Majestik Møøse

Don't send garbage. Dime store off-brand toothpaste, 1990s romance novels and the like. If you wouldn't use it yourself, don't bother. Suggestions: Good toilet paper David sunflower seeds Jerky Sage cotton socks Decks of cards Mouth/hair/body wash Loofas AA/AAA Batteries Hot sauce (no Tabasco) Packs of gum Basically all the shit you have to buy in the BX. Come to think of it, they're probably already intercepting this stuff en route, which is why we never see this stuff.

Draftees making your food, knowing your SSN, guarding your base, fixing your jet. No thanks, I want the guys doing those things to be happy.

Mandatory service works in Israel and Finland, but we're different. It's a leftover requirement for them because they needed it for survival in the 20th Century. It'd be really hard for them to institute it now. The vast majority of a population would have see a dire need for mandatory service for it to become law, so effectively it wouldn't be any different from volunteering anyway.

Holy balls what a mess. Step 1.) Delete slides. Step 2.) $100k pilot bonus. Step 3.) Don't change anything else. Step 4.) Measure results and adjust. Be amazed at the scientific method.

My favorite conspiracy theory (copyright: me): This why the Air Force's senior enlisted leaders are pushing for enlisted pilots. So a goddamn finance command chief can finally feel like they control Ops guys.

The following valid reasons have already been stated: 1. We can always get thousands of college grads so sign up to be officers and pilots. We can't retain the experienced ones because we don't pay them enough / they're assigned too much queep. 2. We love it when enlisted guys are motivated enough to become pilots. We've been rewarding hundreds per year with pilot slots and commissions for the past 50 years. This new enlisted pilot program shows neither an appreciation to enlisted guys (because we're not paying them) nor an understanding of #1. 3. There is a lot more required of being a pilot (ref my previous post) than a good ASVAB score, especially since that test is focused on nuts and bolts. High school doesn't measure anything but GPA. We don't pick officers based solely on GPA, or for anything other single measure. Some other country does it differently? IDGAF. European and Israeli "high school" grads are different than ours. They also go to a multi-year academy-like officer training school. The Dutch one is 1.5 years, IDK about the others.

My ops group has stiff-armed the majority of bullshit additional duties out there. The officers are all concentrated on primarily mission-related duties as well as flying. There is so much (worthwhile) work to be done to improve our platform and way of doing business. We couldn't afford to have a "flying-only" guy that doesn't help out with that. Pilots don't just pilot. Flying a plane is hard, but regular Joes can be taught. Learning all the technical shit is doable. Handling EPs is tougher. Formation is tougher. Doing all that in a jet is tougher. Doing that in the middle of the Pacific is tougher. Being responsible for multiple aircraft doing so is tougher. Add in weather. Add in GBAD and air threats and their intent to employ against you. Oh yeah, employment, that's why we're here. What, where, why, when and how will we use the thing? Meld that with everybody else's plan in real time. Who figures all that out and takes the responsibility for doing so? Who figures out how we're going to do that tomorrow and in ten years? The pilots (and navs). It sure isn't some mystical puppet master, and if it is, he's a pilot. So yeah, I want somebody with the ability to graduate fucking college first.

Unfounded theory with no actual evidence: The efforts to turn enlisted dudes into pilots is a power grab by Chiefs. They will finally have control over actual Air Force operations by controlling the careers of the operators. They want the AF to look like the Army - crusty Senior NCOs calling the shots while mentoring/scoffing at inexperienced officer leadership. How I know this: the proposed solutions aren't effects-based, they're based on enlisted guys wanting to sit at the cool kids table. Enlisted pilots solve nothing. They won't hang around longer than better-paid officer pilots. They don't solve Delta's production problem (airlines want 4-year college grads anyway). Most importantly, they don't provide the decentralized decison-making ability/authority that we need in complex NKE-thrashed environments.

The truth is somewhere in the middle. Some of those MC-12/HVAA/AMC guys would've been fine in a fighter; they weren't all bottom of the barrel, only 1-3 were getting fighters in some of those classes. However, figuring out now who would be ok now is tough. The AF already messed up its natural UPT sorting process 6-9 years ago when they knee jerk shut off all those fighter drops. Everyone saw this happening from the start, except the fools that made the decisions.

Well I suppose the U-2 is ok, as long as it is "allowed" to transit through it. Still don't understand why the military has to beg for waivers from the FAA nerdery.

Why are we worrying about ADS-B out on mil jets? Why do we spend one cent on NextGen/GATM/CNS-ATM/1801/EABOD compliance versus spending miney on mission equipment? Because we will "not be legal" in whatever host nation were pandering to?

Attention any lurking senior leaders: get your shit together, go to congress, and stand on their desks until they give you $600m annually for aircrew bonuses. That's $100k more for 6k dudes. All of the harebrained ideas above will cost you way more than that; $600m is only enough to get 600 unqualified wingmen/copilots vs getting thousands of experienced guys to stay. Dont make this hard.

How do you keep it charged? Power from the jet?

What's the worst they could do? Fire you and make you work at FedEx? Seriously, use solid judgement to choose the easiest solution to meet mission needs and tell the haters to fuck off.

We must keep the -217! Otherwise, what will AFFSA do? Other than provide "PhD-level" AIS grads. They no-shit said that. For a fucking 2-week course. https://www.tinker.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/388296/affsa-new-command-at-tinker-new-commander/

Preferred COA: use bro-level individually issued iPads and leave all the min-req'd paper in the jets. Make students/Lts update paper.

Are you suggesting that one of the Air Force's measures of effectiveness should be its ability to successfully retire the U-2?

Amazing. Even in a room by myself, the feeling of embarrassment induced by that song was so strong that I couldn't physically listen farther than "ABU top." Of all the crazy shit I watch on the Internet, this is the one I can't make it through.

To the world's best squadron. Tied only with the other U-2 locations. Ask some of your KC-10 bros if they'd ever go back.

I'm disappointed that his bio has more than 2 references to being a pilot.

So there's got to be a better way to sell this bonus pay problem. Let's go with nice round numbers: to pay an extra $100k/year to 6900 pilots would cost a cool $690M. That's kind of a lot of money, but it's only about 0.69% of the Air Force's annual budget. Literally a drop in the bucket. Imperceptible. Budget dust. BUT! The non-flying officers and Chiefs would have a shit fit at the pay inequality ("No Comm No Bomb!", etc), and while they should be told, "When it costs $69M to produce a competent Finance Officer, I'll pay you more also," that doesn't work in the real world for troop morale. Those guys would be even more depressed and hate us even more. This has to be approached as a financial benefit. I paid extra to outfit my house with LED bulbs (experienced pilots) because in the long run I save money on the time and effort spent on buying way more incandescents (new pilots) and - most significantly - save a shit-ton of money on electricity (upgrade training). Pay $100k extra to keep your experienced pilots and save $Millions per pilot on backfill training for his/her replacement. For very simple math that only takes into account the cost of replacing your experienced guy with a new SNAP fresh from UPT, that 8 years worth of $100k bonus money would only pay for 69% of a new UPT grad. Add in the immeasurable costs of continuous upgrade training for that new guy, and the benefit is astronomical. Next consider the time lost by the experienced instructors to train new guys that could be used to refine TTPs - you get the picture. This shit is easy, but I feel like there's a glass ceiling WRT mil pay. Congress - and our own mil leaders - just can't stomach the idea of having rich military guys. I think it's a jealousy thing rather than a level-headed financial one.

I don't have a plane, but an unusually large number of other U-2 guys do. Everyone is dual qual'd in the T-38 and, even though there are lots of out and backs, cross countries, formation, and low levels, dudes still want to fly on the weekends. It's primarily because of Beale's location in the middle of the West Coast. Turns a 3.5hr drive to Monterrey into a <1hr flight, and the fun factor is way better. Professional pilots don't fly because it's better than their day job, they fly because driving sucks.

"In June 2014, Airbus tested a quarter-scale demonstrator off the coast of Singapore. The demonstrator flew to 3 km and was piloted from a barge." Holy smokes! 3 kilometers up! Call the Smithsonian. "The vehicle currently in development at Airbus will carry four passengers as high as 100 kilometers, and be able to take off and land at a conventional airport. According to Airbus, the vehicle will operate in between the standard airplane and satellite altitudes, and open up a whole new market segment. The spaceplane could be used as a transfer service or for experiments and work in a part of space not occupied by many other vehicles." It'll be used for pay-for-trophy "space" tourism, and you can bet every flight will be "Certified to have crossed the 100km Kármán Line" no matter how far up it goes.

Meanwhile all the Army helicopter dudes up there are flying around making CTAF calls. The MAF is too smart for its own good. I still say a VFR departure is "legal" and satisfies the "necessary for msn accomplishment" requirement. Was everyone able to reach shelter in time?

Dude, what? No.