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Not as heroic as prior posts, but a night I’ll always remember. It was either Jan or Feb 1991, Desert Storm was raging. Took off in my C-141 from Daharan AB on my millionth flight during that timeframe (over 1000 hrs in 7 months). Anyhow shortly after takeoff, a bright flash explodes off my right side, looked similar to a July 4th firework, the cockpit gets real bright for a second, and as I looked to my right, my Co is ducking down in reaction to the flash. After a few jinks, we hear that the base is under a SCUD attack and the Patriot batteries were responding, hence the explosion, but we’re airborne anyway, so we get outta Dodge ASAP. After the excitement is over, I start teasing my Co about ducking down, and we basically had a good laugh about what happened. The co-pilot was a good squadron Bud, named LeRoy. He looked at me and said “I guess those A-rabs didn’t get ole LeRoy tonight” we just laughed and flew back to Ramstein. Fast forward to 9/11….I’m watching the news, and I read on the bottom news crawl that the crew on flight United 93 that crashed in Shanksville PA included my good Bud..LeRoy Homer (the FO) I still remember the laughs we had after that Scud attack, and his words that night were prophetic. RIP LeRoy

James Denton and Brent "Brandini" Brandon were flying an EF-111 proving electronic attack and support the opening sorties on night one of the Desert Storm air campaign. An Iraqi Mirage F-1EQ was attempting to counter the strike package and ended up being engaged by an F-15C. The Iraqi pilot defeated the Eagle's missile shot and as he completed his defense maneuver by chance he ended up on the six of the EF-111. The Mirage launched two R.550 Magic air-to-air missiles which Denton and Brandon were able to defeat. With the EF-111 skimming the desert the Mirage pilot became fixated and attempted to close for a guns kill. Late in the engagement Denton made a hard out of plane maneuver, the Mirage pilot completed fixated on the gun kill didn't recognize the maneuver in the dark and impacted the desert under the EF-111 as Denton pulled vertical. The aircraft 66-016 sits at the entrance to base housing at Cannon AFB, NM. Two days later Jose Rico Rodriguez were tasked to fly DCA in the western sector as the HVACAP. At the last minute he was retasked and scrambled and switched to OCA to support the exfil of a strike package. Rico and his flight lead were engaged by two Mig-29s with his wingman shooting down the lead Mig-29. Rico ended up merging with the second Mig-29 passing just 50' off his wing. A dog fight ensued with Rico ultimately maneuvering to a position where he was about to take an AIM-7 Sparrow shot. The Mig-29 flying at just 300' rolled inverted and attempted an unsuccessful Split S, he impacted the desert giving Rico the second maneuver kill of Desert Storm. Rico would go on the get a second kill in the same tail number (85-114) which is still active and serving at Kadena (although the Eagles are leaving Kadena, we will see where it ends up).

TDS in full effect. Inflation still raging, the SPR at a new record low (see chart below), and our borders wide open with fentanyl flowing across at record levels killing 300 Americans a day. Can you imagine if an airliner crashed everyday and killed 300 Americans because the border was open, there would be outrage. Instead, liberals cheer and enable more illegal immigrants to sneak across our border carrying millions of pills.

What does that have to do with the violently liberal shut-up-and-comply agenda that's clearly being implemented by our elected officials...predominately democrats? Trump is a raging twit. Fact. Stop saying his name like it's some kind of defense or excuse for the horrific policies of the current administration. Our current administration has exacerbated or outright caused complete failures in America's economy, foreign policy, military readiness, immigration policy, border security, energy and transportation management, trust in our healthcare system, and faith in our baseline governing civics. The former president had nothing to do with ANY of that.

9-12, 15-16 if I want to do an extra trip. But keep in mind, if I do 15 days, I still have 2x the time off as a standard AD guy, and I spend zero seconds at home thinking about work, texting about work, getting a brief together for tomorrow morning, etc. And I know someone is thinking, “yeah but I’m home at night for the kids”…yeah, that’s real quality time when you see them for about 30 min at night before bed (if you’re lucky enough to get home that early). I used to tell myself that lie too. Now it’s dad takes kids to school, picks them up, goes to activities or plays around all afternoon post-school. That is actual quality of time with them, and I happily trade that for the 5 nights a week I may or may not have seen them for a few min before they’re in bed (when I wasn’t TDY or deployed of course). FWIW I was very resistant to the idea for years and made all the same arguments for why I wouldn’t want to be an airline guy. I only have one regret, and that is I didn’t figure it out earlier.

From where it isn't.

Apparently you didn’t read what was posted above about Capt James Denton.

Hopefully they try to avoid the poisonous, backstabbing, terrible environment that went with putting a bunch of #1 strat/fast burner types all in the same squadron that McConnell experienced...but doubtful.

The guard is hands down better than AD, but even on non-drill weeks (so 4 day week) I still left the house before kids were up/just getting up and maybe made it to dinner on time. Still had those nights of sitting at the counter putting my shit together for the next day instead of hanging out with my wife, or staying late for an IPUG debrief and missing the kids altogether. I certainly had a far better QOL as an AGR than on AD, but it’s still a full time mil job. My experience is as a fighter guy, maybe it’s different in other communities. All that to say the guard is infinitely better than AD, but it’s still the mil and still far more days spent working/not getting the max QOL with family you want compared to the airlines (in my experience). I haven’t even touched TDYs and deployments (easy to conveniently forget those months away from home when making a “home life” argument against airlines). I think the night the lightbulb on was when I was making the “yeah but I don’t want to be away from home, done that long enough” argument to my brother, and he laughed while responding, “you’re in the middle of a multi-month TDY right now!” Checkmate… I can commute both ends of my tips about 95% of the time, so I rarely spend an extra night away from home (and I’m junior…probably goes to 99.9% in another 6 months). I do admit that is not applicable across the board as commuting is extremely dependent on what category you’re in, where do you live, what is the flight volume/schedule between your local airport and hub, 1 hop vs. 2 hop, etc. But I think most guys don’t lose many days, if any. A great part about the airlines is you have lots of options for basing, commutes, aircraft, etc. Yes seniority plays into this, but generally you can live anywhere in the country and do this job, so how great (or shitty) your commute is rests significantly on your life decisions and what you’re willing to deal with in order to live in location X. I’d love to live in base, but there’s not a single airline base in this country I want to live in, so I’ll be commuting my whole career. Sure it’s not ideal, but we are living out dream life exactly where we want to be (and want our kids to be). That is worth the commute to me any day of the week.

Didn’t the Navy EP-3, back in 2001 technically have the first Air to Air kill against China? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hainan_Island_incident

I find the full timeline graph even more interesting. Not a single administration in the past 40 years has done this. That includes the Gulf War, OIF, and OEF, just to name a few massive possible drains on our reserves...

Trump has many problems, but our nation is worse off under Joe Biden than him. By all metrics I care about he was a better president than what we currently have. Our nation is more divided, poorer, less free, and less respected internationally now than when he was president.

This is the type of scenario I’ve got on my hands.

Clearly an amateur. Everyone knows you shoot your watch.

https://www.foxnews.com/politics/arkansas-state-senator-asks-transgender-pharmacist-if-she-has-penis-committee-hearing Funny as this may seem, it's crazy that they want to give children the legal ability to make decisions about permanent changes to their bodies. I couldn't get a sweet barbed wire tattoo when I was 12 (thank God) because the age limit was 18. We can't even buy beer in this country until we're 21. If we're going to start letting children make adult decisions about their sex, then why stop there? Give 12 year olds their drivers licenses and let them get tattoos. Let them buy beer and cigarettes. Make them file tax returns as well. Even better, don't punish adults for banging minors, afterall the children are mature enough to say yes or no to a sex change. How is it any different from making a decision to get your sex changed? I don't care what an adult does to their body but for the love of God, leave the children alone.

2020 hysteria. People lost their jobs and businesses over this nonsense. There needs to be real accountability. Not holding my breath

Boomer6, I’ve had to fight with finance and A staff regarding per diem at deployed locations where Airmen were billeted in contracted hotels off base but incorrectly authorized GMR. A dining facility is considered not available when government lodging on a US installation is not available. Therefore, locality meal rate is paid. It doesn’t matter if you eat a dining facility or not, even if they don’t charge you. If they put you off base, you get full per diem. Straight out of the JTR. Linked and pasted at the bottom of the post below the cut line. Appropriate items underlined. Story time. Long ago, I was tasked to stand up a Det at an overseas airport that didn’t have lodging on post. So about 100 of my closest friends and I were billeted at the Radisson Blue. Our orders were correctly written with full M&IE. After a couple weeks of working alongside transient MX deployed to a different unit, I found out they were only authorized GMR even though they were billeted off base in the same hotel as we were. About $100 per day difference. Almost $20k per maintainer for the length of their deployment They were all going broke eating off post, where a hamburger and a coke cost $35, or they had to take the hour long bus ride to base to eat at the DFAC. To top it off, they only provided transportation to the base at noon and midnight. So even on their day off, they had to spend all day on base. I felt terrible for these guys and spoke to their CC, gave himthe reference and was assured he would fix it. His fix was to file an IG complaint against me and get aircrew banned from the DFAC. After a protracted fight with finance, A4 and the IG, common sense prevailed and the maintainers were paid what they were owed. This had been going on for years, hundreds of airmen were incorrectly paid GMR when they were owed thousands more. To my knowledge, finance only corrected the vouchers and orders for the airmen deployed with me but subsequent deployments found the maintainers billeted at a nearby base with adequate facilities and then transported to the airport for duty each shift. Buenos ————————————————————————————————————- https://media.defense.gov/2022/Jan/04/2002917147/-1/-1/0/JTR.PDF#page55 JTR pg 2-34 D. Government Dining Facilities. A Government dining facility is available only when the Government quarters or ILP facility on the U.S. installation to which the Service member is assigned TDY are adequate and available. Government facilities should be used to the maximum extent possible. 1. Use of the Government dining facility must be directed in the travel authorization. The authorization must state when a Service member is to receive the PMR or GMR. Otherwise, the locality meal rate is paid. Schoolhouse training or other excepted circumstance may impact meal rate payable. 2. A dining facility is considered not available: a. When Government lodging on the U.S installation is not available. b. On travel days. c. When an AO determines that: (1) The use of the Government dining facility adversely affects mission (2) There is excessive distance between the Government dining facility and places of (3) Transportation is not reasonably available between the Government dining facility and places of duty or lodging. (4) Duty hours and Government dining facility operating hours are incompatible. 3. When a travel authorization directs the use of a Government dining facility for TDY travel and it is not available, a traveler must provide a statement of non-availability explaining which meals were not available and why, to receive reimbursement. The reason for non-availability must be acceptable to and approved by the AO. Once approved, the travel authorization must be modified to document the change in meal rate. 4. An organization may not treat TDY members as permanent party by providing Government meals in a dining facility at no charge. A TDY member pays for meals in the Government dining facility except in the following circumstances: Essential Unit Mess, field duty, sea duty, members traveling together with no reimbursement or Joint Task Force Operations. See the DoD Financial Management Regulation, Vol. 7A, Chapter 25.

Medical experts, Intel experts, border experts....seems to be a recurring theme on one side of the aisle.

There are a whole lot of "medical experts" that need a good bitch slap and told to just shut the fuck up next time.

Good thing he slapped that thing down before it released it's payload.

https://www.duffelblog.com/p/report-all-female-crewed-chinese?fbclid=IwAR1ZR5q7n0u6b4jZ0Vqlm9dV_RkClCd6Ilcke-xnTIDuA7q3274CiOz22HE

Well you said it: bullshit excuses. But at least in my case, I've seen maybe a couple instances of pilots going too far in 5 years. I've seen hundreds of instances of pilots leaning forward, even just considering your examples. The job is very well defined: What you do, what is and isn't allowed, and what the pilots are responsible for within the company. An example (for those not at AA). "Just one ping" means that when something is wrong/missing on the plane, the pilots make one call to the appropriate office, get acknowledgement, then wait. Maintenance call-out, missing catering, fuel increase, etc. You call once, then wait. Often in a chaotic airline like AA that call gets dropped. I can't count the number of times my captain is literally jumping out of his chair to call over and over and over to get the issue resolved. It's not our job. We are not paid to go above and beyond, not are we even encouraged to. Management takes for granted how much gets done on time because the pilots notice it, and so they must be taught. That means people will miss connections, weddings, funerals, etc. Sucks, but that's life. Our job is not a higher calling, it's just a job with a higher emphasis on safety, *not* timeliness. The military guys are usually worse. They talk the same game everyone else does, then immediately lean forward, sometimes literally while complaining about the lack of negotiating progress. It's comical, but also illustrative. We all want to git-er-done. And we are all trained to identify and avoid risk. Great traits for flying, terrible for bringing out your inner longshoreman.

DeSantis work for you?

A preface to the story. My daughter was four years old. She had watched me pack my bags for for countless trips . I always came home. While packing my bags for DS she came to me with her favorite little teddy bear and put it in my helmet bag. She said "here daddy he will take care of you". I smiled and hugged her. Somehow she knew something was different. That little bear is still in my helmet bag and I've carried it to this day on sim training and observation flights. People ask why I don't get a new bag because this one is pretty ragged. I can't, the bear is still in there. Your kids know

Fascism according to Mr Webster: "A political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition." Yeah, allowing constitutional carry is clearly aimed at putting nation and race above the individual (who can now carry his own weapon more easily) and DEFINITELY empowers a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader...who almost universally in history have depended on the removal private gun ownership. ...just on the off chance there's anyone here who cares about words and the means they have...

At least Brits value being witty and gifted with oratory (that’s max performing an STS) instead of whatever MTG, Lauren Boebert and the like are going for. I’m not even talking about policy, it’s just annoying behavior. And all these MP’s at least dressed like they belong and not like they’re trying to track down 101 Dalmatians to make a new coat like that moron.

Regardless of your political feelings, I wish we could stop this stupid heckling from the crowd. JFC it’s so embarrassing.

The model on the pointy nose side for MANY years has been to build "most" of the initial cadre from Patch Wearers, it makes sense for a lot of reasons especially as you move into OT. These days in an effort to run faster we run DT and OT at the same time, often while still settling on the final design. That being said if you are thinking of pursuing WIC just as a path to the B-21, don't! I was not the best Patch in the world but I was very good at finding (and eliminating), careerists who wanted WIC for the wrong reason. The Weapons School is far from perfect but it is one of the last vestiges of trying to do the right thing with regard to airpower and our Air Force. If you want WIC so you can teach, lead and mentor...SHIT HOT, go for it. The rest will take care of itself.

BTW congrats to Qasem Soleimani. This marks three years since he quit smoking.

https://www.politico.com/news/2021/04/23/trump-bleach-one-year-484399 https://www.axios.com/2019/08/25/trump-nuclear-bombs-hurricanes https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2020/06/james-mattis-denounces-trump-protests-militarization/612640/ clearly one side of the aisle has their shit in a sock 😂