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End of an era. We'll miss you brother! I look forward to seeing you beyond the big blue. I'll even let my wife sit on your lap again!

Officially it is not the rodeo... Unofficially, everyone knows what it is including the exercise people at HAF (AMC didn't get any of their exercise money, so you know what they must think of it). it's an AMC/MAF lovefest... AMC can drop bombs, AMC can plan CAF sorties, AMC can do PR, AMC can do comms, AMC can do AOC's, AMC can do it all! As a matter of fact, why do we need other MAJCOMS? AMC/CC said KC-46's will be carrying air to air weapons in the future and 17's will be able to drop munitions instead of delivering to a forward airbase, so why the need for B-21?. All we need is AMC apparently.

From a KC-10 perspective: Because simply being admin gas sucks and is mostly a waste of our time. Because TACC doesn’t have the tail availability to do a flag and other TRANSCOM-validated things. Because CENTCOM has too many of our jets. Because we don’t have a weapons school to speak the same language and properly integrate into a planning team. Because we don’t have anything to be on the net (yet). Are they all excuses? Yes. But every time I’ve been involved in a flag, my job has been to sit fat, dumb, and happy in an anchor that is either off the range or outside the engagement area. It’s a self-licking ice cream cone…we don’t get valuable training (except boom fighter contacts) so we don’t value it so we stay admin gas because we don’t have the ability/care to integrate.

Why wouldn’t tankers and other heavies just practice these things at regular LFEs instead of spending money and time on a mobility LFE? There’s always a dearth of tankers at flag-level exercises, causing days of planning end up down the drain when one or two of them cancel. The standard should be to always a have reliability tanker ready to flex to blue or red. Related - what if tanker pilots were in the MPC instead of heaping all of it on 1x inexperienced “planner” who’s bound to mess it up?

I’ll never forget on the one I participated in, hearing the patch mission lead repeatedly calling for the “picture” and getting a response: “clean”…. This happened probably 5 times with the ridiculous, long ass train of lumbering moose in tow. Well, what he meant to ask for, was “lowdown” (mind you, major fowl for asking for the lowdown that many times and clogging up the damn radios). Well, as you would guess, the entire formation of tactical magical moose gets dragged through the, not surprising, standard threat they train to lean against during their IR low level local training, the SA-6. Won’t even go into the make believe and wand waving that would go on, and high fives from the guys who argue tactics in that community, had they “survived”. I bet the DFP was “why didn’t the loadmaster plot, on his paper bullseye chart,the picture fast enough to ‘defeat’ the 6?” Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Are you saying that everyone signed on - knowing "the rules" were going to be changed, based on wind direction and political ideology, and we're okay with it, and need to live with it?

Anyone here have the pleasure of participating? IMHO it was more of a waste of time than the last one. I know AMC has an identity crisis - I'm sure we all know that. One can only hit the "I believe" button so many times...

Hi all, In the past few years I have honoured to witness some excellent lowfly from the guys and gals of the USAF, and in turn they have recommend that I share some of the snaps with you here. Keep up the great work, and if you are ever in the position of planning a lowfly sortie in the UK and would like some high quality photos then drop me a DM and hopefully we can sort something out. Discretion assured, many thanks for looking, enjoy the photos.

I knew one that made just shy of 700k that year. He showed me his profit sharing, which was impressive. My personal assessment was dudes were adding in profit sharing. And excess cash from when they passed the 415 limit, which they all did. I do know guys were hitting 100k a month at the beginning of that year, how long they kept that up I've no idea. Personally I doubt anyone made a million without including PS, and excess, if then. But man, what a great conversation, eh?

Valid question, for 130s absolutely. Not saying you need to be a patch to foster valid training but generally a couple motivated WOs who seek out the training, users, range times etc can really make a difference. The problem, and my beef is with AMC as a whole. AMC preaches agile combat employment and full spectrum readiness yet still maintains their risk averse construct. ACE will never be successful if the AMC 0-6s / GOs (AOC airlift directors) don’t delegate that authority. I can make my copilots as ready as possible for LFE type scenarios or ACE, but I can’t tell the 0-6 to delegate his approval to someone lower. Also, doesn’t help when we have toxic senior IPs who scoff the WIC, or anything more challenging that a 1-1-1. Separate but related, actually fund datalink upgrades. The J model (not 8.1) is operating on 90s technology and doesn’t work half the time, in training. No way it works when we need it. Finally, 130s generally do red flag / WSINT and we get a lot out of them..but MG was a solution to an airlift specific LFE where the DLOs are specific to MAF.

If you're trying for O-6...just go ahead and start AWC in correspondence.

Yes... this circus act is what lead to tankers having to add MB52Y to our list of training events when we already had MB50 (or the old M050 for those that knew that). I remember being at the RTRB years ago when they talked about MG and how multiple aircraft got "shot down" by SAM's thus driving the need for MB52Y. I raised my hands and asked if any tankers were shot down during the exercise and got the deer in the head lights look like, "We have tankers in AMC?".

Fresno posted who was selected for interviews on their webpage, best of luck to those who were picked!

Them specifically? No. People at Delta who know them? Yes. Like I said, it was only a few guys qualified on a new plane with a totally FUBAR training process. So every month they started by having their entire schedules bought back by the company for training. At Delta you can double dip, so if you have your schedule bought, then pick up a bunch of green slip trips (200%) to replace it, that's 300% of a normal schedule. At the highest pay rate. At AA there's always a debate over getting contractual provisions that some feel the company would never use. For example, I'd love to see a 300% emergency premium option. The company (especially AA) would *hate* using that. But cancel a full flight instead? No way. It's better to have things in the contract that are highly unlikely to be needed. They are cheap to negotiate for, and chances are you won't see them used. But if they are...

I'm not sure if I'm a better man for having watched both of those, or need to die now. 'Tis a strange world...

ERBs are great and well done. This one is my favorite; Darth delivers the best line ever.

Still...'Merica!!

FedEx. No reason to inflate or convince anyone to come here. I'll try to be as objective as I can. Just think it's worth putting it on your radar if it wasn't. Cons: 90 minute call-out on reserve in Memphis. All other bases it's 3-hours. There is such thing as R-24 (with 24-hour notice for assignments) but it's a fraction of the reserve lines and they usually assign base hotel standby to R-24s soon after it starts and bring you into base. None of the "industry common" reserve attributes like long-call, the ability to bypass assignments, aggressive pick-up, etc. Overall, I'd say the reserve system at FedEx is at best middle of the road in the industry. On the positive side, reserve usage tends to be low and if you choose to live in domicile and can hold it, you stay home often with pay. Domestic night flying commits you to day sleeping while you're at work. If you can't do that consistently, FedEx life will be much harder for you. If you're okay flying longer trips internationally, your life can be much simpler and the flying is infinitely easier. Pros: Commuter friendly - I realize the common advice is not to commute. Impossible to argue with that if you have the life flexibility to move to domicile. If you're established somewhere and don't want to move to a pax carrier domicile, there is no airline in the US where it's easier to be a commuter. As someone who has done both, I guarantee the ease of commute at FedEx is difficult to describe to someone who has never experienced it. The entire operation and system form is set up to fly all the aircraft from the outstations into domicile for the sort and launch 2-3 hours later on the first flight of of a trip. Getting to base for a trip from a city served by direct FedEx flights is a piece of cake and there are ample contractual protections for the potential missed commute. Same with the end of a trip. So there's no mad scramble to block-in and run to a commuter flight to get home. Lines are constructed to minimize commutes per month. In 16-years at FedEx, I have never commuted more than twice in a month. The other unique aspect of the FedEx operation is the regular use of commercial flights to deadhead pilots into position. This give a huge percentage of the pilot group the option to commute to and from work with positive space tickets purchased with company money. I have made executive platinum at AA for the last 12 years straight. While I don't have company passes to travel standby for free, I have been able to use my frequent flyer miles to obtain tickets for my family any time it suits us. In terms of career earnings, current new hires at FedEx are going to have access to wide-body captain seats much earlier than their peers at pax carriers. 83% of our Captain seats are wide body seats with the potential to hit our highest pay rates. Run those same numbers on the Captain seats at your typical legacy carrier. We have pilots hired less than 8-years ago who are now wide-body Captains and will be on our highest pay scales for most of their careers. There are even some outliers in WB seats at the 6-year point at our HKG and OAK bases. Based on projected retirements, that trend is going to continue for the next decade at a minimum. These are the seats and pay rates that many pax carrier pilots only get access to in the few final years of their careers if at all. Late in career military retirees can opt to chase $$ and get to seats they would never touch somewhere else. Or they can chase QOL and be in a WB FO seat far sooner, flying long-haul international if that suits them. No matter which seat or aircraft you end up in, the actual flight hours you spend in the seat are usually a fraction of what you get paid for. Domestic lines paying 80-90 credit hours have about 30 actual flight hours in them. Long-haul 777 schedules are probably 50 actual flight hours for 85-100 credit hours of pay. In my opinion, the threat of single-pilot cargo operations are unrealistic. That's a much longer conversation, but technological capability on a test-bed vs realistic industry application that actually equates to appropriate savings are not the same thing. So, if that is steering a current pilot with the quals away from FedEx or UPS, I think you're over-reacting to that potential downside. Just throwing out the cargo consideration for those who may have written it off.

It was a grainy photo from a powerpoint briefing. I didn't see a date, but the data was readable. Appreciate you confirming, even though the person providing it was solid. I also heard not a single 11R took the "bonus"... go figure. It will show in 6 months. Note: The etymology of the word "Bonus" comes from ancient Greek. The verb is "Boner" and means "to bone". The "us" ending (as in "Bonus") is the third person plural of the verb "Boner". Ergo, "Bonus" means "to bone us" or "we get boned", in the American vernacular. (now that I ponder it, I think it is Aramaic, not Greek).

It’s not for lack of trying; maybe the BUFFs need a new plan of attack (other than R), but USAFE was not game for it the last few times they were in the UK.

Anyone doing 7.0 now? I’m stuck on the Joint 601 class last slide about COMREL and can’t figure it out. Please help before I have an aneurysm.