Majestik Møøse

The amount of students we’re sending through UPT and all of the B-courses? That’s the whole point - it’s orders of magnitude cheaper to retain your $6.9M pilot than it is to perpetually train new ones. AETC’s budget is $10B/year, so I’m sure it could come from that. Then factor in AETC taking less pilots out of their MWS. It’s an orders of magnitude efficiency improvement. But! I have a theory that the Air Force and airlines are secretly ok with military pilots leaving, as the government is basically subsidizing airlines with 2k hour pilots. Airlines have never been financially solvent without some sort of government help, and one way to do that is to keep them accident-free for 20 years with the help of experienced military pilots. There are other factors of course, but airline profits are slim, and they could neither afford to build 2k hour jet pilot experience from scratch nor suffer multiple widebody crashes per year like the 1980s.

We’ll never be able to afford to mass enough pilots on AD for a just-in-case peer fight. Or jets, for that matter. Entire AF force structure should be inverted, with a smaller amount of highly-bonused AD guys and a larger amount of guard/reserve ready to spin up when needed. Modern jets and pilots can’t be cranked out at WW2 speeds, so I can’t see how having a larger reserve force isn’t the best way. It keeps experience around, gets us out of the constant upgrade cycle, saves jet hours, and lets pilots go out and make money for the economy rather than being a personnel drain. Not to mention the great deterrent of having a huge combat force on standby, chomping at the bit for some action. It’ll take an act of Congress, but so what.

Maybe someday Ferrari and McLaren will catch back up to Stewart and Tyrrell.

Studying it objectively in a university sociology class is ok with me. Assuming every one is allowed to discuss openly without forced bias or shaming. If biases were being presented, that would be something that needs crushing. Regarding “critical race theory” itself, I’m willing to wait to learn more. About a year ago someone on this board observed that America only cares about a particular hot topic for about 2 months max. Seems to be true so far.

What did you guys think of Gen Milley’s comments about woke culture and critical race theory? I thought they were pretty reasonable, and i also think that Laura Ingram went off the deep end. Also, Gaetz is a doucheclown.

Haha the KC-46 Drag Queen. As opposed to the KC-10 Drag King

Hmm we’d better have a backup plan for when the E’s go DNIF or call crew rest.

Tire wars make for more failures. Ref 2005 USGP. I was there, it sucked. Michelin tires were faster all year, then they dialed it up one notch too many and dudes almost died. If people are unhappy with Pirelli, get a new sole-source vendor, but don’t make tire companies compete to make the lightest, softest tire. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2005_United_States_Grand_Prix Edit: Also don’t take my word for it, every major racing series has a sole tire supplier for safety reasons. Tire wars cause failures, on top of it no one wants to see a driver handicapped for multiple seasons because his team can’t get the tires to work right. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tire_wars

Jeebus, why? We’re so dumb. What if O-6s could decide which of their guys get paid more. Like the entire rest of the world.

Ok I’m on board now. JASSM shooters that can launch pre-planned salvos from a 3k’ dirt runway.

I’m no expert but I’d bet America has surpassed over 300 million shits per day

Multiple tire suppliers will cause way more failures then there are now. Ref Bridgestone vs Michelin. And nobody gives a shit about a tire war. Imagine if half the drivers/teams are fucked because their tires suck.

As with everything else, the calculus is based on “is this worth the money and time we’re spending on it?” In this case, it’s costing $25m, which is of course being paid directly to LM. Are there bigger problems that could be solved with this money? I bet any PEM would say absolutely.

Observations Airlift and AR are absolutely critical to a peer fight. We will lose without them. The key to a war win is 1.) a clear executable strategy and 2.) logistics. Understand that as mobility force and live it. If fighter AR doesn’t get prioritized by TACC, that doesn’t mean it’s not important. In fact, TACC’s priorities are often 540° off what they should be. These are people that famously use KC-10s to haul an NCO’s household goods across the Pacific, or use C-17s to strat airlift Gatorade to the Deid. Use knowledge and judgement to determine what’s important, then continuously press your leaders and MAJCOM to move in that direction. No amount of RWR, Link 16, chaff, or flares will help heavies survive against big threats any different than you do now. Those’ll maybe save the 6-9% of the crews that couldn’t mission plan for defensive considerations or didn’t understand what was happening on the radio. Survival starts with understanding and planning. Airlift brings weapons into a FOB so the fighters and bombers can continue to rearm and fight. Then they return and repeat until someone loses. If you find yourselves with a pallet of JASSM in the back of your mobility aircraft, do not launch them. Land and give them to someone who knows how to use them. Then go do that again. Don’t waste time on learning how to shoot something, you’ll always be worse at that. Focus on your core competencies. C-17 combat airdrop is something I’d love to learn a lot more about. I think they’d be dropping paratroopers eventually, but not with RF SAMs or fighters still around. That seems like an ALR too far. Manpads maybe. The last 2 large scale paratrooper airdrops were Just Cause and OIF into an airfield already held by friendlies. None in Desert Storm, which I think is a significant indicator of the risk involved for ingressing heavy airlift during a shooting war.

Had the pleasure of meeting and working with him earlier this year. Great guy and great leader.

Spend your 5 hour locals refueling fighters instead of heavies. Scoff the C-5 and non-airdrop C-17 receivers.

An expensive pretend war that has 100+ jets needing tanker gas or it’s all wasted. Less important than some “real world” missions, more important than others.

You sell yourself short, sitting in an MPC and getting the gist of what’s going on isn’t hard. And you’ll gain an immense understanding of why proactive tankers are critical. Better than dry plugs on heavies.

Why wouldn’t tankers and other heavies just practice these things at regular LFEs instead of spending money and time on a mobility LFE? There’s always a dearth of tankers at flag-level exercises, causing days of planning end up down the drain when one or two of them cancel. The standard should be to always a have reliability tanker ready to flex to blue or red. Related - what if tanker pilots were in the MPC instead of heaping all of it on 1x inexperienced “planner” who’s bound to mess it up?

It should never be aircrew doing engine runs. That’s an MX function, pilots should stay away.

Holy shit, how is it even possible to draw like that. I feel like such a talentless clown. I’d ask for a picture of bqzip’s mom, but I don’t think they make that many pencils.

How much range would make it usable?

It’s pretty much capable of replacing everything but road trips… I think Elon just hates dinosaur technology, which a reciprocating engine and transmission with a hundred moving parts is. So are you giving him shit because he’s not an environmental altruist? Why would that matter one way or the other? As pointed out a few pages back he’s already building the cars the legacy manufacturers wish they could make. It’s American fuck you -ism at its best. Edit: road trips greater than 350 miles, lol. You guys really are reaching.

Seems to me there’s a lot of Tesla scoffing wrapped up in political identity (electric cars are a liberal plot!) Probably a lot of Tesla fandom is about feel good environmentalism as well.

Living in a rural area is one of the best Tesla use cases. Solar roof, power walls, and a Tesla require no external power to operate and serve as power storage for outages. And you don’t have to drive into town to get gas for the cars and generators. Living in apartment with limited chargers probably not a great use case. As for road trips...buy a plane! I see no downsides here.