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Hell yes https://warontherocks.com/2020/10/defund-centcom/

Need to be able to refuel gear down around the boat. e.g. The boat is blue water ops (no land divert), you have an emergency or gear problem that forces you to put the gear down, and the deck won't be cleared for recovery before you flame out.

Very low- as in only hiring current, qualified guys from Hurlburt right now. At least that was the case previously when I last looked into it within last 6-9 months and that was the case for all aircrew positions. Might change in future now that they are a squadron versus a detachment but can’t say for certain. There are a lot of AGR positions being posted and all call for current/qualified.

If only we hadn't already learned our lesson about building one airplane for all services, then having to phix all of its phucking deficiencies. Is it to late to name it the Phantom III?

Why is Billy Corgan hosting SNL?!?

This is the shit that needs to stop.

I’m not sure how it is possible to spin imbeciles licking toilets... but okay!

The ACES 2 and canopy jettison as part of the ejection sequence has worked great (including 0/0) on the Viper for decades. The B-mode added an auto-eject/reduced ejection time requirement in case of engine/lift fan failure during critical points of VTOL ops. So, the A/C now needlessly have Det cord and a canopy bow because of the B-model. I’m liking “Phantom 3” more every day.

I'd be willing to bet the reason for det cord over canopy jettison is requirement driven-specifically to attain a 0-0 capability and improve the overall ejection envelope while reducing weight to meet other requirements. Probably a lot easier to improve the ejection envelope by engineering "blow up the canopy in 0.1 seconds and shoot the seat through the hole" than figuring out how to jettison the canopy away (1 or 2 seconds? to clear the cockpit as ground speed zero, as well as all the other pitch/roll/speed combinations in flight) and then fire the seat. Problem gets compounded when trying to improve cockpit visibility by having a one piece bubble canopy- now you'll have a huge piece of glass to move if you want to reliably jettison the canopy in all phases of flight and on the ground. Or pay a significant weight penalty for whatever explosives needed to blow the canopy away compared to det cord. That weight penalty then affects other performance, such as range. My philosophy has always been that if I needed to use the ejection seat (in the T-6), I was in a situation where I was going to be dead anyways so it's a second chance at life. I was always a visor down/mask up/sleeves down/gloves on when in the seat kinda guy, but then again the T-6 air conditioner worked pretty well. But my experience with ejection seats has been in the training world, where you can work hard to stay at the center of the flight envelope, and there's generally no reason to push the bounds of safety, so my perspective is probably different than a fighter guy.

Some of us are not short, so lowering the seat more was never an option.

The T-6 can’t jettison it’s canopy; It wouldn’t even come open if you unlocked it in flight. Maybe we should teach ELPs... Now, if it did jettison, why wouldn’t the ejection sequencer just do that instead of blowing it up in the pilot’s face? Man, if we bought a screw driver, we’d end up paying $300 for a drill with no bits. smh When I retire, I’m starting a business for the sole purpose of selling overpriced shit to the government. ~Bendy Sent from my iPad using Baseops Network mobile app

That is a c model, navy does weird stuff, not sure why you’d put gear down. The jet goes into a different flight control mode when you aerial refuel anyhow with gear up. I’ve refueled from a c-130 before with Eurofighters and Tornadoes all stacked up. It’s no big deal except when 2x wing pods are out, you feel really close to the other jet refueling right next to you. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

That boat anchor fuselage is a result of the B model. I had the opportunity to see the engine with it's gearbox that connects to the driveshaft that connects to and turns the lift fan and it's one ungainly large piece of machinery that has to be stuffed into the fuselage. And that didn't include the actuators and crap for the lift fan doors. RAND did a study and said building 3 separate aircraft would have been cheaper.

Listened to him on a podcast, really interesting story and perspective on things...3 hrs that went by in 3 min. Would love to meet him in person.

He’s saying that he’s tired of the liberal mind set. The one that creates lazy, self interested, victim hood, virtue signaling, making up facts, rioting when I don’t get my way and call it a protest , everything must be equal but I need to be more important than most everyone else type mentality. Same kind of mentality found in today’s feminism also. Being a CC ain’t what it used to be because of people like that. Thanks for your post. Hope you feel better.

Yeah, ultimately this is a class war being disguised as a reaction to racism. The use of race as a canard to to distract these useful idiots as the corporates/globalists/etc... obliterate the working and middle classes with open borders and abusive work visa schemes while simultaneously allowing unlimited amounts of cheap goods into our country made by slave labor in China is one of our main ailments. If we had throughout our government people who realized internet monopolies, bad trade deals and massive conglomerates using media arms, lobbying firms and disinformation factories were actually the ones killing our country and crafted economic policies to combat those negative trends, those disaffected idiots would have two nickels to rub together, a decent job and a material reason to keep their shit straight, but they don't and we don't have many leaders who actually like the country they purport to represent and here we are.

In all fairness, the ATC dude is simply doing as he's trained. Military guys IFE almost at a routine rate (notice not a single word about the F-35 ejection...who's got his back besides JPRC?)...often for items that turn out to be nothing...but and it would be completely negligent for him to simply say "good luck!" A phone number pass to maintain a chain of communication may be the best he's got in that moment. As Clayton has mentioned above, he's trying his best to do what he can with what he's got. In the same right, a controller should be aware that a four engine airplane losing two engines, leaking fuel, and being on fire is not something to take lightly. I'm sincerely hoping he alerted emergency services of some kind on his own end. Still, it couldn't hurt for him and the crew to meet face-to-face and get some learning on both sides of the radio.

ATCer here. I'm a Tower guy, so explaining what Center/Tracon dudes do can be difficult because 1) it wasn't me and 2) the equipment and rules they use are very different (even from each other). As absurd as this guy with the phone seems, keep in context the terrain surrounding the area, and the locations of radar antennae and radio transmitter/receivers - for Centers they're optimized for talking to people in the flight levels above 10k, and around terrain (which there's lots of in that area) you lose line-of-sight and radar contact/comms very quickly below those altitudes. Assuming the aircraft is semi-controllable, which it obviously was, and someone on a multi-crew aircraft is able to maintain communications, passing along a phone number while you can is a prudent move and it wasn't just so the mishap aircraft could cancel IFR on the ground. There's lots of info needed and it's likely that was rapidly going to be the only way to communicate with the Center, who can pass around useful stuff like Lat/Longs and other crucial info for emergency response and not just rely on eyewitnesses calling 911. Also do J-models have integrated Sat Phones, like the C-17's Aero-I? Also where this occurred is just beyond the eastern fringes of the servicing approach, SoCal Tracon (SCT), and at the lower levels of Los Angeles Center (ZLA). SCT in the area is really set up to work the Palm Springs TRSA and to feed/sequence the satellite airports in the area (Bermuda Dunes and Thermal), and there's a basic ATC procedure of not forcing radio frequency changes on emergency aircraft unless better handling will result. Someone in an emergency descent from the low twenties or teens (not sure where MC-130s do their A/R) isn't a whole lot of time to work with beyond an emergency point out as you blow through someone else's airspace. Finally the LiveATC tape was edited so not all the comms are there. Anyway consider the limfacs, don't just look at it as quibbling. Very very happy there was such a happy end result. America!

Technology is great but it can be a double edged sword when it allows basic flying skills to atrophy. Flying WIC sorties between the various Gunpig models it was obvious some of the crew on the "newer gunships" leaned a bit too much (IMHO), on all whiz-bang gadgets they had. As an example the U Boat had a display in the center of the dash called a Tactical Situation Map (TSM). On 99% of my flights in the UBoat, the Co-Pilots would basically stare at that display rather than look outside. Pilots also tended to spend an inordinate amount of time "inside" the airplane looking at that display. As a dinosaur flying older gunships my first action flying into the threat area was to quickly find visual ques that matched my understanding of the battle space...a road pattern, a set of lights, a river as a boundary...etc. That kept my eyes outside scanning for threats...by the way AAA does not show on the TSM. Finally I started bringing a piece of card board that I would place over the display and tell the WUG, "your TSM just failed...no what are you going to do?" I also saw this reliance in the older gunships when it came to degraded modes of fire. I won't go into all the modes but most of the crew only wanted to shoot in the mode with the most automation. I made sure to shoot a few rounds on each sortie in each mode to keep my skills sharp...often getting raised eyebrows from other members of the crew..."what are the odds that will happen in combat?" On my first combat mission in Afghanistan and several others over the years I was forced by mechanical failures to shoot in a degraded mode and on one mission I was forced to shoot with no input from the system at all...and a bad trigger that required a cadence call to the gunners who were manually pulling a lanyard to fire the 105MM and pushing a pin with a bar to shoot the 40MM....all while I was semi-imposing a manual site on a 23MM that was lighting me up. Lesson learned...use technology as much as possible but have a plan AND be prepared to degrade gracefully and still execute the mission. Old guy rant over.

Looks like a farmer is going to get paid for total crop loss, the fuel clean up will be expensive. Those soft furrows probably saved their lives.

That’s a pretty incredible feat of airmanship, putting a -130 on the ground that well in an asymmetric thrust situation. Hopefully the Marines give that guy some serious recognition.

The best part of something like this - is that some folks out there may well have started doing this. Maybe that's just me imagining the misguided, idealistic youth (under 30) doing crazy sh*t like this, because they saw a pic of it somewhere.

Imagine being this much woke! #liberals

Here's a recent article about the "Oath Keeper" movement, the Meal-Team-6 cosplay crowd that PYB was so fervently aligned with. I wonder if he's still wasting his retirement suing his HOA or his neighbors or whatever for their Facebook posts. https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/right-wing-militias-civil-war/616473/