hindsight2020
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Posts posted by hindsight2020
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2 hours ago, BFM this said:
Huh. Ok.
So, a guaranteed trip for all my friends, or just forewarned is forearmed type thing?
It's a bit of a distinction without difference if you lose your CJO over it, wouldn't you think?
But no, not all your friends at the same time. Just one friend at a time, which is worse frankly imo.
At any rate, if you're seriously interested in understanding what I'm talking about, google "institutional USAF reserves". It's pretty self-critiquing at that point, when you then start talking about navy reserve style invol mob IA within these special coded units.
1 hour ago, Jaded said:Wait, what? If that was part of my post AD job offer I would not so politely say no.
Are they activating existing TRs as well?
Got your attention right quick didn't it? Yeah dude, existing TRs as well. Everybody is vulnerable, this isn't the breakfast buffet. Would you commute to UPT to be vulnerable to 180 day (+41 = 221 freebie for transit) non-flying CENTCOM IAs as a TR airline guy, or even as an AGR with an AFI "deployed in-place" charter back when you signed on the line? Don't answer that, it's a rhetorical question.....
ETA: The Air Force has lost its fucking mind. I'm just describing the water at this point, I'm not really surprised by anything anymore.
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On 12/14/2017 at 9:05 PM, Jaded said:
UPT and IFF are great reserve jobs for airline guys too IMO.
Your gouge is dated I'm afraid. They just handed down non-flying, individual involuntary mobilizations as part of the conditions of employment. I'm not gonna derail the thread with all the implications this has for this specific and non-standard conglomerate of flying units, but suffice to say the impact of not turning this good idea fairy off will be as close a reason as regAF will get to stop loss in the next 12 months. They're about to break the UPT mission on national TV and they don't even know it.
If this is still too cryptic for the gallery, get a map of the CONUS, mark undergraduate training locations, then have google draw the punchline in purple dick crayola for you. Or go ask an airline TR the nuances of double commuting because your frau won't get caught dead living in neither. And for the newhire types in the room and to keep it in tune with the spirit of the thread: Raise your hand if you're interested in playing russian roulette with that shiny new DL/UA/AA/SW CJO your wife gave you fellatio over last night, because you told her you're done missing all your small kid's life milestones on account of updating powerpoint slides for a living in absentia. Caveat fvcking emptor.
Not a personal dig at you or anyone, but like my old CAF DO used to say: "the thing about SA is, if you don't have it, you won't miss it....". Game is chess, it ain't checkers. If people don't pay attention they'll find themselves right back on regAF asking WTF happened...
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7 minutes ago, matmacwc said:
You haven't said how you think you did, what were your check ride scores compared to your classmates.
Don't you know, that doesn't matter these days. Fighters for everybody...until the Viper pipeline starts sucking hind teet again and the BUFF gotta get their tributes. Rinse and repeat. Timing and luck muchacho....
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The Moody UPT re-activation is still in the vaporware stage.
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The last line is legalese so Stanley doesn't default to disconnecting the mask hose at the CRU-60, as opposed to the airplane hose at the CRU-60. Big difference in outcome of course.
But yeah, that's gonna be a lotta sit-downs during stand-up and procedural phase tests lol.
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21 minutes ago, Termy said:
Why mention something then not provide a single detail hindsight? I’m in Afrc have no idea what you are talking about.
It doesn't appear this has percolated outside 22AF circles. We'll take it to PM if so inclined. I'm done talking about it here, plus it's thread drift.
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2 hours ago, icohftb said:
What were they proposing?
I'll give ya a hint....Navy Reserves.
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WRT to UPT production.....
Not helping is the grenade they threw into the bunker two weeks ago on the AFRC side. Let's just say if it goes through, kiss Reserve manning at UPT bye bye. Someone apparently hit "send" too early up there in Robins and now they got a hell of a situation down here in the catacombs. RC is not exactly a captive audience, retention-wise. WTF were they thinking....
Big Blue senior management has officially lost all composure. They're grasping at the straws and it's making it worse everywhere. Frankly, I expect stop-loss at or before end FY18. If they're so willing to lose 100 dollars to save 2 pennies on the RC side, then that tells me they've all but thrown their arms up in the AC side. Stop loss has to be the only logical next step.
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17 minutes ago, ViperMan said:
But seriously, not one post on this here internet (anywhere) has successfully addressed the VERY low hanging critique that a lesser-paid individual has LESS incentive to stay in the AF long-term. Read: enlisted pilots have a greater incentive to separate at their first opportunity than do officer pilots. So, given that, how does having enlisted pilots solve our manning problem?
I've addressed that very point, albeit over at APC. It is understood that an enlisted with access to a job at proverbial Delta (a growing percentage of junior NCOs are attaining a bachelors degree, compared to generations past) at the end of their training commitment has much less incentive to stay than a commissioned officer as the income delta (pun very much intended) is indeed much larger than for the O.
I've yet to see evidence there's a sweeping push for the 11X career field to be manned by enlisted.
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Fraternization rules could use a lot of updating. Too much drama over nothing burgers in the military these days. Female participation in the military to the degree they do today, warrants more liberal frat policy.
Of course, pretending every single male/female interaction out there is a casting couch power dynamic is the flavor du jour, so fat chance frat policy getting liberalized in this climate.
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2 hours ago, LookieRookie said:
Are they actually going to fly in T-6s?
Sure....if the MIF is U (2+).
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20 minutes ago, BeerMan said:
Control Zone BFM...then Fox 3?
A kill is a kill, and good on him, but a golden opportunity to use the gun...
No kidding, especially considering it took him two shots! That guy owes money at the bar for almost missing that turkey twice.
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2 minutes ago, Kenny Powers said:
Everyone is shouting about which jet is better when we really need to be talking about what the requirements are. Find the jets that meet those requirements, but the cheapest one.
We did. The T-100.
That in no way means it will be the choice. Again, those of us who live in the land of what things are and understand the nuances of politcs, understand that the T-50 is all but on rails here, unless Boeing can dig up dirt on Lockmart and stall it out.
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10 minutes ago, BeerMan said:
And no offense but you and Clark sound like you’re on the payroll!
glad I'm not the only one who noticed...
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11 minutes ago, BeerMan said:
No argument from the OA-X standpoint, not my lane and honestly from outside my lane, twin engine, range, payload, and basically fitting into “how we operate as an Air Force” makes sense to me, especially over a turbo prop. Light attack, ISR, whatever...go nuts!
But this is the T-38 replacement thread. Are you arguing that it should be the T-38 replacement?
Exactly my thoughts.
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T-X compliant retrofit to the Cessna SuperCitation, I mean Airland Scorpion, is not even in the T-X running anymore. So it's
My money is Lockmart gets the contract, though in an aggregate view I think the Leonardo DRS M-346 variant (T-100) offering is probably the most balanced option out there that meets the criteria. Current production, ground training systems as well, Israelis currently use it successfully to follow on into the F-35. I really don't know the reason Raytheon backed out of the partnership. Something tells me they probably knew something about LockMart that Leonardo chose to gamble with anyways.
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13 minutes ago, MooseAg03 said:
I think the point with the Scorpion is the positive economics for UPT. In a single track UPT we are just training pilots, let an expanded IFF course in a more advanced afterburning trainer like the T-50 teach high performance maneuvering. I’m just a heavy guy, what do I know, but we are broke. We’ve been trying to buy a new tanker for decades and still don’t have a single tail, and if our trainers suffer similar delays we will break our ability to produce pilots which the Air Force is apparently betting the farm on. It makes sense to me to find an economical advanced trainer and to simplify UPT back to a single phase III jet.
The T-100 economics are on par with the Citationjet, when viewed in the aggregate. We could even beat those economies of scale by going to Yakovlev (the M-346 is but a Yak-130 permutation), but no way the US awards a T-X contract to a peer adversary. Why are we talking about the Scorpion anyways? They're out. I have a better chance of winning bronze in female gymnastics than the T-X program is to down-write the RFP for the hardware.
This is coming down to T-50 and Boeing T-X, with Leonardo DRS (Raytheon stood them up at the prom) as the Cinderella underdog with the T-100 stand-alone pitch. As long as Boeing doesn't win I'm happy. Because Fvck Boeing that's why. Their poorly coded MFD tries to kill me every week, and their tech support literally looks like they hired some laid off cable guys yokels from San Antonio to go give me the runaround while their field office contractors back in KSKF probably make more surfing the web than I do spinning the revolver chamber one more time down here...and I digress.
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40 minutes ago, matmacwc said:
I just don't understand the scorpion love, you guys getting paid? It looks underpowered (from reading the specs, A-10 sort of power) and just butt ugly. If we are going to train the next gen of fighter pilots, we need something that will blow the doors down when you go AB.
No love for the Slowtation here. I'm a T-50 guy all the way, but I'm warming up to the idea a T-100 would get the job done for less devil's money.Boeing's T-X is a concept car boondoggle compared to the former two, which is why I'm not really impressed by their chances.
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37 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:
For a jet that costs $30M plus each...
Noted, but JPATS/JSF demonstrated the multiple-platform position has been largely bypassed by Big Blue going forward. The bottom line is that the T-X requirements are set, both the T50 and the T100 are already in production, with the T-100 having a cost advantage at below $20M based on the M-346 (not far from the Super-Citation, which doesn't even meet the T-X specs in the variant they had before they dropped out).
ScorpionJet's T-X version is vaporware at this point. Cessna openly gave up the effort to tweak the motors and make the aerodynamic mods required to make the superCitation anywhere near a contender (mainly, cut the hell outta that glider ISR wingspan).
I understand your call for austerity based on your apparent regard for the "small-fry" "low-performance" mission set of phase III, but your darling IFF is neither on the path to institutional expansion in present fiscal circumstances, nor getting a dedicated jet that phase III doesn't get to play with. The outcome will be a one aircraft solution, just like it exists currently. The IFF old guard just needs to get with the program. I believe they will.
To your point regarding costs, I think the T-100 is the best choice going forward, though I would love to finish my career in a baby Viper on a purely PFA basis. You and I both know that the T-X, just like JSF, KC-X and JPATS before it, will blow the top off their stated budget. But that has nothing to do with the merits of the hardware, so we're crying over spilt milk on that one. I just want the IOC streamlined before more 38s inflight hull losses due to both the experience and mx fronts.
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1 hour ago, AZwildcat said:
BTW Prince Saleem needs more cigarette breaks and 12 more 87 rides. He's on the 2 year UPT program. Also he won't make formal brief Monday because he's got some Tinder dates in Dallas on Sunday and he doesn't want to drive his Maserati back in the dark. He may make 3rd go if Allah wills it. As-salamu alaykamu vanilla face.
Word.
So here's another story for ya. So there I was as an attached flyer, watching the flt/cc give the cats the formal release spiel. Some shit went down in San Antone I wasn't privy to the weekend prior, and they got straight up Shawshank'd into "flight room CAP". Nobody goes anywhere without an alibi, and pack a lunch. So fast forward to the next day right around 1100ish and I'm about to brief my kid when I see the flt/cc go over to a couple of studs motioning and arguing with Prince S. on the center table:
flt/cc: "Where you think you're going man?"
Pr. S: "Uh, Silver Wings zzir"
flt/cc: "No you're not, what did I tell all of you yesterday about bringing in lunch with ya?"
Pr. S: "Oh yes zzir, but zzir, you see...I don't have a wife, so I don't have anybody to make me lunch...."
The collective room:
I had to bury my face to contain my laughing outburst. I'll never forget the pregnant pause from the flt/cc. Truly didn't see it coming. It was truly a #thuglife moment, and the sincerity and nonchalance with which he said that was Epic... and the day I realized this goddamn place had jumped the shark.
Fast forward more years than I care to remember or admit to, and I feel like the Houston WTF reporter. 50% of my daily grind is spent on this ME nonsense, but somehow we're all tapped out of 38 domestic production up in here though, but DTS ain't gonna unfornicate itself either. And now this mickey mouse business about zero-to-hero? Holy Mary and Joseph on a donkey. Like the man said:
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2 hours ago, di1630 said:
10 years ago AETC was talking about changing UPT/IFF construct. This is nothing new. Our inept leaders will continue to struggle and the good leaders will not be able to fight thru the bureaucracy any time soon.
As for trainers. Italy has a kickass trainer called the M-346....we just put a USAF guy there in exchange. It’s modern and performs extremely well with much of the radar and TGP functions simulated. Plus there is a light combat version.
Really sad the USAF system has failed to outpace others. Again, poor leadership.Raytheon pulled out (sts) of the race as partner with *Leonardo for the T-100, which is the platform variant you're referring to. But Leonardo DRS (the US-based front shell company of the *former) is still bidding it on its own, so don't discount them yet. A production aircraft too, with training systems delivery in-house, so they meet the AF requirements for the program in earnest.
LockMart is a monster though, that's your Goliath. And then you got Boeing, the whiny baby in any competition per usual, where the appeals/litigation is most likely to come from and stall progress at the expense of our National readiness. So by my napkin math it's gonna be more -38 cowbell for all my brothers for the time being. But hey, I'm just a guy trying to come home to the frau and kid after an honest day's effort in the rickety rocket. Doing the bidding for the goddamn House of Saud whilst they tell us we're somehow at max domestic production capacity in the same sentence, and my peers are out flying safe automated whales on the outside paying twice as much. So what the fvck do I know.
Nothing new under the sun though, I'm just saying it would be nice to fly something a little less rode hard and put away wet sometime before my retirement for all my troubles. Wish in one hand and shit on the other type of thing....
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34 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:
The objective requirements for the TX program basically make it a new F-16...yet another blunder.
50 years later I would think we could make a reasonable T-38 replacement in minimal time that would have the economy and dependability of a business jet while still having the performance required to teach formation and BFM. Yet again, this mess is self-induced.
I hear ya, but I think there's two issues at hand, one I agree with you and one I'm not so sure about. I guess I should ask you, what should the TX embodiment look like if you were king? Other than being part of the near-kleptocratic bidding and contracting process of our rent-seeking-contractor-beholden civilian government, I don't see anything obscene or "unreasonable" about a T-50 to replace the clapped out 38. It's not like the JPATS wasn't a blunder, and let's not get into the F-35. All "success" stories as far as the pocket lining they were intended to create. I'm not condoning it, I'm just saying I live in the world of what things are, though I'd love to live in the world of what things should be.
At any rate, it's [T-50] largely commercially available already, which means your complaint about timelines would not otherwise exist if the procurement process wasn't broken to begin with. That's not KAI's fault, though certainly Lockheed is complicit. Now, just because it isn't a weaponized mission set doesn't mean we have to eat another underpowered handicapped airplane for a trainer just so the CAF doesn't get penis envy, if that's what you were getting at with the "nouveau-F16" reference. F404 power is not some sort of FWA just because it's UPT. Less of that ethnocentrism would do the organization a bunch of good imo.
This week is probably not the best week for me to pipe up about the T-38 replacement all things considered, but it's overdue. That I agree with you wholeheartedly. If the political climate is such that these tragedies actually accelerate the implementation, so be it. I very much look forward to a F404 punching class of airplane in SUPT, and I don't think the world will end if they have to go back to a two-airplane UPT in order to pay for it.
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54 minutes ago, Napoleon_Tanerite said:
This has bad idea written all over it. It's not even so much a matter of a particular skill that they learn in Phase 3, it's a matter of raw flight hours and the airmanship that comes with it. We are running into the same thing in the T-1 with the majority of the mission fam portion of the syllabus waived. WGAF about "airdrop" or "refueling" sorties. They learn those skills in the FTU anyway. The issue is the basic SA and airmanship that you can't teach in a sim. If they want to cut Phase 3, a second lap through the T-6 program would be more beneficial than just kicking them down to the FTU to fly much more expensive and unforgiving jets.
Considering our week down here, the sheer irony of this statement does not escape me.
--break break--
I can't speak for the relative merits of the T-1 program, but as it pertains to the 38, yeah whoever suggests all we do in phase III is play patty cake for flight hours can go EABOD, FTUs included. Col Jessup's infamous retort on A Few Good Men seem a fitting response to this garbage.
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12 hours ago, MDDieselPilot said:
As an AD guy who has reached out to similar units looking for any position (AGR would be preferable) and been turned away.. what's the reasoning behind this? Are your Sq's willing to go short-handed a while to keep the AGR/tech spots open for the traditional guys when, one day, they may want or need the full time job? I understand looking out for your own, but it's a bit confusing to me as to why a unit won't give a slot to someone willing to fill it when their own people are busy doing their own thing.
It's not that simple. First of all, many units are running overages on the part-time side, precisely because they know there will be attrition as people chase airlines and finalize domiciles long term. The second-tier immediate effect that has is that a full-timer who curtails (AGR) or quits his part-A (ART) might not have a musical chair to go to on the part-time side of the UMD. That's just not gonna fly when many of these full-time people are going to be future leadership, as invested staples of the unit as full timers tend to historically be. In reality, the "overage" game is played every day and we rarely if ever kick people out over it, but it is a threat to those who transition between status if the hiring on the part-time side gets mismanaged.
Secondly, and this certainly may chap outsider applicants, but it used to be you couldn't get a direct-hire full time position. Certainly the case during the Lost Decade. Part of the reason is obvious logistics of supply and demand at that time of no a-word hiring, but the part that you won't be privy to as an applicant is precisely what @Duck already hinted at. Certain full-time applicants, especially those seeking full time work directly, can be the goobers/rotten apples with preceding AD reputation that nobody wants to hire, and/or who aren't willing to be part-time for very telling reasons (to the unit and their peers). They can also be the chasing-AD retirement types who feel regAF owes them and they're on a mission, and their naked ambition comes at the expense of the TRs they're supposed to be serving. or they could be a location-anchor (ART) townie that would be toxic additions to the unit ( again, me-centric full-timers are the kiss of death to a unit imo). Just because you're willing to take a job doesn't mean you're the right candidate, and these seemingly "soft" distinctions actually matter a ton. Few have the level of introspection to be able to look in the mirror and admit they fall in the aforementioned categories.
Now all that said, your observation is correct. Certain units (pointy end in particular) can be insufferably "ethno-centric" when it comes to the occupational backgrounds of their desired applicants, even in times of buyer's market hiring environment such as today. I do believe some of that old Guard sophomoric bias will become self-correcting as a matter of necessity, and God willing. Hang in there, the weather changes every 6 months in this rickety organization called the USAF.
Civilian T-6 IPs?
in General Discussion
Posted · Edited by hindsight2020
Oh, this shit again? Jesus, how little memory this place has....
Yeah, this is just going to attract the unhirables period dot. No offense to the retirees who can't or won't do the airlines and wouldn't mind playing jet pilot for a paycut, this is statistically not going to carve up enough qualified volume to matter.
I know I know, broad brush, but we went through this shit when they tried to ram the ART conversion at DLF. In the end they had to relent and give us the carve out to the policy. There were simply no takers of consequence. It's always been the same shit with ARTs, prototypical dudes who value getting any federal job as long as it's in this one town, or with townie-dependents, plus an unwillingness or, more often than not, outright inability to get hired at the airlines. And the toxicity that arises from ART leadership out of that demographic is a well established quantity amongst TR circles. None of this is new.
The problem in this particular variation of this bad idea, is that from a straight GS perspective, it gets even worse because the payscale delta gets ridiculously worse from the AGR/AD benchmark. And we haven't even dealt with the survivor benefit issues when a civilian pulls military ejection handles vice ARC, vice AD. RegAF guys simply have no clue on these nuances.
You guys think it's merely about living the simple life post-retirement and getting to fly a fun(ish) clapped out jet, but work dynamics are much more complicated than that. Don't be naive, the friction associated with doing the same job as the other guy for an almost 50K paycut does not go unnoticed. You can't keep AGRs and ARTs from each other's throats, and you think a non-SSR table -2181 series GS making flat GS-13 like a goddamn border patrol guy schmuck, is not gonna dagger at the ARC full-timers or AD green suiters over what he deems a fair level of participation in the organization for his paycut? And now you have an AD OPCON SQ/CC that has to tolerate the same level of title V scoff as they currently tolerate from the sim cadre leadership? Look, I get the schadenfreude for giving UPT IPs a paycut is strong on here, but the second tier effects of this proposal will make the UPT environment more toxic than it already is, by opening up the doors for these statistical-outliers to keep doing this job for a paycut in proverbial Del Rio. Extremely myopic.
And I do know that the dynamics of places like Pensacola were not as rosy as described on here either. I know because we have a guy from there who double dipped as a green suiter and tan suiter, and is now at United when they finally gave him the finger about GS-13 as a T-1 pilot for the nav program down there. The level of toxicity was incredible at that outfit, and people left in droves. And that's in P-cola, CBM DLF and END have no chance of this gaining critical mass.
The only proposition of this bad idea we had heard about on the ARC side "town hall" early this year that I think might have gained traction, was civilian contractor UPT at KAFW. Internationals only, all civilian run, fort worth in order to get these yahoos enough of an geographic incentive to do my job for 50K less, with that crappy FERS retirement, without the ART SSR pay even.
The reality is that the people who could staff these billets as qualified (aka mil retires) are statistically insignificant. This isn't conjecture, we literally went through this exercise in 2013. The rest of the applicants will be the broken toys from the OPM/USAJOBS cesspool who mine that hiring system. Complete unqualified retards. We had anywhere from affirmative action web-footed african american lesbian secretary, to a no-shit ARMY tank driver with a PPL, to a female Affirm action UND graduate 23yo fresh CFI with no turbine experience.. all flagged as qualified for my job (when I was a T-6 IP). Let's stop wasting each others time. And it went nowhere when informed and rational heads prevailed. We just wasted hundreds of man hours repeating ourselves until it predictably went nowhere. And lost people to the airlines due to nothing more than lack of predictability in the midst of this terrible idea being proffered as a threat to their career prospects within the ARC. Stupid. The fact that this end should have been self-evident to the people in charge, was my only gripe over the entire god damn question.
You guys keep tilting at them windmills though.