Disco_Nav963

@hindsight2020 Didn't MT use to be longer to accommodate a longer Title 10 seasoning period, and weren't MT tours reduced in conjunction with the creation of the TDART program? Speaking for my own little slice of life (the bomber world), it used to be two years, now it's (I want to say) 260 days between MQT proper and seasoning. In fact WSOs still get two years thanks to a drug deal between units, the FAM, and AFRC/A3 because there isn't yet a WSO TDART program. I had a vague awareness of these issues from hearing about them in my B-52 unit, and when I crossflowed to the B-1 I actually called the AFRC/A3 POC on these issues (as listed on their Sharepoint) to ask about the WSO handshake deal (because I had seen it in writing in a memo from AFRC) and what was noteworthy to me was that the guy I got on the line and my FAM were not at all on the same page about the purpose of seasoning. My FAM believed that the purpose of seasoning was to get a new crewmember to CMR-E status so currency in a Vol.1/RTM sense would be achievable on a TR schedule—and viewed TDART for pilots and longer MT orders for WSOs to be the means to that end. Nothing about serving as seed corn for the viability of the ART program. The A3 POC, on the other hand, articulated it basically as you just expressed it... "Seasoning" is just the shorter MT period, and it exists to build airmanship at an intangible level (not necessarily to Vol. 1 CMR-E hours thresholds), and TDART exists for the separate purpose of facilitating the ART program in an economic manner. Wish everyone would get on the same page. I'm not disagreeing with you at all that how you're putting it isn't how it is... I just don't think the way it is is the best solution for our institution or our folks. It seems to me that the current MT lengths on the Prog Tour spreadsheet don't get our new guys to where the unit needs them to be, and at least in my neck of the woods where the unit has very little RPA and RegAF is starting to put strings on MPA, the remaining mechanism in place to get them where we need them to be forces them into what I consider a disadvantageous full time status (i.e. no USERRA, Blue Cross instead of Tricare Reserve Select, no retirement age reduction). I grant you I came into AFRC with a negative outlook on the ART program for a few reasons (health care + had 12 years active duty, so more interested in 7305 than federal retirement + am a WSO, so GS-12 vs. GS-13 for pilots was a negative selling point) that don't all line up with New Guy interests.

TIL the people at Robins think we're still operating B-52Gs (ref. pg. 2). When man thought he could burn water...

Since we're doing decade+ thread bumps today, GoogleFu reveals this former Lt is now a press spokesperson for Boeing's space division: https://twitter.com/kellykgeorge?lang=en

^ That, with an emphasis on a smaller logistics tail than the strategic bomber fleet... That combined with unrefueled range lends itself to dispersability and unpredictability.

First question from skimming the article: Why did Australia have a beef with the Indonesians? 😂

I think the rub is that the military is inherently political, but isn't supposed to be partisan, and people often mistakenly conflate the two. Every time a service chief or a legislative liaison goes to the Hill for budget stuff, it's political. When we make tactical, operational, or strategic choices, it's political. War is politics. Clausewitz etc. etc. The issue is when you mix service with promoting a partisan candidate or cause. Likewise, impeachment is inherently political (see Federalist 65) but isn't intrinsically partisan. The founders naively thought political parties wouldn't become a thing but a decade before the first partisan presidential election (Federalist Adams vs. Democratic Republican Jefferson in 1796) they wrote impeachment into the constitution on the theory that the competing ambitions and different constituencies/time horizons of a non-partisan House (elected by the people every 2 years) and Senate (elected by state legislatures every 6 years) would equip them to keep a chief executive from abusing his power. They didn't anticipate a lot of trends that subverted that structure: the evolution of political parties, direct election of Senators, indirect popular election of the President (i.e. EC changing from a deliberative body to a ceremonial body that ratifies the results of 50 statewide presidential elections), mass media, and a series of presidents (Andrew Jackson, Teddy, Wilson, FDR, JFK, LBJ, Reagan, etc.) shifting the CG of the political parties away from their congressional wings and toward their presidents/presidential candidates. So today members of Congress are incentivized to stick by THEIR president in any impeachment proceeding, lest they offend their primary voters, and so much for competing ambitions between the executive and legislative branches... And impeachment is seen as partisan like everything else Congress does, e.g. budgeting/appropriations, oversight, confirmation of appointees, etc. All that being said, just because the budget is politicized doesn't mean the CSAF doesn't show up to testify in favor of the Presidential Budget. He's just supposed to say "Vote to fund this because the AF needs it to fulfill the NDS and execute our OPLANs," not "Vote for this to send a message that President Trump supports making our military great again and to own the libs." Likewise, if a military member gets subpoenaed to testify to what they know in an impeachment inquiry, well, they kind of have to do so. As long as it's "I saw this and heard this on this date, and then this happened, etc" and not "I Colonel So and So say Trump has to go. Medicare for All." And if it's service protocol that you testify in uniform, then you testify in uniform. Those who are talking about Vindman substituting his judgment/views over those of the head of the executive branch... Well, they would be right if we were talking about the "high criminalization and misdemeanoring" of mere policy differences. But we're not. Presidents including Trump have disagreed with the consensus of their interagency process before. Presidents including Trump have blurred the org chart before, e.g. Obama making Dick Holbrooke his Afghanistan/Pakistan guy in lieu of working through his ambassadors to those countries, = not all that different from Trump making Jared Kushner his Middle East Peace Czar or even in this case having EU Ambassador Sondland work Ukraine issues. What is new and different here is asking a country to play ball with someone outside government, Rudy G, as your personal attorney and representative of your reelection campaign, in order to receive aid that was lawfully appropriated by Congress. The key factors in the allegation are that appropriated funds were being withheld until Ukraine cooperated with Trump's personal representatives in promoting false stories about a political opponent. If Trump had said through Taylor, Sondland, Pompeo, the State Department janitor, or anyone else on the federal payroll, "I will oppose and/or veto future funding for aid to Ukraine until my Justice Department tells me you are cooperating with it's investigations into XYZ," that's in the realm of policy differences. When you circumvent your ambassadors and attorney general, and say "Get with my private lawyer and coordinate a public statement saying you're investigating Joe Biden for something that didn't happen and that you're investigating yourself for the DNC hack that my intelligence and law enforcement agencies all say the Russian Soviets did, or you can't have the money Congress appropriated and I signed into law," that's a potential abuse of power. (And remember, the Supreme Court declared the line-item veto unconstitutional back during the Clinton years, so the president does not have carte blanche to not spend appropriated funds.) A much shorter comparison: Disagreeing with your own appointees about the wisdom of selling arms to Iran to encourage Hezbollah to release hostages, not a crime. Using the proceeds to pay for things Congress banned you from paying for (Boland amendment) in a bill you signed, maybe a problem. And when that happened, military members of the NSC got called to testify about it and they testified in uniform. [FWIW... I have much less of a problem with doing accounting tricks to pay for fighting the commies in Latin America than I do with holding "fight the commies in Eastern Europe money" hostage to your reelection campaign. But that's just my two cents.]

Citing a thread by some rando begging to be RTed by Pensacola's retard congressman Matt Gaetz and a Q-Anon conspiracy theorist? Yeah, that's credible.

The major benefit for me in not having one was 6 months of TAMP. YMMV.

tl;dr summary, you'll probably get to stay and you'll probably get to fly a more normal amount, and you'll probably look back on it as being worth it You're young. Have patience. I wasn't at that OG/CC call, but the previous WOM I'd heard was that brand new B-Course grads are *not* being sent off to do other things. The temporary crew force redux is hitting the middle tier of experience (broadly speaking), spread out across year groups. The whole point of drawing down manning is to ensure that those who stay can fly, gain experience, and upgrade on a more normal timeline (and not get bottlenecked as has happened a lot recently) given reduced sortie availability... While those that go elsewhere use their experience to add value elsewhere in the CAF, and learn things that will add value to the B-1 when they return. The circumstances suck, but the community has weathered worse and bounced back to bigger and better things... e.g. the early 1990s trying to figure out if it still had a mission after the Cold War, and the early 2000s when the fleet and the crew force was permanently reduced by 1/3rd. You can look at this as "I missed the 18 fat years, and arrived just in time for the lean ones," or you can look at it as an opportunity to be on the ground floor of creating something great. I spent 8 years on the Octobomber, arriving a few years after the "Nukes Across America" incident when it was nuclear exercise after nuclear exercise occasionally punctuated by Guam. People that were short term thinkers looked for the first opportunity they could get to punch to something else (ALFA tours, green door assignments, rando non-flying staff gigs, etc.), and missed going to combat. Those of us who stuck around and tried to make our corner of the AF better eventually led the way when we went back to CENTCOM. Likewise, I suspect the B-1's finest hour is still ahead of us.

Mind re-posting that memo?

I want to say that's straight up a Bomber Porch policy (i.e. I've seen it on their MyPers page or in a VML Webinar).

IC-1 to 11-214 just dropped. Gents, please take a few minutes to review the revised Terminate criteria and sign off the FCIF before stepping for your next 2v2.

Article 32 officer hasn't even determined there is probable cause for a trial yet, Colorado Springs PD already determined that there was not, and we're plastering the guy's name all over the place? Not relevant to topic, and prejudicial to someone that is innocent until proven guilty. Delete and move on.

With the DoD forcing the AF to buy against its will Big Blue going all in on the two-seat F-15EX variant, is the CONOP to use the second seat on the regular for a WSO or second pilot as part of the basic crew... or just for B-Course IPs?

Except that the actual documents which are linked to on the Fox News story do not match the spin that the Daily Wire has put on them... Notably "On Monday, Fox News' Gregg Re reported that over two years later, the allegation that the FBI and State Department floated a 'quid pro quo' deal has now been confirmed, and it originated with the FBI." Well, no. The PDFs make clear that the documents Page was forwarding to Quinn were the source of the October '16 news stories. Lisa Page on Thursday 10/13/16: "These 302s are scheduled to be released to Congress in an unredacted form at the end of the week..." Then two days later, Saturday 10/15/16, Fox's Herridge emails the FBI "Two congressional sources tell fox news that fbi interview summaries and notes, provided to the house intelligence committee late Friday, contain allegations of a 'quid pro quo' between a senior state department executive Patrick Kennedy and FBI agents during the Clinton email investigation." None of the new FBI emails in the FOIA PDF release that was given to Judicial Watch, which include Page's brief summary of the 302s but not the 302s themselves, speak to who originated the quid pro quo proposal like the Daily Wire piece claims they do. Nor does the Fox News story by Gregg Re that Daily Wire cites speak to who proposed it. This Atlantic Monthly piece from 10/17/16, citing language from the 302s themselves (which the FBI released at the time), states explicitly that the proposal originated with State's Patrick Kennedy and that the FBI agent he floated it to wasn't having it. These new docs don't "confirm" the 2016 story inasmuch as no one has been saying it needed confirming. The 302s were already public back then. The only thing that is new here is we now have a heavily redacted set of emails including a couple from Page discussing the impending release of the 302s. ... And of course the Daily Wire piece uses that to muddy the waters, and quotes sloppy language from the Fox News piece ("trove of documents turned over by the FBI, in response to a lawsuit by the transparency group Judicial Watch, also included discussions by former FBI lawyer Lisa Page concerning a potential quid pro quo between the State Department and the FBI") to make it sound like Page was a party to the proposed quid pro quo as opposed to a third party who was forwarding on the 302s from the agent that actually was in the room when State proposed it. To your statement that HRC got away with crimes we would not, well, fact. Civilians get away with things we do not. That's the rub. Where DOJ can't prove intentional unauthorized removal/retention, false statements, leaking, etc. they have not charged criminally... To include cases like Bush's AG Al Gonzales. DOD is much quicker to drop the hammer. To me the most appropriate COA given the facts that were known at the time would have actually been to strip HRC of her security clearance, and review the clearances of her top aides who sent classified stuff to the private email account (esp. this apparent doucher Kennedy). Especially a no-brainer given the "extremely careless" conduct combined with the fact that she was no longer performing the role of Secretary of State when all this was discovered anyway... Then if she can explain in a non-dissembling way to the American people (a) that she f---ed up, she's sorry, and (b) if and how she would employ the former aides that had their clearances reviewed, then the vote of the electorate is kind of the ultimate avenue of appeal to get her clearance back. Of course, (a) she was congenitally incapable of talking about the issue without deflecting responsibility like Millennial Blue 4 at his first debrief, and (b) having sweated out the FBI probe BHO wasn't about to hose his party's nominee by publicly imposing an administrative penalty. But all that being said... the 45 administration's sweetheart treatment of Clown Prince Kushner's clearance after his 69 SF-86 revisions and forgetting to mention having tried to establish a secret, surveillance-proof back channel to the Kremlin via the Russian embassy is significantly stinkier. And if you think the FBI was in cahoots with the Clinton campaign after dropping an October Surprise on HRC (Weiner laptop) while keeping the CI probe of the Trump campaign secret squirrel, I can't help you. Source links to recap: The new Fox story that Daily Wire misleadingly quotes The FOIA docs themselves The October 2016 Atlantic piece that says it originated with State 10/19/16 story from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution confirming Atlantic Monthly's version (incl. interview with the FBI agent, Brian McCauley, not Lisa Page)

Well, when I said that I was alluding to my own particular experience of 8 years in BUFFs where of my AD wing commanders I had many B-2 pilots, 1x B-1 pilot, and 1x B-1 WSO. Didn't have a BUFF wing king until I became a Reservist. Just switched to Reserve B-1s and my wing king is the same BUFF dude as before (because GSU of same Reserve wing), and the AD wing/CC is... a BUFF guy. In any case, they have all been proficient in the bomber mission... Just not our particular bomber. Not like AMC with tanker dudes commanding mobility wings and vice/versa. (Of course, I started my career in AWACS with a wing commander from... The B-1. So there's that.)

They're a necessary desirable evil when the wing commander only has a senior officer qual in the MDS his wing flies.

Jesus you're dense. His Ph.D. is in clinical psychology. All his refereed publications are in psychology. To the extent any of them touch on politics, it's on the personality traits of liberals and conservatives. He has no peer-reviewed publications in history, economics, or political theory. To the extent he has any formal education in those subjects it's a B.A. in Political Science... So did my high school soccer coach. His own statements show he is hardly "exceptionally educated" about those subjects, or Marxist thought in particular. Of course there are Marxists in academia. There are also postmodernists/poststructuralists in academia, which is his real bête noire and what he means when he says "cultural Marxism." The two groups do not overlap. They believe very different things about basic epistemology. Saying "cultural Marxist" is like saying "Malthusian infertility medicine"; you're conflating two schools of thought or fields of study that not only don't overlap, but are actually fundamentally contradictory. Marx made specific claims about economics, politics, and history (claims that were severely wrong by the way) based on an underlying belief in epistemological realism—that is, that objective reality exists. Post-modern critical social theorists (like the gender extremists that hold gender is entirely socially constructed) believe the opposite. The targets of Peterson's ire disagree with Marx on epistemology, and they also don't care much about economics either. But "cultural Marxism" sounds scary and taps into people's concerns about contemporary academia. Ultimately it's a meaningless pejorative like Neo-Conservative (which the Left stripped of its domestic policy meanings to use only to refer to a particular subset of foreign policy thought on the Right, because it conveniently sounds like Neo-Nazi), Neo-Liberal (which once had a particular meaning in international economics, but socialists have co-opted to attack liberals), or "Globalist." It appeals to people whose knowledge of political theory comes from owning but not actually reading/understanding Jonah Goldberg's "Liberal Fascism." Dishonest oversimplification and claiming to speak as an expert about subjects outside your field is not what academics do. It's what hucksters do.

I was referring to his moonlighting beyond the scope of his field to opine about scary sounding things like "Cultural Marxism" (which, btw, is not a thing). I'm not scoffing his actual academic work in his field (Chomsky was a great linguist, but also a terrible historian and political theorist—that's my point), or the substance of "12 Rules." But at the same time there are scores of people and books you could go to for good life advice that aren't also hucksters selling fear for profit.

Testing the lines for a new method of EAM dissemination.

Jordan Peterson is the Noam Chomsky of what passes for conservatism these days. He may have once been a reputable academic psychologist, but at this point he's just another outrage salesman telling people what they want to be pissed off about.

Might need to jump on one sooner to negotiate your way out of Dyess! Otherwise they might keep you at the FTU until you're hot for one.

If that was the choice before you, I'd completely agree. The reality is that we were 100% able to say "The United States does not recognize any unilaterally-declared Kurdish state and will not support the Kurds if they try to do so. At the same time, the United States believes governance of NE Syria is a matter to be resolved through negotiations between the inhabitants of NE Syria and the government in Damascus. Any attempt by Damascus, non-state actors, or external parties [i.e. Turkey, but left unsaid] to change the status quo east of the Euphrates will be strenuously opposed and met by whatever response the president deems necessary." In other words de facto autonomy for the Syrian Kurds similar to what the Iraqi Kurds enjoyed under the umbrella of Op NORTHERN WATCH backed up by calculated ambiguity regarding the means by which we would respond (presumably defensive but not offensive support for the SDF against the Assad regime, continued military support against ISIS or any ISIS 2.0 that rises up), and unspoken diplomatic/trade consequences for Turkey who need not even be named in the statement... While our crack State Department diplomat nerds negotiate a better long term framework. Of course, Trump doesn't do nuance or anything that doesn't benefit him personally, so I'm not surprised we are where we are.

Classic associate with 9th Bomb Squadron (Active Duty)... Strong TFI relationship. In the past 345 BS/CC has had G-Series authority over the garrison 9 BS folks during 9 BS deployments, and on one Guam deployment the 345 BS/CC actually commanded the 9 EBS for 2-3 months. 345th has participated with other 307 BW players (93 BS/343 BS BUFFs) on a couple of EUCOM trips and I believe was also the lead squadron as the 345 EBS for a short TFI Fairford deployment in conjunction with the 9 BS and 7 OSS. Anecdotally there is (or at least has in the past been) an expectation that members either deploy for half of every 9 BS deployment or all of every other 9 BS deployment, but I think this is managed through carefully controlled mobilizations so dudes get dwell protection. YMMV based on needs of both units. At home station I know the AGR, ART, and trougher types are generally making RAP (4 sorties/month inexperienced and 3/month experienced)... Don't know about the true TRs, but I imagine it could be a crapshoot depending on aircraft availability. Anecdotally the participation expectation is at least 6 days/month, which I understand is in line with other CAF-affiliated Reserve units. I'm not smart on average sortie duration, so can't help you there. When the 9 BS is in garrison they only fly 345th-only lines (callsign CROOK) during UTAs and fly as part of rainbow crews with the 9 BS during the work week.

^ Two. No break in service = 6 months of free Tricare via TAMP. A $1,440ish value, yours for only $0 dollars.