Lord Ratner

I was obviously unclear in my point, which is my mistake. I was not arguing that Air Force pilots do not have exposure to Air Force enlisted. I was arguing that Air Force pilots do not have exposure to the enlisted in the army and the Marines, which are an entirely different animal than enlisted airmen. What is required to motivate, discipline, and control enlisted airmen is not the same as what is required to motivate, discipline, and control soldiers and grunts. That's not from personal experience, obviously, it's from the experience of friends and family who were in the army and Marines. And it's from observations made of the absolute daily shit show that was the Marine Recon unit in Moron. And the army/Marine units in Bagram. If you think the enlisted communities between the services are the same, then we just have to agree to disagree. Different jobs, different applicant pools, different acceptance standards, and different expectations. Maybe @Lawman or @VMFA187 could chime in with more first-hand experience than I have. I don't think in-ranks inspections are coming from an Air Force perspective. It's coming from the bigger services and the AF is going to be along for the ride.

You have a habit of being wrong in this thread, but at least you're consistent. Never been accused of being a fighter pilot before 😂🤣

You get a plane, I'll bring the watermelons!

For pilots. We forget that the rest of the military isn't officer heavy with the ability to filter for only the highest performing enlisted troops. Talk to a marine recon officer about the type of shit they deal with, and the discipline side of the military starts to make a lot more sense. Saw a lot of it in Moron, and it was eye opening. Trying to control and motivate an 18-year-old who got his brand new girlfriend pregnant because he heard you make a little more money is an all together foreign experience for most Air Force pilots. I sure as hell didn't have to deal with it. That's not to say I would have been on board with the changes, I'm a contrarian by nature, but the aviation wing of the military has always been the exception, not the rule.

Are we playing the you're probably not even a real pilot game? I'm the only non-anonymous pilot on this forum, you can do a search 😂🤣 Inferences? A quick review: Now, point to the part where I said this was the fault of the pilots in the video? It's nowhere. The follow-up: Neat. This is like saying you might as well not hit the brakes if you're going 120 knots with 1000 feet left to the end of the runway on a long landing, because you won't stop in time. Sure, it's sorta true. But it's also stupid. Another inference: Aside from being incorrect (it was 15 seconds into the video when he jumped in. That's a loooooonnnggg time for engines to spool down), its irrelevant. Is it better to keep them running, or is it better to shut them down? It's not always a lunatic with a death wish. Sometimes it's a ramper holding a couple chocks, or an over eager bag-thrower who didn't realize the engines are still running because the cooldown hasn't elapsed. You gunna wait to see if he keeps walking towards the engine because "Engines don't exactly stop on a dime with shutdown?" Again, please point to the part where I blamed (or made any reference at all to) the pilots in the video? Perfect hypothetical pilot reaction? If "turn the engines off if someone is approaching them" is perfect in your book, then I guess I must be Chuck Yeager. Look at that, you agree with me. So what is with all the commentary? I never made a promise that shutting down the engines will guarantee survival. I did however point out that you are an idiot if you think it matters. If anyone here can spell out a scenario where it's safer to leave the engines running "if you look out the window and see someone approaching the plane when they shouldn't be," I'm all ears. Or is this just because I said mean things to disgruntled? He's a big boy, he can take it.

Completely possible, and either way it's not the pilots' fault when some dipshit jumps into the engine. But there's been a couple of these incidents in the past year, and historically every few years. It's not always some psychopath trying to commit suicide, sometimes it's an IQ-80 ramper. And it could have just as easily been one of the people who was chasing that guy who didn't realize how powerful an engine is only to get sucked in while trying to stop that guy from killing himself. In any and all cases, if people are around the engines and they're not supposed to be, shutting them down risks very little and potentially saves a life.

Except you're wrong. If that pilot had shut down both engines as soon as he saw someone running towards the plane, they would have spooled down dramatically, and while they probably would have hurt the guy, they wouldn't have chopped his fucking head off, and they absolutely, positively would not have been sucking him in towards the core. So instead of just getting close enough to let the vacuum pressure do the rest, he would have had to climb into the cowl, crawl forward, and shove his head into the (decelerating) spinning blade. Watch the video. You'll notice I didn't say "wait until he's sticking his head in the cowling before shutting down." And I have to ask again, exactly what fucking point are you making? You're just going to keep him running cuz "maybe we'll get to depart anyways?" I'll be explicit here, if you think that's a good idea, You have no business being an airline captain. Stick to the military where you don't have to worry about crazy shit like this. I swear some of you guys are so locked into the internet that you forget that being "technically right" is not the same thing as being right.

Thrust production (and the associated vacuum pressure in the intake) drops off very quickly without combustion, while inertia keeps the fans spinning for much longer. Besides, what point are you making? Fuck it, let him die? You think you're going to continue taxiing to the runway after they wipe his brains off the acoustic panels? Christ, are you this obnoxious in real life? 🤣😂 I know you're putting it out there with your user name, but still...

A friendly reminder to any airline pilots here, if you look out the window and see someone approaching the plane when they shouldn't be, just shut the engines down. The passengers will survive the 30 seconds of darkness as you wait for the Apu to come online, and aside from saving a life, you may be saving a whole lot of people a whole lot of trauma from seeing something most people can't handle seeing.

Absolutely. I didn't see in the initial reports who was asking the question and who was denying touching the switches, I just assumed it was the fo denying it. But if it was the other way around, I have no difficulty imagining your scenario. Like I said, High context societies... It was always 99% that this was going to be pilot error

Here's my guess. First officer was a moron, or completely inexperienced. For whatever inexplicable reason, he moves the engine cutoff switches to cut off instead of whatever he was supposed to be doing. Recognizes it instantly and puts them back, but at that point the engines have already started to shut down. Captain asks him why he did that, he does the FNG thing/High-context-society thing and denies the fuck up.

The odds that this was going to be anything other than crew-induced was always astronomically low. Simultaneous dual failures, while at the most critical phase of flight, in an established aircraft is possible, but come on.

Do both... Pretty sure an Only"Fans" account that just posts gratuitous close up photos of C-130 engines covered in leaking oil and hydraulic fluid would make you a millionaire overnight just from @M2's secret combat pornography budget

Isn't it statistically curious how 99% of the people who identify as queer are unfuckable?

With support like that, how can the Iranians lose?

Civil war is not an issue, because "we" (we the people) are not going to cut entitlements, like I said. The "we" that wants to cut the budget to something sustainable is such a small demographic that we have no path to electoral victory. As such, there will be no cuts, as we see with this bill. When my prophesized Great War happens, there will also be no civil war because suddenly "we the people" will be entirely interested in cuts as the government bombards us day in and day out with propaganda imploring us to buy war bonds and pinch every penny possible to protect our fighting boys and girls overseas. I'm not disagreeing with you per se; if somehow there was a way to pry the entitlements away from the entitled, there would certainly be violent social unrest. But the mechanism to take those entitlements away is the exact same mechanism that is protecting the entitlements in the first place. People voted for the politicians who ran on campaigns of leaving entitlements untouched.

Because an increase on business taxes will devastate the stock market, and the boomers didn't build normal retirements like responsible adults, they have everything in the market and are relying on it to go up forever. And everyone in Congress makes their millions in the markets, and all the biggest lobbyists are directly tied to the markets, and now the pension funds are all over invested in the market and (even worse) private equity, and... you get the idea. We've decided that "the market" = "the economy" when that's not remotely true, and because of it we now make devastating fiscal decisions (and monetary decisions soon) that are excused because, hey the S&P is at an all time high so it must be pretty good, right? We will cut spending and entitlements only when we have no choice, and not a moment sooner. Most likely it will be while tens of thousands of our kids are dying overseas fighting the Chinese, or Russians, or who the hell knows who it will be. When mothers see a car with a white top drive by, and breathe a guilty sigh of relief when it stops at their neighbor's house instead of their own, or when the local radio stations list the names of the newest forever heroes as we drive to work, then suddenly there will be a renewed desire to funnel our tax dollars away from able-bodied deadbeats and wannabe-immortal senior citizens...

Considering they didn't even take on the assault weapons ban case, I highly doubt the SCOTUS will be dealing any blows to the NFA soon.

Jesus that's a good looking gun. Is there a barrel extension on that?

How else do you define a "symbolic" attack? That's *exactly* what this was, which is exactly what professor numb nuts was calling for. An off ramp.

Fortunately the president doesn't share your views on international relations. Symbolic acts are just a reality of asymmetric warfare. Pearl clutching when someone discusses it openly only makes the dialog dumber AMD less valuable.

Look the guy is obviously a Islamist hack, but it doesn't sound like he wants dead Americans. He literally said "symbolic strike," as in we all know the political and diplomatic realities necessitate some sort of response, so I hope it's symbolic as opposed to meaningful, which would force the US to escalate. Overblown.

Lol. No. Maybe North Korea thinks about it. Maybe. Nobody else with nukes is giving them to Iran

Exactly. I expect a big part of the strategy has been "allowing" the political class in Iran to survive specifically so they can choose their own lives over retaliation. But they can't not make threats. That's not how international politics work. They are going to saber rattle, the real question is will they follow through. We'll know soon.