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Appreciate the Monday morning QB'ing, but I've had plenty in the past 3 years. If we knew the storm was that severe, do you honestly think we would have flown through it? If you have something constructive to add, please do. Otherwise, go add more nonsense to the IRA thread. This was one of my points of this thread; decisions at 0/0 are different than when you are considering the implications of not going home. Post-flameout, I would do nothing different; I get to kiss my wife every day, and any changes that day could ultimately affect that.

I imagine that if the US Airways Flight 1549 had been an air force airplane, Sullenburger would have been canned for taking off in a dangerous bird condition. Then he would have been raked over the coals because he and his FO didn't reference the landing with one or more engines inop, landing with erroneous airspeed indications, ditching, and and finally evacuation checklists before hitting the water. I imagine the scheduler would have laughed at him if he had said, "we're not going to go today because of the high probabilty of migratory bird patterns around the field." Well at least the AMC/CC got his golden parachute...

This goddamn job has turned into such a bait-n-switch. Timing and luck.. you nemesis of mine! This is what happens when you base your vocational aspirations on information off fuckin' 1980s military-themed movies....I shoulda been a dentist. fvck.

Why was it never a big deal with the songs, callsigns, etc until the past two years? Have you always felt that way about fighter pilot culture? Did you do anything to change it before the USAF conducted witch hunts?

I don't post as much as I read and this thread happens to be the reason I come back to BO each day. Not a pilot myself but still some great conversation about decision making that I can apply to my job. We had a very experienced captain at FAFB during my last assignment that screwed up and violated airspace around Spokane. He got a briefing together, showed the radar track, played the ATC tapes, and even had the controller from Geiger Field come and talk to the crews. We all knew this guy was a great pilot, but things happen, he took owness of the situation, and that day we all learned something. Day Man, like many have said already, thanks for posting your experience. Hangar Flies are always a good thing in my opinion. Good luck on your next chapter.

Please tell me you're not being serious. This is the problem. You can't blindly rattle this shit off sounding like a douchebag totally disregarding your audience. I will admit that it so ingrained in me that I have to pause and stop when I'm talking to somebody who may not appreciate or understand it. These days most folks don't understand why you're saying it, and if they don't you look like an asshole. Know your audience. We can continue doing our things, but if you put your *cranium* down and try to run forward at full speed with your agenda, you're not proving a point. You're being a dickhead.

I've never heard of a WDO in a hawg squadron so I think Hill or Mountain Home. I think everyone in the squadron should just not say anything to each other all day, finish the minimal amount of work required, and go home. Obviously working our asses off and fighting the man hasn't worked. Give them what they think they want, just to see what happens.

I would love to see an actual breakdown of where sexual harassment/sexual assault claims are coming from (sts) in the Air Force. I guarandamnedtee you the Operations Group will be significantly underrepresented (and within the OG, the OSS will be significant overrepresented... just as they are for DUIs).

Great, we DO NOT do that. You say don't "give me that in front of bros shit," but actually it's true. Sure things have slipped out (sts) at an ops desk or two, but you and others on this bullshit bandwagon have this grandiose horrible viewpoint of our culture when in fact your view is ludicrously far from reality. We're very respectful to the 1COs, AFE troops, etc. Stop acting like at every step brief we throw down with our favorite S&M Man verse, right after telling the 1CO she should wear less clothes. This shit does not happen. You want the playboy pinups taken out of the bathroom, out from behind some guy's desk, fine I get it. But to be quite frank, that's about the only thing I've seen that can in any logical way be considered harassment to others. The number 69 is just a number, so to speak is a common phrase, etc. What we sing in our bar with the door closed (no shit) is none of your business and I fully mean this when I say, you are NOT allowed to be offended of something you've neither seen nor heard or will ever be "forced" to hear, but only have an inflated and incorrect opinion of based off of bullshit premises. Now, before you blow your lid, I think a dude should get crushed for REAL harassment at work. If some guy's making passes at the A1C in life support, telling her "nice tits, you should take your shirt off," then fuck yeah, that guys an asshole and should get what's coming to him. As you're well aware, there are shitbags in EVERY AFSC, base, etc. I don't think it's much to ask to leave the 99% of us alone that do not do this shit and actually put effort towards doing something about the 1% who actually "do the things" the anti-fighter pilot community erroneously thinks runs rampant in our community. Going after 69, songs and callsigns is the weak dick response of spineless leadership who are too afraid/unable to tackle the real problem, so instead they go after what's easy and visible.

Liquid, The death of the fighter pilot culture is destroying the morale and brotherhood in fighter squadrons. Being a fighter pilot used to be a lifestyle, but you and those like you have reduced it to simply being another job. Roll calls and bar stories are dying, because everyone knows that it isn't safe to hang out there. All the informal learning that used to happen over beer/scotch is dying too, so yes our culture did make us better at our jobs. When you see retention numbers drop in the next few years, I'm sure you'll point to some other factor, but I won't be staying one day past my ADSC.

Shack. That's what I was getting at but you said it better.

We don't "need" it to do our jobs. We also don't need masters degrees, wellness days with bouncy castles for the kids, or even weekends off. People do work better when they have morale and a tight knit culture (one that can't be imposed - it has to develop). In addition, we need aggressive professionals - someone with a corporate mentality won't be as effective at taking a 60 into a hot LZ or Hogs/Vipers on a one way trip across the Fulda Gap/DMZ. Part of developing the aggressiveness and trust among those you will kill with is knowing they will always have your back and you theirs; no matter how offensive the situation, you will always protect each other as brothers/sisters. Finally, I have known people who were harassed; equating so to speaks, bar songs and 69 jokes with their situations or the trauma of some of the Invisible War stories cheapens what was suffered by true victims.

It sucks this happened to you guys and I would never wish what happened to you on my worst enemy, but three years later this is your take away from what happened? You probably don't realize it but hundreds of young co-pilots read this forum. You really still think the appropriate action after a four-engine flameout is to run zero checklists and pray the guy the in the other seat can maintain control of the plane? There was NOTHING you could have done to improve the outcome of the situation besides put the gear and flaps down? Good on you for starting this thread, but coming in with the attitude that you did nothing wrong is clearly erroneous. For the record, I do think it was a huge foul for the AMC/CC to overturn the findings/recommendation of your FEB.

I think the problem is fighter pilots are turning on fellow fighter pilots. AND sts. But seriously.

This is becoming a recurring theme throughout military aviation, regardless of the outcome the crew gets thrown under the bus. Just happened to a friend of mine. Had to eject from a Superhornet after fighting it for over an hour, and the causal factor being hung around him because of a peculiar system anomoly that barely gets any mention in NATOPS (our version of the -1, I think) that no one in the Superhornet community had any clue even exsisted. Case in point, the F-22 crash in Alaska. Some how an OBOGS defect was the fault of the pilot? Robin Olds would've been kicked out for wrapping his glo-belt around some shoe E-8's neck, and Chuck Yeager would've lost his wings for breaking the sound barrier with broken ribs. More and more the best you can do anymore is break even, from emergencies to employment in combat. Give it another 5 years, they'll see what it's earned them.

And of course, rather than being transparent about it, the air force leaves us to gossip and guess. I don't think the USAF cares about "flying related stuff" as long as the slides are green.

Buy one? Get hired by an airline and fly over there free in business class.

I think it's certainly a purer, truer, and more enjoyable ballpark experience.

You gotta use the HUD... that's what it's there for!

I think the full retard train left the station a while back and a lot of idiot Americans are onboard happily and furiously shoveling coal to make it go faster.

No I'm saying anything physically bolted to the aircraft datum line starts off inherently less accurate than a system with full range of authority in az/el with a weapons processor that makes those compensations for you. Same reason my gun is more accurate than any of my helo brethren. Cobra doesn't have as expensive a Weapons Processor, and DAP shoots the same gun fixed from 1/6 the distance so they can hit accurately. Tell the truth do your gun scores get that way because your system is better than everybody else or because you spend so much more training working on it. And what I'm saying is if people want to leverage the future of the A-10 off all the good it's done in the last ten years, they need to realize there are dozens of other aircraft capable of doing the same job and there are ideas out there OV-10X/A-29/etc that are better suited to this conflict than even the Hawg. The people who think its gonna be pivotal to have the mud fighting down and dirty monster in the next war that has an actual FLOT though really need to go talk to some people about threat systems out there because that method of employment just got ridiculously more dangerous.

I don't give a shit that the school district thinks an air soft gun is a firearm, I give a shit that they think they can suspend a student for something that happens off their property or not while under their supervision.

Ok as one of those Apache brethren I'm gonna ring in here. 1. Nothing in our current fight reflects any manner of how we would be employed in a fit against any kind of force with near parity in firepower. We are aerial QRF, and so is CAS in theatre. 2. What does the A-10 drop at all of the other horses in the stable don't. Besides that bitchen gun you got, there isn't a weapon you carry that somebody else can't. 3. All this crap on desert storm and the great impact of whatever platform... That fight was 24 years ago. That fight predates 2S6, SA24, Gauntlet, and a host of other deadly ass shit that will literally bend over and rape any platform out there that gets in its WEZ titanium bathtub or no. Standoff, low observability, lots of expendables (which are getting less and less effective) is gonna be critical when you can buy a weapon with 4 fold better Pk than the weapon systems our aircraft were designed to take on. Observations I've had... I've been in the stack with Hawg... Other than that inaccurate (by our standards) gun they don't bring anything crazy awesome to the fight that couldn't be carried on another aircraft or a low cost idea like have been proposed. Your not there any longer because as the tanker orbits get fewer and firer between your on station time is offset by your slow cycle time in the yo-yo. You don't have a sensor that permits any better vid than the other aircraft (similar to how we have better eyes than the 58s). Will you be missed at Air Shows and by people with a place in their heart, sure. But the same is true of the Tomcat, and the sky didn't fall down when it was retired.

Spoken truly like a person who doesn't know just how long things take and how this stuff plays out. This is the same thought process all the clowns in the house throw at the POTUS about Benghazi