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fire4effect, So many here have Historical disconnect(s). And I have come to accept that. Glad you were able to know him and his experiences. Springer (talking for you now…) and I can remember that period and the sadness of the loss of several friends due to that conflict (war). Please always remember our friends in arms and Toast to those that gave all. Bests, SHFP

Always with photoshops of this fat 80 yr old yoked out like Stallone.

Nope. Very simple. Been doing it for a long time.

I wonder if that includes the millions of military aged Muslims that Merkel allowed into the country.

Family member flew the EB-66 out of Takhli Thailand in the 60s. His tail is sitting in the museum at Wright Patt. The stories he had were intense. He reminisced about those he knew that were not as lucky. He passed in 2022. I remember helping find a picture of the EB-66 that the funeral home made into artwork that went on his gravestone. 2 AMs and a DFC.

Absolute lunacy. Oh sorry, I forgot. It’s just “mean tweets.”

FYI....Great SAR Missions, for those not old enough to have been to SEA (Vietnam) or have read AF SAR History.... "Bat 21", LTC Gene Hambleton, April 1972. 11 Days, 1000+ Sorties, 8 Aircraft destroyed, 11 Airmen Killed and 2 POWS. "Oyster 01", Captain Roger Locher, June 1972, 23 days, 150+ Aircraft, rescued only 40 miles from Hanoi, no Airmen Killed.

Core mission all of AFSOC sued to train to in nearly every exercise (Bilat/Multi-lat), prior to OEF/OIF. As we drew down in both the command re-energized this type of training and I am here to tell you this is normal bizness for AFSOC and the SOAR. I will defer to the experts but here is my guess...a combination of factors: The CV-22 is in a state of contraction after years of maintenance issues that culminated in the fatal crash last in 2024. As a result AFSOC made the decision to temporarily mothball 20+ birds and focus efforts on the remaining. The maintenance issues are focused on: 1. The blades (wearing out MUCH fast in Middle East sand) - I believe the time between major maintenance was down to 100 hours instead of the planned 500 hours. 2. Turbine performance decline (again related to Middle East sand) - the find sand was "coaking" on the turbine inlet blades and causing reduced power. Ultimately they changed the FDAC to allow higher operating temps in an attempt to burn the coaking off. (very simplified answer). 3. IR center Body problems (cracks) - perhaps the most vexing problem as the airframe manufacturer pointed at the engine OEM Rolls Royce and the Engine OEM pointed back at Bell. 4. Hard clutch engagements like the one that caused the crash in Japan. In short the clutch engages hard which causes a rapid rise of torque to the opposite engine and can cause REAL issues, ultimately, gearbox failure. As a result of these issues there is a distrust of the platform by some of the Tier 1 teams. Also, while the speed and range profile seem to make sense I wonder if the survivor being up high had an impact. The CV-22 is big and maybe they couldn't land on the high uneven terrain. Hovering a CV-22 that high over the survivor was probably not optimal. The downwash is 10 X a helicopter. We had issues the first few times we did fast rope and ended up having to put large weights at the end of the rope to keep them on the ground. The survivor was wounded and hiding in a crevice in very high terrain, so I am guessing that had an impact. Two things that are not being talked about much: When the MC-130's became stuck they called in "other assets" to help. There is a video from Iran showing one of the other assets. ssstwitter.com_1775434822410.mp4 And, as per American SOF standard, we trolled the Iranians in the LZ...left them a Fuck you present!

The fact that not one good guy perished... This is going to make a great mini-series one day!

We invented that in the 80s. Pretty crowded with two little birds in there. Brought the canary slides on line too. It's a sight to see. From parking brake set to little bird in the air. Picture in the article above is rolling out of a TalonII

Only Martin Baker seats and I believe you have to buy them. ACES II doesn't do anything as far as I know. Where I work we put your framed official mug shot on our Caterpillar Club Wall, those who ejected while assigned to the base.

Feel bad for the crews.

The MC-130 community trains to this extensively; the 160th is one of our primary customers. I've worked Little Birds on both prepared strips and dirt LZs; the community as a whole is proficient at both. -130s get stuck from time to time, it happens even in training, especially at strips that haven't been used much. I had a colleague almost get stuck doing Little Bird Infil at Red Devil LZ in CO during a Bi-Lat, was a close thing. The CV discussion is a valid one but people are missing the most likely reason those guys weren't playing on this one (open kimono, I'm speculating). It's probably was a logistics issue. It takes quite a while to deploy Ospreys; they usually have to go by boat if deploying from CONUS. If you fly them any serious distance the TAAR requirement is significant. If you have them do gas and gos you'll leave a trail of broken -22s to your FSB; they just break a lot. Their logistics footprint is also quite large, read a lot C-17 flights to move their support tail. They also aren't a great fast rope/hoist platform and they have pretty serious weight limitations at high DAs.

Someone else suggested WALDO.

Awesome everyone extracted safely. I sure hope a lot of lessons learned come out of this as I finished my taxes yesterday. Assuming it was one SA-6 that's a lot of bang for the bad guy's Rial 2 × MC-130J Commando II aircraft 4 × MH-6 “Little Bird” helicopters 1 × F-15E Strike Eagle 1 × A-10 Warthog 2 × Reapers

What I am told is they landed two MC-130Js with 2 X Little Birds each. Both MC-130Js got their nose wheels stuck in the sand. The little birds launched and one picked up the WSO. At the FARP they tried unsuccessfully to get the MC-130J's "unstuck" so they called in other assets from a supporting agency to pick up everyone. 3 X other smaller platforms came in and picked everyone up. USAF aircraft then bombed the 2 X MC-130J's and 4 x Little birds. We lost a couple of Reapers as well. True team effort.

Probably. I'm of the impression that it's a foregone conclusion, all indications from big blue pointed (over the last 5-6 years) in that direction. This could very well be the thing to re-light the fire. Fucking good work everyone. TOML

The got him 🇺🇸 To the CSAR community 🍻 TOML!

Having personally seen pilots being unfairly hung out to dry by over-zealous leadership, I would sure like to know more details about this event.

Being a ground pounder with many miles under me on aerodromes I'm blaming the firetruck driver, many times I have been cleared to cross, and many times with a jet on final. Nothing beats an eyeball looking down the active before crossing after getting clearance. A few of those times I had a jet hooked to my uke getting clearance to cross.

I would tend to agree. There may be a time and place for mass mobilization and a draft, and in all likelihood, a Pearl Harbor-like event would be the pretext for it. Then, it wouldn't need to be so mandatory, and certainly not in a state of relative peace. I understand the desire to reshape or reinvigorate civil society and many social ills, but I don't think the military is the right institution for it for two reasons. One, the military is a cross-section of society (for the most part)...you get every type and kind, good, bad, or indifferent. So the notion of bolstering civic pride and responsibility is somewhat moot because that's really not our job as it is. We make recruits capable of doing certain tasks and working as a team, but we have our fair share of $hitheads. The good ones are usually already decent folks before they join. Furthermore, if we are generalizing, there has been a marked decline in culture and social development over the past generation or two...kids are fatter, less engaged, and have a host of mental illnesses (anxiety, depression, need their mom to go to the job interview with them, etc). I don't think the military is capable of fixing this, and I certainly don't have the time (nor do the NCOs) to babysit and play stepdad to a mass of new trainees who need safe spaces and inhalers for every minor inconvenience. We already have more things to do with fewer people and resources, so giving the military such a grandiose "fix the kids" task isn't going to help. What is that weekly staff meeting slide going to look like...? No thanks. My second point is that our civil society is (or should be) shaped by the many small, local institutions that foster character formation, civic pride, and responsible adults. This isn't something we should look to the military to do. As a caveat, yes, veterans and military members can influence civil society, especially once they are out of uniform. That can be as parents, little league coaches, teachers, clergy, scouts, the Lions Club, etc. But we shouldn't look to the military to be the guiding force in our culture; if anything it is there to defend it, not influence it. I'm harping on this because one of my recent interests is reading about culture and civil society. There was a book written in 2001 (pre-internet and 9/11) called "Bowling Alone" by Harvard professor Robert Putnam. His main thesis is that civic participation declined markedly from about the 1960s to the turn of the 21st century. Notably, this was before social media, internet culture, and all the recent generational and technological changes we've experienced and it's only gotten worse (psychologist Jonathon Haidt is another good resource here). As a member of recreational bowling leagues, he observed that while the number of people bowling actually increased from ~1960 to 2000, the number of organized leagues declined. He used that anecdote to highlight a broader decline in civic participation from things like religious institutions, social clubs (Lions, Elks, etc), and character-forming organizations (e.g. scouts) as they were the means by which people interacted, developed social bonds, and solved problems. Since he's left of center, he chalks much of it up to wealth inequality, deindustrialization, etc but his point is salient. Interestingly, he also found that immigration and multiculturalism had a negative influence on social capital as there is less trust and cooperation both between groups and within groups. He also doesn't talk so much about the role of the welfare state, sexual/gender revolution, and various counter-cultural movements of the 60s and 70s that started the slow deconstruction of civic traditions and associations. Long story short, sociocultural issues can't be solved primarily by the military, indeed not by the government. If anything, central planning and social engineering from bureaucrats will only make things worse. We should use and respect the military for its intended purpose, not as a tool to correct social ills; doing so is likely to yield poor results in both the armed forces and civil society. We should instead heal our civic decline by emphasizing the importance of character-forming institutions, which, if the time comes, will benefit the military because it will have more ready, able, and willing recruits. Ask yourself, if we made the Air Force responsible for teaching young Americans math, science, and good character...is this something AETC will f*ck up?

Sadly this theory clashes with tenure... Uber left-wing professors (who outnumber uber-right wing professors by 100:1), now use college to indoctrinate rather than educate, which is a horrible waste of key time in a young persons life where they can think critically and develop their own viewpoints. I spent some time at a place that is supposed to be the apex of our collegiate educational system, Harvard. Instead of a great period of enlightenment it was daily hand-to-hand combat defending a viewpoint that dared to drift from extreme liberalism. It is no shock our political system has become so dysfunctional, as every new administration brings in the Ivy League big brains to solve problems...further entrenching the extremist ideas. Until we find ourselves back in another situation deemed national survival it will be difficult to employ a Clausewitzian total war approach to service to the nation. IMHO a better approach in current times would be to highlight the personal benefit and growth that comes with service to our country. Whether is be military service, time in the Peace Corps, the National Health Service, working on a Native American Reservation...etc, there is tremendous opportunity to expand your mind and make a difference.

New footage. Pretty crazy