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The HF phone patch net handles official (commercial or DSN) and morale patches as well as radio checks for DOD stations worldwide with good propagation conditions. Cost of the phone calls are covered by the individual member. The MARS Phone Patch Net website has been redesigned for easier viewing and includes an article on net procedures and operation. There is a training video available as well as a flyer that can be posted to provide information to aircrews. Questions or requests like access to the FOUO video and current frequencies can be made through the contact form. The request should include a .mil email address. The website is at https://marsphonepatch.net It is our privilege and honor to support those who serve our country. Richard / AFN6PP Mars Phone Patch Net Manager

The answer as always is, it depends. Some are in favor of putting the GAU-8 on the new gunship, while another camp is DEAD set against that COA. An understanding of gunship employment is important because they way a Gunpig would use the 30MM is very different from the way a Hawg would. Nothing against the A-10 but they are obviously limited to forward strafe so they make gun runs using very accurate high volume short bursts. The Gunpig is always over the target and always pointed at the target (always in the bad guy WEZ as well), so it does not need the same high volume delivery. A-10 bubbas please correct me if I am wrong, but I believe you employ the GAU-8 AT 6,000 RPM...while the 30MM and 40MM shoot MUCH slower (200 RPM and 100 RPM respectively). Even when the AC-130H's had the 20MM there were "slowed to a respectable 2500 RPM because there were seen as suppression weapons. When I learned to shoot my old head IPs would have me spell my name in the dirt with the 20MMs so I could develop the fine muscle memory need to employ the 20MMs in a dynamic situation or against a mover. Employment of the 30MM and 40MM is much different, while you can put the guns into a rapid mode and sling a lot of rounds, it is usually better to act as a high volume sniper and that can shoot in VERY close proximity. On one rotation in Afganistan I was supporting a team that was about to be overrun, I ended up shooting the bad guys at about 17 meters, a lot of pucker factor but the slow, steady, accurate volume of fire from the 40MM made it the ideal weapon for that particular fight. The 40MM and 30MM (MK-44), are also very good in urban environments. On many occasions our guys would get wrapped up in house to house fighting and we would be forced to engage a target on the other side of a street...sometime the other side of a wall. If there is a draw back to the 30MM and the 40MM its that you usually need a direct hit to kill someone. Yes they throw frag and often the frag will wound, but we learned early on that the bad guys would go to ground and even though it looked like the frag was taking them out, we would come back a few minutes later to scan the area and the bad guys would crawl away. We changed our tactics and had a montra in the squadron, "shoot until they leak." No...a common myth was that the 20MMs would slow and "tumble...in reality as the threat drove employment to higher altitude and thus longer slant rangers, the velocity decay of the bullet resulted in a loss of enough kinetic energy to cause detonation at impact. The old 20MM fuses were very safe, I've been on the range with EOD types would will reach down and pick them up barehanded, I've actually seen dudes juggle undetonated 20MM's. The 25MM on the other hand is a different beast. The same EOD guys who would handle 20MMs on the range would see a 25MM, place a red flag, and keep a wide birth away from the projective.

Who let nav have an opinion?

Now I'm a little jealous...I've been wearing soft contacts for 8 years and I've never had them paid for.

Bullshit. That was the super-secret Me-263.

15-08 Drop Night JSTARS x 2 AWACS x 2 AC-130W AC-130U EWO RC-135 x 2 EWO RC-135 Nav U-28 Cannon F-15E x 3 EC-130 x 2 EWO EC-130 Nav KC-135 Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No. PST's aren't allowed to reside on the fileshare. There's good reason for this. PST's get huge, into the GBs. You really should try to keep them below 2Gb or they start to corrupt. You can keep organizational PST's on the share. Legit org, like a flight's org box or a CSS org box. Plus those legit boxes can get increased size as well. Talk to your CS. Additionally your file share.. clean that shit out fellas and ladies. We're doing scans at the wing king's direction and there's so much duplicated data that's just eating space. I know to you guys it's "free" but imagine if that was paper docs. That space is precious to us for numerous reasons below. 1) Regulations - Your electronic records should be filed in accordance with your file plan. A fair chunk of your emails probably could be filed under this. The CS is required to make sure the ERM drive is big enough to support that. We are not required to maintain the Share Drive. That's right. The ERM drive and Share Drive both run off the same equip. Which leads to more problems - 2) Tech Challenges - Sure, we could connect a 3TB disk via usb to the SAN (Storage Area Network has diagrams). It'll void the storage array warranty (haha, just kidding. ACC didn't pay for it to be continued, but didn't bother to tell us.) The storage stuff isn't as easy as plugging in another hard drive. The APC have had problems because they populated storage arrays with different speed disks (ex. 10K vs 5Krpm) and its causes write/read errors. There are whole certifications around the management of data and data storage products. Just look at the product break down here - EMC Toys So, we have to get vendor approved hard drives, installed by trained professionals (i.e. generally not my Amn) and expand the arrays through their software tools. Now, we can buy more drives. Except that they're usually red/business/special and cost much more than your normal drive. Here's a EMC approved 15K RPM, 1.7TB drive.. for ~$14K. Much like our aircraft I can't pop down to Frys/Best Buy and stick any hard drive in this specialty equipment. 3) Programming Challenges - I don't mean code, I mean money. Your base stuff is old (probably). Almost all of our expansion/new stuff is fought over at end of year. I'm not going to get into how much of my current bases equipment is pushing against the EOL/EOS. Just this year the AF decided to move off of Windows Server 2003. Why? Because MS said they were going to charge millions for continued patches past the July drop dead date. Even this move was couched with "show us if you really need it and we might pay." This is a double impact. I can't get a new array when it starts failing, because Comm/Cyber support equipment doesn't get regular updates from MAJCOM/HQAF. We fight for end of year funds to make sure we can expand services (VoIP) or continue with vendor warranties and/or equip. Imagine if you had to fight for F16 block upgrades at end of year against the new gym/finance offices. Kinda like that. Remember when I said we weren't required to support a shared drive? This is why. If we were, it might get programmed against. 4) Old. Sure I kinda mentioned this before, but think about how well old hard drives work. Touchy, special dedicated hard drives. I've no kidding seen a 50% disk failure rate on a base's share drive array. And the only thing you can do is plunk down more $$$ and hope they work. Once the disks are no longer provided by the vendor all bets are off. Now - I bitch about the APC's and move to consolidate. BUT - this is where things are getting programmed against and regular updates are being applied. The cash isn't flowing to your bases even close to the way it was, but it is flowing to these Orgs. So, that's better. Unfortunately, the service isn't on-par with what can be supplied locally. I'll have another post about consolidation, security and cyber later. It's Friday and my D&D group is starting. Hope this answered your question, I rambled a bit. EDIT - TL;DR - Regulations, Money, old tech and specialized equipment make PST's on the network shares bad. But mostly expensive old specialized equipment. Also, I'm trying to spell out all the acronyms, but if I miss one let me know.

Today would have been Rich's 42nd birthday. We still miss you, brother!

Heard in a staff meeting on 6 Dec 1941.... Lets park all of the planes tightly together in the middle of the airfield so we can guard them easier.

You won't believe what happened next. It will restore your faith in humanity, Especially number 8.