pawnman

Gotta love the useless comparisons..."an eighth of the time that powered flight has existed". Things that took less time than the F-35: The Beatles entire career as a band. The Apollo program from Kennedy's speech to Neil Armstrong. The combined timelines of WWI and WWII. Both Mars rovers were proposed, approved, developed, launched, and have been on Mars for over 3 years. The entire construction, from proposal to completion, of: The Golden Gate Bridge, the World Trade Center, the Empire State Building, the Suez Canal, and the Channel Tunnel. The Manhattan Project. Alexander the Great's conquest of Persia. Caesar's conquest of Gaul. The Wright brothers' first airplane, from conception to Kittyhawk.

Few and far between. Because the Air Force cares more about looking educated compared to other services than it does about tactical proficiency.

It's OK, that's a different pot of money.

The problem is, as a LT, nsplayer has very little power to affect the system. You can call those guys out to their face, but the boss will still promote them because they have an MA and SOS done (X2). That is the core problem....Air Force leadership doesn't seem to care if you can operate on a tactical level, as long as you are checking the right boxes. I've flown with O-5s who are absolutely terrible in the jet, I mean not even IQC level knowledge...but they did the MA, they did SOS and ACSC in correspondence and some joint school in residence, so they were the competitive guys, while the real tactical leaders in the squadron got passed over for not doing ACSC fast enough or not having enough outside activities.

Depends...are you talking about services guys (finance, MPF, persco) or maintenance folks? I submit that 0.5 services to 1 aircrew member is too many.

I think this is where O-3s can have an impact. Stop using cookie-cutter OPRs, and start really stratifying your people. Brief that strat to the SQ/CC, so he has something concrete to use instead of Master's/SOS/ACSC.

No, Rainman, it isn't the deployments and ops tempo. While I don't like to be away from my family, I enjoy deploying because it eliminates much of the queep from homestation (granted, it substitutes other queep...but that queep is generally the easily ignored type) and allows me to focus on mission accomplishment...flying, mission planning, or pre-flighting for other people to go flying. No, what really wears on me is practice OREs, going TDY right after a six-month deployment, doing SOS online so I can do it in person, spending more time away from home doing something that doesn't matter. Squadron Christmas parties can be fun, until the SQ/CC or OG/CC's wife gets a hold of the planning and you're all showing up in mess dress, so you have the added bonus of buying new medals from the last time you had to wear it. Not to mention the several hundred dollars for a formal dress so the wife can come. Woo, fun! No, Rainman, it really is the queep. And it isn't even the individual pieces of queep, although they are incredibly annoying. It is the persistent and total lack of mission focus by the people who implement these pieces of queep. Only tan shirts? Really, missions were not being accomplished due to black shirts? Planes were falling out of the sky due to morale patches? So for me, at least...it is the queep, not the deployments.

We can discuss hypothetical wars if you want...but right now, the mission is an 18-year-old with a rifle.

Some of these are pretty standard gripes. So back to the original question, what mistakes are "WE" (CGOs and FGOs at the squadron level, no offense CH) making that we could correct and put a stop to at least some of this? 1. Magical OPR bullets. Not everyone in your flight is #1/x. Give brutally honest feedback prior to the OPR, give a guy a chance to straighten up and perform...but at the end of the day, stop making your mediocre performers and your all-stars look the same on paper. If we start giving SQ/CCs and WG/CCs actual differences in performance to rack and stack people with, they won't have to use a Master's/SOSx2/SOS DG as the discriminating factors. 2. Tolerating the crap support agencies. Yes, we all expect it, so many of us are at the point where when finance/MPE/etc tells us "Oh, the person who does that is on leave" or "We're closed for training" or "Well, you have to fix what we screwed up in DTS", we accept it. We feel it isn't worth our time and effort to engage with the support agency, and we work out a way to get the job done without them. Maybe it's time to start requesting to talk to A1C Snuffy's supervisor. Then his supervisor's OIC. Will it change overnight? Unlikely. But if his supervisor's game of solitaire keeps getting interrupted, maybe A1C Snuffy won't get a 5 on his next EPR, and maybe he'll learn from his mistake, if only to keep from getting burned again. 3. Coddling students in the squadron. We complain about making everyone feel like a warrior, then we do the same to the new guys in the squadron. Hammer them not only on the flight stuff, but on the expectations of the squadron in general. Make it clear that PFAs are not allowed in scheduling. Make it clear that the FNGs will clean the bar. Essentially, make it clear that the new guys have a place, and that place is not the same as the senior guys'. 4. Goes along with 3, but use your damn bar. Give guys shit for not hanging out in the bar. Make the bar an expected place for the informal debrief following the formal debrief. Make it a point to gather the squadron together in the bar, with morale patches and all, and lock the door so that REMFs can't get in or see what's going on. Hold on the the small bits of heritage we have left. That's all I've got. Obviously, no one at the squadron level has the pull to fix the new uniform reg, or blues on Monday, or the support agencies and their hours of non-operation. But we can start grooming the next batch of leaders to be more like Robin Olds than like the risk-averse, heritage sucking folks that seem to populate the USAF right now.

I do wish PA would stop emphasizing this crap. They should do more like the Navy did with the submarine crews. Come Sept 30, be ready for the string of "first openly gay copilot/pilot/WSO/boom/FE/etc..." followed by "First all gay crew for F-15E/KC-10/B-52/Etc..."

I'm sure we won't send everyone, but having an entire squadron sitting on their asses is way less useful than any of the other suggestions. And let's face it, Raptor pilots aren't exactly bringing the fight to Afghanistan or Iraq. I have no doubt if something bigger happens, we could get those guys back into F-22s in a hurry. Hell, even if all you do is the staff job portion of it, that would lessen the burden on squadrons who are actually deploying on a regular basis.

And then they won't lose gate months. Too bad they'll never fly a Raptor again once they go to UAVs.

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/08/grounded-stealth-fighter-jocks/ Even Wired is reporting it now...this time from the angle that Raptor pilots are going to lose their currencies and have to go through requalification training. I was not aware that only Tyndall and Langley had sims, though...I'm kind of surprised they didn't put them in at the other Raptor bases.

They're all out of regs. Where's the first shirt when you need one?

Sort of my point. My current squadron got copies of my training record from P-Cola...which they promptly shredded. Can't see an ops squadron commander digging through TIMS any more vigorously than they did through the paper records.

And? The paperwork already follows the student. Unless you think that some student, 25 years from now, at his confirmation hearing to become CSAF, will be confronted with UPT paperwork that has "Carrier Qual complete" on it.

While I agree for attacks we can prove came from another government or state-sponsored agency, who do you shoot when someone like anonymous or lulzsec hacks critical infrastructure and does real damage?

Wow. I think I'm gonna have to stick with crazy cat lady.

Three year investigation? How many other causes of death did they rule out?

So he isn't fit enough to go to class and graduate, but he is fit enough to send into combat as an enlisted soldier? WTF?

Happy Birfday, 'Merica!

I submit that if you have multiple Q-3s, then a good leader (as opposed to a good manager) would check the "does not meet standards" under "job performance".

So...why was he wearing the uniform if it wasn't for the upgrade?

I thought the worst O's were usually Academy grads...I keed, I keed.

What, no scenes with them baking the hot wings in the oven?