MCO

And there are C130s. 7 month FTU, 3-4 months of it is tactics, formation, and airdrop. Are students from the new system going to be ready or is it going to be on the FTU to teach some of this basically from scratch? I had the benefit of going to Corpus, which was designed as a C130 prep course taught completely by C130 pilots on the AF side. So honestly I don’t know what right looks like.

From my limited time working these, honestly very average but better than not having it. On the O side you want the definitely promote or the if I had one more line. Yours basically says if your records are good enough, promote him, but he isn’t my top. Not having the promote now however would be a message that they don’t think you are ready. We just switched to a whole new system though so who knows what normal is now.

The other advantage of flattening the curve other than what’s already stated is the effect of herd immunity, which is more effective if you already have a population of immune people.

This is exactly why I think the US will be hardest hit. Our freedom is awesome, but plenty of people will say "I thought this was America, I'll do what I want!" I agree with you that we need to protect our freedom from being attacked, but I also think we are going to pay a price for that. China can effectively fight it because they just point a gun at everyone and say don't leave your house. Not what I want, but it works. Just to be clear, I think the price is worth it in the end.

I don’t have a picture of it but I was sent to Beijing when I was refragged after show time and had to deal with a high level pax. Of course the J model is not GPS approved in China so now I’m the only aircraft shooting the non GPS arrival and it is about 15 step down segments in meters switching between headings, multiple VORs and NDBs and various speed restrictions. It was a little chaotic. Add to that gusty winds so I’m supposed to fly a 144kt approach speed, but I overspeed my flaps at 145kt. Most of the time it’s when you are going into a field with no radar service using procedural deconfliction, probably some place like Africa or the Balkans, and you look at the approach plate and even after years of flying think what the hell is this. Luckily you usually can look over the approaches the night before but not always, and ATC seems to be good at getting you to join the arrival/approach in the one way you weren’t expecting. The more experienced you get the less this happens and the more you laugh at/teach the young guy struggling, but as the young guy going into some interesting fields in the middle of no where at mins, it’s everything to keep your SA up. I’ve shot multiple circling NDBs at mins after I was told in pilot training NDBs were going away and I’d probably never have to shoot a real one. I’m sure there are plenty of other guys on the forum that have had some ridiculous foreign approach sprung on them at the last second.

I agree with you. Also, there should be a fully qualified AC or IP in the seat in a heavy every time with a copilot, so take advantage of it. I usually let my copilot fly a complex approach until they are overwhelmed and then take it if I need too. Instruments aren’t hard but they will definitely kill you. If we don’t trust our ACs then either extend time to upgrade or don’t just upgrade everyone “because it’s their time”. You can get the majority of instrument experience in the sim just fine, and the rest as a copilot on the line. Tac flying on the other hand, which varies airframe to airframe in the MAF, needs ass in seat time. On that same vein though, I think a lot of MAF leadership focuses on “sexy”, “cool” training that they can claim they prepped the fleet for instead of getting the crew force good at what we would actually be doing, wasting our training opportunities. Just my opinion.

The timeline is published by AFPC. No PSDM though so it’s not super helpful except to make everyone write their PRF. Luckily it’s only 2 lines so if some end up not on this board it’s not as much wasted time as it used to be. As far as writing the 2 line PRF, no one really knows what right looks like yet, but you can’t use any info already in a PRF so it sounds like yours may get rewritten. What I’ve seen (which may or may not be normal) is top line a statement about why your experience makes you good to this point, and bottom line is your push line of strat or no strat and why you’ll be good in the future. Honestly though I’m sure everywhere is doing it slightly different based on their own interpretation.

No idea. Rumor here is 1BPZ is the new first year IPZ, but for all I know someone made that up.

Yeah they gave out timelines with no PSDM. None of the wings have anything more than a timeline, which makes it hard to do PRFs. Your wing probably did what ours did and had people write PRFs so that there was something to hack on once the PSDM dropped. The way it was explained was there will be no more APZ/BPZ. 5 years of IPZ and when you get promoted you aren’t tagged differently regardless of what year in the zone you were. Everyone getting looked at is supposedly treated the same as well. Without the PSDM though we don’t know for sure, and we don’t know which years are going to be the new IPZ. Basically that means we aren’t really sure who is meeting this board. I know for you that would mean a decent chance of another IPZ look if this all happens this board. There is also a chance they push it to next board, but I doubt it with this much delay. EDIT: if a mod wants to move this to the PRF thread I’m not opposed

🍺 a toast

PACAF commander told our base that at an all call last week. Also PACAF staff thinks that’s why the PSDM for Lt Col is 2 months late so far. Sounds like they are trying to switch to the 5 looks in the zone with no BPZ starting now. In another thread it sounded like someone on this board is a lot closer to the source and was confirming this as well. no idea on how this will affect specific year groups.

I can second that I’ve heard similar rumblings in my corner that this may be coming down the line soon, though I haven’t seen specifics.

When to effectively apply ctrl alt delete.

You’ve already figured out how to be good at pilot training as a cadet. The Air Force could really value your insight. Please help your instructors with their rack and stack when you get to Sheppard.

Career wise? Don’t disagree. Good cadets tended to have decent careers. More of a correlation. Abilities as a pilot? I saw almost 0 correlation between cadet ranking in my fellow ROTC cadets (my school had about 150 in my junior/senior years) and how they did in pilot training. PCSM seemed to be one of the few things that did correlate. Obviously this is just my point of view and there are always exceptions, but it was a fairly sizable group.

No, a good PCSM from what I saw was just a decent indicator. Plenty of dudes with bad PCSMs picked it up quick. My point is while even that may be an indicator there is no cookie cutter perfect every time UPT student, and a lot of what you think is important to UPT as a cadet doesn’t translate to automatic success in UPT.

Your score on whatever the hand eye coordination test thing was, and previous hours in an airplane. Abilities as a student? Mostly irrelevant. It shows a drive to succeed. Lots of “bad” cadets are great in UPT, and lots of “good” cadets are terrible.

What if one parent isn’t a citizen, just a green card? That effects more than a few people.

My wing hasn’t had a historian for close to 2 years

The global hawks here at my overseas base are parked next to the base aero club hangar...

Then go be a mx Officer. All you have to do is not quit to command. Higher risk reward in the flying world, but at the end of the day you get to go crew planes and put warheads on foreheads. Do you really want to go back in time to commissioning and choose a non aircrew path to command? Not doing anything wrong does not a good commander make either. It just means you took care of what you can control, but it doesn’t mean you’d make a good commander. Not that you wouldn’t but one doesn’t necessarily equal the other.

Obviously they flipped 1 and 2, but I’ll forgive them. https://www.popularmechanics.com/military/aviation/g28612977/badass-planes-ranked/?source=nl&utm_source=nl_pop&utm_medium=email&date=080719&src=nl&utm_campaign=17709519&slide=24

Meh. Replace release weapon with airdrop and it sounds like a local herk sortie minus the 4 ship formation low levels and formation tac arrivals. A better argument is they flew 38s in UPT and therefor have relevant experience.

I think you are close but I think the 2 real problems with 11Ms (I’m a pimply faced herbivore herk driver) are 1, they don't understanding it’s a different flying in the fighter world with different skill sets. There is some overlap with some heavies but not all and it’s hard to teach from that perspective but you can overcome it with some extra hours. 2, and I think the bigger problem is who is considered a good pilot in the heavy world. Guys that have the -1 memorized and are good office workers but have hands of 2 ton bricks are considered great pilots on most platforms. Hand skill almost doesn’t matter based on the type of flying being accomplished. This means you send your “best” pilots to go fly planes that actually take some SA and hand skill and the reason they sucked in UPT comes right back to the forefront. Also it seems everyone is getting a fighter now, which means who is getting the heavies? The bottom of the class, even more so than it used to be. 10 years ago # 3 of 27 is going heavies and adding to those platforms. (While also contributing to the current fighter woes). Not the same today (also contributing to some of the perceived lack of talent. Not every fighter pilot is 1 or 2 in his class, he may have been 7 or 8 now)

List should be out