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@Clark Griswold Yes more flight time would help, but the major problem is cultural: lowering standards (both official and unofficial) to unacceptable levels in the name of meeting subjective goals on a spreadsheet (X amount of pilots, Y amount of insert-qual, etc.) Phase 1 fix is establish reasonable standards and hold everyone to them. If that means 80% of a UPT class washes out, then so be it. If that means 50% of the B course class washes out, so be it. If that means chuckle nuts just can’t seem to pass FLUG after 3 years in the CAF, then thanks for your service, good luck in your future, non-fighter flying endeavors. You’re on your second or third willfully unsafe flight incident (not mistake, but you meant to do it), then it’s not sit for a week or two punishment, it’s you’re done flying, enjoy the rest of your ADSC in the non-flying world. Phase 2 is based on the attrition seen after a year or two of phase 1 implementation, then determine what must change in training and CT requirements to reduce the attrition. That could be a lot of things, not just flying hours. Also I know I’m rapidly approaching old man yelling at cloud status. There are many phenomenal young dudes out there crushing it. But there are way more guys out there today (vs. yesterday) who should not be where they are due to relaxed standards and their IPs/leaders not having the fortitude and/or judgement to call a spade a spade.

Flight time is also critical. When I was an Lt in the fighter squadron, we laughed when we were briefed that the North Korean pilots were flying 80-100 hours a year. "How can they do anything besides takeoff and land?" Fast forward 17 years and I found myself averaging 80-100 hours a year my last couple years in the AF and it wasn't because I was avoiding flying. There just were not enough sorties to give experienced guys much more than the vastly reduced RAP numbers. Extra flights above RAP were prioritized (properly) to the young guys. In the second half of my career I saw guys that were actively spinning up for WIC make airmanship mistakes/poor decisions that I'm sure wouldn't have been made by a similar aged dude 15 years earlier. The 2007 average flight lead probably had more sorties than the 2022 line IP. You can't replace time in the air.

Where have you been the last four years?

Absolutely need more flying hours, as most of the young guy issues are lacking airmanship and decision making skills (specifically decision making while handling an aircraft in a real, dynamic environment…e.g. cannot be replicated in a sim). From a tactical proficiency perspective, we need sims to take a 6-9 year leap yesterday. 5G perspective: In a perfect world we’d train to missionized stuff primarily in the sim environment and do primarily part-task training in live fly. Bottom line: more flying needed, but also need meaningful sim training environments that are accessible daily at the wing level.

Another $2.5B to UKR…totally nothing that needs money here in the US, this makes complete sense.

Get funky while getting funky Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Listen to the whole Carmina Burana performance. With drinks. Here is the 2nd part of O Fortuna, Fortune Plango Vulnera.

UPT and PIT as a whole are complicit in 'fixing' the AF's retention problem with new accessions. The result of this complicity is realized in what we all know is UPT/PIT studs making it through that shouldn't. B-Courses and Ops squadrons see this as a failure of IPs to hold the line, which at best leads to a reduction in lethality, and at worst an increase in mishaps. I'm not saying IPs at UPT/PIT are solely responsible, but the enterprise as a whole owns part of the problem and it's 2nd/3rd order effects. PIT pushes some ppl through that are unsafe. They pass ppl that are staying at PIT and then spend months getting them through MQT before they're safe enough to fly with PIT students. This bends the squadron over even more, but their other option is to wash out/FEB a pilot that didnt have an issue in their previous airframe. This isn't 100% of studs, but there is enough of it at PIT/UPT that the increased scoffing from the CAF is, to some extent, earned. I'm not saying all UPT/PIT DOs/CCs for the last x years should be burned at the stake. The decline has been insidious and the external pressures play a huge factor. On the -38 side IPs know there's a better chance they'll get a 5th gen follow-on than a stud getting washed out. If they hook him, the timeline is going to suffer, if the timeline gets any worse they're going to have to go back to flying local weekend sorties in 100 deg heat, and none of it matters because the stud in question is gonna drop a KC-135 anyways. The stud is gonna drop KC-135s because B-Courses can't keep up with the increased production, to include the extra sorties required for the lower quality product from UPT/IFF. Yeah that's right, IFF owns this too. The IPs showing up at UPT/IFF now were a product of the lowered standards caused by increased production pressure. They saw their bros/possibly themselves skate by and think that's how the sausage is supposed to be made. If anyone figures out a way to get the entire AETC enterprise to grade IAW the CTS, and find some bobs that will back their IPs up, maybe the icecream cone gets cleaned. TL;Dr version:

How many hours is it going to take for me to switch everything over? Damnit.

Guess it depends on what disgruntled means by clown show. If he simply means theatrics (like making Canada the 51st state), then yeah, trump is full of stuff like that. If he means hypocritical theatrics from congress, then also yes, there will be plenty of that. If he means executive level performance on par or worse than the historic disaster of the Biden admin, then I believe he is completely off his rocker and incapable of self-derived rational thought.

Tell us five new policy changes that Trump has said he will implement that you believe will make things worse.

Touché but it represents how much faster their blob (acquisition n development structure) works than ours Our tech is great our admin sucks, their tech is stolen and their admin is focused and allowed to move irrespective of parochial jobs interests just something that we should take seriously Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'll bet that thing is about as stealthy as BQzip's mom on a friday night at AJ's.

Merry Christmas to all of you! Here's a special background you can put on your TV whilst eating Christmas dinner.

I’ve come to expect that the only people who will have serious issues with the American leadership the next four years (just like 2017-2021) will be our adversaries like China, Russia, Iran, terrorist groups like ISIS, transgenders, illegal immigrants, far left lunatics like Antifa and Black Lives Matter, and decrypt democratic leadership in failing states like California and New York.

The data from the bros is unbelievable from the perspective of how benign the situation was and the guys on the boat still fucked up to this extent. There are many people who deserve to have ruined careers over this. Zero sympathy for what comes to those in the chain of command.