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Whether it's easy or hard to get away on the weekends or not, life in the USAF with a spouse/loved one is all about expectation management. Set her expectations now that it is unlikely you will be able to travel to see her very often at all -- anything more than that and you are her hero because in her mind you pushed he limits just to see her. If she wants to know what time you'll be home, tell her 8pm even if you think 6pm is possible. Tell her that two 365s could happen before you hit 20yrs. If you only do one, or even none, she'll feel like she's won. Words to live by from a fighter pilot in my first squadron. Expectation management.

Oh good god, man. I was going to let this die rather than participate in a classic baseops dick-measuring contest, but the irony here is just too rich. You lecture your homie about not spouting off about that which he knows nothing of, but then you reply to Moose's very valid points with a naive combination of ignorance and NG propagandist talking points. Once again, you have no clue as to the capes of the U-2. On 4 U2 deployments, I personally have never wx cancelled a U2 mission and can count on one hand the missions that I saw wx cancel. I've climbed and descended through ice, lots of it. I've dodged TS by looking out of the window. I've landed in 1/4 mile vis, mobiled sorties that landed with lightening and TS very close to the field, and mobiled and flown missions which landed in excess of our crosswind limit. The U2 is extremely flexible WRT weather. On station and enroute, we are ALWAYS above it. Can you claim the same things? Not queep unless you are ignorant or just touting the party line. WRT threats, yes, we have capes to operate in those denied environments, jamming and kinetic. Your lack of knowledge here is glaring, but this forum is not the place to rectify that. Grab iowa and go to the vault. Sure, all gobble drivers are now stoked to be there. Wait, let me find my BS flag... I can't even believe that you are persisting with this pack of 12 bullshit. As Moose already pointed out, it's not your POS jet that anybody cares about, its the freaking billion dollar sensor. We don't have 12 packs of those. And yes, distance matters. Especially vertical distance. How high can you guys carry the payload again? Clueless again. You need to open up your aperture beyond mx/wx limitations. Perhaps the U2 wasn't tasked to cover GH shortages because we're already maxed and operating at near 100% rates. Truth. Also, perhaps there have been instances where the CCDR needed an asset in the air RIGHT FUCKING NOW and the GH never entered the conversation because it's not even remotely possible. But guess who can surge, waive shit, plop a driver in the jet and get on station FAST. Ask your intel folks where/when this situation might be applicable. Or ask any U2 driver. Finally, we agree on something. If indeed the GH were merely complimentary to the U2 or its ultimate replacement, that would be fantastic. But for some reason the boneheads making the rules have decided it should be either/or. And therein lies the problem with the GH. And of it were so simple to modify the GH to carry U2 sensors, carry them higher, and generate the power (electricity) required for the next gen, then trust me, NG would have done it long ago. The problem is that it is not a simple remedy, and may in fact prove impossible. Which could leave us with a subpar platform replacing a more capable (and cheaper) platform for the sake of politics. I don't care what you fly, that is a fucking fail.

Not trying to take the wind out of your sails Alpha, but you have OCS and potentially flight school ahead. Go get some wind under your wings learning to serve, some of your questions may be answered for you as time goes by. Keep your head up and your options open...that gives you flexibility. A lot of decisions are going to be made for you by The Man (timing, locations)....out of your control (finger crossing won't help...but good grades might). Flexibility is key. Best of Luck.

All of the talk of increasing 11F production, just to make sure that 11F staff billets are filled, reminded me of this blog post from a couple years ago. I feel like the whole damn defense apparatus of the country is somewhere between "Bloat" and full-on "Failure/Implosion." http://www.oftwominds.com/blogdec10/lifecycle-bureaucracy12-10.html "Tip of the spear" military forces and readiness are left twisting in the wind while the thousands of senior officers in the Pentagon and Services jostle for promotions. At the point of implosion, there are more captains, colonels and generals than actual war-fighters. (There are plenty of barbers, cooks, waiters and assistants, though, to serve the senior officers.) Benefits for the survivors are left basically untouched while new hires are fired to preserve the budget for those with seniority. At some point, the mission of the bureaucracy is completely lost, and the citizens' patience with institutional incompetence and self-aggrandizement finally runs out.

Ha. Ok. Whatever you say, buddy.

Top FAIP = King turd on Shit Island.

If you're referring to the Geographic Combatant Command(er), the proper acronym is GCC. COCOM references command authority, similar to TACON, ADCON, OPCON, etc... Get your shit straight.

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The ones that were born male don't count. Which wedding?

No doubt, saw an HC-27J a few months ago, looked good in Coastie colors but me still thinks the Guard should be flying it. There's a market and requirement for a common light tactical airlift in the US amongst the military & public safety agencies, ala the JCA. Forest service, CG, Military and with some of our usual friends, too bad we couldn't heard all the cats together to settle on one. Switching gears to Chinese airlift, saw the Y-30 concept, A400 clone or just inspired by?

Take it from this stupid 0-1 back in 1992....when my first training command 0-5 told our class: "...you can always find another girlfriend. You get three yellow sheets in your training track, you won't find another place to become a Naval Aviator". It all comes down to priorities and managing expectations (already mentioned above). Be honest with yourself and those around you....and live them. Break Break Side lesson: Don't sit next to the douche that asks the Commander if he can take leave to see his girlfriend every weekend during training. To this day I can't believe that question came from the mouth of a "boat schooler" (aka: Naval Academy). ATIS

As far as the plane goes - a buddy in my class who is a civilian crop duster had 2 planes stashed at GTR in Columbus during UPT and we utilized them frequently, mostly to fly to Biloxi on weekends and hit the casino. 11F hit the nail on the head for training - expectation management. Mainly yours, in that you should expect her to break up with you while you're gone. If you think it's going to happen and it doesn't, you win.

I went trough UPT in deal rio. I was never there on the weekends. In fact, I was in Austin so much I rented and apartment there with a few other guys to save on hotel bills. However, my situation was slightly different in that I am the best pilot to ever grace AETC's program and I didn't show up to a formal training course worried about my long distance relationship. YMMV. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Well, he said "no offense" which lies somewhere between "with all due respect" and academic non-attribution. Sounds legit.

The Air Force isn't looking for fighter pilots. They are looking for 11Fs. The benefit of getting an 11M is that they bring the experience of operating in the system, deployments, MWS experience, exercises, etc. No offense to any of my FAIP friends but they have such a small perspective on what awaits them outside of AETC. I foresee most of these 11M to 11F guys being fodder for staff, ALO, non-flying 11F billets and maybe T-38s/IFF. And as much as it pains me to say it, it makes sense to do it that way. I'm a kick-@ss pilot. Probably the best one I will ever know, but put me in a fighter against dudes that have been doing it for 4-6 more years and 1,000+ hours more and it's going to take time and $$$ to get me caught up... And as a soon to be/pinned on Major, guess what two things the Air Force doesn't want to spend on me? Time and $$$. At least not to get me to be an "expert" in my MWS. Some dudes will get multiple Ops tours but still be behind their peers. Others will get the requirements to call them "experienced" and shuttled off to help the other aspects of being an 11F so that the experienced war fighters can operate the death machines and train the young 2LTs who just signed up for a 15-year post UPT commitment...

I'm sorry, but opening this up to T-1 FAIPs is not even going to dent the problem. Letting MAF dudes go be 11Fs isn't going to fix the problem, giving fighters to every booger eater that goes through UPT certainly won't fix the problem. Poor leadership, poor people management, not truly valuing your people and placing acquisitions priority #1 over your people. Plus for about 3-4 years we almost completely shut the 11F pipeline down. Those year groups would have been your young Maj/Senior Capts/IP types. Now those dudes mostly VSP'd back when they had their 3 opportunities to do so because the AF said "leave, someone will take your place."

The article doesn't mention the fact that the upgrades are for both C-models and E-models as they move to a common OFP. So while the author focuses on air-to-air, there are key capabilities coming with the improved hardware and software for the air-to-ground role.

$12B could have bought a few more F-22s I think. http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/02/politics/us-air-force-f-15-upgrades/index.html

Correct. Though the McGuire guys might do it with less if they're tired enough.

think tank huh?

I'm no stranger to Air Force programs. If you think I'm getting DG, you should have a chat with my Flt/CC here. And since my promotion board to O-4 will be completed before I finish SOS, it wouldn't do much anyways. I'm doing it because I raged long and hard for years about the title of this thread. Period. They scrapped the original think tank and targeted this one to the CSAF's letter, and I like most others here thought the letter was a spot-on representation of the things we've bitched about for years on BO.net. I'm no fool. I had dreams of unicorns and magic carpet rides when the last CSAF got rid of Blues Mondays. I will not be similarly enraptured by mere letters from the new CSAF. But after being here for only a week and listening to the various levels of leadership at AU talk about the problems, I haven't found much to disagree with. I spent all day yesterday in Destin with a beer in my hand soaking up some significant skin cancer fuel. Friday we ate crappy tacos and watched our classmates hit each other in the face with padded sticks, Thursday we went to trivia night at a bar, Wednesday we ate brats and watched a baseball game. Again, all with a beer in my hand. Classes have been almost entirely focused on leadership theory and application, which pilots often lack based on our limited CGO leadership opportunities. And the geeky "think tank" instructions were to use whatever means and methods we choose to gather unfiltered opinions from across the ranks and figure out how to begin solving (it's only four weeks, after all) the single greatest issue fueling bitch-fests in every flying squadron heritage room AF-wide. Maybe I'm just the luckiest pilot ever to go through SOS, but I gotta say fellas, if this is the experience we've been raging against for so long, maybe we really have lost touch. I wouldn't have turned SOS down three times if I knew it was like this. Anyways, /rant. Not attacking you, Duck, but I've been facing an existential crisis here because I was expecting to be the lone naysayer in an ocean of shoe-clerk Kool-Aid, and even when the SNCO Academy students came over to "cross-talk," we had a hard time finding topics to disagree over. Maybe things are so bad that everyone at the squadron levels, officer and enlisted, are finally aligning against the same malignancy. Or maybe they gave me a Kool-Aid enema on day one and I don't remember it. Either way, I could use the help from the one forum that has done more to articulate the problems we face than any think tank or focus group Maxwell could ever assemble. And all you have to do is click some up and down arrows in a website.

Wanna help? I'm at sos now and we're doing the "think tank" on that very letter. Think tank sounds lame, I know, but they have at least given us free reign to design the process. I set up a Reddit page for people to add ideas and vote on others. The more we get, the better. You'll need a Reddit account, but if you're like me and have been bitching about this topic for years, this is a way to be heard. Anyone here who knows me knows I won't sugar coat the feedback for staff officer consumption, and we are presenting the info to at least two generals at the end of the month. https://www.Reddit.com/r/SquadronFocus Please at least go and vote on all the ideas in there. Thanks, Seth Sent from my Nexus 5X using Tapatalk

I guess we'll have to wait and see if Gen Goldfein does anything to fix the squadrons. Step one would be manning.

I call BS on the results....the Air Force just surveyed 500 drone pilots and 412 of them want to stay in the career field!! You obviously sampled the wrong people!! You need to do another survey until the numbers reflect what I want to hear!