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You win the internet, I have been saying this since day one of the "Knife" deciding to Crazy Ivan the command. Are we so desperate to play in the big fight that we forget why SOCOM and AFOSC were formed? Oddly, in fighting the GWOT we gave up on some basic blocking and tackling that was the foundation of the command, did that need suddenly go away as well? These so called "transformational leaders" just force us to chase our tail in an effort to build "their legacy." IMHO there is value in being able to seize an airfield in a hostile nation and conduct operations, I can only imagine the flail if we tried to simul three MC's onto a runway and roll out the TF. Situations and adversaries change so the status quo is not always a good thing, but divesting basic tasks that took YEARS to develop and refine is a poor choice in a chaotic world. While we are at it, what defines "post-GWOT"...is it because we quit and went home? Did all the bad guys just stop because we went home? Obviously Afghanistan is turning back into a soup sandwich, but I hope someone is watching the brewing terror storm in Africa, South America, the islands in PACOM. It is absolute lunacy to think that just because we left Afghanistan GWOT has gone away. The real question is why does AFSOC think they need to transform so quickly, the answer is easy...$. After years of being the Belle of the ball they were worried they would become the B team and lose all the cash that was poured into and on the command. Keep in mind that on Sept 10, 2001 the TOTAL SOCOM budget was $2.1B, that swelled to $15.5 at one point and that doesn't count the many billions the services had to carve out of their budgets as "service common" to do things like RECAP the C-130 fleet ($10B), purchase CV-22's ($5B), buy RPAs and Ops centers for AFSOC ($4B). SOCOM/AFSOC certainly have a place in the peer/near-peer fight but in a desperate effort to play the big contribution we are homogenizing the C-130 fleet into missile trucks? Seriously? What happens when the phone rings and the boss asks us to insert some BAMFs deep (STS), to enable the fight? We are years away from the shinny new MCJ's having the TF and ECM capability we are sending to the desert on the T2s...while mothballing half the CV-22 fleet! Also, our shinny new gunships are still waiting for an ECM suite that is half as capable as the H model that went to the Boneyard 9 years ago. Good thing the near-peer fight won't be fought in a SAM ring. WTF is your problem dude, thinking we should follow our basic doctrine of centralized control, decentralized execution that has been written in blood many times through the years...F that nonsense! Define winning, which has always been the problem. Did we stop attacks on the homeland while murking bad guys "over there?" I think there was a certain value in that proposition but obviously it can't go on forever. As far as monitor and assess, I presume you are? The intel feeds and assessments are not pretty, Al-Qaeda, ISIS-K, Taliban and other Jihadist groups are most certainly rebuilding and spreading influence while our exalted leaders have shifted to countering domestic violence here at home. Sadly, there will be another big event, followed by investigations, finger pointing and over-reaction. I know I am a dinosaur but one would think there is a better way to plan for both. Back to the rocking chair and running kids off my lawn.

Hub-and-Spoke can centralize a schedule disruption at a hub (e.g., DEN for UAL) by re-routing to other hubs (ORD, IAH, etc.). The point-to-point model has a much harder time recovering from a mass disruption (e.g., aircraft going DEN - MDW - PHL - BOS is cancelled at DEN, which then dominos cancels the remainder of the points). The cancellations using point-to-point isn't normally a big deal until you have a massive weather system, fueling issues at DEN, now causing hundreds of cancellations and SWA's antiquated scheduling software that can't keep up the demand.

Now, I know this will be a complete shock to you, but I could not get anyone in finance to answer their phones today. Since I'm on alert, I just couldn't work up the energy to wander the 500 feet across base to ask LOL. I'll reattack tomorrow.

Sounds to me like we don't have an educational, social, or economic crisis. We have a complete failure of the parenting. I've said if for decades now: If you heal fatherhood (i.e. incentivize men to stay in the home where they procreate instead of incentivizing single parenthood, divorce, and abortion), you heal our country. The second problem...which is related to fatherhood...is that American parents appear to have adopted the belief that it's someone else's job to teach their children truth, morality, logic, and reason. No wonder millennials (i am one) are so lost: we were raised by public schools. I've got two teens, and my bride and I are working hard to make sure that no university education or any other life experience will upend their faith foundation or their logic and reason. If they launch with a solid relationship with God and a thirst for truth, it won't matter what lies they encounter, college or not. ANYWAY, we're finally done in Afghanistan and it feels like we're right back to the mid 70's with the end of a horrid war, wild problems with energy, social upheaval, and a couple of political parties that have lost their minds. ...now, where's our Reagan?

There's a big difference between solar and net metering. Net metering was always absurd. Why should the power company pay you for electricity? And pay you the same rate they charge? Can you imagine going to the grocery store and trying to sell your homegrown tomatoes to the produce manager, except you want him to pay you the same amount he plans to sell them for? It was yet another government scheme to get more people to adopt solar. And of course it increased the price of power. And yes, since the wealthy are more able to afford the frivolity of solar power, they disproportionately benefit. I'm not a big fan of subsidizing the poor, but having the poor subsidize the wealthy? Only California could hatch a scheme so absurd. Too bad others followed. You want to be off the grid with solar panels? Awesome. Go for it. But wanting the power company to subsidize your prepper fantasies was a gross distortion of free market capitalism, one of many these days. Now a bunch of people are upset that they aren't making money off their solar panels. Many of them are allegedly conservative. Boo hoo. A handout is a handout, even if it's to someone with a big house and nice cars.

The 11 Days of Christmas Should be required reading for everyone/anyone even remotely involved in fighting the air war on basic leadership and strategic thinking that went sideways. Those BUFF gents hand a hand and foot tied behind their backs, but hacked the mission. Unfortunately with more losses than there should have been. I’ve talked to a few A-6 folks who carried hate inbound and delivered on the deck dodging all kinds of shit…some remarked how they couldn’t believe the BUFFs above were flying their predictable profile into that same iron shitstorm. ATIS

I would subjectively say life in the bomber force is busier than when GWOT was a thing. Everybody wants a BTF, and the old "I'm going to Guam for six months every eighteen months" is long a thing of the past. I always said Buff life was great for stability because in the course of a normal ops tour, you could pretty much pin down exactly you were gonna be gone over your three-four year tour. Now we're on the road a whole lot more than we used to be, much more often and with much less predictability. Like Brabus said, holding the line against the next war.

I agree. The progressives are retards. Edit: I just needed to reiterate that they are RETARDs. I can't think of a single thing I like about them? They destroy everything they touch. Change my mind....lol

Lots of "glad I'm retiring this year."

Poor people can’t afford solar, ergo solar is racist, but the left pushes “green energy”…but they’re “anti-racist”…hmmmm. The progressive left is such a dumpster fire full of shit.

We can hope. He's already demonstrated that he can handle a crisis with logic and reason. If someone would please shut down Trump, that would be great.

There's probably a governor named Ronald running in 2024, just saying.

50th Anniversary of LB2 missions. I post this every year, but it's a well put-together video with some great audio and info graphics. I highly recommend the book "The 11 Days of Christmas" about the BUFF LB2 missions. Enjoy!

I was in that same boat...until several conversations with non-college grads who now operate international airliners. We discussed simple things such as supply and demand economics, civics, statistics, basic biology, and even the foundations of what calculus is and how it touches, well, everything...(I get it, that sounds higher level, but explain how you "derive" a solution to someone who hasn't touched math beyond algebra...it's painful...turns out derivation and integration thought processes are kinda handy)...and a load of other subjects that were basic pre-recs at my school. It was honestly saddening. I honestly had to explain the difference between miles-per-hour and kilometers-per-hour to two dudes...I wish I were joking... Am I for everyone going to college? ABSOLUTELY NOT. Are there a LOT of subjects that should be covered and assumed as a baseline for a college education that allow a higher level of social and economic understanding and interaction? Definitely. The current American 'college experience' does not meet that standard. But it should. If for no other reason than the fact that IT SHOULD. University education should STILL be a high standard, and I refuse to let leftist liberal doorknob licking morons debase that standard like they have with every other standard they touch.

They are forced to take it at a rate equal to what they sell it at, depending on what state you're in. The big change in California is getting rid of the requirement that what they pay equals what they charge. With this change, the economics of solar turn red for many, many homeowners. This of course was obvious to anybody paying attention, but as I said before, government meddling in an attempt to promote the wide scale adoption of a half-baked technology has once again left us worse than we were before.

Would also add that point to point is affected less by disruptions when frequency of flights between city pairs is high enough that cancellations can flow to later in the day or different connecting airports. When the pandemic recovery began SWA gambled on adding new cities rather than restoring frequency between existing ones. The new COO has talked openly that the goal for next 2 years is now rebuilding frequency, but in the meantime the airline is vulnerable to meltdowns. Well we F’d around and are now finding out…

I didn’t appreciate BTF life until I was teaching at the WIC and we had set up a big exercise with the Ellsworth Bones and Sioux Falls Vipers. Went there on a Monday to do some briefings and then before the first mission they got a BTF tasking to go to the Black Sea. To their credit, they filled that tasking and produced 3 jets for each vul (2 flew). I was seriously impressed with that effort from the entirety of the Ellsworth team.

Ironic that you mention AFSOC because (IMO) that command is in a drastic flail trying to find its way post-GWOT. The command has been given guidance to focus on GPC (sound familiar?) and the direction to “innovate”. The problem is that the command structure (and the AF writ large) isn’t willing to drastically innovate and take risks at the appropriate level. Perfect example is that the PC-12 is flown single pilot by some kid from Embry-Riddle with a couple hundred hours down to minimums but AFSOC won’t entertain that. Or put the decision authority down to the appropriate level (way below O-6). I don’t know if we’ll ever have WW3 with a Great Power, but I guarantee there will be dirty little wars fought by SOF that AFSOC will be a part of. I hope this innovation doesn’t cause the command to lose that skill set.

The way I see it, we are exactly 2 weeks away from being able to say "any day now"

It's the Walmartizination of airline travel. Cut product and personnel trying to maximize profit and leaving no margin for error. Cancel one flight when running 90% load factors and folks are going to be stuck for a while. Cancel a bunch of flights and fit hits the Shan.

College was taken over and misused by a bunch of unproductive pseudo-intellectuals who figured out the only way their obviously stupid ideas could gain a foothold would be to form indoctrination camps for inexperienced adults. That's probably not surprising to anybody here. But while they were doing so the world changed and the distribution of information was radically redesigned by the internet. While colleges probably could have adapted to this new landscape, they were far more concerned with dogma and societal change. At the same time, the government wildly distorted the economics of education with, go figure, unlimited money. Now the cat is out of the bag as my generation, the millennials, are facing the reality that their degree did not, as they were promised, result in a more lucrative life. It did give many of them an inescapable financial anchor around their neck. The gen Z kids behind them, at least the latter half of the generation, are beginning to reject the system that is quite obviously built on false promises and lies. I suspect at this point it's too late to save the system, and there will be a split. College will return to the playground for the rich and breeding ground for politicians, while everyone else will shift back towards on the job learning, heavily supported by much cheaper and adaptable online courses. We haven't reached the final act yet because the money printing has only just stopped, but when unemployment starts going up and the long due pandemonium from the last 15 years of intentionally blind spending comes due, the idea that middle and lower class kids with no road map for their entire adulthood will just go to six figure institutions to get drunk, fuck, and occasionally sit in a room with 500 other people learning subjects they don't need to know, well that just isn't going to hold when people can't afford it.

You can never fail with a DQ Blizzard!!! Lol

Agreed. I hope they embarrass these fools if they’re really trying to scapegoat this crew. And then I hope they get a new airport.

920500982_LastnightsUPSarrivalrushatLouisvilleMuhammadAliInternationalAirport-SDF.Theairportisalwaysbusythistimeofyearbutletsthrowin...ByJason.mp4

If the state of Vermont can have a 5th gen fighter, then the Marine Corps can too.

In UPT, I Launched out in a T-38 as #4 in a 20 second trail departure in crappy weather to about FL200. Broke out on top, picked up a visual on #3, plugged in the blowers and started climbing to catch him. After some time climbing and approaching the top of block, my feeble brain comes to the conclusion something ain't right about the time I vis ID "#3" as an Evergreen International 727. Oops. Rolling the jet on its back, I see the other 3 jets about 4000 feet below me and I'm hoping they didn't notice as I rejoin. All my IP said was "Nice recovery."

If I were them I’d chose now, in 2 years we might have a CINC that can string a sentence together. Disclaimer: To be clear I hope to god we never have to be in a position to confront China in a conflict.

Standing By for the national will to stand up for ourselves, governance in that direction, and a national leader who believes America is worth fighting for.

I bet he whips immigrants with those reins

So a 23 year old, 50 hour CFI, who has never gone through any military training (flight or otherwise) will be better than a 25 year old officer who has gone through a commissioning source, graduated UPT (they still wash people out btw), and has successfully gone through the current PIT syllabus (which also still washed people out)?

30,000 unsorted bags sitting on open air tarmac due to no more storage space inside 🙂