Smokin

For reference, I flew the Viper for my entire career, so just over 18 years of Viper time after UPT. Neck pain is real and it will be for the rest of your life. For me it is mostly turning my nugget to the side (like checking a blind spot driving or talking down the same side of a table at a party) and then sometimes a constant low level pain after a physical day. Whiskey helps for both. Everyone that has flown fighters for more than a decade will have neck or back problems (back issues are more common in the F-15). It is likely that I will need a spinal surgery at some point due to damage that is calcifying and starting to impinge on nerves. That being said, it is manageable and it has not really ever prevented me from doing anything I want to do. I play full up with my kids, far more than most guys in their 40's. I do tons of physical things from back country hunting to working on the house, again, far more than most guys in their 40's. There are multiple things that are and will continue to mitigate this in the future. As more F-35s come online, they will be the new F-16 as far as force preponderance. The F-35 is not the BFM machine the Viper is and I doubt that F-35 pilots will have neck issues that are anywhere near as bad as Viper guys. I'm sure an F-35 guy is going to cry foul and talk about what a great BFM platform Fat Amy is, but he'd have to be drunk or delusional to think the F-35 is on par with the 16 or 15 in a visual gun engagement because that's not the purpose for which it was built. Another mitigating thing is the AF is finally putting it's money where it's mouth is in regards to pilot health and has started making dedicated physical therapists available just to the fighter pilots. I think this is going to be a huge long term win for guys' necks and backs and will be a huge help as guys start working with them as Lts. Also, you are largely in control of what you do with your neck in a fight. My first two assignments I wanted to win at any cost so if I thought rolling my nugget around to the other side while pulling full aft stick would help me win, I did. After I started to get more neck pain, I got smarter, kept my helmet against the seat more, momentarily let off the g's while moving, etc. More experience let me do a couple things that were not quite as optimal in a fight and still win but kept my neck from hurting as much. I could have done those things earlier and would have had less damage. Finally, I know plenty of people that never flew fighters that have had to have neck surgery. How dumb would you feel if you skipped the opportunity to fly fighters to keep your neck healthy and then ended up having neck surgery anyway? I have lots of physical issues from flying the Viper for my whole career, but if I could do it all over again, I wouldn't change much other than being a bit smarter with my neck when I flew. I don't think I'll be one of those guys on my deathbed wishing I'd done more with my life. I for sure won't be one of those guys looking back wondering if I was good enough to do what I had really wanted to do all along.

If an enemy is really adamant that something needs to stop, that is probably the thing that needs to keep happening.

Ops to Ops for everyone! Sucks to be the last Lt showing up to a squadron right now, 4 years of being the SNACKO and scheduler.

That's valid. I was AD and then ANG and I'll tell you that the guard being used like AD is crushing the guard. Guard fighter guys can make RAP flying less than their AD counterpart and historically it's been because the average guard guy is WAY more experienced than the average AD fighter pilot. No white jet tours, no ALO assignments, etc. A guard baby could spend 30+ years flying combat coded jets non-stop and possibly the same tail numbers. That type of experience is impossible in AD. But you start deploying guard units like they're AD units and suddenly there isn't anyone in the guard with 30+ years of experience because they decided the time away and the loss of income wasn't worth it anymore. No idea if my experience was typical, but I'd bet the average experience level in my guard unit dropped by 690 hours in my 8 years. That's close to two tours in CAF units worth of experience (assuming no circles in the sky deployments). That's brand new wingman to IP loss of experience. That's a big deal. The part timers flying for 30 years straight may not be the tip of the spear in current 3-1 knowledge, but throw them into a crazy situation no one has thought to train to and their experience will bring them through way better than the 700 hour CAF IP that can rattle off all the threat data.

The biggest contributor to that is our total force size. For the guys that weren't born yet: during Desert Storm we had at least one ANG fighter unit in just about every state. In the subsequent no-fly zone patrols, guard units did 30 day deployments and the part timers swapped out half way through. Our CAF is a little over 1/3 the size it was then. Now most ANG units that aren't on the coasts can't even train with other squadrons on a normal basis because they're too far apart for normal training.

Too early to tell. IF money is transferred/released and if those figures are accurate, than it's not as bad as last time as last time was $50 billion. Still not good though. Also, they will likely need to spend a fair amount of that rebuilding all the stuff we blew up. Not trying to make it sound like it's good because it's not. But, in the big picture, it isn't as bad as last time. Hopefully the release of those funds would be contingent on the transfer of the uranium. If that were the case, that would be far better.

Why did the Afghan take his sheep towards the edge of the cliff? So they would push back harder.

The US has not been good at the money/cost side of warfare since Vietnam. We outproduced Germany in WWII in part by making something that is 80% as good as the German equivalent for half the price and then making 4x as many. When we had Cold War defense budgets, we could get away with making a bunch of the most advanced (expensive) weapon we could find, but hopefully this is a bit of a wake up call for our acquisition side (probably should have occurred in the 2005 time frame).

Too bad the US doesn't have an option for "six months hard labor". There are still a lot of ditches that need to be dug and potholes that need filling.

1000%. This is the absolute most un-American thing that is somehow enshrined in American law. I totally get and would support a similar concept IF it were after appropriate due process and the person found guilty, much like what happens to people's trucks and guns after they get caught AND convicted of poaching. But to put the burden of proof on the citizen is completely upside-down and the fact that it hasn't been struck down only proves how far removed the Supreme Court is from actually reading the Constitution and doing it's job. With the qualified immunity removal in some states, legislators that passed that need pass a law to hold themselves to the same standard. If they pass a law that would would meet a similar threshold of 'obviously illegal' (like Colorado's ban on verbal only counseling to help a teenager wondering if they should actually be the other gender that got struck down 8-1), they need to be tried and convicted of violating their constituents' rights. A good starting point would be an identical punishment to what a law abiding citizen would have gotten under their unconstitutional law.

Aren't two threads entirely dedicated to people either bitching or cheering about Trump enough? Talking overall national security policy and such regarding Iran is one thing, but this thread has gone entirely off the rails.

If someone posts a slide with direct comparisons of gas prices under Biden and Trump that factually disproves the implied claim and I call it out, somehow that means I'm claiming that Trump is doing 5D chess? Both the spikes and the averages were higher under Biden than Trump. I said nothing defending or advocating Trump or his policies, I simply called out an objectively incorrect argument. I 100% agree that Trump is far from being a conservative, but that's hardly the point of this thread.

Gas prices are currently around $4/gal nation-wide, which is the peak under Trump's second term. Gas prices peaked at over $5/gal under Biden. Biden's total term average was $3.45 according to your slide. Trumps second term average is $3.06 His first term was $2.57. So please tell me again how gas prices under Trump are so bad?

I figured this was basic to learning to drive, sirens or not. I don't start after a stop sign, red light, or even go through a green light without a quick check that the crossing traffic is actually stopped. They might be at fault if I don't look and have an accident, but it's my kids in the vehicle. Going through a red light or anything else unusual would only make it that much more important.

An Israeli website is saying that he was knocked unconscious during the landing (makes sense if he had to do a PLF in rough rocky terrain), which would help explain the initial delay in contact which likely complicated things greatly. Lucky he didn't break a leg instead. Same website also claims that he evaded for around a dozen miles and ended up climbing a 7K ridge to get away from Iranian forces. That's a great reminder for dudes to keep in shape. You never know when your or your loved ones' survival might depend on it. New fighter pilot PFT; 12 mile evasion ending in a 7k climb with no warning. Ready set go!