Hacker

Irrelevant? Hardly. What other organizational groups in human society have the specific purpose of waging state-sponsored violence, with a specific and acknowledged risk to one's individual life, in pursuit of political goals? There are a *lot* of unique leadership and teamwork aspects to the military that aren't found elsewhere.

I'm missing the relevant data about military operations in there. But, more importantly, "diversity is our strength" has *nothing* to do with your search terms. That statement is, and always has been, a reference to diversity of immutable human characteristics. I'm all for diversity of thought being a force multiplier, and there's plenty of evidence in the social sciences for that...but that's not what people mean when the term is used.

Well, I'm a staunch individualist...but that being said, there has never been any data or proof (outside of a cliche catch phrase that was foisted upon society in the 1990s in pursuit of an ideological narrative) that "diversity is our strength." I don't have a problem with the concept if it is actually true...but unfortunately we bypassed the "falsification test" part and went right to the "this is fact and we cannot question it" part.

I am wondering what happened to that thing they used to tell us all in initial training that we were no longer a gaggle of individuals, but that we were all "Airmen" now.

To be fair, both of those statements/decisions were made in a pre e-commerce dominated western world, and before a lot of the political/economic changes in Asia of the last decade that are the ingredients of the current global flow of goods and money. The whole foresight vs hindsight thing, and all.

The purpose was for operators of both DC-10s and MD-11s to have a common pilot type rating to streamline training costs, as well as modernize the avionics and remove the FE position (and remove the weight associated with both). I still don't know what kind of parts commonality there is in terms of the airframe, systems, etc, between the KC-10 and MD-11. The MD has a different wing, different horizontal stab, a different empennage, a different #2 engine design...so far as I'm aware, parts commonality with the DC-10 fleet was never a selling point of the MD-11. FedEx is slowly retiring the entire MD-10 fleet, so there could be a small number of MD-10s available in the boneyard to support KC-10 fleet sustainment, although as mentioned earlier it sounds like the parts which really matter to keeping the KC-10 mission capable are KC-10 specific.

You know the "MD-10" is a different aircraft than the DC-10, in that the MD-10 has been modified with the flight deck of the MD-11 (which eliminates the flight engineer position)? It is a different type rating (for the pilots).

Don't forget that, in the days/months between when international pax flying was shut down, and when the pax carriers decided they were going to conduct some cargo-only flights to keep the revenue stream open, the freight forwarding companies that were previously using the pax carriers still needed to move their product. UPS and FX (and I have to assume Atlas, Kalitta, ATI, Western Global, Sky Lease, and anyone else who picked up that slack) were all in quite a position of power when those forwarders pivoted to them to move their freight. I know FX, at least, rather than just take on that business temporarily, signed multi-year contracts with those freight forwarders. I'm sure there are smart business folks at the other cargo haulers as well who would have also penned longer-term relationships with the freight forwarders, rather than just picking up the work during COVID and allowing it to go back to the pax carriers when the capacity came back.

How much parts commonality is there between the MD-11 and the KC-10?

No..."X" planes are research aircraft, and "Y" aircraft are/were prototypes of aircraft intended for production. And the designation is "e" not "E".

Oh, I'm certain that the AF will wholesale believe that their whatever-the-current-terminology-is sensitivity training doesn't fall under this mandate.

What is insane is that so many people accept without question the theory that in a truly fair and equitable world, every career field would reflect the US population's statistical spread of (insert immutable human characteristic here). There is lots and lots and lots of sociological data throughout history and spanning many societies that counters that theory. It is very, very sad that supposedly smart people in the Air Force have bought into a worldview that yields tokenism over competence.

We are literally de-evolving intellectually as a species. The entire point of The Enlightenment was the idea that humans could use logic and reason to transcend what had previously been tribal barriers to knowledge and understanding of other humans. That the human experience was common to all humans, and that personal experience (e.g. "my truth") could be understood and empathized with by other humans. People are now being taught from a young age -- not just through formal education, but through social cues and other informal learning, and in a wide variety of social and cultural groups -- that one's identity group is the most important characteristic of their existence, which is the diametric opposite concept. This is a road that has a bad end for human civilization.

Y'know, cargo airlines are "airlines", too. You don't have to say "airlines/cargo" because the first term covers the second.

That's exactly the problem -- it is this kind of "begging the question", a statement that is made as fact when it has never been substantiated as being true. Immutable characteristics don't define anything about an individual's character, intelligence, skill, attitudes, etc. The layer after layer of self-selection that is required in order to find one's self in a UPT class virtually guarantees that there is a huge commonality of humanity, motivation, character, attitudes, etc., between classmates.

Uh...I don't even know how to respond to such a logic-free hypothesis. Maybe next they can check to see if different t-shirt colors lead to higher graduation rates.

Only one of the three that I know of. The Personal Endorsement continues to be important, but the same things that have always made a strong application apparently continue to be too.

What is amazing is that, in an Air Force that is massively overly concerned with "how things look", on this one they're mostly concerned with trying desperately to gaslight the people who have identified that there is a problem into thinking that *they* are the problem. The AF can't even get their own dysfunctional leadership processes and priorities executed well.

Had three friends get FedEx interview invitations this week, and one get a job offer at UPS. The dudes who got Purple invites: - One current active duty pointy-nose TPS grad O-4 with a separation date on file this fall. - One former pointy-nose driver, now reserve SUPT IP O-3. - One former AD/reserve MC-12 and C-17 O-4, now a couple years into a Legacy (and vulnerable to being furloughed) who didn't previously have a FX app in. The UPS guy is a former pointy-nose DO who is freshly-separated.

My view in the rearview mirror says that it really took a no-shit turn for the worse right around 9/11.

No, it was a generic "you", not *you* specifically. Really I meant "The AF". This has been the organizational emblem of USAF Mortuary Affairs Operations since 2014. Is 6 years not long enough for the AF to un-fornicate a logo? Is it incompetence or apathy? Or worse? Literally a symbol of "what's wrong with the Air Force."

But it *is* a specific aircraft silhouette -- a Flanker -- and even if it weren't the front-line fighter of our peer-state enemies, it would be in violation of the "rule" in that it *does* depict a specific airframe. It should have never made it past the initial design review for that to begin with. Of course it wasn't intentional, but the fact that the mistake made it through multiple levels of review is what is disturbing. Even worse, the apathy shown toward fixing the error (and, bizarrely, the doubling down on the mistake and digging in of heels to *not* fix it) is a *real* cultural problem, yes. In a culture that is steeped in symbolism -- as in, nearly everything the military does has symbolic meaning -- having an organizational emblem with Flankers overflying the graves of dead American soldiers and a folded American flag is a Russian or Chinese propaganda victory if there ever was one. We should *all* find that disturbing and offensive and massively disrespectful to those who've given the ultimate sacrifice, the very people that organization purports to treat with dignity, honor, and respect. Would you be okay if, say, the "mistake" was putting a folded Chinese flag on there instead of an American flag? Or if a casket came back with a Liberian flag over it by accident? Ludicrous. I guess "excellence in all we do" is just as empty a saying as "Dignity, Honor, Respect".

Plus, there's this great vis-recce powerpoint making the rounds. pa_vis_recce-2.pptx

Here's an email that was previously sent back in January to a number of different recipients, both at Dover, the AF Historian and heraldry folks, as well as CSAF. Apparently none of those folks are concerned about the symbolism of Flankers flying over our military dead and our folded flag enough to fix it.

Had several squadronmates in fighter squadrons who were Mormons. Non-drinkers, non-smokers, non-cursers. They killed commies just as well as the rest of us heathens, and were almost always just as fun bros as anyone else. And, as Evil mentions, they are usually happy to be DDs.