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Fair enough. I guess I've just seen a lot more of group commanders sitting in meeting after useless meeting, and not a lot of ordering troops to their death.

Thread derailment in 3,2,1... Here's your breakfast... Return to course... My opinion is Leave also, if Remain wins Brussels has them by the balls, freedom beats the guided cage every time .

Fat Amy = F-35...they're the fat chick, they know it, so they call themselves out on it before you can. I actually heard it first from an F-35 guy, so you know it's legit when they jokingly call themselves that!

Weird...plenty of companies can succeed by hiring CEOs from outside the company, or even outside the industry, but there's no way the military can possibly make it work... Doesn't this also neatly circumvent the problem of the box-checking, risk-averse micro-managers getting picked up for these command slots? Might be nice to have some folks willing to take a risk because 1. they don't have 20+ years already invested and 2. they have a cushy fall-back position if they fail. We constantly piss and moan about the wrong people being placed in leadership positions, due to the incentives the Air Force puts into place. Is it so outlandish to think that people who have not been subjected to the same incentives their entire careers may come up with different solutions?

This is the latest I've received from the Omega military purchase program rep as of 26 Feb 16. "Thank you for your interest in our timepiece. Currently, the program is on hold pending HQ review. I’m keeping a list of qualified interested parties to contact once the program resumes. Please confirm and I’ll add you to the list. Best regards, Latoya" Her email is latoya.morris@swatchgroup.com

The military is not a profit maximizing entity. It will never run like one because it's a part of the insanely bureaucratic gov't. I'm all for hiring some intelligent and successful dudes off the street but they simply won't be able to achieve anything without systematic change throughout the DoD. Until big blue realizes how powerless a Sq or even a Gp CC is, nothing will change. Although maybe bringing these dudes in and watching them spin their wheels for two years will shed light on that fact...

I guess I don't understand how opening up leadership positions to a bigger pool is a bad idea. If a civilian wants to be the mission support group commander, I say let him or her interview against whatever O-6 was "groomed" for that position. I think this organization would be improved with some outsider perspectives in positions of authority.

Below is purely based on past discussions/ideas, hopefully someone else on here is close to the program and can confirm/deny and/or add info... A major intent is to maintain the CAS/Sandy culture in the AF; we do not want said culture and the dedication to said missions to die when the Hawg goes away (whenever that is). Think of it as the AF's idea of maintaining a "CAS/Sandy heart beat" and not letting it shrivel to "just another mission set" the Viper, Strike or Fat Amy does. Additional plans are to move the Viper FAC(A) school house there from Luke, as well as start up a Sandy school house (whenever the mission officially transfers from A-10 to F-X). Always a potential for A-29 type aircraft to someday be added to the inventory, and this group would be an ideal location. Perhaps in the sunset of the Hawg, we'll see only 1-2 squadrons remaining and they'll be moved to Nellis to be a part of this group until the end...maybe. In addition to the air side, this will be a central place for the JTAC community to maintain/develop their side of the mission in an environment that is focused all on that, and not like it is currently where a lot of JTACs are holding signs on the side of the road saying, "will go TDY to random ranges for controls." That's the very general idea of it - hopefully someone else has more current, in depth knowledge to pass on.

Nuance was the best way I could describe it but it seemed in the interview he was making what seemed to be a "softer" argument(s) for his idea, which I am only about 10000% opposed to. No argument that rearranging the deck chairs from 3 groups to 2 groups would probably not have that much affect or if it did it might have the opposite effect he (I and I suspect others think he has which is to massively expand the size and missions of the US Army). I imagine that most who believe in reviving the Army Air Corps are animated by hindsight and interpreting US military history failures as often involving a disconnected / ambivalent AF, some of it deserved most of it not. Follow on: I emailed Prof Farley and asked him to participate in this thread, I hope he establishes an account and does so, would be interesting. Most of the complaint about the AF even when it was the AAC/AAF was it has always favored Air Interdiction and Strategic Attack at the expense of CAS, the USMC might have the same complaint about the Navy, fix that and our habit of gold plating our procurement and much external critique falls apart.

sorry, thought you said 'breakfast.'

Ugh. If one defines "nuance" as ignoring the lunacy that one can easily see in the way the Air Corps was treated by the Army prior to 1939--when one of the most pro-airpower presidents in history (FDR) pushed the most pro-airpower Army chief of staff in history (Marshall) to start building the Air Corps from its emaciated interwar state--then yeah, I'd say he might have a nuanced argument. I could go on with his selective use of history, but this is the problem when political scientists pretend to be historians. I think his idea of giving the Air Force back to the Army is moronic, but I'll bite. The bottom line is this: sure, we could reorganize and get back to two services, but I don't think the Army would be all that happy with the way it would turn out. If we were to divvy up the services, I'd think we'd split it into (1) a high-readiness service, consistently deployed around the globe [you could call it the Navy if you really dislike the Air Force name and are happy with tradition unhindered by progress] and (2) a break glass-in-case-of-war service, that generally remains stateside [Army] that expands and shrinks, according to what overseas adventures our civ leaders find for us. How would I split the services up? - "Navy"--gets all AF's: tankers, airlifters, OSA, fighters [but for A-10], bombers, big wing recce, CSAR, AFSOF, Global Hawk, space [missiles, satellites, all of it], cyber, and the bulk of the training infrastructure. I probably missed something, but that should mostly cover it. Maybe if one service owned both land- and sea-based air, we might make more rational decisions about using carrier battle fleets to do jobs that land-based air can do as well or better...around the clock. -- BTW, if you really want to rationalize force structure, the Army's THAAD and probably Patriot should also go to this new "Navy." It would put all air theater air defense capabilities in one service. Come to think of it, I could probably make a strong case for handing the Ranger Regiment over to MARSOC...it would put the nation's "911" force all in the same service - Army--gets AF's: Preds, Reapers, A-10s . . . the stuff that primarily exists to directly support conventional ground users. They could buy all the Super Tucanos, C-27s, RC-12s, etc., they want to directly support ground users. Of course, the Army would have to get rid of stuff that has nothing to do with direct support to ground users [THAAD & Patriot above come to mind] -- This way, the Army could focus on their two-dimensional world, where all that matters to them is defined by the ground they own and the fixed-wing assets that only support them (rather than all joint/combined users across big theaters), and the amalgamated Air Force/Navy could own the oceans, air, space and cyber and non-CAS missions The podcast brought up an interesting point about USAFA--what would happen to it? I've got an idea for that: a Merchant Aviation Academy. - People who want to kill people and break things overseas--in air/space/cyberspace/over, on and under the sea--go to USNA - People who want to defend the homeland--in air/at sea--go to USCGA - People who want to make money driving civilian boats--go to US Merchant Marine Academy at King's Point - People who want to make money flying civilian planes/launching rockets for SpaceX--go to the US Merchant Air & Space Academy at Colorado Springs [on the grounds of the former USAFA] - People who think two-dimensionally and/or who aspire to be Fortune 500 CEOs--go to West Point, then into the Army Would my plan work? Perhaps. The funny thing is, it would ultimately end up in one service being even more dominant at the joint level (and it wouldn't be the Army), and with the addition of a whole bunch more land-based aviation, aviators would likely become even more dominant in the Navy than they already are. TT

Maybe you should separate. We thank you for your service.

A word of caution to the uninitiated: F-15 shaped openers will only work on bottles of Zima and wine coolers.