Information on PIT (Pilot Instructor Training)

[Bode]

I fail to see an argument here for why PIT should remain the school house for UPT IP's. You say you're getting a worse product of UIP and PIT IP, I read that as UPT bases already have a corps of young and motivated IP's used to teaching to a brand new student. Would I rather be taught by someone with receny flying with a student  vs a PIT IP whos flown with a student maybe a handful of times in the last year for a re-blue?
 
PIT is loaded with people on their last assignment that dont give a shit, which you admit to. Why would I want people to go through a program where thats the majority of people they interact with? What kind of tone does that set for how business gets done in UPT? I would much rather them go to a UPT base with the young O-3's and faips that actually give a shit to inculcate the new IP's with the pace and attitude of that base. 
 
SPS has proven it can work. Make RND another UPT base and the production problem gets much easier to solve.

Just give RND all the international training. Offset the good deal location with tougher work. Also it would allow the international reps to all be local to their people.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Homestar]

45 minutes ago, Laxer69 said:

PIT is loaded with people on their last assignment that dont give a shit

That wasn't my experience at all in T-1 land.

Teaching new IPs how to teach new students is different than teaching new students. 

[Homestar]

48 minutes ago, Laxer69 said:

young O-3's and faips

Those are actually the last people I would want teaching new UPT IPs how to keep themselves safe.

[DirtyFlightSuit]

1 hour ago, Laxer69 said:

I fail to see an argument here for why PIT should remain the school house for UPT IP's. You say you're getting a worse product of UIP and PIT IP, I read that as UPT bases already have a corps of young and motivated IP's used to teaching to a brand new student. Would I rather be taught by someone with receny flying with a student  vs a PIT IP whos flown with a student maybe a handful of times in the last year for a re-blue?

 

PIT is loaded with people on their last assignment that dont give a shit, which you admit to. Why would I want people to go through a program where thats the majority of people they interact with? What kind of tone does that set for how business gets done in UPT? I would much rather them go to a UPT base with the young O-3's and faips that actually give a shit to inculcate the new IP's with the pace and attitude of that base. 

 

SPS has proven it can work. Make RND another UPT base and the production problem gets much easier to solve.

I was sitting at the DFAC enjoying my 69th egg meal in a row (thanks night flying), when a heated conversation at an adjoining table started.  These old timer reservist were going into detail about the numerous broken jets they were being asked to take with increasing regularity.  The conversation was a life saver as it informed younger inexperienced AC's like myself at some of the possible issues with accepting these aircraft and becoming normalized in the new standard that was continuous creeping in.  Back then generals and commanders all made plea's about the importance of our mission, the utter vital need for our aircraft and its mission etc.   These old timers were derided by commanders and a few of the younger folks as being checked out, in it for themselves and angry that their flying club was interrupted by deployments and the war.   Fast forward nearly 10 years later, and I am seeing the same #$%, and amazingly for the same War that back then was already well into its 7th year.  We are being asked to do more with less, fly aircraft with faulty ejection systems, suspect o2 systems, electronics that have KNOWN common place failures that have resulted in substantial fumes.  B1's recently had their own enjoyment with their system, KC-10s with egress rafts/slides and much more.   

But that is cool, your a brand new IP Captain that knows every thing has done every thing, and was raised up in this system that long ago normalized this bull #$% and now you don't know how otherwise to operate.  You look at those fleeing for the Airlines or the Exits and either are reacting out of jealousy or anger that it wont be you any time soon, and rather than thank them for their service as they leave and perhaps learn something of their time in, you try to find fault with their decisions and pin every thing that is wrong on them and their attitude.  Understand that those old timers at PIT have seen this same crap 3-4 times already, the revolving door of innovation, the joke being that there has been no innovation.  

I and every other PIT IP would LOVE to have UPT production done at Randolph, it would be a dream come true.  My favorite assignment was my UPT base, the comrade and joy of teaching new pilots how to fly is the best.   I hope you are right just for that reason alone.   PIT isn't some magical beast, you can absolutely do the training elsewhere, but PIT acts as a geographical fence, on manning, sorties, support etc.  Tearing down that fence (ask the 135 guys) never has produced anything short of a backlog and further capacity loss in the pipeline.  If you think somehow you'll be able to produce an IP at a UPT base faster than at PIT your insane, especially once scaled up.   Perhaps one or two you can jam through, but at some point very quickly you start to have to weigh UPT PFT vs your in house PIT, and those calculations always get jacked up.  

At any rate, don't take our lack of #$%^'s given for a literal statement.   If they(we) really didn't care we wouldn't be complaining on this forum for one, wouldn't be pushing for better accountability of T-6 nation maintenance issues, and wouldn't be fighting (and failing =\) the reduction in syllabus and emphasis on production over retention.   We are tired, and exasperated at how things are looking for all of our futures. 

 

[jazzdude]

From what I saw, generally FAIPs weren't the best instructors. Not necessarily bad, but they weren't disproportionately the best instructors. They could fly lots of sorties though, but generally because they weren't tied down with significant office jobs.

They would sometimes miss the bigger picture of why we do some things, or teach a lot of -isms only relevant to the base or that jet. Not their fault because it's all they know, but it reflects in their instructional style and what they emphasize in briefs and debriefs.

Like someone else mentioned, there is a difference teaching someone how to do something, and teaching someone how to teach doing something.

I think PIT made me a much better instructor in general (previously was a MWS IP).

Being TDY for PIT also meant no outside pressures-focus on flying and learning to instruct. Saying that upgrading IPs will be protected from office work until cert is as laughable as saying that new copilots will not have jobs for their first 6 months to focus on flying the jet...

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

[AZwildcat]

The Bob's are banking on all this VR/Sim/P-mission innovation to cut down the number of sorties required to make a pilot or a UPT IP....but they recognize it's not going to get them to the magic number to "grow our way out of it"...I can't remember the figure, but well over 1K new pilots a year.  The idea of another UPT base has been lingering for a while, and on the surface Randolph would make the most sense because the infrastructure is already in place.  Still...i don't think the math works without buying more iron and hiring more help.  There's only so much you can do on the ground.

What really grinds my gears is all this balls to the wall talk about innovation and guess who's left holding the hammer to go execute...all the folks in flight suits.  Go ahead and pin on your comm and contracting and cyber badges, if you didn't have them already.  PIT dudes are skipping flying to work 12 hour days building VR sims and 360 videos...WTF 

[DirtyFlightSuit]

^This.   Our recent OG meeting it was stated and I quote "This will need to be done on all our backs otherwise it wont happen"  Apparently he didn't get the look on my face of "then don't let it $#$%^ happen...

 

Edited August 31, 2018 by DirtyFlightSuit
Because The El Taco Hut....

[hindsight2020]

I told you cotton-pickers Massa is not in the business of bartering with his human property. That's not rhetorical; they literally mean that. That's why the CSAF guidance feels like double-speak to you all.

The point of the ADSC is to utilize labor at-will, in ways the civilian support structure has the legal ability to say no to. And they do, which is why our mx is broken and can't surge with the whims of the ops side, while we spear chuck at each other pointlessly. Labor surge-demands such as the VR implementation is but one of a thousands of examples how regAF burns through its human capital, exacerbating the retention problem regAF doesn't consider a bona fide problem in the first place. You guys think of middle managament retention woes as the bug, they consider it the feature! It's called the devil's money for a reason. Are we all new here or something?...

 

[LookieRookie]

Why would a MSG dude work more hours than he has to?

 

Reasons like "patriotism" or "core values" ring hollow when he could be spending time with his family.

[Bode]

This failure in support will be the reason we don’t succeed. We have pilots running the comm equipment for EFBs. They are running the cables, installing the repeaters, everything. Also, I call comm because I can’t get the new outlook in the cloud working. Three days later I’m fixing it myself because they haven’t had time to fix it.

We could make more pilots but the support piece is never going to enable it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[jazzdude]

This failure in support will be the reason we don’t succeed. We have pilots running the comm equipment for EFBs. They are running the cables, installing the repeaters, everything. Also, I call comm because I can’t get the new outlook in the cloud working. Three days later I’m fixing it myself because they haven’t had time to fix it.

We could make more pilots but the support piece is never going to enable it.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Counter point- maybe they don't get around to it because the metrics briefed to leadership are good. Pilots doing the work only masks the problem. Let it fail.

Sent from my SM-T700 using Tapatalk

[AZwildcat]

My theory is that it all boils down to a generational issue with leadership.

Our current senior leaders and fossilized bureaucracy didn't grow up with technology however they have been exposed it enough and have seen its benefits over the last 20 years.  When it comes to the execution and what kind of skills and resources are required, they're clueless for the most part.  They understand that they pay Lock Mart or NG or Boeing some astronomical amount of money and years later something magical appears on the battlefield  This magical thing is proprietary and doesn't talk to anything else it wasn't paid to talk to.  Pretty soon we need a new magical thing and so the cycle continues.

They're just starting to figure out that the pace and quality of commercial industry has outpaced the defense industry and there's a LOT of things that can be done on the small scale with COTS tech and so the new word of the day is "Innovation"!  Everybody innovate!

Perfect example: Electronic Flight Bags.  Let's use a tablet to replace paper FLIP...makes perfect sense.  The tablet brings exponential capability to the cockpit vs. a paper FLIP book, but it also comes with exponential support requirements.  It takes a couple airmen to order the FLIP, open the boxes, and stock in on a shelf.  To support an EFB program, it takes hardware, it takes software, it takes management of said hardware and software, it takes a network infrastructure, and it takes smart skilled people to properly configure, deploy and sustain it all.  And oh by the way the local comm squadron has/wants nothing to do with it...so fail there.

I listened to Goldfien talk on the WarontheRocks podcast...he was raving about how we can use inexpensive off the shelf simulators to help pilots chairfly.  I'm thinking to myself, dude we had this 10 years ago!  A guy in my UPT class built his own T-38 sim in his house....and here we are just now figuring this out.  Better late than never, but the bottom line IMHO is we're headed full speed ahead in a direction the Bobs don't understand, and the technical knowledge and support requirements for this "innovation" is more so than ever, and will require us as a service to rethink our IT model...putting IT specialists back in the units, shit canning NIPR, leveraging the cloud, putting contractors in place to execute the innovation at the direction of the green bags....that's how we'll be successful.

[Homestar]

Why does comm need to be involved with your EFB program? Most likely these are iPads than never touch the mil network and use a commercial WiFi network that was probably installed by a contractor and is serviced by contract with the internet provider. 

Edited August 31, 2018 by Homestar

[BashiChuni]

Lotta pit IPs stroking each other. Jesus h. 

[hindsight2020]

 

41 minutes ago, Homestar said:

Why does comm need to be involved with your EFB program? Most likely these are iPads than never touch the mil network and use a commercial WiFi network that was probably installed by a contractor and is serviced by contract with the internet provider. 

Some people would argue that allowing comm to touch it would be the one sure fire way of ensuring any implementation fails. It is beyond ironic that the viability of development of the VR suites unashamedly relies on its decoupling from the AF net systems (wireless or otherwise) in order to not screech to a halt. The very systems being used as monikers for the AF tech innovation mind you. 

 

[LookieRookie]

45 minutes ago, BashiChuni said:

Lotta pit IPs stroking each other. Jesus h. 

Toughest job in the AF, teaching people to fly in RCPs and talk while doing it.

[jazzdude]

Why does comm need to be involved with your EFB program? Most likely these are iPads than never touch the mil network and use a commercial WiFi network that was probably installed by a contractor and is serviced by contract with the internet provider. 

The fact they can't touch the mil network is a fail.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

[BashiChuni]

49 minutes ago, LookieRookie said:

Toughest job in the AF, teaching people to fly in RCPs and talk while doing it.

Lol

get real bro

Edited September 1, 2018 by BashiChuni

[BashiChuni]

BOOYAH!

[Homestar]

43 minutes ago, jazzdude said:

The fact they can't touch the mil network is a fail.

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk
 

Why? I’m not a comm guy but it seems like that many WiFi devices on a mil network would be a security nightmare. Having run an EFB program for a wing, pilots are less than, ahem, “secure” in what they’re doing with their devices at times. 

[DirtyFlightSuit]

37 minutes ago, Merle Dixon said:

As Laxer69 typed on page 13... Eliminating PIT at RND and doing it all in-house would be fantastic! How many UIPs go through PIT at RND every year? 300? 400? Eliminating all those 4+ month TDYs (lodging expenses, per diem, mileage, etc) would save mucho dinero for the AF and save the TDY ass-pain for UIPs.

I think training UIPs in house at the SUPT bases would also reduce the PIT UIP sortie count. You, the UIP, could sit in on countless SUPT stud briefs and debriefs, with, gasp, actual students. You could sandbag numerous formation sorties in the trunk of an IP (yes, we direct support student sorties quite often), with an actual student on the wing, not some PIT IP make-believe student. An in-house PIT would also eliminate the 6 to 9 MQT sorties every PIT grad has to go through. Your MQT would be your UIP since you are going through PIT in-house. Eliminating hundreds of MQT sorties per year at each of the 3 SUPT bases would also save mucho dinero.

Finally, in-house PIT would eliminate the passed over O-4 and ROAD O-5s that do next to nothing at RND. These lazy SOBs (I don’t see all RND IPs as lazy tools, but many of them are), would all be sent to the SUPT bases and actually have to work for a living. Finally, for real finally, how many PIT IPs at RND have not flown with an actual student pilot in many years? When I was at T-38 PIT, there were numerous IPs that had never been SUPT IPs or hadn’t flown at a SUPT base in 10+ years.

BOOYAH!!

 

[Danger41]

This discussion really reminds me of this scene from the movie “Moneyball”

“You guys are talking the same old good body nonsense like we’re selling jeans.”

From several sources that I trust, PIT needs a big overhaul or needs to go away. While some of that may be sour grapes, my experience tells me that a place full of passed over Majors and ROAD O-5’s leads to some serious stagnation. 

 

[Bode]

This discussion really reminds me of this scene from the movie “Moneyball”
“You guys are talking the same old good body nonsense like we’re selling jeans.”
From several sources that I trust, PIT needs a big overhaul or needs to go away. While some of that may be sour grapes, my experience tells me that a place full of passed over Majors and ROAD O-5’s leads to some serious stagnation. 
 

Shack. There are a few solid dudes but I believe they are outweighed by the aforementioned problem personnel.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[DirtyFlightSuit]

The funny thing is we are at the point (or near) where the majority of T-6 PIT are 2x2 IPs.  Sooo all this hot air about young bloods being the answer, and old passed over O-4s/O-5 Roads being the root of all sin is a straw man. (If I am using that term correctly).  So these are Captains who at most will pin on Major as they PCS out of here and have direct UPT experience and instruction.  

[Tommy]

Heavens forbid there’s a good deal in the AD Air Force for IPs who have put in 15 plus years deploying or living at crappy UPT bases. 

I spent time as a PIT IP and when I was teaching PIT all the IPs had a ton of experience and were professionals who really cared about the students, regardless if they were passed over or ROAD. I learned a ton from them and haven’t worked with a better group of pilots since. I can’t imagine UPT bases creating a better IP. 

I’m sure there are some pros of turning PIT into UPT... but I think the cons out weigh the pros.

When I was at PIT we proficiency advanced guys/gals appropriately, the students had time to focus on studying ie didn’t have another job in the sq, and when I was going through TI at my UPT base it took FOR..EV....ERRR because the students were behind the timeline and they had priority.

You can try and make sure those things don’t happen if you get rid of PIT BUT all it takes is one IP getting sent to the wing or group before they are done with TI to make it the new norm. Or for student lines to take precedence over TI/IP Qual lines and before you know it all the “efficiencies” are lost. Also if this does happen who’s gonna have teaching this new TI/IP Qual program? I sure hope it’s the Sq’s best and brightest. You dont want some new-ish IP acting like a student and kill the crew. I say if it ain’t broke don’t fix it. 

Edited September 1, 2018 by Lifer