HeyEng

C.W. Lemoine breaks down the “Air Force Era of Transformation” on his podcast.

This pilot is suggesting that there might be more trouble on the horizon for UPS!

On a completely unrelated matter, the Navy found the poor scapegrunt not guilty of setting the Bonhomme Richard on fire. I don’t know what the rate of not guilty Court-martial convictions are in the Navy but I’m guessing they are pretty low so I’m guessing the case against him was pretty weak! https://www.2news.com/news/seaman-recruit-found-not-guilty-for-destroying-navy-ship/video_f95d432f-bf23-5bf3-944b-4d5975ed92ec.html

I don’t doubt that circling approaches are a necessary training requirement, I just wonder if it’s necessary to do that type of training in a T-38. On another note, when I worked at ATA we used to regularly do a “circling” type of approach on the 727 in to Midway airport although technically it was a visual maneuver but the pilots who had training in circling approaches did much better than those who didn’t.

As a former FE in the AF as well as civilian life I never had the pleasure of flying an aircraft with wings the size of credit cards so this video was very informative. I never realized that the T-38 was a category E approach aircraft but it should have been obvious since the wings are essentially scaled down from an F-104. The author states that we have been crashing T-38’s on circling approaches for 50+ years so I have to ask, is this type of training really that necessary on the T-38? https://youtu.be/huYvrZm_Y_M?si=UnqokXrEaumim5Mi

I’m in the process of reading John Nichol’s book “Eject! Eject!”. It is the history of the seat ejection system with heavy emphasis on Martin Baker. I purchased the book after watching an episode of Ward Carrol’s podcast after he interviewed this author.

And it was not just limited to NATO countries either, the Soviets had similar plans for Sweden. The Russians learned the hard way not to tango in mock dogfights with Swedish Viggens and often stalled their aircraft with trying to turn into a Viggen at low altitude! Soviet sports and Olympic teams were filled with Spetsnaz agents and were more “free” to wander around in target countries without a KGB keeper that their teammates had to endure!

Gen. Mark Milley was interviewed by CBS Sunday Morning about the Chinese Spy balloon. Apparently the flight was never intended to fly over CONUS and the sensor equipment was never activated. What was really interesting is that he was never asked (or it got left on the editing floor) about the other balloons/dirigibles that were shot down as well!

The DIA responded to a FOIA request from the Black Vault about the origin of Covid and they released a very heavily redacted document revealing very little information in their effort to clear up the mystery of COVID’s origins! https://www.theblackvault.com/documentarchive/dia-releases-heavily-redacted-documents-on-covid-19-origin-raises-more-questions-than-answers/?fbclid=IwAR1ecaNxh1LQQpbUkK-SIWFUn_-Op1UwPzR9CNDy6M-5hHa2RFznk_nEi9w_aem_AfIAp6C21UOEbBJR9GdmIG9PLIA3ZA_Ix7Tgs86oFJDIrmFM8VfkBcZYOZiiiVTtrlQ

I expected that to be a Babylon Bee or Onion article!

It’s also important to remember that a disability rating for a service member is completely different from a civilian. A bum knee or shoulder might just be an annoyance in civilian life but could disqualify you from worldwide deployment and curtail further military employment. Take the AF fit test for example. The AF expects you (males at least) to be able to run a timed 1.5 mile course with little regression for ages 18-49 (after age 49 you get three more minutes) and in any weather environment! There is also a certain amount of fudging going on with VA claims too. I remember one SVO who wanted me to claim all sorts of things I thought was dubious at best. He also had no good answers on what disability claims might affect civilian or GS employment. I can certainly see some individuals being talked into claiming benefits they might later regret.

I can guarantee you that any grunt you talk to who had to train Afghanistan soldiers would tell you that they would fold up like a cheap chair the minute we pulled out and told someone in his/her chain of command. That message got filtered out before it even got up to corporate. Big Blue was not any better! Anyone with a brain could see that mandatory deployment as part of your career progression to do make believe jobs and running around ensuring airmen had their PT shirts tucked in and wearing reflective belts was a logistics nightmare! I ran into so many airmen deployed in Afghanistan and Manas who had no clue what they were doing there other than to do “busy work” and count the days when they returned stateside!

The last line in my paragraph shows how much faith I have in the system. It’s like those “benefits in name only” the DOD likes to roll out only to never fund or man it!

The only retired military personnel I ever heard of being recalled was doctors and specifically doctors like trauma surgeons and the like that the military could drop back into service with little or no training. One would assume that the DOD maintains some sort of database of skills and some sort of matrix timeline of retirees i.e. someone who separated recently vs. someone who has been out for fifteen years. The database would have to be continuously updated and I suspect that some sort of time cutoff would have to be implemented least the database would grow too large to manage. Or maybe they they just throw darts at a dartboard, I can honestly see either scenario!

Thank God! If I ever had to process a voucher through DTS again I think I would jump off a bridge!

I always wondered what would happen if they mobilized the people who Big Blue separated due to the fit test/force shaping polgrom! I could see the AF making you do a fit test the first day you stepped back on a base after being out for several years!

Yea from what I remember or was told years ago sanctuary was implemented so that the military could not RIF people at the 19 year mark and save money by screwing service members out of retirement once they got close to their retirement date. The law was probably written due to abuses by the government and later expanded to include ARC and other members. There is probably a similar law for civil service retirement.

The guy at Ramstein was much older (or looked older, living on the street can do that to you) with white hair and beard.

And on the topic of military retirees living on overseas bases does anyone remember the homeless guy living on Ramstein? The rumor was he was a Colonel who lost his wife and kind of fell off the deep end? I cannot vouch for the story but I actually did see the guy on base pushing around a shopping cart full of cans and other detritus, I wonder how he managed to fly under the radar living on an overseas Air Base.

So they can ensconce themselves in leather, head to toe from Pop’s!

It looks like a possible loss of pressurization of a Cessna Citation V that was flown single pilot with his family. Two F-16’s intercepted and reportedly used flares to to attempt to contact the pilot.

I actually found a DVD copy on eBay. It was not BlueRay but a nice remastered edition with some extras.

Attempted drone strike on the Kremlin: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russia-says-ukraine-attacked-kremlin-with-drones-failed-bid-kill-putin-ria-2023-05-03/

https://warisboring.com/air-force-launches-f-22s-in-response-to-another-balloon-being-tracked-over-us-air-space/?fbclid=IwAR3D2FY_CGNJ1iPSgFTXYWnBRmtvIwNKgUv4UBAmt_cQfQ4LCKQo1gb3AAA