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@Biff_T This is where you chime in and say “Save the fat one for me”. 🤮
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Short of a dropping nukes or a full ground invasion, I think this conflict has proven we don’t have the firepower needed for Iran to capitulate. It’s not about what the public will or won’t support, because we already proved we’ll go ahead and launch a super unpopular war. I’m talking about the real world limits of our military power. This might be a tough pill to swallow but we had 3x the fighter squadrons we do now when we took down the far smaller country of Iraq in 1990. And in desert storm, airpower was paired with a ground invasion. The notion that we can ramp up to some previously unseen level of air power just isn’t reality. Almost the entire tanker community is deployed already and run ragged with crew rest waivers. We redirected more carriers to the region than at any point in the last 30 years and one of the CSG’s retasked for this thing just completed the longest carrier deployment since WW2. Idk if you guys follow the meme pages but one of the running jokes right now is that big blue basically took the entire AFFORGEN model and threw it in the trash when this kicked off. They just said fuck it and deployed everybody. Now folks are tired and ready to be done with it. There’s no world where we turn this back up to early March levels of strikes, let alone exceed that intensity. We shot our shot, and it didn’t work. And now we’re taking a crap deal to get out of a crap situation. I think this is a super valuable lesson to learn after Venezuela folding like an house of cards got us high on our own supply. If we’re serious about deterring China we need to learn the actual lesson here: we aren’t all powerful anymore. If you want to sustain operations against a determined opponent, you need volume, and a deep bench. We’ve become insanely good at lighting people up night 1 with all the shiniest most expensive toys. But we’ve become terrible at sustaining that pressure over time.
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I had T-41 training at the Valdosta airport prior to T-37s and 38s at Moody. I remember my T-41 instructor as a young guy, probably no college, wanted to go on to the airlines. He was a competent teacher and had the patience to put up with my fumbling around. Nice guy. I hope he found his dream. For what the T-41 program was intended for back then, he did a good job.
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I’d certainly offer it to boom operators. They talk on the radio, learn approach plates, and are already trusted to not carve their initials into 5th gen paint. I’d rather have instuctor boom E-5 — E-8s become warrant CFIs than civie CFIs teach LTs how to fly. If that’s a choice I’d ever have to make.
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That made me laugh. I recall a 1980s USAF program that put new UPT grads into ANG/AFR units as a first assignment because there were no slots in active duty units. So we put an impressionable 2Lt into a unit of folks who essentially were people who wanted out of active duty for a variety of reasons, some good, some not so much. What could go wrong with that?!The shit show continues... Top Army General Who Was Last U.S. Soldier to Leave Afghanistan is Suddenly Leaving His Post WASHINGTON — The Army’s commander of its forces in Europe and Africa — who was famously the last American soldier to leave Afghanistan in 2021 — is unexpectedly stepping down from his post after just 18 months in the job, the Army confirmed late Tuesday. GEN Christopher Donahue, commanding general of U.S. Army Europe and Africa and commander of NATO’s Allied Land Command, will relinquish his command on July 2, according to an Army statement provided to The Associated Press. He is the latest in a line of nearly two dozen top military leaders to either retire or depart their jobs early under the leadership of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has undertaken an effort to thin the ranks of the military’s top brass with the mantra “less generals, more GIs”... More at: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/military/army-general-christopher-donahue-unexpectedly-leaving-post-rcna351524 Other reporting indicates this is a forced departure as directed by Hegseth. Sure, there are a lot of potbellied GOs that need to transition to lucrative consulting gigs, but this guy seems to have a lot of gas left in the tank and it makes me wonder if Hegseth is now targeting generals that can do more push-ups than he can! If anyone has other insights, I'm sure we'd all like to hear them. Speaking of which, remember how the purges ended up going for Stalin?!?@brabus Thank you so much for this link. I am reading it right now. I have been meaning to give AOPA a call, and maybe I can try to do that on a business day this week. But regardless, I am 99% sure I will have to answer yes to 18v, if nothing else, due to the fact that my driver's license was suspended for 30 days for a driving offense committed when I was 14 years old, even though it involved zero alcohol nor drugs (part 3 of 18v says "even if it involves no alcohol or drugs") I was under the impression that 1: I should NOT immediately first fill out a MedXPress; But I should instead first do a paid initial consultation with AME(s) before I do anything (I have never yet met an AME in-person, nor had a phone call, nor paid any AME(s)). I spoke to one AME office that told me that is not allowed but everybody else says that the office was wrong and full of baloney and that with my crazy set of drama, I should pursue a paid consultation without a MedXPress, to do a game plan. Unsure if the conventional wisdom is to do this with a normal AME, senior AME, and/or HIMS AME I was under the impression that not approaching it via HIMS from the get-go could result in a denial and/or deferral that would make it more expensive in the long run. I was told that a denial can be very expensive to appeal and make your life more difficult. Regardless, I was told that not approaching it correctly, sometimes they say "okay you filled out your MedXPress, you have sixty more days to submit all these documents, and if you don't have your application complete and ready and fully submitted by day sixty, you automatically get a denial". Again, thank you so muchSure. I’m an Academic/Sim IP and I fall in that boat. I had little to no desire to fly for the majors/cargo. One of the big reasons I took the job I currently have is job satisfaction; I like that I’m still contributing to my previous community. I also like that I’m home every night, the pay is good, and my location lines up with where I want to live. Guys instructing at IPT won’t be doing “fighter pilot shit”, they’ll be teaching Private/Instrument/Multi-Engine courses literally flying the same GPS approach using a G1000 to a full stop based on what several IPT’ers have conveyed. In this hypothetical world guys would have to be willing to relocate, have an CFI/II/MEI, and roll the dice on a contract program that is new at flight schools that can have their contract CNX’d at the government’s whim (has already happened in Arizona), all for not that much pay. Once again, there will be guys that would be willing to do it, there just won’t enough IMO to make a difference in the instruction at all the different flight schools.I was a courseware author on the KC-46, and I'm currently a F-16 Flight Manual Manager. I've worked with a lot of retired military pilots in both airframe programs who had no desire to fly for the majors because they didn't want to bag drag through airports as an FO in the 40s-50s. A lot of fighter pilots don't want to go to the airlines and work at Lockheed with me because they like doing "fighter pilot shit" and not flying an ILS all the time.The morality of the general public, whether correct or incorrect, is going to prevent us from bringing the firepower needed for Iran to capitulate if this kicks off again. The administration vastly under-estimated the effort needed to succeed. We are world champs at converting tactical success into strategic loss.
- Yesterday
Haha England tied Ghana.In concept this isn't bad idea, devil is honestly in the money. There's not enough retired mil guys hanging around willing to work for the wages the government would offer. Sure there's a couple, but en-mass, the bodies just aren't there. And who can blame them? You'd have to be a pretty motivated retiree to trip-turn a DA20 in Texas heat or Florida humidity for peanuts compared to an airline or cargo gig. We're starting to get IPT students coming through the FTU I instruct at. The quality of previous instruction they received seems to vary quite widely. The guys that went through at Sky Warriors seem to get exposed to a more mil way of doing things; from what I understand there's several ex-mil guys there and the quality of instruction shows. Students that went through other locations tend to have lower (in some cases much lower) opinions of the training they received.Yes, I’d recruit CFIs, Army WO pilots, prior rated Es, cast a wide net but be discerning on which fish you throw in the cooler… It would be a reasonable commitment (less than a commissioned officer) but they would have the same aero rating, that’s the kicker. Now while they are instructing they wanna get a degree and at the end of their commitment apply for an ARC or AD billet, more power to them, if they wanna punch and separate, thank you for your service. There would be some commissioned IPs still flying T-6s, supervisors and such, but the bulk of the IP cadre would be WOs. This would solve some manpower issues for the AF and fix the inconsistency in instructional quality described in the UPT Next thread.This is where I see WOs fitting into the Line well. WOs recruited from aviation programs and with a specific initial career track, along with others. Basic flight instruction handing off to commissioned officer instructor pilots. UPT split into three phases: Flight screening. Contract CFIs and mil check pilots, PPL with INSTM rating, military only program, contract IPs only fly mil students, focused and consistent instructions. Basic phase. USAF WO IPs instruction. T-6 syllabus then a 30 hour ME course in a T-54. Advanced phase. Commissioned IPs in the T-7, track after formation phase. Fighter/bomber on to the T-7 and IFF, Crew/heavy to a 737 type and sim course.I so hope it's 4. (Get down to business after the mid-terms) Our politicians are largely oblivious to the fact that their negative comments are watched closely by the IRGC and like many of our conflicts since 1945 our wars are not lost on the battlefield but in the court of public opinion. Iranian oil refining/transportation infrastructure needs to start having a run of industrial accidents especially after the first week in November.
