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It's not hard to avoid a gear overspeed - increase pitch attitude/reduce power as required. A plan of "raise the gear as soon as I break ground" is not a good plan for overspeed mitigation; sounds like that thought process may be fairly widespread in the Raptor community. This should be something briefed in motherhood to a young guy when an AB takeoff in cooler weather is planned. Also worth bringing up to the squadron at large at a pilot meeting as winter flying approaches.

Guys you’re really trying to justify fucking up rotating?! Doesnt matter how fast or slow it happens...don’t rotate 20 knots early and pull your gear up before you have flying airspeed Jesus h.

Epic night in U-2 Land last night. The fires north of the base tried their best to stop the gathering, but to no avail. The Wing and Ops Group leadership went out of their way to help us make this work out (especially considering what they had on their plate with the short-notice POTUS visit today), and it was quite the event. We had around 50 Alumni make it out. Even Tony B showed up... he solo'd in the U-2 in March 1957, and about 10 years later went on to fly the SR-71. Great guy! When something like last night happens, it reminds me how great things in the AF can be; how great the people that work in the flying squadrons are; and how I'm thankful I ended up in the U-2 Program for my career. Hail Dragons.

A lot gets lost in the translation when it comes to making a post. However, this statement significantly stood out to me. And I thoroughly disagree with the implication it brings with respect to flight disciplined operations. Certainly not what you meant... but not the best choice of words.

Kenny - I thinks it's understandable that someone from a multi-role, multi-ordnance fighter would scoff as you are. However, don't discount the impact of MDS culture, especially with a single mission, single load-out (more or less) fighter. An air-to-air fighter doesn't have the myriad of ordnance and potential takeoff variables that say, an F-16 has. On most take offs, the TOLD data is a square filler. Sea level bases and an overconfidence in a/c and engine capes could easily create an environment where things like density altitude is not in the cross-check. I'm not saying it's right, but I can understand how they got there. For the the first two decades of the F-15's existence, pilots didn't even compute TOLD. Every takeoff you rotated at 120 knots. Full aft stick to get the nose moving and adjust after that. Mil, Burner, missiles, training load, clean, 1, 2, 3, bags... didn't matter. Or did it? I'm sure if someone took the time to compute rotation and takeoff speed, they would have varied somewhat in all the different scenarios. Takeoff speed? WTF is that anyway?😜 It started in FTU with the aborted takeoff discussion. The guidance for some "issue" on takeoff went, that if you're at or past 120 with the stick moving back to rotate, then you're going. If you're not there yet, then you abort. Of course, there was always the caveat that if it was a "no shitter" (whatever that is was up to you) you could abort above that knowing you had the hook. That was for mil power on an 8K runway. Anything longer just gave you room to work with, but didn't change the decision process. How's that for TOLD? Even after we started putting TOLD numbers on our line-up cards, not much changed. I also wouldn't discount the effect the FTU training environment may be introducing to this cultural problem. If you actually read the report and look at the data, it's pretty clear that there's a huge trend throughout the F-22 community to rotate early, even in FTU. That makes it pretty clear this stuff is being taught early on. Another thing to consider - There's probably a bunch of ex-Eagle guys wearing coats and ties and teaching sims and academics who may be throwing out some questionable techniques and info from "back in their day" that's being gobbled up and retained by "Stanley" the newbie Raptor dude. I think back to more than a few bogus techniques I had to unlearn thanks to some retired F-4 guy, now sim instructor, throwing out something he thought worked great. Some bigger stuff but mostly little things. I ended up with an audio only version of my HUD tape during what anyone would argue was the highlight of my career thanks to one of those sim instructors teaching me how to set up my cockpit for start. But, I digress. It's pretty clear from the report that this is much more than one guy not reading his line-up card and being a dumbass. That's not to say your points about not checking safely airborne, etc. aren't valid. As others have mentioned, we're not talking about a huge amount of time from brake release to gear up and I'm sure muscle memory and expected timing took priority over a more accurate check. At least the result was a shiny a/c underside, some personal shame and hopefully a better approach to takeoff ops and not another nickle in the grass.

Maybe not the best choice of words but it certainly sounds worse when you clip the sentence immediately following it, where I mention using lessons learned to become better and safer, out of your quote. Point was that guys should not be blindly applying someone else's technique to their jet without putting some thought into it. Teaching techniques to a young guy in the B-course is a slippery slope and, for the most part, they should just be teaching from the books. Techniques are for people with experience to understand the assumptions behind them.

Doesn't get you that awesome video of the jet screaming down the runway at 20', though.

I get irritated when I hear the Air Force talk to the airlines about a problem big blue created

Nobody has oversped the gear because they rotated late...

I also think non fighter dudes don't realize how fast this all happens. I had a Block 50 F-16, clean, have a 700 foot takeoff roll. I didn't have to use AB, but of course I did, and rotated as soon as I had a speed indication. Even an F-16 can be a dozen second takeoff roll, max.

Contraire young Padawan, there's more than 1 F-16 class A that involves early rotation and gear retraction.

Yes. There were some significant C2 issues due in part to the doctrinal requirements for who provides PR to who.

Priceless comment dude. Allow me to paraphrase...”you’re an idiot if you don’t read, but I’m too lazy to read the whole AIB.”

To follow up; if, as a fighter pilot, you say "well someone told me this and I dont know/remember why", then you're full of shit and lack credibility. Everything we need to do to execute well /safely is written in our pubs. Everything else is technique

I didn't read the whole thing but, what I will say, is that as a single seat fighter pilot you're the Mayor of Cockpit City. I do what I want in my jet. I am more than happy to take lessons learned from others and apply them to my jet to make me better/safer. This is just a dumbass mistake, nothing more. We all make mistakes at some point, this dude made an expensive one.

PR for their people, not everybody else in the AOR.

Your core AFSC should still reflect that you’re rated. You can find it on your SURF.

AIB is out. https://www.kunsan.af.mil/Portals/6/180413-PACAF-JB%20Elmendorf-Richardson-Alaska-AIB%20NARRATIVE%20REPORT.pdf?ver=2018-11-15-200849-187 Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I COULD give you the five drastically different stories I have heard in the 72 hours...but I’m not going to spread rumors and just wait for the SIB/AIB to do their jobs. Then we can discuss it more. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Dude... really? It's been 4 days. 🙄

I'm sure the voucher got kicked back a few times...

Part and parcel with one of the cancers that has been growing in AF leadership over the last 10-15 years: nobody wants to make a decision, lest their superior disagree with that decision and it reflect poorly on them. So, we have raised an entire generation of "leaders" (really "managers") who have to "run it up the chain" for absolutely every decision. And this attitude is reflected, now, by the superiors themselves, who expect this kind of "mother, may I" out of their subordinates. The grand result is that nobody is really empowered to make any decision, and few commanders have the balls to just make a decision <gasp> and risk their bosses not liking it.

Manchester.

Hard to imagine anything is easier than the American interview

Not true at AA.

"Raptor, may I touch you on the throttle?"

ACC "IS" terrible about helping the CSAR guys and for some reason (Stockholm Syndrome), the senior CSAR guys remain loyal to their ACC puppet masters. On MULTIPLE occasions ACC used CSAR TOA to pay for other things, how do you think the CAR folks ended up with the oldest C-130s in the Air Force? Another HUGE issue that is always pushed under the rug is the amount of CSAR capability that is in the reserve and guard (50+%). I am not saying the guard and reserve doesn't pull their weight because in this community they most certainly do, but the active component ends up eating a lot of deployed alert because of activation limitations. When you have a low density high demand capability, putting 50% in the guard or reserve causes some second and third order effects. I would disagree with your assessment that AFSOC does not care about "ACC" assets, the minute they become AFSOC assets they will most certainly care as long as the TOA is moved over with them. The HC-130J (long overdue), has about 90% commonality with the MC-130J, but the last 10% is all the special sauce that is equally applicable to SOF or CSAR missions, ACC could care less if you get those capabilities which is a terrible shame. The politics of this potential move are complex and it is not being driven solely by the services or altruism on the part of AFSOC. The genesis was an effort by OSD to save money, SOF is almost always in the same places (and more), as the conventional folks and they have executed many of the recent CSAR events, why not find some synergy. The main sticking point form the CSAR rotor types is the deal would almost certainly drive a reduction in the CRH buy, which I personally think is a good thing. Why in the hell are we buying a 140kt helicopter to conduct long-range CSAR in today's world...seriously? If I were king for a day I would move CSAR to AFSOC (that comes with some doctrinal changes and direction to SOCOM). I would put some of the CSAR forces back in the active component (75%-25%). All 29 HC-130Js (if they get 29, reading the latest NDAA USAF is trying to cut the buy to 26...yeah ACC loves you guys), would be modified to MC-130J configuration (MCTF, SMP, RFCM). CRH buy would be curtailed to 100ish and 30 CV-22s would be added to AFSOC with at least two CSAR units becoming CV-22 equipped.

Any information yet on what exactly happened? Prayers for him and his family. 🍺