done and flew home.

[MechGov]

Does EVERYONE need to focus on the future conflict, or can we rotate units through prep routinely while the other guys focus on today’s fight? Isn’t this why the Flags were developed?
AEF has been (in practicality) dead for some time. But maybe we can actually let dudes focus on a particular near-term way ahead as opposed to everyone preparing for Folda Gap 2.0 while also preparing for the ‘Stan.
If everything is important, nothing is important. 

Having a readiness cycle would be a nice idea in the flying world: preparing for routine deployments on one side of the cycle, then training for the high end fight post deployment. That might have a side benefit of shortening some of those 179s for you guys in the CAF if your community goes to a 4-part training/deployment cycle.

It’s done with certain units in SOF and it seems to work out fairly well with units having dedicated workup periods for different, yet complex mission sets. Granted, if your MDS is low density/high demand and limited to a couple units, it’s probably not going to work.

[Danger41]

1 hour ago, MechGov said:

Having a readiness cycle would be a nice idea in the flying world: preparing for routine deployments on one side of the cycle, then training for the high end fight post deployment. That might have a side benefit of shortening some of those 179s for you guys in the CAF if your community goes to a 4-part training/deployment cycle.

It’s done with certain units in SOF and it seems to work out fairly well with units having dedicated workup periods for different, yet complex mission sets. Granted, if your MDS is low density/high demand and limited to a couple units, it’s probably not going to work.

The only problem with this is compare how good an F-15E of F-16 unit is at air to air mission sets compared to an F-15C unit. Same with those multi-role fighters compared to A-10’s at CAS. Or any multi-role unit compared to a single role.

This cycle works for those SOF units because the missions at their core (with notable exceptions like AFO, etc) are the same regardless of the environment. Get to a compound, secure it, take care of business and get out. Not so for multi-role assets used across the spectrum of conflict.

This is why you need units (CAF or SOF) that handle the missions we are doing with VEO and let big blue train for the big fight. I can’t imagine how hard it would be in a Strike Eagle unit to train for the variety of air to air METLs, then all the air to ground stuff across the spectrum from CAS to AI, and then be expected to be ready for a VEO deployment or maybe to defend Taiwan. 

[MechGov]

The only problem with this is compare how good an F-15E of F-16 unit is at air to air mission sets compared to an F-15C unit. Same with those multi-role fighters compared to A-10’s at CAS. Or any multi-role unit compared to a single role.
This cycle works for those SOF units because the missions at their core (with notable exceptions like AFO, etc) are the same regardless of the environment. Get to a compound, secure it, take care of business and get out. Not so for multi-role assets used across the spectrum of conflict.
This is why you need units (CAF or SOF) that handle the missions we are doing with VEO and let big blue train for the big fight. I can’t imagine how hard it would be in a Strike Eagle unit to train for the variety of air to air METLs, then all the air to ground stuff across the spectrum from CAS to AI, and then be expected to be ready for a VEO deployment or maybe to defend Taiwan. 

It would have to be an apples to apples cycle, I.e. rotating 3-4x F-16 units between an AOR rotation, capped at 120 days, back to a reconstitution cycle/workup cycle, then a MCO cycle including your trips to Red Flag. I’m not contesting that F-15E mission sets /= Viper METLs for major combat operations. However, I’d argue that our current construct in theater is largely “get in stack, drop bombs on coord, NTISR, AAR, sit in stack.”

Again, within same MDS, trying to separate the training/readiness requirements from the VEO/low intensity fight from the high end/kick down the door training we still need.

I don’t know if AEF was trying to address that since it’s been an abortion my whole career and reduced to “you all are enablers.”

[Best-22]

16 hours ago, Danger41 said:

The only problem with this is compare how good an F-15E of F-16 unit is at air to air mission sets compared to an F-15C unit. Same with those multi-role fighters compared to A-10’s at CAS. Or any multi-role unit compared to a single role.

This cycle works for those SOF units because the missions at their core (with notable exceptions like AFO, etc) are the same regardless of the environment. Get to a compound, secure it, take care of business and get out. Not so for multi-role assets used across the spectrum of conflict.

This is why you need units (CAF or SOF) that handle the missions we are doing with VEO and let big blue train for the big fight. I can’t imagine how hard it would be in a Strike Eagle unit to train for the variety of air to air METLs, then all the air to ground stuff across the spectrum from CAS to AI, and then be expected to be ready for a VEO deployment or maybe to defend Taiwan. 

Are you talking about SOF aviation or ground forces? You might be more in the dark than you realize, but I don’t want to assume since I don’t know you. You’re describing direct action but that’s only 1 of several well defined  mission sets. I could shed some light on the aviation side, and if you teach me a little about the different multirole missions you allude to I can draw more accurate parallels. Then we all might have a better idea if the work up cycle could be applied to fighters.

[tac airlifter]

2 hours ago, Best-22 said:

 You might be more in the dark than you realize...

He’s not.

[brabus]

On 4/6/2019 at 9:53 PM, MechGov said:

preparing for routine deployments on one side of the cycle, then training for the high end fight post deployment.

That's how fighters have generally done it since I started flying over 10 years ago.  We "spin up" for a deployment X months out, and the rest of the non-spin up/non-deployment time is spent training for the other missions/scenarios. 

[Clark Griswold]

If only there was an aircraft designed to provide Attack, Observation and ISR in one airplane, ideally suited to combating VEOs in COIN & LIC, inexpensive to fly, low technical risk, easy to operate and capable of delivering a variety of effects (observation, strike, multi-int ISR) in one platform and on every mission....

This aircraft could even have an open architecture and be flown by CAF and SOF, customized for each.  One might want several FMV sensors, A2A radar and the other a SAR and EO cross-cue capability, space and power for other systems in a compartment...

The units equipped with this plane, could train almost exclusively for this mission set and get really good at it, allowing 4/5 gen equipped units to focus training mostly on high end fights, there could be cross-flow between these manned platforms and experience in operations across the spectrum could be gained...

Sarcasm rant - Complete (P).

Directed at the AF, not anyone on this thread.  

[MechGov]

If only there was an aircraft designed to provide Attack, Observation and ISR in one airplane, ideally suited to combating VEOs in COIN & LIC, inexpensive to fly, low technical risk, easy to operate and capable of delivering a variety of effects (observation, strike, multi-int ISR) in one platform and on every mission....

Sarcasm rant - Complete (P).
Directed at the AF, not anyone on this thread.  

You meant the T-X, right? That way the UPT-N kids can roll straight out of T-6s into 75 more hours of T-X training and be ready for the fight!

/sarcasm. I’m with you Clark on the LAAR. AF let that one get away.

Back to your regularly scheduled programming about doing traffic pattern stalls in Austin.

[pawnman]

9 hours ago, brabus said:

That's how fighters have generally done it since I started flying over 10 years ago.  We "spin up" for a deployment X months out, and the rest of the non-spin up/non-deployment time is spent training for the other missions/scenarios. 

That's how we've always done it too.  When we were home for a year, gone for six months, we would spend the first six months home running through all the high-end fight stuff - defensive tactics, large-scale JDAM, stand-off weapons, package integration, concluding with a Red Flag.  Then we'd shift over the CAS to spin up for deployment, concluding with a Green Flag.  Then we'd deploy.

Of course, that meant we were spending as much time on CAS as all out other missions combined, but it was also the only mission we were actually executing in the real-world.