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Majestik Møøse

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Posts posted by Majestik Møøse

  1. One of those slides roughly translates into:

    "Is this GOOD for the company?"

    Yeah, I noticed that, too. "Act in Netflix's Best Interest", just like Initech! But, according to this slideshow, it's one of their only policies dealing with day to day ethical decisions. Imagine if our Air Force gave officers even a fraction of that responsibility. Would we abuse it?

    Ironic that you highlight Netflix as an ideal to look up to when they've recently pissed away much of their customer good will in the last few months.

    I don't think it's ideal at all; in fact I think they've gone a little too far in many ways. It's definitely the opposite end of the spectrum from us and I think we could both stand to move closer toward the middle. For sure they could obviously use a little better process for ensuring that a few executives don't "crash the jet".

    Processes for the critical stuff, delete the rest.

  2. The link below is to a slideshow (stay with me here) describing Netflix's corporate culture strategy. Whoever put this together has a great grasp on how inflexible bureaucracies are created. Slides 44-77 are relevant.

    http://www.slideshar...0&startSlide=44

    There are a lot of points that parallel observations recently made about the USAF:

    • Company starts out with focus and high performance
    • High performance creates growth which leads to complexity and chaos
    • Complexity is fought with procedures and regulations
    • Too many procedures and regulations drive away talented people
    • Everything still seems fine until the market (battlefield) changes
    • The company is now filled with process followers that cannot adapt quickly enough to change
    • And the best line: "Company generally grinds painfully into irrelevance"

    Their solution is to focus on what they're good at and continually hire better people. Better people don't need as many procedures to do their jobs well. Netflix doesn't get distracted by additional duties (my words) and they let mediocre people go. They analogize their model to that of a pro sports team constantly looking for new talent.

    I'm not saying the USAF should be run just like Netflix. It's a very laissez-faire company, to the extreme of not even having a vacation policy. You just leave whenever you feel like it. They've also made some pretty buffoonerous high-profile decisions lately that seem to show a lack of temperament at the top. Also, a few slides later they specifically state that their management culture is more suited to a creative company than organizations primarily concerned with preventing catastrophic error (such as crashing airplanes). We crashed a lot of jets in the past which begat today's voluminous rulebooks.

    That said, I think we sure as hell could at least a learn something from this kind of thinking. It seems to say that inflexible, ineffective bureaucracy is inevitable and the best way to fix it is by raising the Lowest Common Denominator. The AF may be trying to do this with the RIF but unfortunately the stratification seems to be based on who's the best at following the damn processes.

    Thoughts? Can we ever get out of this downward spiral of bureaucracy?

    • Upvote 1
  3. A huge portion of the shit we carry across the Pacific is people's household goods. We might as well be a moving truck. It's pretty ridiculous that sorties are generated to carry couches around. My solution to this and many other problems in the AF: stop PCSing officers every 2-3 years!

  4. It's probably because somebody used check marks instead of Xs in the signature block. This is the kind of error that could bring down an entire flying squadron; they must want to do the whole thing over just to make sure everything is kosher.

    But seriously, the Vol 2s have it all, specifically Chapter 5. But I wouldn't worry about studying that stuff, it looks like you have a checkride coming up!

  5. The GAU-8 has a 5 mil dispersion. That means an average combat shot will have 45' of dispersion for 80% of the rounds at 9k slant range. It is important to note that mils subtend a greater distance at longer slant ranges so you would not want to open fire any further than 9k. Flashlight effect aside, that means 0.075 bullets/square foot on a 9k slant range three second burst...and that is with the perfect Track-Shoot-Track and no Aiming Error (which is the greatest and most common of all errors in weapons delivery by any platform).

    So, you can see you do not want to cast any more dispersion than is inherent in the system since bullet density is the key to Pk.

    Does that help?

    Is it true that initially the GAU-8 didn't have enough dispersion so they made the gun slightly less accurate? Maybe to overcome said Aiming Error, i.e. to get more of a shotgun effect? I can't remember who told me that.

    I ask because it's so hard to see what's going on 20K' below.

  6. 2) How are you getting around the power issue (for those of us that do not have a power outlet)?

    Battery is supposed to last 10+ hrs under heavy use. Up to a month on standby.

    3) How are you updating it without plugging it in to the AF Network?

    Same way we update ePubs. An approved, spinning hard drive for a go-between.

    6) How can I find out how much it would save our squad/group/AF to stop getting paper products from NGA?

    Supposedly will save Travis something like $1.4 mil per year.

    7) What other things are you using it for (flight planning, PUB Reader, joining the mile high club by yourself while your CO is asleep, etc)?

    Probably light flight planning and absolutely for a pub reader. The best thing is that people can learn to write their own programs.

  7. This is what should be in the press, not some all-female crew flying a KC-10.

    True, but I would guess, based solely on the number of replies to the Gucci Girls thread, that Baseops readers would much rather bitch and complain about silly PR stories than applaud guys that are cooler than them! I will do both. :rock:

    While this is a pretty incredible event, the Pedros are doing missions everyday that 90% (minus some CAF dudes and our EOD bros) of the AF would call insane.

    I am none of the above but I'd love to be doing this. As a KC-10 pilot I have no chance of cross-training so I hope run across the opportunity to steal a helicopter someday. Preferably from a foreign country as part of a daring escape like in the movies. That would be more likely.

  8. Make one of them fall in love with you. Move in together after graduation, then get married. After a few years leave with half his stuff, but leave a can of tuna and the wrench. It'll be great; you could even get his mother in on the joke.

    Dammit I already ran out of positive votes before I got to this post.

    +1

  9. Top rated comment on YouTube:

    "This must be the next aircraft of the Hellenic Air Force!With this aircraft we will ###### the turks!Greetings to our orthodox brothers in Russia!!!!!!!"

    No wonder the Greeks are out of money. Much too worried about new and expensive ways to ###### Turks.

  10. If anything I feel bad for them (I know, I know...spears incoming). My least favorite days are home station when I'm not flying. Those days have the most bull and the least amount of what I became an aviator to do, fly. I've been DNIF for about 2 months and it blows...manning the shop and getting spun up on taskers and briefings is not ideal compared to days flying or deployed actually hacking the real-world mish.

    Could you pull some for short-term rated staff, AIB/SIBs, courts martial, etc? Probably, but anything longer than a 90 day I'd say just isn't smart because this problem could be solved as quickly as it arose and then it's back to flying. And it can't be everyone...you know that the bullsh*t in a squadron hardly stops when you stop flying...

    At least now they'll all have plenty of time to get bullshit bullets so the Sq/Gp/Wg execs don't get all of the good follow-on assignments! [ducks]

  11. Some of this is true and some herbivores get butt-hurt, but not every "heavy" is hauling trash from A to B. Based on knowing tacairlifter as an acquaintance, the platform he flies is neither a jet or a trash hauler so there is room for non-jet pilots who get down in the weeds of a mission where actually flying the plane is a secondary concern.

    Hey man I totally agree. There are lots of heavy dudes out there doing great things. I was just noting that there are quite a few heavy guys out there who can't (or choose not to) see much outside their world.

  12. Are fighter pilots focusing on instruments? Is that the "pilot stuff" you think "pilots all like doing"? You're still joking, right?

    What you guys call Admin is our entire world. Lots of mobility pilots don't realize that or won't admit it.

    I love my squadron, I love my jet, and I think I'm pretty good at flying it, but I'm not delusional. The guys in my UPT class who went to fighters are light-years beyond me now. I'm comfortable enough with my life to admit that.

    Some will get very pissy about this.

  13. “No one person or service is better than the other. We mustn’t forget that.” “I would say every job, no matter how big or how small, is important,” Waite said. “It doesn’t matter if you’re rucking gear up a mountain, or if you’re pumping s--- out of an aircraft.”

    Not true. I wish people would quit spouting this bullshit. Some jobs are absolutely more difficult than others, thus the people that do them are more important. Virtually anyone in the military could learn this guy's job in about a week.

    "Without me, the bathrooms don’t get serviced, cargo doesn’t get shipped on time, and bullets run out ... and the enemy wins.”

    Well ok, he's right about this, our shit trucks were broken for three months in the desert and so we just cancelled all the sorties and played xbox the whole time. The enemy definitely won a little bit there.

  14. The French are so ######ing stupid. "Hey, Peire, why don't we build a really ######ing big plane that is impossible to taxi around airports?"

    I'm probably in the minority here but I think the A380 is a pretty amazing airplane. I don't care who built it, 1.3 million pounds at .85M is a pretty significant achievement. Currently, Airbus is the company that's pushing the envelope in regards to jumbo aircraft. It will cause other manufacturers to build bigger and better things, which is good for everyone.

    As far as it's wingspan, airports should adjust to it IMO. It's not like the early car manufacturers waited around for nice roads to be built. Technology drives its infrastructure, not the other way around.

    Also, though the A380 has had some high profile taxiing incidents, it probably still has a better record than AMC!

  15. For all the pilots that think they're irreplacable, review Air Force OTS.com and see how many wantabe pilots are standing in line to replace you in a heartbeat. In fact, they will help you pack your bags and assist you in filling out your paper work. Experience levels will suffer but that is why you wear safety belts.

    True, there will always be plenty of people that want to be military pilots, but we would rather not have the ones that would otherwise be working at BK. Better pay helps bring in better people, period.

    It doesn't help when an EXPERIENCE pilot crashes a C-17 in Alaska costing over $200M.

    That's a pretty low-SA, douchebag thing to say, dude. I don't care who you may or may not be.

    My wife's step-father retired in 1960 and is still collecting retirement for the last 51 years. As a WWII vet, I say he deserves it, but the gov't is saying when is this old man going to die.

    Yes, he deserves it and so do the rest of us. We joined the military knowing the retirement pay was an option and some of us figure it as possibly part of our retirement planning.

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