Leaderboard

Didn't realize Iran was employing balloons.

Any FedEX guys know when the iPad (10) lanyards are getting ordered? I’d like one.

Re-sharing these gems:

Honestly it was a ballsy move by Iran, if they had killed any US with the TBM strikes on IZ I think things would look different right now. The mood was lethal. When we had zero casualties (granted many folks had TBI) the decision was made to stand down. It could have easily gone the other way. Fun side note: since they destroyed our hangar with TBMs I used the event to clean up 5 years of property book shenanigans. Seriously, it was very beneficial. For anyone reading this: if your stuff ever gets destroyed by the enemy, seize the opportunity to do your unit a solid.

Man, this idiot doesn’t know crap!

*Promote ahead of peers*

Stolen

He is there because WEF, Blackrock and Vanguard want him in that chair.

Bottom line, those MudHen drivers went to bed with a smile on their face, knowing they did a great job. Plus they garnered the admiration and Thanks of another nation. They will be honored in the future. Nice Job!

Okay, I've been there, done that although it was a while ago in 1994. Got hosed by what passed for DEI back in the day but that's another story. So, got hosed as the A-10 Division Chief of Stan/Eval for the Wing and my AF career is pretty much over. Not much I can do to fix that. "Should I stay or should I go now..." was an appropriate song lyric and I chose to go. However, I wasn't prepared to go with no airline apps but airlines weren't hiring, no Guard/Reserve contacts, nothing. So, I had to get those done before I cut the income lifeline and I ended up sticking around for about a year and a half before I separated from Active Duty and left with a $52K separation bonus. Got a GS-13 job as an IP at Barksdale but I was looking at the job as a place holder until I could get hired at an airline. I did get promoted to Major. After 2 years, I got hired by American so I switched to the traditional Reservist role. Somewhere in there I hung up the G-suit and got a staff job at 10AF. Got promoted to Lt. Col. I retired with 28 years total service although I wanted to retire earlier but 9/11, a faux bankruptcy, age 65 retirement, and a real bankruptcy made me not want to give up that lifeline until I had to. I'm currently paying back the $52K. As much as getting passed over was a huge insult, I think I'm better off for it. I wasn't worried about the next promotion, I wasn't worried about the next school, and I wasn't worried about the next job. I flew T-38s and A-10s for 21 years. I got into a more lucrative career and approaching my airline retirement, I have financial stability I'd never thought I'd see. That $52K that I'm paying back was basically a 30 year interest free loan for a house now approaching $1M in value. The military retirement also includes medical which helps. So, you have skills that are marketable and there are companies out there that value them. Even after getting hosed for promotion, I did do Air War College, I did an Electronic Warfare School and a few other odds and ends. Making yourself more valuable is always a good idea and don't burn bridges that you might need to cross back over. Your life isn't over but it is going down a different path than planned. Best of luck to you!

My favorite output from that was the crater directly where the hangar with gym in a box was with a quote “I told you to stop dropping the weights!”

Multiple visits shows the unit you are interested. We never hired anyone that we hadn’t seen stop by a few times. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

I am in charge of both, thanks 😃 Do you seriously think that Democrats are not in the military or in other positions of authority? New flash, people of all political stripes serve and do so well. My politics has little to do with my service in uniform. A fellow pilot on my team is a HUGE Trump fan and we joke about it all the time, but we work great together. He gives me shit, I give him shit, we fly the mission, etc. We'll be checking different boxes on election day 2024, but pretty much every other day we're fully aligned on killing our nation's enemies and protecting it's friends & interests with airpower. If that seems weird or foreign to you, I in turn hope that you are retired. TYFYS.

Call my accounts manager…. Tell him to put half of it in Raytheon. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Only counts if this is how it was done

It counts for nothing

You can Skillbridge for up to six months. I chose to do four. On Skillbridge you’re essentially PTDY still making all your AD pay and benefits while working as an unpaid intern at whatever company you’re Skillbridging with. I got my ATP out of it, paid for by the company I was working with, and I’m working full time for them now after leaving AD. https://skillbridge.osd.mil

Another important distinction is that while losing Afghanistan, it wasn’t an existential threat so we had the luxury of pretending to avoid civilian casualties more than we actually did. So it’s pretty ridiculous that Biden has the nerve to try to tell Israel how to conduct war after losing two urban wars. The only one that we “won” was bombing every city block to exterminate ISIS. Hamas (and by proxy Iran) are an existential threat to Israel that embed themselves in the local population as shields. They’re honestly doing a great job limiting their impact to civilians. All the numbers are dubious in the news because it relies on what Hamas reports. Definitely trust those guys.

And we lost. can you provide an example of a war that was won by the side that respected and protected civilians when the other side doesn’t? I think you’re expecting the impossible from Israel.

You remember where 1200+ Israelis were literally raped, tortured and murdered? Sorry but the hunger of the supportive population does not trump the security of the attacked population. Anything else would be an abdication of responsibility to the Israeli people. And a friendly fire accident is another regular feature of war. Sucks. We sure had our fair share. Unless you are arguing that the WCK convoy was intentional, then just saying "do better" is horseshit. Hamas could do better too. Everyone could do better. Lets make this useful and say how many dead Israeli soldiers are a fair exchange for how many dead Palestinian "civilians." Until then it's just sideline commentary. The Palestinians have a government, that's who should be worried about their hunger and safety. Instead it is up to Israel to move hundreds of thousands of people who cheered the rape and torture of their wives and daughters so the terrorist psychopaths they are protecting can be hunted and killed. But sure. Do better. Funny how the standard is always "do better" up to and past the point that the objective can no longer be accomplished. And how many of those were sheltered over or around the many varieties of Islamic militants? Subtract those. How many were storming the border fences or checkpoints? Subtract those. How many were civilians killed as the primary target, not collateral damage in response to direct attacks on Israel? That's the more relevant number. Once again, do you believe we were wrong for Hiroshima? Dresden? Because we did blockade Japanese oil, and most of Europe made Germany into a pariah state after WWI. Holistically is a cop-out. There is a line between geopolitical competition and outright acts of war. Hamas, not Israel, started this war, to the cheering of their poor, hungry population. It is Israel's responsibility to it's people to end the threat. When Israel starts raping Palestinians, bombing apartments, or dumping humanitarian aid into the sea to "make a point," then we will have the beginning of a basic equivalence. They are humans with free will. Yes, pawns. Yes exploited. So too was every population in history that eventually found their way to peace and freedom. And they elected Hamas in 2006. Hamas has since taken total control, but since when did Americans decide that populations are no longer responsible for their destiny? Once again, how many Israelis should die to save the lives of people who want Jewish blood in the streets more than they want their children to eat or survive? Americans and Westerners have a really tough time understanding religious fanaticism. When death is a reward for killing your enemies, you can't freedom and compassion your way to changing hearts and minds. How we haven't learned this after the last 20 years is mystifying.

FIFY

You old bastards know if you decide you want to add something to your post, you can just edit the post, instead of making 6-9 in a row...? FFS.

Don't worry, they learn how to read once they hit elementary school.

Nothing Uncle Bosey's nephew can't handle.

Ballsy move Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Hate to be the bearer of bad news, but a year and a half of rushing is just getting started. I know it seems like an eternity, while in your 20’s, but if you’re a gov employee, as you stated, then you certainly should understand the glacial pace the system moves in. Have you interviewed anywhere more than once? You do realize that guard units typically select pilots only once per year? So in a year and a half you haven’t even been through the cycle more than once. Other than that, the advice offered to all the others on similar threads still holds true: -Widen your net (Heavies, Reserves, USAF, USN, USMC) -Enlist in the unit -Practice your interview skills -Get more flt time -Polish up your resume -Network

Another area we disagree. The longer we wait, the weaker we will be for the actual fight. As our weak governance racks up increasingly absurd debt, the pressure to divert military spending to welfare programs will only grow. The longer we wait, the fewer war fighting experts we will have coupled with less and less modern military equipment to fight with. I still think we win based on geography and natural resources, but it'll cost more lives and treasure to wait. Whether or not there is a nuclear exchange, which is not nearly as certain as you propose, does not change the calculus. Will we be better capable of fighting Russia today, or after another 10-20 years of peaceful decline? I'll be honest. I don't care about you. Or me. I want what is best for my kids. I am not interested in adding WWIII to the list of hardships we are pushing off to the future. Appeasement does not work. History is clear on this point, and that's exactly what you are proposing.

I’ll answer: We let it fall. We have no treaty obligations, and although I’m opposed to Russian aggression I do not believe WW3 is the best option for our interests. If they start some shit with a NATO ally then fights on.

Awards/medals are embarrassing compared to the days of old. Even bronze stars and to some extent, DFCs, are handed out for simple baseline-doing-your-job. Everyone gets a trophy for just breathing and doing average shit. Ridiculous.

During my sentence...I mean tour... As an ALO with an armor battalion, I was having a conversation with one off the air defense guys and he proudly stated that the AD folks could visually ID 67% of all aircraft. I guess the other 33% are screwed.

This is completely wrong. I work SIMCERT stuff on staff. AMC self-certifies its sims to level C+/D “equivalency” (AMC has its dets go to the FAA course) but none of it is FAA certified. The time counts for nothing and do not put it on your apps.

Another good example of how a bullshit deployment can turn on a dime. Good work strike bros. And awesome work by all the maintainers getting it done under very hairy circumstances.

USAF shot down 70....repeat 70 drones last night. How many drone aces in the strike eagle community today?

Not to be a simpleton, but do they ask? In the past hasn’t really been their thing.

What the fuck are you talking about? 🤣😂 I'm sure I haven't called you a Muslim extremist. There is only one group involved in this conflict that outright desires the death and starvation of babies. That is Hamas. Not Israel, not the US, not you, not me. Only the Islamic fundamentalists are deranged enough to believe that the death of their own children is a good thing. You just keep repeating a bunch of points that imply that Israel is somehow intentionally starving people. They have done more in this war to protect the civilians of their enemy population than any organization, the United States included, has ever done in the history of humanity. There is not a single example that comes close. Considering your background, I surprised at your minimization of the unfathomable difficulty of distributing aid to a population who hates you, under the governance of a terrorist regime that is not only actively engaged in military combat against you, but has and continues to steal the aid in an effort to intentionally exacerbate the humanitarian catastrophe in the hopes, sadly successful it seems, of convincing westerners that somehow Israel is in the wrong here. The Washington Post article does a remarkable job showing why the aid is so difficult to distribute, though it conveniently starts with Palestinian allegations, easily ignored, glosses over Egypt's regular to accept refugees, then covers the many different Palestinian factions that steal, riot, or refuse to distribute the aid. There are two countries with larger gdps than Israel, and nearly every country with more space and people, yet somehow these Muslim countries aren't responsible for the Muslim humanitarian crisis. It's Israel, the attacked, who are responsible. It would be nice if Israel wasn't fighting an enemy that used years and years of humanitarian aid repurposed as weaponry and used to construct defensive tunnels. Even the notion that Israel 's historical stance towards the Palestinians somehow created this mess is laughable. What were they going to do? Integrate the Palestinians into one country, immediately creating a majority voting block that openly calls for the immediate genocide of all Jews? Recognize Hamas in a two-state solution and solidify a militaristic terrorist government next door, with even more undeserved rights given to them by the UN? Do more is meaningless. Do better is meaningless. Saying this is somehow different, or a different time, without explaining exactly how, is meaningless. More Israeli participation in Gaza means more dead Israelis. Doing more or doing better means more dead Israelis. We incinerated tens of thousands of civilians to protect American lives. And we would do it again in a heartbeat if any country strapped GoPros to their chest and fucked the bleeding corpses of our wives and daughters. I'm not accusing you of supporting Hamas, or even the Palestinians. But this strange Western tendency to reflexively build moral equivalence between two diametrically opposed populations is being exploited by the real bad guys to continue on to the next rape or murder. And as unfortunate as decades or centuries of human history can be, the Israelis alive today should not have to sacrifice themselves because of what a bunch of dead people did decades ago. There are poor and hungry populations all over the world, but only certain ones are participants in a religious death cult that glorifies the shedding of blood, be it their own or their enemies, in the pursuit of eternal Paradise. Treating those civilians the same as civilians who believe in fundamental human rights and dignities is an immoral stance.

The current "AI" iterations are not AGI, however they are closer to functioning like a human brain than we have ever gotten before. The irony here is that we didn't accomplish this by figuring out how the brain works, quite the opposite, we created an array of associations that is as mysterious to us as the individual neural pathways of a human brain is. We know that the brain has a combination of biologically-arranged pathways (e.g. for walking, breathing, visual identification of faces, eye position, etc.) and experience-formed pathways (math, music, flying a plane). Right now the AI models crunch tons of mostly-unfiltered data into a model that we do not have the ability to directly adjust because of the sheer volume of parameters, then an overlay is used to do things like prevent swearing, giving directions for bomb making, etc. But this is in it's infancy. Once you can pre-program certain behaviors into the actual model, then leave the rest of the model to continuously adapt the weights based on new data, we will take another big step to AGI. But since we have precisely 0% knowledge on what is or what causes consciousness, it is entirely possible that we reach a point where AGI is achieved simply by running the models with enough horsepower that we stumble into the solution. That is, incidentally, remarkably similar to how evolution works. Are humans the only animals that are conscious? What about dolphins, octopi, crows, or chimps? If not, does that mean there is no intelligence other than human intelligence? That seems like an arbitrary definition. Where is the line, and how smart does a computer need to be before it is considered intelligent? Smarter than all humans, or just smarter than any human? Do people born with Down Syndrome have consciousness? What if an AI surpasses the intellectual ability of someone with DS? Calling even the current models an "abacus" is like calling the human brain a glutamate sensor. Sure, it's kind of true, but it's the scale of the apparatus that makes it interesting.

Vance 24-10 added to our board at work.

I think most of us spent time in special ed. Lot's of arts and crafts time.

Disagree, I think Israel is doing good WRT CDE considering they actually need to win. They haven't leveled Gaza which is exactly what we did in Kobani. what precisely should they do differently? "Do better" is feedback I've received alot in life and I must say, it's unhelpful. Again, can you give an example of a war won while respecting/protecting civilians against an enemy who does neither? And given our own track record, are we really in position to be giving advice of how to win?

They really aren’t. CDE basically doesn’t exist. Now that said, they absolutely aren’t purposely targeting civs and I find little sympathy for the ton of civs there that actively support Hamas. And I do blame Hamas solely for putting legit mil targets purposely under/around/next to as many civs as possible. Could Israel do better, yes, but are they between a massive rock and a hard place, also yes.

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that” Sent from my iPad using Baseops Network mobile app

Your Air Force dreams are dead statistically. You have three priorities now: Rack up hours for your airline application (fill the app out now and keep it updated every month). Start learning about the airline application process. Make damn sure you don't get promoted on the second look. You are forever a second class officer now. Some escape the gravity of a late promotion, most do not. Going to PIT should be a great way to not get promoted. Failing a PT test will guarantee it 😅 Prepare yourself mentally, financially, and logistically for a life outside of the AF. Where do you want to live? Do you know how civilian investing works? Are you ready to live lean for a while until your next career starts paying well? If you don't want to be an airline pilot, then you need to start networking aggressively. Spend the next year finding people who work in the field you're interested in and learn everything you can from them. We have people here who can speak to that world, I only know the airlines. As for airline hiring, I think we are possibly in a phase where the people hired today will be furloughed in a year or two. Maybe. Doesn't matter. Being furloughed means no airline apps to maintain and most importantly, no flying currency to worry about while you work outside of the industry. When hiring restarts, you get called back, no questions asked. Your airline will pay for your training and re-currency, which will put you in a spot to change airlines if you desire. This is part of the reason why you always take the first airline job you're offered. Good luck, and feel free to ask questions.

Congrats, brother. Seriously. The Air Force itself is struggling to navigate a rapidly changing world and it doesn't appear to be doing a very good job. It thinks it doesn't want you because you haven't performed all the ridiculous requirements to make rank. We have a failing foreign policy, and at some point in the near future, you're going to be caught up in it. If you were to make Maj, you'd be eligible for more non-flying BS with more responsibility and zero ability to affect any change. Happiness is a trajectory, not a position. Is making Maj really going to put you on an upward vector where you'll continuously find increasing satisfaction with your life? You may think so, because I did, but it's only because you've normalized and become accustomed to military life. You can now identify a point in the future where you will have near unlimited possibilities. You'll be young, have received millions of dollars in training in education, an outstanding resume, and the freedom to choose your own path. No one but you will care if you got passed over. I left AD AF as a Captain under a VSP program. One of my best decisions. I did go back to the Guard, which I enjoyed for a while, but then felt trapped to stay in because I was close to the retirement bennies. But having the ability to determine your own future outside the AF is a gift with a bow on it. Now you can just fly and give the finger to all the other AF careerist pressures. If you do go to the Guard/Reserve, they'll pick you up once passed over no problem. Twice passed over requires a big waiver (or at least it once did).