Majestik Møøse

Strange things happen in a nation when you start losing a shooting war

Tough problem. This forum has lamented “every airman a warrior” before because the perception was that services were just as important as Ops. Perhaps a shift to “if the jets you see taking off and landing can’t find and kill the ballistic missiles, they will kill you and your friends, so we need to make sure the force generation is smooth and efficient” might work.

Pilots succeed at things because that’s how they became pilots in the first place. Take the top 40% of USAFA guys, the top 20% of ROTC/OTS, keep stratifying them through track select and drop night, re-flow the FTU washouts, give the remaining top 6.9% millions of dollars of high speed decision making skills, knowledge, and experience and then spend more millions to upgrade the best ones of those to IP and Patch…and then let them separate and fill their old staff positions with the aforementioned bottom 60-80% guys. The Air Force spends $20M each to produce guys that have survived 12 years of stratified tiers and is willing to let them walk away because they think they can replace them with non-pilots. Incompetence at best.

I have a theory that a lot of our problems are due to a wrong perception of how things degrade. A lot of people think problems get worse on a continuous slope, kind of like flying an ILS. In reality, it’s an exponential degradation that’s not particularly detrimental for a long time, but by the time you realize it has failed the cost to fix it becomes astronomical. Think of a shingle roof, car paint, the back deck boards, even your personal health. They don’t degrade by an even 5% every year, it’s more like above 90% for 20 years, then 85%, 65%, then falling apart. That’s the same with pilots on staffs and experienced pilot manning overall. We’re at the 65% part of the slope. The USAF telling itself that it was “good enough” for the last decade is like ignoring the worn patches on the roof just because it hasn’t leaked yet. Shortly, there will be a dozen leaks and the whole thing will need replacing along with fixing the rotten trusses and moldy drywall. That costs more than just paying to replace the roof before the leaks started. Modern aircraft programs take 20 years to develop, and if your best guys that would’ve been the program managers, strategists and tactical leaders all left from 2015-present, then you have medium-talent guys in a lot of big spots. Getting back in front of that curve will cost way more than if we’d never let it approach the cliff in the first place. But it didn’t look so bad at the time, so those CSAFs don’t look like they caused it. The $50k bonus is hanging onto the tail and patching leaks. To correct the problem, double it at least, and your best guys will start staying. Most pilots I’ve met with mission-focused drive love doing big things for their platform and America, but have doubts when the USAF forces a financial decision to do those world-changing things. I believe that a war vs China will also degrade for one side or the other on that same curve above - and that the degradation is extremely dependent on air power, so I’m not sure how our country can accept anything less than keeping their best pilots both operational and on staff.

Clearly it’s the Dolphins, but they have no intention of warning us. They live the best life on Earth and are happy to keep us at >0’ MSL.

Army Patriots will kill you without a thought because the right light turns on or doesn’t turn on. They do what they’re told and critical thought is discouraged because they’re punished for mistakes. Stay TF away from them. The USAF should own their own air defenses.

That would be an amazing parody skit. Imagine the perpetual second place guy scrambling to get his cut off in a slapstick way, bursting into the room to make the announcement, only to find out the careerist already being congratulated on the transition and awarded the job

Ain’t no Burger Kings in Fairford, fortunately

A lot of guys want to command and fly at the highest level of operational war fighting, which is arguably the squadron. Edit: the other half of the thought: but no one in their right mind signs up for O-6 without a cultural change in the Air Force.

Oh yeah, haha.

Special pay for extra quals would be pretty easily tied to your AFSC prefix, W-, Q-, K-, S-, etc. If they want to pay FTU instructors more, make up a new code for that. Easy. In fact, add B- and C- code special pay and it’ll start to make a lot more sense. Taking on commander duties deserves a lot more cash than being a line Lt Col.

Unfortunately there are no backwater AORs when you’re dealing with China.

Can’t figure out why someone that has Ferrari money would spend it on that. Same with that Lamborghini Urus. Looks like a Lexus, but with Italian reliability.

The difference is that the Chinese spy balloon was visible to civilians on the ground across America. It was first seen by a Billings radio DJ before the military said anything.

I would be astounded - and honestly proud - if there were an organized plan that unified the efforts of NORTHCOM, the NSC, and the intelligence agencies. The more you deal with the Big IC, the more you realize that not only are the disparate agencies independent, they’re fiercely competitive with each other over budgets and opinions. At all echelons - sometimes down to the individual - people work to do what they see is the right way while actively notching around any guidance contrary to their worldview.

What do you mean by this?

When do you choose that over a high key?

Turn back like a 90/270?

Meaning he wasn’t liked?

Because they understand that military action and economic investment are tied together. I suppose it’s easier to arrange when the same guy is in charge of both. For some reason America has tended to use economic power and military power as two separate forces ever since the 60s. The places where we have wielded both at once tend to get better. If we go in without security - or worse provide security with no reason - we leave it a boondoggle. If we’re willing to set up factories and farms with wages that make the average Haitian dream of working there, then any military action to support that makes complete sense. Unfortunately that’s usually derided as “colonialism” because money is involved. So instead, we go in with only the military and some band-aid pallets of food in an attempt to convince the locals to believe in an idea, which will never work.

You’ve both proven that you are mature enough to realize you’re on the same team and fighting is not the answer. The rest of us are not that mature and only ask that if you do end up fighting, please post a video.

Dude, no. If other agencies and departments are at work, let them continue. Military involvement? Absolutely not. There is no end state, let the people sort it out.

Military action is always tied to economics. Or at least it should be from a realism perspective. When we don’t tie them together as part of a combined objective, we fail. Our security action in Afghanistan had no synced economic effort, so no one (including us) had any financial incentive to see it through. Postwar Germany and Japan were successful because of massive economic investment tied to a permanent security presence. In a sort of reverse case, massive economic investment that isn’t backed up by military security will eventually fail, like when Iraq rolled into Kuwait uncontested. At that point, a military action by an outsider is needed to restore the previous situation, because our Allies didn’t want Kuwait’s oil to be controlled by Saddam. Nor did they want Saddam to conquer them also, which seemed like a legitimate threat in 1990. In Ukraine’s case, our European Allies don’t want Ukraine’s resources to be controlled by Russia, and a Russian expansion also seemed like a legitimate threat in 2021.

When the Russians started buying back munitions from former customers because they have none left of their own, that was the end of their ability to win a war.

There’s something to this. A unique combination of extreme comfortability and safety brought on by untold global wealth, combined with a brewing discontent due to lack of shared purpose.