ClearedHot

Have a buddy at Southwest who posted this: We had a full class of 30 new hires; only 10 showed up for class, why? Long time to upgrade (10+ YEARS), we fly more than our peers for same or less pay, poor contract. Not so at Delta and FedEx…for starters….

Should be good, it was Fundy that was hacked then taken down at the request of the Russians.

The other piece is USAF pushed an RFI to industry as park of their "market research." By business rules if their is more than one technically compliant response they have to go to an RFP. Multiple companies responded and the USAF graded the homework in hours...literally HOURS. large documents full of engineering reviewed and discounted in hours, ultimately declared "not technically feasible. That response meant USAF could say there is only one choice so we are going to sole source to Boeing...AND we are going to give BOEING a contract to grade the submissions for the NATO AWACS replacement...including their own. Honestly I believe this is on par with the tanker shenanigans that put people in jail.

Not applicable in this case...True AGILE is simply a programing method not an acquisition process. I won't list them here, if you are on a .mil net simply contact PEO-FW and they will share their AGILE programs. I can assure you there are numerous highly successful, once of them running for over 15 years. I will share an example of the benefits of AGILE. From the LAE one of the programs was restricted to TPS grads only because the plane had not been certified by the Air Force. There was an O-6 TPS grad who was a GRP/CC who flew that airplane and gave an input to the team about the HOTAS arrangement (I think a sensor or weapons slaving input). He came back for a second flight a week later and the team informed him the change had been made in MMS for HOTAS. At first he didn't believe it. That change was now in the OFP which includes STC approval because it can communicate with he autopilot. The company was able the change overnight, sent it to the SIL for regression testing, then to the OEM for two test flights, all completed within 7 days thanks to AGILE and without breaking the STC. The same change in the F-16 OFP using waterfall would have taken 6 months or more. Shack! There are other more capable radars that are TRL-9 as well as platforms out there. The risk and delivery schedule is the same and at a lower cost point. The problem is USAF has to take more than a cursory look. Again, I refer you to the problems Wedgetail is currently having.

How did you donate? The Russians hacked his Fundy link. I have his wire info and Venmo.

A good man and good friend, doing incredible work over there.

Wouldn't than mean we should censor Jen Psaki who from the White House Podium has shared these truth bombs: "Hunter Biden Story is Russian Disinfo" "Putin Price Hike on gas" "Inflation is transitory" "It is irresponsible to say Americans are stranded in Afghanistan, they are not" "Psaki denies transporting illegal immigrants at 0230 AM is the middle of the night, calls it early flight"

You must not be dealing in the SOCOM realm, off the top of my thick skull I can think of four VERY successful programs, all software mission management programs. When I was on active duty I only had a cursory knowledge of AGILE. It wasn't until I joined industry that I got a full immersion and better understanding. As a frame of reference my undergrad was in computer engineering so I was most certainly a legacy guy. I think the seniors were slow to understand and believe, mainly because the PMs are older and stuck in their ways. As an example I recall sitting in a long meeting with the SPO as we discussed progress on a current effort. My company had just concluded an Agile Sprint and we were WAY ahead and very confident on our progress. They were trying to tell us we were way behind because they were stuck in the Waterfall construct, it was painful to walk them through it. We went on to deliver EARLY with ZERO defects for that ATP. I disagree with that assessment, the entire software industry is switching to AGILE for a reason. Time and again it has proven more effective and efficient than waterfall. Most of the issues I've seen come from a lack of government understanding. In the scenario above the government actually mandated that we convert AGILE metrics to waterfall so they could understand and report up. That conversion wasted a lot of time and $, we still delivered early. I 100% agree on Boeing, they are a train wreck. While on active duty I watched them take collaborative software developed by both government and Boeing software folks and slap a "Boeing Proprietary" label inside the code. I think if you look beyond the five bigs you will see some companies have actually done a superb job with AGILE. With regard to T-7...dear god the program is an abortion. It is failing on some many performance metrics...horrific. Look outside the AF at FARA and FLARA...those are going to be HUGE procurement programs (if they survive), and they have MOSA from both a hardware and software perspective all over them. Sorry but I 100% disagree. Wedgetail is having SERIOUS issues, look beyond the glossy brochure as you said. There are programs that can deliver on the same timeline or sooner with FAR more capability. I know I am now a slimy contractor but I am also a huge skeptic and in this case I hit the I believe button after many long talks with the engineers and looking at and putting my paws the tech/equipment/software myself.

Brother I didn't say your entire post was false, I was very specific in what I quoted. It is not the factors, it is the alternatives and how singled minded they are in discounting alternatives. There was ZERO rigor in the process, actually an ignorance of reality in an effort to quickly sole source to Boeing. I do NOT view Wedgetail as a win. The program is having SERIOUS issues (Australia’s Troubled E-7A “Wedgetail” AWACS Program), causing others like South Korea to walk away. On the EXACT same timeline as Wedgetail there are alternatives with far more capability but they don't want a competition.

Great point and kills two birds with one stone. Highly recommend you take a look at Modular Open Systems Approach (MOSA). When married with AGILE Software Development it is the path of the future that provides for rapid upgrades and development while allowing the government to retain data rights so a single company can't "vendor lock" a program and charge exorbitant fees to upgrade or change.

Depends on the company. Sadly they plane to go sole source to Boeing and Boeing is a hot mess right now. They almost went bankrupt and they are YEARS late and a BILLION over budget on two 747s for POTUS.

Old guy knows better? I was in the room two weeks ago when alternatives where reviewed, were you? Did you read the responses to the RFI they sent out? There is obviously much you don't know about the current situation.

Watch the testimony and questions that follow. Why put it under DHS except to harness broad legal powers? Look at the lady they are installing as the director, look at her words about the Hunter Biden laptop and her book How to Lose the Information War: Russia, Fake News, and the Future of Conflict "What's changed about [fighting disinformation] today is the tools and tactics and speed at which the info spreads. Part of this is not only building resilience but we have to get the regulatory framework in place so that we can respond more effectively." “...In the digital sphere, there’s artificial amplification of particular ideas, and so it’s cheating in the marketplace of ideas. If digital platforms can’t find an effective way to remove those fake voices, the trolls, the bots, then you’re not actually approximating the true public square.” Are you remotely serious? Russia - Pravda Nazi's - Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment Iran - The Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance - Additionally the "Supreme Leader has the power to appoint and dismiss the leaders of the judiciary, the state radio and television networks. North Korea - Korean Central Television - It is so bad in North Korea that wrote a book called The Ministry of Truth ! The 1st amendment is crystal clear - Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. In a free country the government does not get to decide what is true and what isn't or what the press can report. Based on how well our own government did with Vietnam, tests on American soldiers, Watergate...the list goes on. The 4th estate is vital and although right now they are extremely dysfunctional, we NEED them.

In what is perhaps the most dystopian thing Biden and his extremists have ever proposed it appears we will now have a Disinformation Czar that falls under the Department of Homeland Security. Department of Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced that his agency is creating a “Disinformation Governance Board.” Is anyone paying attention? Does anyone care? If you swore an oath to the Constitution you should be appalled and shocked. The proposal gives this board the ability to regulate free speech, to take down websites, to control what the press reports. For the record, previous organizations like this only existed in Russia, Nazi Germany, Iran and North Korea. The board will be led by Nina Jankowicz – a disinformation expert who has been criticized for repeatedly casting doubt on The Post’s reporting about Hunter Biden’s laptop.In October 2020, after The New York Post exposed damning emails and other information in Hunter Biden's laptop, Jankowicz scoffed and said “We should view it as a Trump campaign product.” If she held this position two years ago not only would the laptop story have been crushed on Twitter and Facebook, she would have shut down the NY Post and Foxnews. If this succeeds the Constitution is dead. Please enjoy the Tik Tok this lunatic made! Czar.mp4

Shameful, those around him and in the cabinet have a DUTY to step forward and say something. Dude is cognitively impaired, we all see it. I don't want Harris as a President but this is getting scary.

Absolute nonsense and false.

A bit more specific? Installing what tablet? Installing the tablet where? I have tried several Ipads starting with an Ipad Pro thinking bigger was better but it was difficult to mount and bulky in the cockpit. For the past three years I've been using an a bigger IPad Air which worked well but honestly was still a bit big. A few months ago I moved to the new IPad Mini 6 and it is perfect for me. I have a new airplane with full glass but use the IPad to send the flight plan and clearance changes wirelessly to my panel, really cuts down on button pushing. I can mount the Mini or put it on my leg, very versatile. My panel is backwards compatabile so I get ADS-B info in addition to what is displayed on the Garmin.

Start to open versus fully open is a big difference, especially when Blue State economies fully opened later and they have a big impact on our economy as a whole. Not sure which Blue State you live in, assuming Washington or Oregon? To see the damage look at New York which at Biden's urging kept mandates and closures in place the longest. I am not 100% but weren't they the last to allow indoor dinning. I know they were the last to end vaccine mandates to eat inside and that was this past February. To see how the Blue States performed and their impact on the rest of the economy take a peek at this article by CNN Business (hardly a right wing source). The punchline is policies in New York took their economy from #3 in the country to #47 and it hurt our nation as a whole. Keep in mind New York contributes 8% to the U.S. GDP. Deblasio and Cuomo combined to form a new a new lunacy that saw impacts beyond the city/state...it helped drag down our overall U.S. GDP. How bad is the Empire State compared to the other 49 states? In 2019, before Covid hit, New York had the third-strongest economy among US states, lagging only Texas and California. The state's gross domestic product — the broadest measure of economic activity — was nearly $1.8 trillion, on par with the GDP of Italy. More than $1 trillion of that came from economic activity in New York City. The state contributed more than 8% to America's overall GDP that year. New York's GDP contracted by 5.9% last year, a bigger decline than the total US GDP suffered, putting it at No. 47 out of all 50 states for economic growth. Why New York lags behind more severe lockdown protocols than in many other parts of the country. And the challenges don't end there: One of the components of the Back-to-Normal Index that holds New York back the most is the shortage of restaurant-goers, according to Colyar. The state is still 40% below its pre-pandemic, eat-in diner volume, while the nation as a whole is down only 13%.

There are options that fly higher, further and longer than Wedgetail and they have a MUCH better radar. Again, Wedgetail is 15 years old and based on a 737 platform limited to the mid 30's that can't be upgraded any further. Here is how corrupt and broken the system is right now. Boeing-Led Team to Explore E-3 AWACS Replacement Options for NATO Yes the article is true, Boeing has been hired to grade alternatives for replacing the NATO AWACS. How this is legal, ethical, possible is simply beyond me...seriously WTF!

While I don't lay all of the blame for our current situation at the feet of the Biden Administration, I think four big factors would have been very different had Trump won the election. Energy costs - Whatever you think about pipelines and the actual utility of the Keystone Pipeline, the Biden administration launched multiple executive orders at the energy industry which have most certainly impacted the price and availability of oil. The narratives are all over the place but when you attack pipelines, refineries and drilling, you are going to impact the price of oil. The administration is attempting to spin many of these issues like the 9,000 unused leases on federal land without admitting they are holding up many of those leases through lawsuits. Both sides are guilty and there are other factors like Putin going into Ukraine but ultimately Biden's policy has caused the price of oil to nearly doubled since he took office and most of that run up occurred well before Russia launched their attack. Continuing stimulus - Obviously we needed stimulus and support during a pandemic, but Biden continued to dump gasoline on what most knew was a raging fire. $1.9T in relief and payments kept people out of the workforce WAY longer than was needed. All that extra cash without workers available to produce goods caused a huge bubble of demand to surge through the economy. While the supply chain issues are not entirely Biden's fault, some of that blame does fall on the DNC and their unions, just look at the situation at the Long Beach Port. Crane operators making $250,000 a year refusing to work overtime in an emergency, refusing to allow non-union workers to help in an emergency and refusing to surge the port to 24 hour a day operations. I honestly think Trump would have federalized that operation, at least temporarily. I hope we learned our lesson on this one. COVID Lockdown Policy - Biden and his Uber left folks kept things closed WAY too long. The implications have had second and third order effects all across the economy. Fed Policy - While the Fed is meant to be an independent body they do seem to follow the lead of the President. They certainly did under Trump. The Fed COMPLETELY missed the boat on interest rates. They should have been slowly raising rates a year ago but they waited on perception of Biden and partially in response surging energy prices. Now that they are late to the game they are trying to fix everything all at once. When you signal four consecutive 50 basis point raises, the possibility of a 75 point basis raise, openly say interest rates should equal or exceed inflation and out right say the interest rate raises should be "front loaded", you again crush the economy. Most people don't realize the impact of increasing interest rates. Look at the report released today showing 1.4% GDP contraction, if you dig into the numbers you will see a decrease in home sales of over 1.5%. That will further crush the economy as fewer people buy appliances, building materials and other home upgrades. As my wealth advisor put it yesterday, they are going from creating inflation to completely putting out any fire related to the economy. As a frame of reference the U.S. Economy went from 6.9% in Q4 2021 to -1.4% in Q1 2022.

U.S. GDP SHRINKS 1.4% U.S. Inflation 8.5% from March 2021 - March 2022 No worries as long as we don't have bad tweets from the orange man.

Epic...Epic mistake. Sadly they have Stockholm syndrome...Is the Wedgetail better than the E-3, absolutely, but Wedgetail is 15 year old technology and there were other, newer, far more capable options. Sadly the warfighter will get another substandard product. I wonder why South Korea is walking away from Wedgetail....

First, more does not mean better and I hope you can see the difference. Notice in the chart below the vast majority of what would be considered the mainstream media organizations are well left. Among the worst is NPR which we as taxpayers subsidize, which is simply not right. Second, even if you gave equal credential weight to all of the sites lists, the number of left leaning sites is double what leans towards the right. I would disagree mainly because the problem became FAR worse under Trump. Under his term the Liberal media lost it's mind and went from bias to outright cheer leading and actively working for the DNC to win. They were (and still are), active and willing participants in suppressing news stories in order to shape the election. A bit of denial and hubris here brother. The Dems made great theater of their supposed outrage for most of Trump's term pushing a Russia Collusion lie based on a fake dossier that THEY built...all the way to impeachment in the house. Have you forgotten the live telecast of them slowly and painfully walking the articles of impeachment over to the Senate? They were also active participants in suppressing the Hunter Laptop story which most certainly would have impacted the election. Again, not saying Hunter is guilty, but as has been discussed the amount of evidence CLEARLY cleared the hurdle of an honest an unbiased press investigating what happened. Sadly the 4th estate is dead.

For the second time in this conflict the pundits predicted Russia would quickly dominate at least part of Ukraine. It appears the Russians shifted to the south and an apparent strategy to make Ukraine a land locked country by capturing all access to the Black Sea. Several weeks ago the experts said this would be a different fight on wide open flat ground where the Russian armor advantage would allow for maneuver warfare and a more certain victory. The Russian also changed commanders and brought in a brutal dude who leveled much of contested Syria. The new commander seems content to slowly grind forward using massive firepower to level everything in front of the Russian. The will change once past Maripol and into open terrain. If the Ukrainians are going to hold they are going this added armor but more importantly they are going to have to fix their interior lines and supply chain. I have a friend on the ground who is leading a group of former SOF folks who are training the Ukrainians. Despite massive aid from the U.S. and other nations, supply issues and shortages continue to plague their efforts. If you watch FlightRadar24 you can see the steady stream of C-17's and other platforms pouring into border nations each day. Word form the ground is we have no problem getting supplies and equipment across the border but the Ukrainians don't have a mature supply chain that can move things to the front efficiently. Also, it appears some local commanders in areas well outside the fight have been hoarding weapons and supplies. Understandably they want to be prepared should the fight come their way but the front line folks are suffering as a result. Talking to my friend on the ground he related a story about a front line commander who recently rotated out of the front for a day to resupply and reequip. That commander lost six men they day before, they all bled out at a casualty collection point due to lack of medical supplies. Interestingly this morning I read a report stating the UK MOD thinks Ukraine again controls much of its airspace. It remains to be seen if they can take advantage of this change and move equipment and supplies quicker and more freely without being interdicted by the Russians. If they can get their new armor and a portion of the many anti-armor missile systems that have been provided to the front, they may well be able to deter a Russian combined arms maneuver style attack across the south. The question is how will Putin respond if the Ukrainians stop them again.