Bender

Maybe we (USAF) should set up a safety center. I mean between this confusion and the Class A accidents over the last few years, seems like as good of a time as any! ~Bendy

The current syllabus T-38 track has 90 T-6 hours (3 of which are solo). You guys think we should take more of the sorties and just send them solo? Sounds like an easy fix if it in fact bolstered SA later on! Shite, they can do 90% of the syllabus solo if it helps! Wouldn’t get any complaints from me! ~Bendy

Excessive use of PA is the opposite of the general problem with current UPT. While I don’t discount your example (I love to check out that grade book), the syllabus revisions were design to single handedly solve pilot manning over the course of the next 5 years...its implementation is costing way too many rides to believe it will do anything better than maintain the status quo. If anyone believes that 5 more T-6 sorties are going to remove SA issues in the RTU or Ops Squadron...I just can’t quite understand where you’re coming from. One of the big issues with UPT is we keep changing things and have made ZERO effort to analyze what the impacts of those changes have been. We celebrate those that promote change, promote them, send them to school, and then start working to change things again...without a sliver of desire to track anything or quantify anything. PA’ing a lot of a “contact” block sounds like a relatively old example...it’s combined contact/instruments now called “transition”. Just old terminology perhaps... That work is hopefully something that can be done soon...would certainly be interesting to quantify the cluster that has been the evolution of UPT over the last 10 years...literally 30+ versions syllabi without a single check. ~Bendy

Okay well if we’re just stating things without source, Google told me 0.2-0.4 is moderate and 0.4+ is relatively strong. I’ve seen a number of charts, and there does seem like there is something there. (That sounds like a fascinating conversation I wouldn’t be able to turn back off, Hacker. Soft pass.) That said, the correlation targets elimination rather than specific performance. Trends can be bucked, we see it all the time (which was the previous point), but it makes sense as part of a selection process as a variable, if not overly relied on (probably just like VR itself). With the innovation efforts, the students with high flight time are doing well (that stat is available to the flight(s), but again not significant as I’ve watched high time students struggle hard out of the gate to get to above average and also struggle the whole way...kind of a crap shoot that depends on the individual’s personality.) Specifically to the VR integration, is there as much push back on the use of oculus products pushed left on the timeline to prep students? I’m probably the biggest naysayer in my neck of the woods when it comes to the Warthog HOTAS, but I think the oculus VR’s affordability, portability, and teaching potential is amazing. The fact the AF hasn’t spent millions of dollars developing VR software to train pilots in their down time just baffles me. Almost every major company has been into this game for a while...particularly with things like “critical events” that are too dangerous to practice. Personally, I would love to watch a T-6 pilot turn, climb, clean, check, shut the engine off with the firewall shutoff handle and high speed ELP down through a 2k overcast cloud deck to a safe landing on a 3k foot runway. I’d probably watch it more than once...or twice... ~Bendy

It’s been a long time since I had to be smart, but 0.5 doesn’t seem all that exciting. If 1.0 is perfect (-1.0 being negatively perfect), wouldn’t .5 mean maybe could mean something positive but only half sure? I do know the innovation flights do not have their class’ PCSMs (at least not at my base), but will include that along side of the final student performance when it’s said and done (just for funnies). Do I even understand correlation? I think statistics is interesting, but kind of like a different language most of the time. ~Bendy

I think to say I’m defending anything is an assumption. Everything deserves criticism... ~Bendy

Perhaps the disconnect is to think PTN (with its low pilot production) is intended to be a pilot training syllabus. While FTUs and operational units will see and “have to deal” with a handful of pilots trained their way, it was, is, and will continue to be nothing much more than an experimental ground for innovation (built ala the framework of the Innovator’s Dilemma). What you should have your eyes on is “UPT 2.5” and/or “UPT 3.0” which will take shape at Randolph starting next summer, informed later this year by the current innovation flight activities that are looking to bridge the gap between PTN and the current UPT environment. The effort at RND next year is expected to generate a syllabus, and that syllabus will impact everyone in much larger numbers. PTN has never been exportable to UPT as a whole and has not, is not, and does not plan to try to make itself wholesale exportable...goes against the point what what is going on there in a lot of ways. There is pressure to reduce events, but that pressure mostly resides with CSI led events, so mostly academics and traditional simulators (most have already felt the MSI answer to this problem). There isn’t any mystery that VR (in its current form) cannot replace the aircraft...in fact some of the UPT innovation flights have seemingly set out to prove it. In some cases, the position straight to the top of AETC is quite the opposite...more experience is needed to compensate for observed deficiencies. If you have constructive input and/or criticism, I can assure you now is the time to give it and that window is closing rapidly. Personally, my experience shows VR provides negative physical flying training (in its current state), which must be overcome by exposure to the aircraft. I feel quite the opposite about the tool from the mental perspective, although that is also grossly tarnished by the huge limitations in the tools control input/response and avionics interface(s). The words are being spoken now at every UPT base, each singing a different tune...the action has yet to happen. If that’s what is more important, then you’ll need to wait to see what transpires over the next year or so...I’m sure you’ll feel free to continue providing your unbacked up Captain Obvious statements. I assume you have a lot more to offer than what you did...but, I’m wrong a lot...so.... ~Bendy

Not sure about the aircraft (I’d guess borrow is the answer with the Navy student(s), if they fly them at all) but I know their contractor is finishing up work on the T-6B model for their VR sim...it may be just that change alone that is being referenced. ~Bendy

If you’re confused that the words come before the actions, I can’t help you nor is it worth my time. Good luck, ~Bendy

Well, it seems you’ll need to wait before you open up your mouth again then... Sounds tough, ~Bendy

Who is telling you that is the intention? A General? ~Bendy

All traditional production flights at CBM still do both morning briefs and standup. When our schedule cluster bomb causes the flight to have to show up in multiple groups to make the 60 yard goal posts work out, there is difficulty in getting mass events accomplished without unduly increasing workload on scheduler and USEMs. That said, the innovation flight at Columbus does a morning brief, but it has nothing to do with weather. The students are expected to plan for themselves rather than spend time reviewing it together for a toastmaster session. The intent and result of such a move can be debated, but it’s probably too early to tell...probably here nor there anyway. The innovation flight likely does more EP training than a standard production flight. In addition to the tabletops associated with the daily flight, they rotate between traditional standup and using a VR EP training program in front of other students...anything that can’t/isn’t accomplished in the VR is followed up in a traditional fashion. Break, break... I find it to be a hard stretch to think that someone that “chooses” to make a low SA move in the Viper wouldn’t have been capable of it just because the did the May ‘18 Ch 1 or Feb ‘19 syllabus rather than the preceding version of airplane flying and simulating. The differences just aren’t that vast. Reducing hours is a part of the equation, but in reality the hours aren’t being reduced...they’re being flown, which is in reality the failure of the new syllabus revisions. Me thinks you were always going to get that guy/gal, and they were always going to do that. Maybe if they had done that in the 6 or 38, they would have actually washed out...luck and timing, and apparently that cat has both. ~Bendy

LOL...WTF. Okay...I’m out then, had no idea there was that level of shenanigans going on there. ~Bendy

None of the innovation flight students in the initial 19AF sanctioned 20-15 effort are close to track select. Sounds like you’re at Vance, where this shenanigans has been on going for longer than the other bases. I can’t speak intelligently on the details of what Vance is doing outside of 20-15 (and honestly, it’s often difficult even when it comes to 20-15). How one flights student loading is impacted by another is the work of your Squadron Commanders as much as it is any particular flight (to include innovation). A number of moving pieces going on in that opening... Get a class off to fly with innovation students? Again, seems like a weird concept on face value. Sounds like the start of 20-15 May have also had an impact on previously laid plans when Vance got forced to take on a specific innovation load at a specific time... Sounds like another statement that can only come from Vance, where there were intentional activities (mostly driven by CSI manning) that we’re interrupted when the 19AF decided now would be a good time to release a brown cluster bomb. PTN feels exactly the same way, so whatever solace you can find in that fact. So...tell me if I’m right....Vance? Vance IPs have been impacted by this innovation stuff more than the rest of us (so far)... ~Bendy

While innovation flights wouldn’t exist if it weren’t for PTN, there is no further connection there. What do you mean by “picking up the students that would otherwise be flying with “innovation IPs.”? Those “flights” took on an entire class (against their will) with similar manpower. I’m not tracking on your statement... Perhaps your base’s flight isn’t handling all of class 20-15? I was under the impression all of UPT’s 20-15 was inside of innovation flights (outside of kids washed back into that class...outside flights would still be “picking them up”.) Trying to understand your “impact”, ~Bendy

You a fan of loaded questions? Why not provide your own intelligent perspective on PTN rather than offer it up like meat to lions? PTN can do whatever PTN does and it makes no difference to any UPT line IP’s life for the next 2+ years. This whole thread is a sport bitch exercise... PTN is literally the only counter weight to this thread’s topic, outside of UPT innovation flights...which wouldn’t exist if it wasn’t for PTN in the first place. Captains and Lieutenants are actively trying to unf*ck what Lt Cols, Cols, and GOs have done over the last decades and even the last couple years...so focus your fire precisely and be constructive in your criticisms. This coming from a guy that climbed up hill both ways in the snow...way too old to not be able to empathize with the perpetrators...but smart enough to see both the heroes and the victims. Waiting for this thread to even find a glimpse of usefulness, ~Bendy

I was tracking on the consolidation. I certainly hope we aren’t including that effort into the “reduction of queep” effort. If Instrument Flight Rules were in the target of “queep”, we are worse off than I thought! ~Bendy

You should probably still QC that...they couldn’t make you before, can’t make you now. Hopefully you never run into a database error or something. I helped with the C-5 CNS/ATM stuff and I was a little surprised by the chain of custody issues with those databases. I suppose it’s fair to acknowledge I have little trust/faith in people I don’t know (or in general really) as it is. I’ll always check that shit whether it’s required or not. Is this from the new 217? I’ve yet to even read that thing. ~Bendy

Board it...in terms of the UPT IP discussion, I think that is a valid position. Could address some of the issues that have been raised I would think. That said, I don’t think that’s what you meant... When I had a wheel, my spreadsheet was massive with objective and subjective metrics ranked just how I saw them and walked into a room of utter nonsense with a list. Now, that said...so much was still subjective... How do you suggest we measure that Capt A flys the plane better than Maj B, assuming they both fly the same plane at the same time in the same unit? Again, just asking for a friend, ~Bendy

Always trying to tell people to care and never suggesting how we should measure. How do you suggest we measure such a great metric, Pawnman? I’m with you...but as soon as we cross airframes...now what. Even within your community...how do we do that? Asking for a friend, ~Bendy

The new guys on here better start posting more before baseops.net itself pays back the unearned part of its bonus, separates, and finishes up reserve with that Delta gig. Geesh... ~Bendy

When decentralized execution gets to dictate the organizational needs to the centralized control, the future takes a back seat to the now. There isn’t any mystery here...we hit a point where we should have started saying no, resources aren’t available to take care of the future and escalate “needed” requirements now. We have needed more IPs for a while. Everyone knows that, to include the last general I heard say, “...but, I need you to do it with less IPs”. I’m not in a position to argue any gripe provided thus far, but we don’t have to use VR to reduce the syllabus. It could be used highly effectively to augment training and increase the quality of the products that move on to the next step in the pipe line. Naturally, the GOs want it to be the solution today to the needs of now...always the same story. Who can lead the AF on a path that minimizes our involvement within the capacity that provides for sustainment? Seems like it’s part of the job description of a couple jobs, but we can’t get it. And, we also cannot promote people that would... ~Bendy

Hahaha...nice! ~Bendy

We need to have about 10-20 General Officers go back and be Squadron Commanders again so they can understand how ed up everything is. O-6’s don’t even understand how jacked we are...how can you lead when you don’t understand what is wrong. It’s not even worth trying to explain it to them either, no one stays put in a position of power long enough to care. Yeah, definitely get the feedback (why, I honestly have no idea), ~Bendy

Well that about sums up our problem right there. Just so much of this perspective these days. That’s what endless war without clear military objective will buy you. Sad to think leaders are just trying to attach patriotism to “it”. Bloody hell we are so ed up, Bendy