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Well, looks you got your answer.

Watching POTUS realize that Putin is a menace in real time has been entertaining.

I think this about the 5th cycle of colored shirts and name tags in my career. Thankfully I’ve been able to mostly ignore all of the knee jerk decisions and keep doing the right thing: morale shirts and call sign name tags (and no hat/sunglasses on head), as God intended.

i totally agree that UPT cuts are seriously degrading the quality of the product. But don't conflate the UPT syllabus cuts with a need to create a new ACE program: even with a robust UPT syllabus like I went through many moons ago, the ACE Program was extremely beneficial for the new co-pilots. Story time: I remember back in the 2005-2006 time frame, there was a Langley F-22 at Hill AFB whose crew chief lost control of the landing gear pin during ground ops, and the pin got sucked down an engine. IIRC $6.8M in damage. That year, at Beale, our T-38 CT Program was run on a budget of around $6M for ~3700 hours of flying time. Think about that. That's around 3,000 SORTIES in a T-38... for $800,000 less than the cost of a single Raptor FOD incident. My experience in the Beale T-38 CT Program has made me such a better U-2 pilot and overall aviator than I would ever be without it. A magnitude better. There is so much that could be done to make our USAF aviators "that much better"... but the AF leadership will simply not invest the pennies... and I do mean "pennies"... to make it happen. It's no longer a priority. I hope I am proved wrong on my last statement.

I have heard rumint of a program similar to ACE as a possibility in the near future for AFGSC, although I have no idea where the process for that contract currently is. Personally, I have seen the benefits of flying GA while struggling to find flying hours after UPT in the Air Force. Getting back in the jet after a few GA flights feels much more natural and the airmanship and SA bubble is much greater. I would go so as far to say a program like this would have a significant positive impact on retention as well. Job satisfaction rapidly improves when the option exists to fly consistently and feel safer while doing it, not to mention the adventure of increasing the types of flying pilots can be exposed to. In the last couple years at least, I have seen the wait time for CAF assignees after IFF/T-38s exceed 12 months from last T-38 flight to MWS initial qual/B-course dollar ride. In my opinion, spending millions on training a pilot and then sitting them for a year is unacceptable, and we must find a way to bridge that gap. The additional crisis is the backlog of co-pilots/wingmen struggling to find hours to just keep currencies. When we aggregate the extra flights required and the safety impact created by decreased proficiency, I absolutely think some version of this is necessary.

To pile on, everyone always gets screwed. The people who get screwed the most are the property owners. The people who get screwed the (distant) 3rd most are the poors who get to benefit from "affordable housing." The people who get screwed the 2nd most - close to the 1st most - are the people who never get mentioned: the people who would otherwise be able to afford said apartment at market rate, but unfortunately inhabit the 'in between' - the wide span of those individuals being too rich to qualify for "affordable housing" but to poor to afford luxury apartments; i.e. the entire middle class. This is all to say that there is no such thing as "affordable housing" - but such is the core nature of Leftists' favorite social programs - none of them describe what the thing really is. In reality, there is only "taxpayer-subsidized-housing-for-a-select-few-lucky-enough-to-be-among-the-chosen-few-to-receive-it-housing." If there was truly "affordable housing," you and me would be able to purchase it at that rate, but as we all know, we can't.

Yeah while it's an interesting conversation in an academic sense, the simple reality is that the people who view flying as an unfortunate necessity and impediment to ladder climbing are not going to do anything but the bare minimum to train and keep pilots trained. The bare minimum will be discovered by gradually reducing flying experience until too many planes crash to ignore the problem.

Correction applied, thanks for the input as I strive for accuracy in my posts. Yup, lotta questions to try to seed the discussion. I see the value, looking back at my AD AMC tour, and I think it is possible unless things are way different now than then for a new CP (probably an Lt and not a Capt CP), especially in that first year at their assignment. The CT program the Global Hawk was about $90,000 (05-06 dollars) to fly all the RQ4 pilots for the year, maintaining ASEL INSTM currency per the FAA LOA that was in effect at the time that covered Navs directing the GH as Mission Commanders when it was in the US NAS. Dirt freaking cheap. ACC HQ squashed it as they whined they couldn’t set it up all their projected bases for the GH so nobody could have it, because you can’t fly a Cessna in Japan apparently. That was one of the reasons I requested my GH assignment, it was a great benefit while getting a RPA tour done, then the bait and switch happened. Total bullshit and not even penny wise, it was less than the color copier budget for an FY, no kidding. An example to consider for the HAF staffer lurking on this thread: Google AI says a -46 per flight hour cost is about $12,000 and a Gamebird GB1 would be about $400 per hour. Checking their AFMAN 11-2KC-46 Vol 2, to go from FP to MP you need a 1000 total and 400 -46 hours. Substituting 300 hours of GB1 time with a good bit of that being solo to really build airmanship would save $7 million in flying hours and I’m confident in saying likely deliver a stronger upgrade candidate than one with all -46 time.

Correction: ACE did not end when SAC went away. It remained within the newly-formed ACC until summer 1994 (maybe '95) when General Loh cancelled the program literally overnight. In my opinion, this was one more indicator of the lack of understanding that officers like Loh and many of the other ACC generals with fighter backgrounds had WRT to the non-fighter platforms under their command. Although I was never in ACE, I have many friends and classmates that flew as ACE co-pilots, or that were assigned to ACE as instructor pilots. I have a lot of experience with the CT Program at Beale, which ran in conjunction with ACE until the ACE portion was killed. You pose a number of questions, Clark. Bottom line: the ACE Program was a cost effective and solid aviation method for getting low-time co-pilots some much-needed quality flying experience. Not to mention, it made pilots very happy that they were able to fly... actually fly anywhere they wanted to go, and work on developing their new aviation skill sets. Imagine that... happy pilots working to better their fundamental aviation skills. For a brief period of time, Beale RQ-4 pilots were flying Beale aero club aircraft in an ACE-like program. Pennies on the dollar. Of course, it was cancelled. But it showed that with a tiny bit of thought and effort... and not much money... something positive could be done. The short-sightedness of Gen Loh and his staff was very unfortunate. Bringing back an even better version of the ACE Program should be done today. In both ACC and AMC.

I don't work for Beehive but have visited their facility a few times. At AFA they rolled out their 100LBN thrust engine which is a game changer. If you know anything about affordable munitions space the brewing fight with China has spawned several program to mass produce cruise missiles and other munitions at a cost 1//10th to 1/20th of legacy munitions like Tomahawk, JASSM and JASSM-ER. The opening 72 hours of a fight with China are likely to consume nearly every weapon in stock (50,000 units), so the services have launched an effort to greatly increase quantities at a much lower price point. Companies Like Anduril are trying to mass produce Barracuda for less than $200K. Believe it or not the high cost component in these systems is the engine and current providers charge around $120K per unit. Beehive is driving to get that cost (en masse), down to $25K.

very disappointed in trump that he hasn't pulled the plug on the ukraine disaster.