Leaderboard

IPZ only, starting with the (now May scheduled) O5 board.... no more BPZ. And the Five year window (Once in place) starts on your fragged IPZ as well. These are big changes for the better for the service. Maybe we will gain some credibility in the joint world... They are So big In fact that the way I heard it was the “Senior Statesmen” (retired four stars) started lobbying the CSAF to slow or reverse the train... because, by god the promotion system (which hadn’t changed this substantially since 1986) worked for them. They were told their input was welcome and appreciated, but the train has left the station (AKA decision-made...). Chuck

If Trump wins a second term this should be his mission, who give a sh*t what permanent Washington, the swamp, think tanks, Puzzle Palace and the like want: Just order a phased withdrawal, declare our mission complete (no win or loss mention just done) and publicly order the US military to begin withdrawal one month from announcement and complete in one year. No one wants to be the President when Kabul falls like Saigon, but our role there is done. It's just done. No politician who come up thru the established paths and gets all the associated baggage can do this, it will take an outsider who DGAF what the American Aristocracy thinks and will rip the band aid off.

That is, hypothetically speaking, based on the belief that people actually abide by the insane base policy (it's not Federal law no matter how many people claim it is, read 18 U.S. Code §930). Here in Texas, I suspect there are one or two that don't (again, hypothetically speaking). The Lone Star State does things right! The DoD could learn from it. By the way, in case you didn't notice, open carry is allowed on Texas state military installations while not in uniform!

Agree with the family... https://www.foxnews.com/media/family-josh-watson-pensacola-florida-attack-navy-hero-second-amendment

You make it sound like DTS and CTO have this process clearly defined with an easy guide and approachable help via phone, email or chat.

We've spent more on Afghanistan in adjusted dollars than we did on the Marshall Plan FFS. Fellow alum was a PRT commander there about 5 years ago, so like 14-15 years into the war. He and crew rolled up into a valley in western Afghanistan near the Iranian border and the locals thought he and his folks were Russians. Never heard of 9-11 and didn't know there were any Americans in Afghanistan. 14-15 years into the war!

It’s terrible that we have people waiting for months with no heads up whatsoever and then this. Equivalent to flying along in a full pattern with tower trying to call you, but wait, you can’t answer because you’re still planning out the fine print of your approach and landing. Unsat. At least give people an idea about what you’re doing (months ago) so they don’t start breaking out. But what’s done is done. Now don’t let our people hang while wondering if they’re even going to meet this board. These are people who may still be deciding whether to stay or go. Let’s not add another hundred to the shortage.

I saw they put something like 200 rounds into the truck... where the driver was still being held hostage. Also, check out the sight lines these guys had... Taking cover behind occupied civilian vehicles, firing through the truck into civilians, hell, some of them are pointing their weapons at other cops with zero awareness about what is behind their targets. This kind of shit is why people don't trust the police.

Agree 100%. This stupidity has got to change. The fact that military bases are soft targets is criminal.

CHeers! Long layover in Vegas. Didn't feel like walking the strip so I was enjoying the happy hour 1/2 price special on 1 Liter drafts at the Hofbrauhaus. The Deep State hasn't called me yet. 😄

All of this! What's the average reaction time of SF to something like this? I can assure you it's long enough for me, and many of my friends to get filled with bullets. At least give me a fighting chance. I'll take my chances that SF would confuse me with the attacker. What's going to happen is people are just going to start carrying anyway and taking the chance that they'll get in trouble.

I think the collective "meh" is because everyone in the government and military already knew this (maybe not the details, but they knew the mission was a failure and that we were not making progress, that we were pouring money and blood into the country with little to show for it and little accountability). And the civilians are probably surprised to hear we are still in Afghanistan.

I guess .... I don’t really know what your buddy expected her to do about it? I’d expect my boss to tell me to “figure it out” too... You’ll find that GOs rarely, if ever, have answers - let alone the power (Or intestinal fortitude) to sweep away problems all by themselves. They want solutions, on a platter. They’re so busy they only have time to process and decide, they don’t do the work, fix the thing, write the email, etc. The staffs do. GOs endorse, present, champion, award, coord on, etc etc. Asking for engagement better benefit the organization (or them) somehow, or it’ll die on the vine. I'm not being critical - I’m trying to highlight how you work the bureaucracy for your own interest. Im also not endorsing this particular GOs actions... simply telling it how it is. Chuck

The sim is fine for learning procedural tasks, but it's not the same as being in the jet. More MWS sim time is not the answer, at least for the C-17. Need more quality training time in the jet, but that means reducing mission taskings so guys are home to train, and more locals so you don't have 5 dudes all trying to get recurrent on 4.0 local instead of focusing on tactical proficiency. Even if you moved money to find more sim time, there are a limited number of sims, and there's not a lot of excess capacity for more training. So that means mil construction for more sim buildings and buying more simulators, which again, really just teach procedural tasks. Not saying the T-1 track needs to stay as is, but I'd bet there would be better payoff for the airlift community trading for more time in T-6s learning visual navigation and building air sense in general. Pretty sure that 1x C-17 sim session (3 hours) would buy you 6x 1.5 sorties in the T-6. Also don't need to have both the T-1 and T-38 tracks graduate at the same time. No matter how rigorous MAF wants the T-1 track to be, the fact of the matter is that big AF will always see the T-1 track as being limited/lesser than their T-38 track counterparts, who will be universally assignable (subject to AFPC's whims). But if all you think C-17s do are strat missions, then yeah, just do transition phase in T-1s and graduate, cancel all locals and do it all in the sim, just like the airlines. Hell, just direct hire guys of the street with a FAA commercial Pilot certificate; it'd be a lot cheaper and fix the rated manning numbers really quick. And while we're at it, do the same for the fighters, cancel locals and do more sims; they'll just be cruising at 30k dropping GPS JDAMs in a permissive environment.

That could be fixed by dissolving the T-1 UPT IP manning and generating more MWS sim time. I honestly can't recall how much attention I've given to di1630s posts before, but I hope you are still serving and in a position to affect the current model. As alluded to earlier...too many get off my lawn types running around. Also good to see hindsight still writing 200 IQ responses to internet chat blabber.

Well, I think some more strat rules will come as well as clear direction to the board. That should help. God forbid the "leaders" actually rate those that are performing well and providing feedback. Just had a Grp CC retire that was the epitome of the shit we've had to trudge through with the myopic "golden child" view for the past 15~20 years (maybe longer). He had someone else's #1 come into the group and the rating Sq/CC said they were absolutely not performing worthy of a Group/Wing Strat. Shit-bird didn't want to "impact his on-ramp" and got him a grp/wg strat. I think about staying in and all of this getting figured out, and seeing where we go as a force. The future is bright...but I'm really fucking tired, and I don't want to move.

As an APZ guy, the vast majority of Commanders won’t waste their DP’s on us once we’ve missed our chance. I don’t know how this will change that...after you don’t get promoted, we unfortunately aren’t who leadership is focusing on anymore.

Did anyone think we had a legitimate plan to “win” in Afghanistan??? We’ve been spilling our blood there for almost 20 years and still don’t have a coherent strategy. The US should have pulled out all our shit, the day after we killed Bin Laden.

If you’ve seen the stats, one of the discriminators for people making General was being Below the Zone to O-5 and O-6. I’m curious how this works “upstream”. Hopefully this whole shift is a change for the better...

The Navy started merit based reordering last year. I have two friends that both screened for O-5 and squadron command. One guy ‘merit reordered’ to promote at the start of the new FY, the other didn’t. Both were weapons school grads, had masters degree, and jpme-1 complete. Point being, a lot of squadron commanders (and the rest of us) were left scratching our heads on what was being used to define the merit reorder. It’ll be interesting to see what the AF uses.

I didn't have any of that and got Korean ACSC as a B-1 WSO. The only thing I had going for me is my wife is Korean. I know I beat out some prior enlisted Korean linguists; how, I don't know. The F-15C guy that came after me had absolutely nothing to do with Korea and didn't even have any foreign schools on his IDE app. And I think the F-16 guy after him had nothing to do with Korea either except a Kun or Osan tour under his belt. My impression was that AFSC was more important than other factors.

How we leave....as soon as possible!

The Washington Post weighs-in this morning with "The Afghanistan Papers," a broad look at the war in Afghanistan. https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/afghanistan-war-confidential-documents/ The article also contains links to all the source documents (interviews, memos, etc). Quite the rabbit hole to go down. This interview with BGen Brian Copes, Indiana Army Guard, was just three pages, but hit on a lot of the major topics (too much money, too much in-fighting between DoD, DoS, etc, too much "top-down" thinking, etc). https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2019/investigations/afghanistan-papers/documents-database/?document=copes_brian_ll_05_c15_02252016

For the AFR folks, the UPT pipeline is currently backed up and the 340th is still trying get seats for folks who were selected early this year. I'm not sure how long it will take for the UPT pipeline to unclog but I'd highly recommend saving at least 5 months of your pay to sustain yourself and your family if you're coming off of active duty. I am slated to EAS in late Jan 2020 and got a tentative UPT date of 23 June. However, nothing is official until I in process with the 340th and receive the orders.

Herc isn't an acronym. Your question is too vague to answer accurately. Definitely need a takeoff, approach, and landing monthly. Then you'll need some night stuff quarterly. Then you'll need a bunch of airdrop, formation, arrival, etc stuff semi-annually. And a bunch more stuff annually. Exactly how many iterations of each event depends on your seat and experience level. Suffice to say, for an AMC aircraft, it's a helluva lot to maintain currency. Deployments - again, too vague to answer. You go sleep somewhere else for 1-12 months. Maybe in a hotel. Maybe in a tent. Fly every day, maybe every other day, maybe once a week, maybe once a month. You might go hang out on the beach or you might go hang out in a shelter waiting for the rockets to stop falling. I don't mean to be flippant, but I got my early career gouge from pre-9/11 crews and my wars ended up being very, very different from their wars. Your wars will be very different from my wars, too, so anything I could tell you wouldn't be worth much tomorrow.

I never really thought I would disagree with a MOH Recipient but in this case I do. https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/navy-base-shootings-pensacola-pearl-harbor-revive-debate-myths-about-ncna1097656 That said in this case he's an NBC analyst so there's little doubt who signs his paycheck. I would guess it's probably a sizable amount to make sure he toes the network line. Maybe limiting the concealed carry to NCOs and Officers active/reserve/retired would be viable. When you realize the armed SF Airman at the gate was still coloring in elementary school when a lot of us who aren't allowed to carry on base were doing missions downrange it sends you to a new level of pissed off. I do know of at least one off installation Reserve Center that allows members to discreetly carry and have for quite a while now. I've said this before. How safe are the people off base either coming or going when a bad guy knows 99 percent of them are unarmed due to policy? Most higher leaders probably figure if it happens off base it's not their problem and their retired pay/post retirement employment aren't in jeopardy is what matters to them. It's not like the bad guys can't come along in a van and spray the long line of cars (made even longer by the new "security measures") waiting to drive on base. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1993_shootings_at_CIA_Headquarters

I flew the tweet, dropped BDU’s from a T-38A with a manual pipper and I still have become completely reliant on datalink and other technology to the point that when it fails, it’s mission degradation. Yeah, I’m more comfortable than the young guys when some stuff fails but that doesn’t happen often. I’d hate to dust off my manual bombing skills on the fly. We were saying the same thing about datalink/HMD/PGM reliant Lt’s in 2012 and most of those guys we worried about “what if” have all been just fine whether it be combat in Syria or training at home. In 2003, my b-course IP’s were saying the same thing about my class because we had EGI and if that failed...watch out, those dumb f-ers can’t navigate with INS drift. Every generation is one computer glitch away from catastrophe, only to be saved by their tacan, eyesight and stby pipper. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Dude, don’t give that guy’s opinion an ounce of credibility.

That statement tells me everything I need to know. What a piece of shit.

That convening authority should've been fired for that.