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Pawn, I like you and I think you’re smart, so please indulge me in this long reply. There are three schools of thought with rule following: 1. Follow them all, all the time. They are right, rule breakers are wrong. 2. Follow only those which are right and just. I am the sole arbiter of deciding what is right. Those are two extreme and opposite sides. There’s a third, middle way: 3. Follow rules, but recognize those which don’t make sense and work to change them. Comply if you must, resist when & how you can. 1 is almost always wrong. Schools love it, because it’s blind obedience. Dictators love it too. I don’t love it, I don’t even like it when people obey my rules without critical thought, because eventually they hit a situation where following those rules leads to a worse outcome than the rule was designed to prevent. Example: stand in this line. Circumstance: now there’s a fire. Outcome: standing in that line is obviously a terrible idea; would we support yelling at people to get back in line under those circumstances? No. Judgment and critical thought are implied. 2 is interesting. At first glance it seemingly leads to chaos. Within the right cultural context though, it has historically been a common mechanism of governance in developing societies. “Lex iniusta non est lex” is the Latin expression for the ancient concept that an unjust law is no law at all. Surprisingly, even rule following early societies like feudal China had a similar concept. Once a ruler passed a threshold of capriciousness, he was said to have “lost the Mandate of Heaven” and a coup was justified. However I concede that in modern democratic societies, and certainly in the modern American military, 2 is an impractical way of operating. 3 covers the full gamut from “I will comply while working this lawsuit through the system using established legal means” all the way to “I will not comply with this specific thing but I will rigorously comply with everything else thereby convincing you that I’m not a rebel, this certain thing is just wrong.” Think about the civil disobedience mechanism Martin Luther King Jr utilized in championing the civil rights movement. Has there been a better example than 1960s America of people who were justified in noncompliance with laws, and conducted their noncompliance righteously? All that background to say this: the spectrum of 3 is where most of us were for COVID mandates, while you are stuck on 1 despite thinking we are advocating 2. Hopefully this long post adds clarity to these various reactions you’re observing. It’s easy to look at the situation and say, I am following a lawful order why is there even a discussion about this? Those discussions dance around the concept of questioning if the order itself was lawful. And of course the people giving it will say yes, but is it? There might be a deeper authority than the whims of dictates by transient management.

The entire COVID mandates were absolutely tyranny. “Take this shot or lose your job.” Tyranny. the fact is this vax has been proven to NOT stop the spread of COVID. It has lowered the chance if you catch COVID it will be severe. For military members who are young and healthy they had a 99.998….% chance of having a very mild reaction. Why the need for a mandate? What a stupid order. much like the masks. What a stupid mandate that was PROVEN to do NOTHING. These mandates did nothing at all, and smart thinking citizens rightfully questioned them. It’s healthy and wise to maintain a level of skepticism when big government attempts to dictate terms to its citizens. it’s also healthy to question why big pharmacy is pushing their product on a population demographic who has been PROVEN to not be at risk from the disease.

That’s not a readiness issue, that’s a political issue…easily conflated.

I'm happy that this idiot who has equated getting the covid shot with a religion is gone, yes. I continue to be baffled that a group of military aviators seems to think lawful orders can be disregarded based on your personal opinions, but here we are.

Need to keep Boeing in the fighter business

On the surface it doesn't add up. Also, google the "heritage foundation" and it's connections to Lockheed in the last decade.

Agree it's great discussion! One of the limitations of the AF safety system is it looks to assign blame (even though it's always talked about as not assigning blame, labeling factors as causal and contributing assigns blame). It looks for what went wrong and establishes a chain of events leading to a mishap, and that one individual can break the mishap chain. That approach is fine for all individual chain of events, but largely misses problems that tend to not consist of individuals (i.e. organizational problems). Another safety paradigm that is starting to gain some traction is to look for what goes right rather than what went wrong ("safety II" if you want to read more into it). Basically, any system is prone to errors that could lead to mishaps, but the people in the system make small corrections that together keep the system safe. So for this mishap, we would expect a competent pilot to recognize that TOGA was inadvertently engaged, and to reconfigure the flight director and recover from any spatial disorientation by transiting to their instruments. Post flight, the pilot could fill out an ASAP documenting inadvertent TOGA, which could initiate a trend leading to a cockpit redesign or procedure change if it's determined that inadvertent TOGA is a frequently realized hazard/issue. Alternatively, FOQA analysis could see inadvertent TOGA trends. We'd also see that pilot hiring relies on accurate job history. Generally, pilots will be truthful on their resume since if they aren't and are caught, they'll be blacklisted from that airline. But without a system like a fully implemented PRIA program, it trusts pilots to be honest or airline HRs to do a lot of digging into applicants to verify employment. It's something we take for granted in the AF, since we have our FEF that follows us every time we change assignments that documents our history. (Sidebar- is the AMC philosophy of Q3/Q1 to "document" a deviation that in ACC might be a "there I was" lessons learned brief to the sq good or bad?)

Bro, the CP flew the aircraft into the ground because he sucked. Despite any other culture/system failures, what can you add to the incident which contravenes my first sentence? Copy every accident has a chain, but this level of incompetence was a crash waiting to happen. I don’t like being a dick, but we shouldn’t be afraid to call a spade a spade. That dude was terrible, and stories like this help reinforce the importance of IPs & EPs holding the standard. That’s the single change which could have prevented this.

I’m surprised you’re confused— judges did this numerous times to overturn various POTUS policies during the previous administration. The reason it took so long in this case is psycho democrats enabled by an aligned media and risk-averse doctors did all they could to stop it. Make no mistake: masks were always ineffective and the science never said otherwise. This was political all along. Some of us are taking a bit longer to figure that out.

From the article “Here we are, trapped in the sky with our 8-month-old unmasked baby (you can’t actually mask a baby that young) under the supposition that everyone who can be masked would be masked, and the flight 325 crew has taken our choices away from us,” one Twitter user said. “Very very angry about this.” So apparently, if you give people the choice to wear masks or not, you’re actually “taking away choices” from others. This only makes sense if you’re a progressive.

Not the answer you want, but call the specific FSDO you'll be asking for your type. I've found their understanding of the rules varies wildly and therefore so does their enforcement and application. i.e. Dallas FSDO didn't want to give me the CFII because the dude was ex-Army and didn't understand the scope of an AF IP Form 8.

For the life of me, I do not understand why it takes 3+ months from the time a board concludes to the time the results are published.

I bet her EPR will clear it all up for you on what she has and hasn’t done.

In regards to the vax effectiveness discussion. I know two fighter squadrons that have had 95% of their ppl contract COVID at one point or another. Around 50% contracted it at some point prior to getting vaccinated. After being fully vaccinated + boosted about 60% have contracted it. All of those that have contracted it twice (before and after being vaccinated) have had no change in symptoms from the pre/post vaccinated cases. You can make the argument that the symptoms weren’t as bad the second time because they had antibodies, and to be honest that doesn’t really matter. It doesn’t matter because the trope were being pushed is we need to get vaccinated to maintain readiness. When 60% of the bros contract COVID after being fully vaccinated + boosted and get taken down for 10 days of quarantine the readiness argument doesn’t hold up. The vaccine is not effective at preventing our demographic from contracting it, which is all that matters for the readiness discussion.

But I don’t understand if you think these mandates are morally correct and Keeping people safe it makes sense that you’d be firm in your belief and continue wearing a mask according to your convictions!

They can’t go back now, there would be rebellions across the country. Some of my leftist friends are confused why people are making such a big deal about masks. “It isn’t that inconvenient?” It isn’t about the damn mask, it’s about government overreach, which has to stop.

The financial argument I’ve heard is the sustainment cost is where the “win” is. But other than that, it was not the best move IMO…still a shitload of money for a less capable platform.

I think a justifying a Q3 with "documenting" a discrepancy is asinine. If we banish folks for smaller mistakes, it creates a culture of non-reporting and non-accountability. The ultimate goal is to debrief every sortie and preform to a higher standard during the next hack. Every aircrew member should be on their game every time they step, meet Q1 standards and discuss with the dudes and dudettes when they were exceeded. I get there are black and white standards in MDS Vol 2s. As tac mentioned it takes a strong core of line IP/EPs to holistically uphold those standards and foster a Squadron and intern community that fosters development. For example, I previously violated my MDS V3 by accomplishing a mission event under a training LAA (1000AGL vs 1000MSL). It was as an honest mistake that we overlooked. Before we did it we discussed COAs as a crew, accomplished an inflight terrain analysis and pressed. It ultimately lead to no downgrades, and we passed a emphasis point that LAAs are easily misattributed, specifically when operating close to sea level. Since then I've heard three stories with a eerily similar root causes that weren't discussed.

I’d guess that the vast majority of judges actually take their profession seriously ….

Last Friday, Special Counsel Durham dropped court filings that state that five Clinton campaign staff have invoked 5th amendment regarding the Russia collusion matter while Durham is charging one lawyer already. In addition, court documents contain findings from the CIA, from early 2017, that the machine language supposedly between Trump, et al, and a Russian bank, was "user created," i.e., phony and manufactured by somebody. The indicted lawyer, Sussman, says he didn't lie to the FBI when he said he wasn't working for any client. Fusion GPS, hired by Clinton campaign, and the Clinton campaign itself, are trying to have the documents thrown out due to "attorney client privilege." So which is it? No client or attorney-client privilege? I still hope for some perp walks before I'm dead.

That was attributed to pilot error doing a full rudder deflection swap which caused the rudder to fail. Not that I agree with the findings but that's what they said.

I’ll buy 90% of what you said above. But I do not ascribe to your earlier viewpoint that primary responsibility for an act so blatantly bad rests with entities other than the person who did it. You and jazzdude mention multiple contributing factors that should all be examined and rectified. Concur. But causal on this accident is pretty obvious: dude flew it straight into the ground. It’s necessary to state it so bluntly (because I’m not a fan of throwing spears at fellow aviators who made mistakes) to reinforce the importance of holding standards. Thank goodness so many flight evaluators had documented his behavior and poor performance; had HR caught it he may not have been allowed at the controls. I will also mention a thank you to the original poster. These are great discussions for a bunch of professionals to have, and much more useful than Covid and political discussions to me personally. Cheers🥃

Go read some FB comments concerning the news story on the “mainstream news outlets”…the progressives are upset at the ruling and believes that this will kill people. Oh and they say that the federal judge shouldn’t even be a judge (was “unqualified”), people that won’t wear masks are selfish, blah blah blah. Same nonsense people have been spewing on here for the last 1.5-2 years.

The dude sucked, but if that's where you leave it, it opens the door for this kind of thing to happen again. Getting after the "why" the pilot sucked is the more important and harder question to answer to prevent something like this from happening again. They were flying in an environment that is regulated and controlled: there are supposed to be several players of safeguards to remove bad pilots from flying (for an air transport carrier) and being a danger to the public. Poor sq or company culture can be a factor (i.e. IPs/EPs/LCAs not holding the standard), and that needs to be examined and fixed if needed as well. Things like FOQA and ASAP are important as well to identify issues before they become problems, whether it's bad operational procedures/guidance or poor aircraft design. I don't think anyone would argue the mishap copilot doesn't deserve blame, but there's a lot of blame that is deserved elsewhere as well.

Last year the dude literally said if he were a commander he would seeks out and look forward to giving out Art 15s to those members who weren’t wearing a mask but had not had the covid shot (back when that was a thing). Take this as you will…

yeah, good luck with that

I’ve heard the same thing from several sources. I was hesitant to bring that up because I’ve not seen it substantiated, but it certainly adds another element if true. I’m generally for airlines increasing diversity. I understand the means to that end are controversial & I don’t intend to start that particular argument. The one thing we should all agree on though is that there must be a minimum level of acceptable performance for everyone. Maybe this accident will move the needle a bit in convincing airlines, judges, and maybe even lawyers that, regardless of minority status, airlines need the ability to weed out people who can’t meet the standards.

I think if your complete lack of skill and aptitude kills a couple of people who depend on you to operate with an assumed level of competence (with the potential for many, many more deaths.....imagine if the aircraft had gone down in a neighborhood or crowded city), you deserve a good chunk of the blame. Multiple failures at several operators should be a clue that maybe this isn't the job for you. At the end he seemed only too content to place his fate in the hands of his god. I wonder if the other two people on the airplane shared his sentiments? Sure, the FAA and Atlas are also complicit, but this dude deserves the criticism IMO.

I don't think anyone is arguing that. It's rarely down to a single pilot error. In this case, the pilot error was pretty significant though. Over and over again.

Yes, you can fly it single pilot if the other pilot isn't horrendously incompetent and keeps touching switches. Self induced problems were apparently a trend item with this guy.

That sucks, but honestly par for the course. Happens all the time in the AF…seen many DFC-worthy things go down, but not even a mention past a “good work, see you tomorrow.” Meanwhile someone else gets a DFC for doing something that amounts to standard daily ops. It seems to not matter much what happened, but if the boss and their bosses are hopped up to do paperwork and give out a medal. Personally, fuck it, your bros know the guy you are and what you’ve accomplished - their assessment means more than any mil award. Caveat: I know several people with legit DFCs, this is not an attack on those who did some seriously great shit and actually got officially recognized.

It’s better to go guard, get into an AGR position (fairly easy as a Maj), sign a bonus for the same amount and remain a free agent - if you curtail your orders you only owe money back if you didn’t serve it out. All the benefit, none of the ADSC. AD bonus is for those who were staying anyway…and complete suckers.

If, however, you have photo evidence of yourself signing 368-DD’s, you may get hired on the spot! This pun game is getting fun!!

It’s not a bad chunk of change for those of us who love our jobs and the people we serve with. Doubly so if you’re a U-2 guy without a Guard option! (unless you’re cool with flying something lame)

Thanks for the considered post. I don't agree with the assessment that a 5-10 year capability gap existed between the F-111 and the Tornado. The Tornado IDS was on par with the F-111E (operating in Northern Iraq out of Incirlik) in terms of capabilities. These 1-11s dropped at night from medium altitude, alone and without ever seeing many of their targets (and they weren't running against Saddam's airfields, either). I am not sure how effective they were, but as one of the guys who there recently told me, "no one really cared about what we were doing". As for the F-111F with its PGM capability, they still went in low against airfields and other targets in the opening nights. So, they chose the exact same tactics. Sure, they didn't overfly the runways, but I think I have already established was not the cause of the initial Tornado losses. In fact, the F-models were extremely lucky not to eclipse the Tornado force's losses - three of them were badly damaged by AAA on night one. The F-15E, which had a PGM capability, went in low for the first couple of nights. One was downed by AAA on night one. At the time, it was the newest MDS in the Air Force inventory and was, in the same way as you characterise the IDS, optimised for a European conflict. But the capability gap didn't stop the same tactics being chosen... The F-16 had no PGM capability (some squadrons with LANTIRN did, but they were in the monitory), and they went in at medium altitude and dropped dumb bombs without any idea whether they were going to hit the target. So, no, not convinced that capabilities explain the disparity between sortie numbers and loss rates.

I remember which is why I asked him if he's happy that another unnecessary mort is occurring due to the goatrope that ensued. The ending of the mask mandate (mostly) is just a last gasp of the stupidity that occurred. Lest we forget...

I don't have a conviction to wear a mask. I'm thrilled the mandates are being dropped. But I also haven't tied my whole personality to the idea that mask mandates are tyranny.