joe1234

A tanker works with almost every other airframe/mission...fighters, bombers, paxlift/airlift, AE, AFSOC, C2/ISR, Navy, Marines, nuclear, foreign military, etc. Because of that, the missions are going to be very diverse. In one month, a crew could go from supporting a fighter exercise one week, sitting nuclear alert the next week, flying an aeromedical evac mission the week after, and then supporting up gunships to finish off the month. The tanker is actually very cheap per flight hour and has very long legs, so you get some interesting taskings that you would never expect.

I'll break with convention here and say that I admire scoobs for his consistency. He's been trolling this forum since like 2004 -- that takes some serious willpower and dedication.

Well, with my elementary understanding of reserve retirements, if you only have 3 years left, you'd be at 6205 points, and you need 7300 for an active duty retirement. You could probably pick up an active duty retirement in 8 years as a part timer. Or you could just do 3 good years and collect when you're 60.

It's the crab in the bucket mentality. When one crab tries to escape and achieve freedom, another one will pull it back down to captivity making escape impossible for anyone else. It's best to ignore it.

The fact that you can't see the glaringly obvious downsides to this is enough to tell me that you shouldn't do it. To avoid torturing you... What happens if someone PCSes? What happens if someone gets married and doesn't want to raise a kid in the bro mansion? Who pays for something if it breaks? How do you enforce that? How easy do you think it is to resell a million dollar mansion?

My understanding was that they deny/approve apps based on your proposed date of separation, not the date you submit it. So, if your ADSC was up on Jan 1, 2018, you could apply for a DOS on Jan 1, 2017 and probably get it, but the earliest you could submit it for that particular DOS is July 1, 2017 (~180 days prior). Someone correct me if I'm wrong though.

Where do you get that info from? I only ask because I'm wondering if I need to make a phone call down to AFPC after the holidays and find out what they are approving or not approving. I'm also an 11M.

I have often found that there is a time value that correlates with the quality of one's time in service. For example, here is no way in hell I could imagine signing a 10 year UPT contract in today's AF, because the atmosphere has changed so much for the worse. When you went back to the AF, it was a much different AF back then, and it wasn't even that long ago. These days.....I don't know. We have witch hunts, yearly budget crises, constant personnel missteps, looming acquisitions disasters and plethora of attractive alternatives. If the Air Force was a stock, I would be shorting it. I would imagine most others would, too.

Okay, sure, if you're not flying any aircraft at all, ever, then yes getting some time in a T-38 is better than sitting on the ground for weeks at a time. My point is that the T-38 isn't some magic bullet that makes you better at flying every aircraft in the inventory. If being a good JSTARS pilot involved flying formation, BFM, and flying low levels, then yes, the T-38 would be fantastic. But it doesn't. It's a costly solution that provides very little marginal benefit in that community. What DOES make a JSTARS, or an RJ, or an AWACS pilot better as a pilot besides GK is: 1) practicing air refueling, 2) practicing enroute navigation, and 3) practicing landings in a big airplane. I don't know or care what B-2 or U-2 pilots need because I know very little about flying their aircraft, which is why I didn't comment on that. Sorry if when I said ISR, I forgot to carve out a U-2 exception....I meant big ISR. And TreeA10 I have no idea what you are talking about, unless you were landing a 707/-135 at the time, in which case, please elaborate.

The T-38 would be a terrible companion trainer for the ISR community, IMO. The most important pilot skills a heavy aircraft pilot has are A/R, enroute navigation, and landing in any possible weather condition that nature can throw at you after a long day. While yanking and banking and flying fingertip looks great for the recruiting videos, it's not gonna make me any better at putting an RJ down on the ground at night in a -20 degree Alaskan blizzard after a 24 hour duty day. The T-38 is great at making pilots better at skills that are completely irrelevant to a heavy MWS's mission.

This is such a fun thread, and I was originally going to leave it be, but conversing with someone who has such a radically different....perspective was too good to pass up. A few questions, if you will. I'm not intending to judge you or offend, I'm just looking for a civilized exchange of ideas. 1) In the majority of disaster situations that I've seen the world over, it's typically chaos in urban areas, a lack of supply in the rural, followed by the government eventually re-asserting itself as it is able through the military or civil authorities. Since the US military is one of the most powerful and well-outfitted organizations in the world, and you are (I assume) in the military, doesn't it stand to reason that your best chance to weather out a SHTF scenario is your association and access to a nearby DoD installation? 2) Defending your patch of land with a bunch of guns seems like something you feel the need to do in a SHTF scenario. If I'm a sociopath, what's to stop me from simply silently sneaking in your place at 3am and cutting your throat, rather than an obvious ranged frontal attack which seems to be the only thing you're ready for? Do you plan on posting guards on a 24 hr watch? How many people do you need to effectively defend a patch of land with a gun that rotate 24 hr shifts every day? I don't know, it just seems like a losing proposition to defend your poorly defensible, value-less land with so little manpower. After all, absent a government authority to enforce property rights, it's not really "your land" anymore -- it's just land and ceases to have any value outside of what is on it. I would feel pretty fucking stupid getting members of my family possibly wounded or killed to defend a mass of wood and drywall if the National Guard simply rode in a week later establishing order and distributing relief supplies. Logically, to me, your best defense is to hole up in a relatively unknown, isolated, concealed area that you can get access to within a few days of travel by foot, and camp out there until government control is reestablished. At that point, you live off the land and pre-positioned supplies, while utilizing a radio to build your SA on what's going on. It doesn't fit the narrative of being the gallant heavily armed patriot defending your land against thieves, but it sure as hell seems a lot more safe and reliable. 3) Finding "like minded people" just seems like wishful thinking to me, and an easy way to let your guard down and get taken advantage of at a time when people are panicky and desperate. It's like you're just kind of hoping that this guy you just met isn't going to kill you in your sleep and take your incredibly valuable of supplies to ensure their kids don't starve. Again, going back to #1, all the like minded people for me are the ones on the military base.

I hope you'll continue to stick around these parts and offer up any insights or advice about your transition to the promised land. Wish you all the best, man.

Caveat: I grew up religious, so I'm not taking a stance in this slap fight, but I felt the following needed to be said. Atheism is a lot like what gay marriage was 10-15 years ago. Eventually it starts off as a niche movement that's steadily growing. Then the sheer amount of people drives general acceptance and it's not a niche anymore. Then, casual bystanders start changing their mind and switch over, not necessarily atheist themselves, but supportive of their movement. And pretty soon, before you know it, the goalposts have shifted, the opinion that a lack of religion in any openly public or government form is the "new normal", and your stance that was reasonable and compromising 10 years ago (remember how endorsing civilian unions was a popular opinion) makes you look like a social conservative today, and an outright bigot 10 years from now. Ironically, this was the way Christianity became so popular, except add in a lot more persecution, and extend the timeline about 300 years.

You are entitled to whatever the marketplace dictates you are entitled to. AF pilots are entitled to more than what the military has to offer, so people are leaving in droves. Have fun with whatever is left behind. Also, dude, you don't get to preach about service to people pulling an 11-year obligation at the bare minimum.

Fuck it, I'll say what everyone here thinks but can't acknowledge in real life. All jobs are not created equal. A 13-year O-4 FSS officer with a perfect record is not worth as much as the 13-year O-4 instructor/evaluator aircrew, period dot, full stop. But we pay them the same. We promote them at the same rates for O-4 (not sure about O-5). Only at the higher echelons does the split happen, but not before. That FSS officer could be the most incredible leader in the history of leadership, school grad, volunteers for every little brown nosing event, does all the big blue crap, and they STILL won't be as valuable as the #15/20 fighter pilot with similar time in service who has none of those credentials. I can't take a rock star FSS officer and drop him in a CAOC to run a fucking air war, now can I? It's not just pilots, I'm talking anyone involved who has specialized experience that is essential to running or maintaining wartime capability. But we pay these two people the same. And pilots are starting to realize that they are grossly undervalued by the government, so they GTFO. Yes, the bonus and flight pay are a factor, but the combination of QoL+compensation simply doesn't measure up to the alternative. TOTAL compensation of the entire military is killing our budget, but we have a shortfall of people we need to maintain proper combat capability. That tells me that the problem isn't that we're paying our guys too much. It's that we're paying the wrong people too damn much, and the right people not enough. Yes the job is fun, and we all want to be true blue patriot heroes, but you can only look outside and see how much better everyone else has it until you understand that you are completely fucked in the name of fairness. I know none of this will ever actually happen in real life, but in my eyes, we need to figure out who the hell we absolutely need in a war, and work our way backwards, and then whoever needs to get the boot will be very apparent that point.

IMO it makes more sense to go the biz-jet route for a lot of those things, if it's possible. They are incredibly fuel efficient, more inconspicuous, and much easier to support and maintain than a I imagine a 767 would be. If we could find a way to make the systems suites smaller, then it makes more sense. Putting everything into one platform just puts all of your eggs in one basket that is insanely expensive to acquire and maintain, and will be constantly overtasked to support 500 different mission priorities. If you have one jet take 5 different roles, you can't split it into 5 airplanes and task them in different parts of the world, or even the AOR, which pretty much kills your ability to field it effectively. Keep the roles simple so that you can actually put multiple jets where you need them the most, and keep the big jets for the things that need it, like cargo and gas. Also, putting a boom on a business jet is just plain retarded.

It amazes me how much people just refuse to accept this basic truth regarding promotions in the AF. For years, I was pretty jaded with the Air Force, criticizing the way we glorify careerism and playing the game. But you know what? That's what the Air Force wants in its senior officers, and the reason why this organization is the way it is. If you like life on AD, then that's great -- you deserve the benefits that come with doing your time. However, some of us just want to be that glorified captain. The guy who is the badass in his airframe, has the experience, skills, and respect to back it up. The guy that new people look to when they have questions about how to be a better aviator. Not the guy who's not stuck in an office somewhere managing the commander's schedule, wishing he could be out there flying the line, killing it everyday, and living the life they envisioned when they decided to join in the first place. Unfortunately, active duty isn't very kind to glorified captains, now is it? Active duty is what it is. You can't change it, you just learn to accept it. Some people thrive in that environment, other people languish in it because they are being mismanaged and under-utilized. Huggyu2 once sent me a message that's always stuck out....to paraphrase: you deserve to be in an organization that respects and appreciates your skills and experience. For a lot of us, that can't be found on active duty. Back to the point, promotion boards reflect the priorities of the organization. Having different priorities than the Air Force is like being in a bad marriage. Don't stay in a bad marriage just because you're afraid of being alone.

Look, you can be the career guy, get the strats and awards, and have the accolades from leadership, and dodge deployments, and that's completely okay. Sure you won't have the respect of your peers as an aviator, but you will outrank them, so I guess that doesn't matter. Or, you can be the guy who only cares about flying, and busts your ass trying to teach/guide the next generation of flyers. You can be the guy people look to when it comes to difficult questions about flying or doing the mission. Sure you'll probably get passed over, won't get awards, get the shit deployed out of you, and won't be loved by leadership, but at least you'll have the respect of your peers as an aviator, and the respect and thanks of your students for your guidance. I made a decision to be the second one, because I can live with being passed over and RIF'd. I couldn't live with being a careerist.

Actually, I didn't bring race into it. I used a metaphor. At no point did I ever come close to implying that the xenophobia was racially based. I was actually using the example to compare a similar level of discomfort with thinly veiled xenophobia. Would a metaphor using antisemitism, sexism, or homophobia be more to your liking?

Let's try to keep this convo on topic and avoid thread trolling due to weird unexplained internet grudges. I didn't mean to imply anything was racist, it was simply a metaphor. I would just hope that the character of this nation would be above that of the actions that you typically see from prisons and third world autocratic dictatorships. Casual disregard of human life seems commonplace when it comes to finding a permanent "solution" to the Mexican "problem".

I like to think of it as visiting the zoo.

As entertaining as this thread is, the casual suggestions jokingly thrown about where we just simply start killing illegal border crossers doesn't seem so joking and casual when it comes up like 10 different times. It's like being around a bunch of guys who start making a few too many racial jokes and you start to wonder about the quality of the company you keep.

The Forks is 6, Cannon is 10, and Hickam is 47. Seems legit.

I would say, ironically enough, that most people over-inflate the value of the service itself to their own lives. It's sad to see the occasional person who is deathly afraid of leaving active duty military service and the benefits that came with it. Like, "I will die in the street of starvation" levels of despair. And in 100% of those cases, the guy turns out just fine. In the majority of cases I've seen, they end up even better because they were held back from opportunities they never knew existed for them. All I'm saying is, if you had the drive and aptitude to suffer through the massive hoop-jumping marathon of shit it takes to be an AF pilot, you're probably going to remain well above the median of American society.

By your same logic, doesn't that still separate out who is doing the mission and who isn't amongst AMC guys too, but only with a relatively larger scale? And just to pre-empt this "I had it harder" nonsense, we're all pussies compared to WW2 vets.