Leaderboard

Taking this one step further, if I’m those bad guys I know there are two things that MAF force can’t operate without - TRANSCOM and The 618th AOC. So to gain advantage in the outset, I’d be turning every cyber ninja bad guy warrior I can toward shutting them down. The centralized and efficient processes that developed to support COIN conflicts are akin to those that made the Berlin Airlift hum along. Shooting wars are messy, inefficient, and chaotic. When the next high end fight kicks off, the current processes, organizations, and leadership will all need to be ushered offstage so the innovators, do-ers and combat leaders can get back in the mix. We’ve been in purgatory long enough… Especially in the MAF. Chuck

BS the C-130 is perfect in every way

Every business is going to try and realize cost savings from teleconferencing in lieu of business travel... Until the first time they lose. $5 million contract to the company that sent their executives out in person for a couple grand.

Spot on for AFSOC as well. But you’re asking an impossibly difficult organizational task: for its leadership to realize they can’t lead in a new environment. And what is the mechanism to ID new leaders whose thought processes are compatible with the new environment? There isn’t one. When the next high end fight kicks off (which I think is not soon), we’re going to follow the pattern we’ve always followed: get our ass kicked a little bit, then pivot dramatically by firing existing leadership. That will be our only chance to win…. Assuming those new military leaders are matched by political leaders who also demand victory and enable it. Our entire approach to war will need to look very different than the last 20 years.

I mean, at one point in history someone asked "what if we put a bunch of miniguns on a cargo plane?"

O-5 Board update: Reported into USD on 4 Jun. If it follows the last boards timeline (13 working days from USD (P&R) to public release), that would mean: DepSecDef: 4 or 7 Jun Public Release: 23 Jun (Wednesday) So notifications out between 18-22 June (that is a Friday to Tuesday)? Not sure when the list is sent to the Wings...If that timeline follows, should be next week, right? Sorry, no morale slide for this step-brief. *Note...I have no idea if it will follow the same timeline, but it looks like we should definitely know before the 4th of July weekend. Also, feel free to check my work/math in public, probably missed something.

I’d love all the KC-135s to have working lights and crews not be afraid to turn them on over the desert. You are at much higher risk doing lights out ops from your receivers than any ground threat. And if you ever get the chance to brush up on HVA killers...do it. You’ll see that in today’s world. There is very little you can do other than stay waaaaaay away. Push tankers away 100 miles, you just lost 200 miles of fighter range. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

My company offers what I would consider to be very generous mil leave benefits to us. Obviously that's just my sample of 1. Except... I can't tell you what company and benefits we get (PM me if you want to know).

True We’re in a business / operations model likely to not work in the cyber environment we’re seeing develop now with also the threat of long range non nuclear (fingers crossed) ballistic and cruise missile capes Also to your point of the leadership being selected for process efficiency optimization skills vs strategic & operational military judgement I concur 25+ years of steady state operations in CENTCOM have put us into a cultural rut that is not easy to escape Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You must hate puppies, too! What I liked about the 75 was the ability to takeoff or land on short runways like SNA, LGA, DCA or high pressure altitude airports like Quito or Lapaz with no problems at all. Lots of power even with an engine out. 727 was like a Harley. Lots of smoke and noise. It didn't really climb as much as the curvature of the Earth just fell away over time. 737-800 was a surface departure waiting to happen. 767 was...meh. 787 was a comfy long haul Starship Enterprise-ish ride. 777 lies between the 76 and 78.

There isn't time back home during the workday to get a little smarter. What gets measured gets managed; OPRs, Christmas parties, bullshit taskers, rejected vouchers, and "insert nonsensical tasks," that's what your boss is going to hassle you about. Not how tactically minded/proficient you are. Now, if you're saying that "leaders" at the SQ/GP/WG should ensure everyone has time to get better at flying-centric duties, I couldn't agree more. However, at this point, the onus is on the managers, not the squadron line flyer.

Observations Airlift and AR are absolutely critical to a peer fight. We will lose without them. The key to a war win is 1.) a clear executable strategy and 2.) logistics. Understand that as mobility force and live it. If fighter AR doesn’t get prioritized by TACC, that doesn’t mean it’s not important. In fact, TACC’s priorities are often 540° off what they should be. These are people that famously use KC-10s to haul an NCO’s household goods across the Pacific, or use C-17s to strat airlift Gatorade to the Deid. Use knowledge and judgement to determine what’s important, then continuously press your leaders and MAJCOM to move in that direction. No amount of RWR, Link 16, chaff, or flares will help heavies survive against big threats any different than you do now. Those’ll maybe save the 6-9% of the crews that couldn’t mission plan for defensive considerations or didn’t understand what was happening on the radio. Survival starts with understanding and planning. Airlift brings weapons into a FOB so the fighters and bombers can continue to rearm and fight. Then they return and repeat until someone loses. If you find yourselves with a pallet of JASSM in the back of your mobility aircraft, do not launch them. Land and give them to someone who knows how to use them. Then go do that again. Don’t waste time on learning how to shoot something, you’ll always be worse at that. Focus on your core competencies. C-17 combat airdrop is something I’d love to learn a lot more about. I think they’d be dropping paratroopers eventually, but not with RF SAMs or fighters still around. That seems like an ALR too far. Manpads maybe. The last 2 large scale paratrooper airdrops were Just Cause and OIF into an airfield already held by friendlies. None in Desert Storm, which I think is a significant indicator of the risk involved for ingressing heavy airlift during a shooting war.

You must work pretty deep in the JCS to predict what the construct of the next war will look like? What are the odds of us seeing a B-2 employ a nuke in our lifetime? Does that mean that B-2 dudes don’t train for the worst case, high end fight nor ensure they have the best equipment to deliver that effect? To other posters talking about the current ops tempo, I got it - but I’m tired of that being an excuse. What we do in CENTCOM and other commandant commands as MAF dudes is not hard, at all. You have got to be an average aircraft commander at best to succeed in most operational missions currently. Don’t tell me there isn’t time back home during the workday to get a little smarter on near peer threats or attempt to be more tactically oriented. Maybe less Christmas party/CGOC planning and more time in the vault might help. Circling back to the MAF JFR/GRF construct passingtime69 aludes to: it was option B to invade Iraq in 2003, it was almost used in Haiti with 130s/17s enroute with 82nd troopers on board until they were recalled. Unlikely? Probably, but not out of the realm of possibility if we decide to kick the doors down of a country.

To your point, most of the tanker crossovers I’ve seen come into the Herk are usually surprised/terrified by the Herk culture of pushing the envelope to make the mission happen. Especially deployed making decisions on the fly without C2 blessing because you can’t get ahold of them. For the most part, you adopt the culture you grow up in, and a lot of the MAF culture is more of an airline business model than a fighting force.

Not in the AF but...what I have learned is to never stop being grateful and always realize how lucky you are. This applies across the whole spectrum of aviation. I and many others would kill to be in your position, just to teach in the T-38 and not a Piper Cherokee is a dream for me, let alone fly a fighter. Here's the thing tho...somewhere out there there's somebody dreaming they were me, wishing they had enough money just to get the opportunity to even be a "lowly" CFI, instead of mopping floors at the mall. There is not limit to how high you can reach...so long as you recognize how small you are. To be fresh out of college and flying a super sonic jet man? Pffffff, help others as best you can and just enjoy the best years of your life.