Leaderboard

So let's see just how many different possible solutions the AF can come up with to sidestep fixing the actual retention issues.

As tech increases, you need to keep platforms that have ease of expansion, excess generator and ECS output and minimal carriage restrictions alive. When the 69lb brain trusts make the death-star-turn-it-on-and-you-auto-win system (likely first fielded in a pod) we can't afford to spend $690B and wait 15 years (ala aim-9x) to get it on a Raptor or 35. There's some pretty cool crap already out there, integration on the 5th gen is a monster. At the unclass level, the whole idea and execution of RCS reduction (I won't call it stealth for 4th gen) has advanced considerably. Can't turn an Eagle, Hornet or Falcon into a Raptor but you can bring those threat wez's into something more manageable - particularly if we actually put some interest in offensive EA game. Hi/lo mix still makes sense from a lot of perspectives - a lot of the monetary pain we see right now comes from the significant gap in fundage towards sustainment of 4th gen during the 90's and 00's. Chickens have come home to roost in that department so instead of upgrading mission stuff we're buying new wings for multiple platforms and finally trying to figure out just how many hours we can really fly these things.

. It's absurd. The amount of time, money and energy going into ideas that will NOT fix the exodus is just staggering.

89th Airlift Squadron... C-17s

Penicillin

I don't have platform specific numbers with me. I know from looking at charts of oxygen analysis being done on some test jet aircraft (OBOGS) that the numbers on the ground are usually max performance (95-100%). For some aircraft, there is an OBOGS source change that happens after Weight Off Wheels that immediately shows a drastic decrease in O2% by vol, then increases back up to about 60-80%. The F-16 OBOGS O2 concentration to the face is very similar to the F-15 LOX, except it has a steeper increase at low atitudes. A lot of pilots let their mask hang until they absolutely have to put it on, but then they are getting that mass influx of oxygen to the lungs. When it is absorbed by the blood stream, and the pilot is still breathing a very high percentage of oxygen, the alveoli start to collapse since there is not a high enough concentration of Nitrogen to retain the shape (or so the theory goes). Luckily, with all of the OBOGS issues, they are implementing sensors in a lot of places in a lot of aircraft and this theory will be proven or disproven soon. As for the T-6 IP hypoxia issues, I would have to look at the debrief from the flights/ground events. I don't know if I buy off on lack of SA because a lot of the bad cases of hypoxia end up being "Oh, I remember being cleared to land and I didn't really feel good. I remember taxiing off the runway, but don't remember actually landing the plane." If that's the case, then no amount of (lost) SA is going to help you keep 69 seconds of flight time that would have otherwise been lost due to oxygen deprivation. Personally, I'd look for 1 or 2 aircraft that have the most amount of hypoxic events associated with them and start digging deeper. In addition, it would be a good idea to do hose leak check, mask fit check, mask leak check, concentrator and regulator replacements, check for water in the system (obviously), etc for all aircrew/aircraft that had an incident. I'm sure whichever team has been tasked to deal with this issue is already knocking out that easy stuff.

Meh whatever. I just don’t get why we do drop night like we do. Back when predators were dropping, God forbid someone didn’t act like it was their #1 choice of assignment. Also don’t be an @sshole.

89th AS

What problem are they fixing though? Like @AZwildcat said, there's no shortage of pilot candidates. The problem is still training capabilities and retention of seasoned guys...

Good lord, the AF is desperate. This in no way will help production (more likely to hurt it - more washouts) and will result in worse retention. And that’s just the numbers side of it, not even touching the host of problems posed by enlisted ACs. Who in God’s name is steering this ship?

Way behind in total salary (maybe), but are you accounting for the amount of insurance required of private doctors? It can be enormous from what I understand, whereas the cost to someone accepting any of those bonuses equals precisely $0.00. You account for $200-300K of med school debt, are you doing the math on $0.00 of med school debt to a mil doc? Difference between these positive and negative numbers begins to add up pretty quickly. We always talk about bringing doctors "in". Do doctors need to be in the military? Does a base located in city X "need" a whole ing hospital? Why don't we just outsource our healthcare to the civilian sector and pay market price? I grant that there are certain specialities that the military needs for reason X, but we do not need the medical infrastructure that we currently have set up to be able to accomplish our mission. There is an awesome (sarcasm) thread on the CAF Fighter Facebook page that is basically just a swinging dick contest between doctors and 11Fs. The point missing from the whole thing is that there is a separate 'sub-economy' in the USAF wherein pilots > doctors: because mission. So it doesn't matter what the USAF pays doctors relative to pilots. If this was a janitor's union, and our mission was sweeping the hallways of junior high schools, no one would care if some of the "help" who checked janitor's balls (who had tons of expensive education) wanted more pay or "deserved" more pay. The mission is hall-sweeping, not ball-checking. Yes.

Nothing better than getting kicked in the nuts and watching your childhood dreams fade away on stage in front of 400 strangers. At least it prepares those kids for the real AF.

They are called missles, not hittles

I thought the F-4 was pretty cool when I flew it in the Seventies. Baumholder AAR track in Germany at 230 kts:

I think one of the best periods would have been Korean War - F-86. Gun only jets with a willing adversary who came up and tangled on a pretty regular basis and lots of Aces. Fighter pilot heaven.

Word on the street is that the Aircrew Task Force colluded with the Russians to hack Baseops.net.

Trick question: the fuel from the fuel truck was too warm, F-35 doesn’t get airborne, Eurofighter bombs F-35. Sorry for the derail. I digress.

FIFY. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk