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Here is what you should be asking your IP’s. Where do you deploy too, how often did you deploy, what bases can you go too. I had a crusty Iron Major as an instructor once tell me to look around the school house and ask the junior captains why they were at a training base so early on in their career. Many people don’t want to leave their op squadrons after their first tour. That should tell you something about their community. As a pilot on the RC-135 variants, there is not a whole lot of vault time in terms of you having your head in the books. Many aircraft besides the pointy nosed ones do their crew briefs in a vault to bring the discussion up to a Secret/Top Secret discussion. The RC-135 takes you to Gucci places such as: Okinawa, Alaska, England, Greece, Diego Garcia. You’ll make a bunch of money because you will be sitting alert at most of these places earning North of $100 per day. Their worst deployment location is Al Udeid in Qatar. This is not a bad location at all despite what you read on here. You will work with a large crew of officers and enlisted who are the ones doing the mission. You will essentially be a bus driver, but that’s not a bad thing. The RC-135 of all variants is a highly requested and useful airframe. If you go to an RC-135 variant you can expect to spend most of your career at Offutt AFB in Omaha Nebraska. You’ll have the opportunity to fly other airframes in the iron-triad (E-3, E-8, RC-135) if you so desire. Of those airframes, the RC-135 has the nicest cockpit, deployed locations, and gets the most money from the government. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Gen Turgidson was right, we can’t let a missile, mineshaft or seaplane gap to exist Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Two good things for America, I believe. One yesterday, one today. Yesterday, the current Administration announced it had brokered a deal for diplomatic relations establishment between UAE and Israel. That's a very significant development. Today, the first guilty plea occured in the Obamagate investigation. An FBI lawyer pled guilty to intentionally altering a document that was used to renew, again, one of the bogus FISA applications on the Trump campaign. While I'm too cynical to believe that any of those "too big to fail" will ever perform a perp walk, that fact that a worker bee is being held accountable might, just maybe, be a hindarance for future wannabe hop on board the corruption train riders in our government. I do hope there will be more such items to follow.

Personal opinion is don’t put too much stock into location if you’re passionate about a mission. You’ll get a few years of doing the best job in the world and you don’t want to avoid that because you want to live near family or whatever. Also, take everyone’s location advice with a huge grain of salt. A quick google search makes Mountain Home, Idaho or Box Elder, South Dakota look terrible but if you get off the bases (Mountain Home or Ellsworth in this case) and check out the area, they’re awesome. But it’s all a personal decision. If you just want to fly and DGAF about how/what mission, then just pick location. Honestly, if that’s all that matters don’t bother with the USAF and just live where you want as an airline guy and commute. You won’t have to put up with all the military BS with that COA.

The initial speed of shock waves (I believe shock waves slow down over time/distance traveled) generated by explosives is complicated and somewhat based on the detonation velocity of the particular explosive involved (way to complicated for my old ass to remember/figure out). Here's a couple examples (relative effectiveness is based on a TNT equivalent = 1.0): - Ammonia Nitrate (fert grade), detonation velocity 2,700 m/s, relative effectiveness .42; - ANFO (explosive grade), detonation velocity 5,270 m/s, relative effectiveness .74; - TNT, detonation velocity 6,900 m/s, relative effectiveness 1.0; - C-4, detonation velocity 8,040 m/s, relative effectiveness 1.37; Some basics; If you're a good distance away from a large detonation but still within the hazard zone/footprint - typically the first thing to hit your location will be earth shock, followed shortly by the shock wave/boom - plus some frag. If you're really close to ground zero, everything happens so fast you won't remember what hit you first.

If it's below Mach it's not a shockwave anymore, it's just thunder.

Sterling silver wings and letting them age naturally wins over the manufactured oxidized wings, though both beat the shiny wings

Oxidized wings all the way. They look far better than the shiny wings in all uniform combinations

Let's be clear, the important point to emphasize is the USAF is not just paying you to fly airplanes. We have Delta and United for that BS. They need you to take a plane and utilize it as a weapon system, which is going to be impossible without a little vault study. You're a military officer first which means your first obligation first and foremost is learning how to kill enemies and break their shit or resupply good guys and keep the fight going as long as possible.

Pretty soon we’ll be behind on the mineshaft gap.

Hemingway once saw one near Havana

I believe it is used by Soviet bloc countries in the Indian Ocean to conduct special operations and anti-surface warfare. It has a wide range of capabilities, to include detecting and tracking carrier groups as well as employing the Exocet ASM.

I’m very interested in what you find out about the U-27.

That is a terrible list for not wanting to spend time in a vault.

Just make sure you're spelling Tucson right on the app.

Next time, arm the helo and shoot back

DFCs have been given for less.

Interesting thought but those missile attacks had a pretty definitive precursor. Funny that we would put families in Korea and not in Qatar.

Well, that’s one less Hezbollah ammo dump to worry about Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I fly T-38a right now and for the couple years you’ll do it you won’t have much vault time (unless you choose to). Your follow on is needs of the AF. It used to be a fast track to F-22 but now they can get: F22, F35, F16, F15, and A-10. I’ve seen guys get all of them. All of those will spend time in a vault, but if you’re going to be trapped by the AF doing something I’d rather be learning how to kill people and break things than how to fly a perfect AR circle or where to best fly in the WX to screw the fighter guys. I spent a fair amount of time in the vault but it was good living. Unless of course it’s because you have security clearance gremlins you don’t want to address....