Lawman
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Posts posted by Lawman
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Somewhere on F-16.net.... A thousand Flanker fanboys cried out and then were suddenly silenced.
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Fulda Gap in the era of Power Point....
Russians will be having Crepes in Paris before we get the damn slides for the counter attack AMB revised for the 7th time. The XO says we didn't use the Brigade standard format.
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In a good number of places, especially those without open carry laws, wearing a real gun in that manner could be construed as brandishing a firearm or public menacing depending on local and state statutes.Even if it were a real gun, why would that merit calling the cops? Did he pull his tattoo out and threaten anyone with it?
Other element to this is we have no idea what the 911 dispatcher actually relayed from the original report. Look I get 2nd amendment shall not be infringed and all that but seriously it's not like this guy was arrested and charged. Officers went on e side of caution as is trained and standard when a firearm is suspected in any call these days. Would you rather some dispatcher question the report and say "nah doesn't sound valid we don't need to roll a unit."
And seriously the guy got a tattoo of a gun so it would look like he had one tucked into his pants. Bitching about this is like being the guy that gets the Hindu symbol that just happen to look like something else at a glance and wondering why everybody assumes your a Neo Nazi.
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There's a HUGE difference between a BSM and a BSM with a V device.
Yeah one is handed out to every First Sergeant who spends his deployment driving around the FOB in his own truck and doing no observed work....
He other is pretty much never approved or automatically downgraded....
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Hate to be a debbie downer, but it isn't any different on this side of the fence. It's still the military.
That's kinda why I'm focused more to the guard aspect of it. I'm not sitting around trying to leave the Active Army like some guys, I'm just not ready to sell the whole ship yet on this if I can do a job in a useful capacity and not have to spend it living the dirt poor Army way just because I refused to look at other options. Don't get me wrong moving doesn't bother me, but no different than the guys that go Active to Guard/Reserve whether AF pure or some other combination, there is a definite bullet in the plus column if knowing your kids can grow up in the same schools district and wife have a job etc.
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Why do you want to leave the army for the AF?
Wait me or him?
My reasons are mostly family oriented. I've still got enough time till retirement (13 years) to be useful to any service whether I stay where I'm at or reset elsewhere. Plus the way Warrant promotions are going it's getting very difficult to retire in this job without having had 6-8 years of enlisted time to eat up some of that clock. I have to make CW4 to retire, and now days promotion rates for that are approaching the teens and not looking to get better any time soon.
Biggest thing for me is being able to buy a house in my 30s and actually live in the damn thing. Or telling my wife we aren't moving in 2.8-3.5 years just because the Army says so. And allow her to use all those degrees we paid for her to get so now she can get an actual career and not some job just to keep her busy.
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When you say criteria for Guard UPT, any idea what those are?
All honesty the idea of staying in Colorado is looking very tempting.
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Sounds like you want into the fixed wing world? If that's the case, good luck, I can't help in any way. If you are interested in looking into the rotary wing world let me know, I can point you towards the functional manager at AFPC as well as some ex-Army Apache dudes flying the Hawk in the Air Force.
Out of morbid curiosity.... Would CV-22 count as Rotory wing to the Air Force
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Once a year, they give this "award" to AAFES. Otherwise, they just rotate it between squadrons. I've always been against it on the grounds that it should go to someone wearing the uniform as opposed to someone who supports it. This circus is absurd at KLRF....that this is who they picked this one time of year? WTF ever.
In all fairness it's not just you guys in Blue.
The Doner stand in Bad Windsheim has a whole wall of awards from every Brigade and Battalion commander going back 15 years..... But it is a really fuckin good Doner.
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Stay flying is a pretty broad term. Technically you could stay in Aviation units of your type your entire career permitting you to maintain a FAC status where you stay on the schedule just at reduced hours compared to a line company pilot. Or you could be the guy that is always drawing the shitty straw and doing staff jobs that keep you out.
Luck and timing, YMMV
Agreed
I can only inagine the screaming that would ensue the first time somebody handed an Alice pack for the 18th Airborne annual ruck requirement to one of these "grass is greener AF guys."
Whatever job you have something will suck and we as humans will bitch about it. If there was an MOS whose job was to receive handys all day while shooting guns and drinking beer that guy would bitch he had to load his own magazines.
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Is it possible for an RLO to stay flying or is is it normal to rotate between flying and staff gigs?
Stay flying is a pretty broad term. Technically you could stay in Aviation units of your type your entire career permitting you to maintain a FAC status where you stay on the schedule just at reduced hours compared to a line company pilot. Or you could be the guy that is always drawing the shitty straw and doing staff jobs that keep you out.
Luck and timing, YMMV
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Don't the WO's have it made on day to days hours worked?
Entirely dependent on the unit and how much of a "made man" that WO's particular position makes him.
There are guys who are almost never at work and seem to get away with it but for the most part it's more myth than fact. I've been at work earlier and stayed later than a lot of the RLOs just because I had a job to do. Good example is all the additional duties one pulls in an Army unit. I was the unit movement officer so for 3 months before deployment I was pulling 12-14 hour days being a combination of a logistician and a carpenter/loadmaster because I had to get our shit loaded for deployment. Meanwhile somewhere there was a safety guy pulling 4 hour days because we had no aircraft and enjoying family time.
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13 years of non doctrinal permissive environment, combined with every Brigade in the Army having Standards guys (super IPs) writing SOPs. Kinda like how nobody even reads the SPINs or complies with them because ###### it.the next time I hear "sausage" or "convoy" I'm going to break something.
Why is it the USAF seems to be the only service that uses Joint Brevity?
But hey the plus side to not knowing our own doctrine is the enemy will never be able to predict our course of action.... *insert fuming anger and a desire to strangle people here*
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Not really true brother, you guys suck at and don't care about close formation work, which is important for slicks to put lots of helicopters into an LZ during an assault. Having your wingman in the correct position to provide mutual support during an attack is still formation work. It's just different; and you guys use trucker comm. Trucker comm is so addictive, much like heroine.
Just because I fly a much larger formation spacing than Army 60's doesn't mean my wingman doesn't have to be good at maintaining spacing and geometry, and in some ways it's harder to maintain that setup from further away when you're power limited.
But thats what I'm talking about.
60s in the Army (especially assault units) are big on the insertion profile and tight formations set in particular ways to fit an LZ. We fly much more dynamic. Great example would be pink team, the only prebriefable point of that is I will be higher than the scout in protecting, beyond that my position is dynamic. Where is the sun, where is he, where is the likely avenue of threat, etc. But when we get told hey fly 3-5 disks apart line abreast it looks like a circus of stupid.
And yeah trucker comm is a good way to put it. Every time I bring up joint brevity I get looked at like I have a dick growing out of my forehead, that's just Army aviation as a whole. After 13 years of continuous ops where all we worry about while home is how to get ready for the next op everything has fallen by the wayside.
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Just curious are you strictly wanting the viewpoint of Army 60's because that's only a narrow portion of Army Aviation.
I'm an Attack guy and many of the things we veiw as critical to your development as an aviator are ignored by their field and vice versa.
Example they are very big on formation flying where as we have no tactical necessity because it prevents weapons employment in an offensive manner. Meanwhile we suck at deliberate planning as a community right now where they are very focused on it. Different takes for different flakes.
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You won't even talk to the Army side at Mother Rucker. Closest will be watching them bus out to other parts of the flight line at Cairns.
Heck I'm here TDY right now and it's the first time I've conversed with AF flight guys and that was at teasers.
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Nsplayer, I think he's making the point of this administration having no credibility left to be taken seriously on an international level. Brinkmanship is easy when you know the other guy will back down.
For 6 years this president has shown that he and key members of his party/base believe the worlds problems are because the US hasn't thought about it from everybody else's side. Hence the criticism of all things Bush, the world wide apology tour, disbanding plans for the missile shield, etc. We have been appeasing Putin for 6 years an he knows it. We have gone out of the way to either ignore Russia (unless it's about gay rights) or try to somehow give them something in the hopes they will reciprocate. So now Putin knows he can pretty much do what he wants. NATO doesn't have the ability to fight him an we don't have the will of leadership even if it was in our interest.
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You need to reread the Budapest Memorandum. We are in no way "bound" to come to the aid of Ukraine. You're making it sound like they're a member of NATO and are invoking Article V, it's nothing close to that. Russia has probably broken THEIR obligations under the Memorandum by failing to "respect Ukrainian independence and sovereignty within its existing borders" and by failing to "refrain from the threat or use of force against Ukraine," but we are under absolutely no obligation to come to Ukraine's defense, regardless of if they request it or not.
Chalk this one up as yet another reason why the proposals for NATO expansion eastward of where it currently is were all really, REALLY stupid ideas.
Your arguing whether is means is or is means "is" on this one. I've read the document but hey since Russia isn't obeying their side we can not obey ours right? It goes through the UN which is pointless since the country being aggressive has veto power and is a permanent member. In the end what the treaty flat requires vs implies isn't important. If we support the Ukrainian sovereignty and recognize their government we will not allow the Russians to simply strong arm them into letting the old president come back like nothing happened. What level of commitment that's gonna require is up for some debate but we definitely aren't coming out on this in our favor if we sit back and watch.
And more importantly this incident will serve as a plain and clear message to every other nation we have signatory agreements with on any level. Will we come to Taiwan's aid if the Chinese get aggressive... Well let's spend a few months defining aid before it's all over anyway. Currently the administration is standing on the international stage hiding behind the theory that it's all gonna just blow over and no hard choices will need to be made if we just wait long enough. That's the political equivalent to a 5 year old hiding under a sheet hoping the monsters go away.
What's funny is if their ousted president hadn't been elected Ukraine would more than likely be a MAP member of NATO despite Germany and France's objections.
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Probably isn't helping that after 13 years of continuous deployments we have a very vocal group of isolationists on both sides of the political isle now days.
People simply don't want to get involved right or wrong, which disgusts me since we are by treaty bound to come to the aid of Ukraine if they called for it. But hey the Oscars are on and I heard Jared Leto made a really important comment about AIDS.
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Anybody got a spare Air-Land Battle Doctrine laying around?
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The Army infuriates me on so may levels. Two side tracks coming and yes these will paint with a broad brush:
1.) Why the warrant system sucks: Army officer pilots can end up in leadership positions without knowing what they are talking about. I tried to setup a a joint integrated fires exercise with the OH-58s on the same base. We had a training area that was at a sort of high altitude for helos, but not what I would call excessive (same as our school house) and not above what the Kiowas had actually done work at recently. Despite me working with the LT platoon leader to answer his leadership's apprehension (due to not knowing) about risk mitigation, the final answer was "no, you can't operate above XXXXmsl" with no regard for why, what was actually going on, and any thoughtful considerations by the dudes on the line.
2.) Infantry Generals who know nothing about anything that isn't grunts.: We were planning a hit, the Apache guys talked about being able to get over target and provides support for X amount of time before needing to go hit a FAARP, then they'd be back for Y period of time then we'll need to leave again. His next comment was "is that because of your crew rest" he changed his tone to mock "crew rest." To the Captain's credit he just replied, no sir we'll need to get more gas. My only point is, how does a dude get to be a 1 star in the current fight and not understand the fundamental aviation aspect of running out of gas?
I say all that, but interactions at my level and down has always been outstanding with the Army, just a bunch of dudes figuring out how to make it happen. Which I guess is why dealing with Army leadership is exasperating.
Never ask a question of a Lt in a 3 Shop unless it involves something like how much are the tickets to the ball gonna cost. Also when asking questions of Cpts confirm PC status or confirm answer with a CW2+.
And I cant tell you how many times Ive wanted to strangle somebody over the issue of crew rest. Bullet heads dont get it and will come up with some goofy ass ways to get around it. I had a night where I spent 13 hours from start to finish physically in the aircraft with it at least APU on. But because I only spun blades for 6 hours of it (granted with a big long ass sit in the middle occasionally firing them to cool the transmission) we were within legal.
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With the lowest ASVAB entry requirements and taking folks in with GED's (the Marines won't accept GED's and the USAF only a few a year) what do you expect?
Thats not the only problem. The bigger issue is we've spent 7 years doing that kind of crap and thanks to the reverse musical chairs that is our enlisted promotion system where we simply have too few people willing to stick around a lot of those problem children now form a good size of our NCO corps.
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You should not have to bang a gun into a table repeatedly to get internal parts to line up.Disagree. Yes, takedown is strange. But once you get it down, it's fast, easy, and requires no tools. There are a few good youtube videos that show the required TTP's.
There is a difference between strange and just stupid.
Saddle up for Syria? Or Op Deny Christmas '13
in General Discussion
Posted
I'm thinking somebody found some stock photo of one and just ran with it. I don't remember seeing anything on Syria getting Flankers.