MCO

Yes, but most of the stories are anecdotal “new pilots suck!” Which everyone has said since forever. The change in how the slicks do business is actual change in how we operate as a result of new pilots sucking after pilot training.

We can argue about the right way to teach assault landings. My point was things were mostly fine until UPT started changing, then the rash of hard landings followed by limitations placed on our new pilots. I feel like the quality of FP is linked to the UPT issues, and it’s showing in a lot of ways. This was the most obvious example I’ve seen so far.

We did it fine before without issues. And the C-130 is a tactical airlifter, it sucks st strat. We fly 2 tac locals a week to get good at it because we really exist for the front line resupply efforts to get as close as possible to the action within reason. if you are going to make us an airland only C-17, then why do we exist? Just get rid of us. Save some money. Landing a C-130 isn’t hard. Landing a C-130 with half the pilot training time, a nine month wait on the flight line at the school house, then a multi month wait at your first unit as a new Lt is hard. And now you’ll barely do it as a copilot, get upgraded to AC and then have to do it for real with limited reps and a copilot that’s never done it.

Lots of rumors on coming changes but right now just no assault landings for copilots unless they are with an instructor due to a rash of hard landings. There was some discussion on if that was the right way forward but the AMC A3 2 star directed that this is the way and released a fleet wide FCIF. We absolutely can fly cargo around with pilots that aren’t as good and are given significantly less time to train. We are just going to bend more metal in peace time, and in wartime the new expectation needs to be the MAF won’t be anywhere near the front line if we want to preserve the fleet. People gotta figure out their cargo another way.

C-130J community is starting to limit what copilots are allowed to do.

As long as the mission isn’t moving why would congress care? The money saved is in the base, if anything more students is more housing and more money in the economy. The sub quality pilot training product is becoming apparent on the flightline.

The real progress made is people have successfully made the talking point it’s ok to invade another country and take their land if you don’t like their government, even if they don’t pose a direct threat to you.

I don’t understand how we lecture Ukraine. Hey, Russia invaded your land and took a third of your territory. You want to keep fighting? Sorry, we don’t like that you have the will to fight for your land. We have decided it’s not worth your people’s lives so we have also decided that we will give the Russians everything they want. Imagine France told us in 1778 too bad, we won’t fund your war because the British are killing too many of you. Go ahead and sue for peace and just be British puppets again because we don’t like other people’s war or the idea of you dying. Your people hate it and just want to be British rather than have a war so let them. There is a valid argument over money spent which I think is separate to supporting Ukraine’s right to defend itself. I personally think it’s money well spent. Let a malign foreign actor who wants to bully those around him and affect our internal politics get stuck in a war they made against an enemy willing to fight them with little risk to us. Seems like a win/win to me, way better than other crap we’ve spent way more money on. Obviously the opinions on that are all over the place. The die hard support of all things Trump amazes me. You can be a fan of his and support him as President without just justifying everything he does. It seems like no one has their own views anymore. Trump was a dick to Zelensky because he correctly pointed out you can’t trust Putin, which could hinder a negotiation. Trump just wants to say he made peace at any cost, repercussions to Ukraine be damned. It’s like Afghanistan, he started that shit show pull out because he “made a deal” with the Taliban that they were never going to uphold, Biden just didn’t change course. Trump doesn’t care if his deals are held up, he just wants to say he made one. There are lots of things happening now in the country I like. I’m not a rabid anti Trumper. This just isn’t one of them.

If he’s UK based I assume he is talking about their service requested which is like their version of VFR/IFR. How much ATC is helping or responsible to the traffic. So IFR, VFR, VFR flight following would be most likely what he means. Depends if he was applying UK logic to US or if he just slipped up on his words.

Career badges are impossible to decipher. Give rated wings, kill all the other badges and give them basic tabs not broken out but broad. CE, WX, SF, ATC, etc. don’t make 10 different identifiers for each career field. Gives people pride and makes it easy to see what they do. Pilots do it with flight suits, let everyone else have a little morale and pride as well, within reason.

Both are problems. Yes you need to focus on creating lethal pilots, but the FGOs are the ones setting the rules and working to make the space to create those pilots. Shitty QOL, development, and leadership leads to people getting out. Everyone left becomes the shitty leadership because there is no one left to choose from for a quality cut. These shitty leaders/pilots make decisions destroying QOL and good pilot development driving out the younger pilots and continuing the cycle.

I love these hate on other platforms stories. I did 4 months in Afghanistan in Herks and we’d hate on C-17 and tankers for the same thing and didn’t call in anything or get AFCMS except the plane that came back with holes in it, but we assumed all of the other dumb platforms who don’t know what they are doing were. Like the C-17 on short final into Kandahar 5 miles in front of me yelling on the radio he was taking fire while I was staring at him on nogs seeing nothing. Everyone else that doesn’t fly what I fly is dumb!

He’s either a troll or an idiot, why is everyone arguing with him?

Or the realization there is no point arguing with you in this.

Why would NATO sign that?

Solid it depends here. Top 5 or 6 in my class were all commercial rated before UPT. The #1 guy had 269 hours of formation aerobatic jet time. I’ve also seen the 2000 hour regional pilot that is bottom of the class.

This. Peacetime managers vs wartime leaders. Some people are good at both but many aren’t. 2 different skill sets and not being at war it’s hard to know who is actually a good wartime leader.

I think it’s understandable considering they probably started pilot training September 2001.

Yep. The fighter year groups from 07-09 are tiny, especially 07. 07 got ravaged by UAVs and backed up B courses making only about 1 fighter pilot per class across all three UPT bases. We just didn’t make any fighter pilots. Now everyone on staff throws up their arms like we never saw this coming.

Aren’t they inviting them back because it was congressionally mandated they invite them back?

“We don’t want to pigeonhole ourselves in strictly special operations”- Air Force Special Operations Command official

Dogs are fine and getting a car is not hard. The paperwork on the other hand is painful, but that’s true of everything in Germany.

I was in a briefing with a bunch of 3 stars and a 4 star. Our team briefed some COAs and a 3 star asked the briefer why some majors and Lt Cols think they get a say when the proposed COA was presented. As the briefer was trying to find words the 4 star said I’m going with their suggested COA. Briefing concluded.

Damn dude. Shitty timing and you even laid out the issues with the timing. Transitions end. Shit will still need to get moved to the front of the fight. Also, turns out we also train to worst case peer in peer but if we get into another less hot conflict guess who is going to be bearing the brunt of the intra theater airlift again? Every deployment is different. There are squadrons that deployed and did 100+ airdrops on 1 deployment and literally the next group out did 0 on their 6 month deployment. They don’t make requirements based on what’s fun but what’s needed. Some of the stuff we’ve done in Africa is pretty cool, but it’s always changing from current world politics. No 2 deployments are the same. There is a ton of stuff in the AF to get mad about and this is obviously an extra one, but you sound like you checked out as a 6 month FP.