tac airlifter

There is a legal prohibition on military requiring boosters. The booster remains under an EUA unlike the FDA approved shots. There are some commanders trying to trick their people or pressure them into getting boosters because they have requirements to deploy into locations which require boosters (I think Kuwait is an example). But that places those commanders in an precarious position, and would not survive first contact with legal.

Yeah I’m looking at this front page here trying to figure out how to start a thread. It is definitely super complicated. Instead of looking harder, I’m just going to start a new thread as a reply within whatever existing thread I happen to be reading. Makes perfect sense, go Air Force.

I don’t know how it is in your community, but for us this change at UPT is accompanied by a decrease in training at the FTU and a decrease in hours requirements for MWS upgrades. And none of the tech works as advertised yet. In principle I think you’re right, I’m no Luddite. But all signs trend towards a decreasing organizational emphasis on competence. Good news is we still attract and hire great people, I’ve been super pleased with all of our younger teammates as they grapple through these challenges which are not their fault.

Good question. I’m also curious how this would have played out had they never asked for permission ahead of time.

I enjoy watching liberals argue how the economy isn’t actually bad. Everything is more expensive. Costs have gone up, purchasing power is down. It’s obvious. But keep trying this Jedi mind trick, it might work!

This type of hyperbole is absolutely ridiculous. Have you forgotten it was only a few years ago Isis was running slave markets and murdering entire schools full of children? do you think women in Afghanistan right now agree with your assessment on worldwide evil? Christians using the democratic process to advocate for their beliefs is more evil than the Chinese government locking people in homes until the whole family starves? you may disagree with conservative Christians or anybody else, but you can’t fault somebody for attempting to vote on issues that are important to them in a democratic system where we are supposed to vote on issues that are important to us.

Yes I understand what you’re saying, that is exactly the foundation of Roe vs Wade. all I’m saying is this new draft opinion postulates that is not the case. And I personally think the draft opinion is more convincing than Roe vs. Wade… which I’ve read. The only reason I waded into this thread is to discuss the core legal issue. This is such an emotionally explosive topic, it is easy to sidebar into our various opinions on abortion. A discussion which I believe will be unproductive; I’ve never actually seen someone change their opinion on this issue after a discussion either online or in person. My point was simply that in this ruling as I understand the leak document, the issue of abortion itself is largely irrelevant. And even if you disagree with the draft opinion, this is the kind of thing the Supreme Court is supposed to be looking at.

If you want abortion to be the law of the land, then pass a law that says so. Either at the state or the federal level I don’t care. Row v. Wade is an illegitimate decision because it’s in conflict with how our government is organized to function, analogous with Congress deciding court cases or POTUS creating new laws. Not how our system works. In this context, abortion itself is irrelevant. ETA: draft opinion specifically self-limits to the issue of abortion.

What are your feelings on BLM riots & ANTIFA attacks on federal buildings in Portland?

I can’t even believe we’re having a discussion to justify the first amendment. If you favor censorship or think there’s anything reasonable about homeland security developing a misinformation department led by a woman deeply steeped in partisan misinformation—- GFY

PMCR is typically for TDYs not daily flights, at least in the communities I’ve been in. For example, it might be something like “gone 5 days get 1.5 days off.” If the MAF didn’t have it, they’d never be home. In SOF I’ve ignored it when there were cool missions I wanted, and no one cared. However now I make people take it. Mostly.

Just a few of your many biased points: -You assert republicans aren’t putting forth “reasonable” candidates, yet fail to define reasonable. You and I likely disagree on that definition; it is arrogant to presume you arbitrate what is and isn’t reasonable. - you say democrats aren’t pushing “insane conspiracy theories” but they are. Calling Glen Youngkin a white supremacist racist is in fact an insane conspiracy theory (Curious if you consider him another unreasonable republican candidate) because there is no proof. For that matter all the talk of white supremacy is a fringe conspiracy with no factual basis. Unlike the many factual things censored by democrats, which precipitated this conversation. I could go on. You are blinded by bias while being certain you aren’t.

You are completely blinded by bias.

Pawn, I like you and I think you’re smart, so please indulge me in this long reply. There are three schools of thought with rule following: 1. Follow them all, all the time. They are right, rule breakers are wrong. 2. Follow only those which are right and just. I am the sole arbiter of deciding what is right. Those are two extreme and opposite sides. There’s a third, middle way: 3. Follow rules, but recognize those which don’t make sense and work to change them. Comply if you must, resist when & how you can. 1 is almost always wrong. Schools love it, because it’s blind obedience. Dictators love it too. I don’t love it, I don’t even like it when people obey my rules without critical thought, because eventually they hit a situation where following those rules leads to a worse outcome than the rule was designed to prevent. Example: stand in this line. Circumstance: now there’s a fire. Outcome: standing in that line is obviously a terrible idea; would we support yelling at people to get back in line under those circumstances? No. Judgment and critical thought are implied. 2 is interesting. At first glance it seemingly leads to chaos. Within the right cultural context though, it has historically been a common mechanism of governance in developing societies. “Lex iniusta non est lex” is the Latin expression for the ancient concept that an unjust law is no law at all. Surprisingly, even rule following early societies like feudal China had a similar concept. Once a ruler passed a threshold of capriciousness, he was said to have “lost the Mandate of Heaven” and a coup was justified. However I concede that in modern democratic societies, and certainly in the modern American military, 2 is an impractical way of operating. 3 covers the full gamut from “I will comply while working this lawsuit through the system using established legal means” all the way to “I will not comply with this specific thing but I will rigorously comply with everything else thereby convincing you that I’m not a rebel, this certain thing is just wrong.” Think about the civil disobedience mechanism Martin Luther King Jr utilized in championing the civil rights movement. Has there been a better example than 1960s America of people who were justified in noncompliance with laws, and conducted their noncompliance righteously? All that background to say this: the spectrum of 3 is where most of us were for COVID mandates, while you are stuck on 1 despite thinking we are advocating 2. Hopefully this long post adds clarity to these various reactions you’re observing. It’s easy to look at the situation and say, I am following a lawful order why is there even a discussion about this? Those discussions dance around the concept of questioning if the order itself was lawful. And of course the people giving it will say yes, but is it? There might be a deeper authority than the whims of dictates by transient management.

I’ll buy 90% of what you said above. But I do not ascribe to your earlier viewpoint that primary responsibility for an act so blatantly bad rests with entities other than the person who did it. You and jazzdude mention multiple contributing factors that should all be examined and rectified. Concur. But causal on this accident is pretty obvious: dude flew it straight into the ground. It’s necessary to state it so bluntly (because I’m not a fan of throwing spears at fellow aviators who made mistakes) to reinforce the importance of holding standards. Thank goodness so many flight evaluators had documented his behavior and poor performance; had HR caught it he may not have been allowed at the controls. I will also mention a thank you to the original poster. These are great discussions for a bunch of professionals to have, and much more useful than Covid and political discussions to me personally. Cheers🥃

Bro, the CP flew the aircraft into the ground because he sucked. Despite any other culture/system failures, what can you add to the incident which contravenes my first sentence? Copy every accident has a chain, but this level of incompetence was a crash waiting to happen. I don’t like being a dick, but we shouldn’t be afraid to call a spade a spade. That dude was terrible, and stories like this help reinforce the importance of IPs & EPs holding the standard. That’s the single change which could have prevented this.

I’m surprised you’re confused— judges did this numerous times to overturn various POTUS policies during the previous administration. The reason it took so long in this case is psycho democrats enabled by an aligned media and risk-averse doctors did all they could to stop it. Make no mistake: masks were always ineffective and the science never said otherwise. This was political all along. Some of us are taking a bit longer to figure that out.

That’s unfortunate, the Army did awesome work and helped prevent a true calamity. I’m sure it looked bad on the news, it was absolutely insane on the ground and there was a period where things could have gone either way as Taliban C2 decided how to play their victory. Ultimately they determined a tentative truce was in their interest, but their decision not to escalate was based on heroic actions by several military members between 14-17 Aug. Multiple Tb infantry attempted to mix it up. The AH-64 pilots displayed bravery, and I sincerely hope they are recognized for it.

If we select the AT-802 we will crash several of them as new pilots learn the idiosyncrasies of flying a tail wheel. It’s not rocket science, but it’s different enough to surprise you if your habit patterns aren’t defaulted that way. Knowing this organization, if that happens risk averse management will generate policies which obviate the austerity advantages you reference above. I’m excited to see which aircraft is selected, and I believe it’ll be announced in the next few weeks. I do think our nation isn’t done with jihadi VEOs, as much as we want to be. I don’t think we’re going back to AFG. AFSOC’s pivot towards near peer is driven by a desire to remain NSS relevant. Appetite to engage VEOs has decreased markedly since the fall of Kabul. No one really knows what near peer looks like for us, resulting in a weird dilemma where HQ is mad that ops units aren’t creatively finding ways to do new missions, without actually defining those missions. It’s a strange time in the command.

Sure you can: that we should be free to demand additional data to provide that missing context. You think my post was about that specific article, but it was not. My apologies for the lack of clarity. I thought it was obvious when I said the article lacked amplifying data to make its conclusions useful, then questioned why we have no access to data which should be readily available (military health data, since that is a database I know exists). My post was lamenting censorship initiated by the left, and the fact that we have no objective third-party news sources any longer.

We have two choices: hot garbage article that at least points to a real phenomenon (although lacking amplifying data to make it useful), or MSNBC / CNN propaganda repeating without question everything Fauci says and hiding conflicting information. Worth noting how many “hot garbage conspiracies” have turned out to be true, so although the article is admittedly not great we have a track record that shouldn’t be ignored. I wish there was a middle way, but those voices have been censored, and the censorship has come exclusively from the left. Good luck finding objective data, which should be easily available, on whether US military members had more, less or the same number of heart attacks in the past 18 months compared to the prior 18.

Agree. The insanity only ends when democrats are voted out. Still administering the EUA vaccine at my base, no FDA approved vaccine anywhere to be found. And here’s a fun article about how many athletes are suffering heart attacks. I get it’s a bit sensational, but there is no objective reporting anymore.

https://sofrep.com/news/4-airmen-awarded-the-distinguished-flying-cross-for-rescue-and-evacuation-153-us-citizens-and-afghans-from-kabul/

We should all stop calling it a bonus. It’s a contract extention.