tac airlifter

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.

LOAC says you aren’t supposed to murder wounded prisoners. I notice some of the Russian victims are zip tied. There have been a lot of those videos— you can find Ukrainians killing tied up Russians with knives fairly easily. It’s terrible. War is terrible, and in this case neither side is innocent of wrong doing. That said, this was a war by Russian choice and for Ukrainian survival. If Russia invaded Florida and I was running around with a piecemeal group of volunteers while every other nation sat around watching atrocities inflicted on my family…. Well I have some bad news for the LOAC office.

All those intel chiefs who definitively stated the laptop was propaganda should be banned from government service ever again. They are permanently discredited.

Why’d you have to shit all over my happy rumor?

Side note and RUMINT only- timing no longer favorable for that member to take over the command. GO moves are palace intrigue/cloak & dagger stuff, so who knows, but it’s a good rumor.

Quick update- still no FDA approved vaccine available at my base clinic or local Walgreens. Our only option remains the EUA vaccine, accompanied by an unproven manufacturers claim it is the same.

Neither are common is AFSOC, but they aren’t particularly uncommon either. It’s not a big deal; if someone has 2 or more I do inquire if we need to get them some targeted training. Never in my life have I seen a silly policy about a mandatory number. Evaluators discretion works great… if you pick the right people to be evaluators. Which we mostly do.

Yes to your first question, although I’m tracking a bit sooner. There is a plan to get some use out of those three aircraft, I will decline to say further in this format. I thought a conversation about this might be interesting. What was going to happen was crystal clear to those of us outside the CAA world, but those inside simply didn’t see or believe the writing in the wall. I think there’s a cultural reason for that, but was curious what others thought.

Just curious how the A-29 for CAA thing is going. “Not according to 6SOS planning” is my charitable characterization of where we are now. We could have an interesting discussion on how and why this played out the way it did, lots of good lessons learned.

“Working” was defined as causing the populations to rise up. I agree NK is dark at night. Does that mean sanctions are working or does that mean civilians are miserable? I get it. Everyone disagrees with me, and that’s fine. I offer a perspective for consideration so that we think carefully and choose to do things deliberately. Laughing at hungry civilians is for pussies, not warriors.

Seeing as how both locations are decisively NOT resolved in our favor, I’ll disagree. None of the sanctions have caused the populace to rise up. They just suffer. I do not think this COA is wise.

Copy the idea. Has this particular method of pressuring a dictator ever worked? It didn’t on Saddam, and it didn’t on Ghadafi. Or Milosevek. It’s not working in Iran or N Korea. When you target civilians for suffering, all it really does is hurt civilians. If you have a counter example I’m game to hear it.

Have all the sanctions you want. I love the ones targeting their elite. But celebrating bread lines? Do you think that will make people hate the dictator or hate us? I know it’s an unpopular opinion. But I’m uninterested in hurting civilians. I don’t think it will be effective and I don’t think it’s a good look.

I think it’s a terrible idea to hurt Russia’s economy and their people just because we don’t like what Putin is doing. Mass punishment doesn’t work on me or you or anyone. Human beings hate that shit. i’m not sure what specific military effect we want to achieve by turning off some grandmother‘s credit card, or what we expect Russian civilians to do, but I’m not going to chuckle at starving civilians standing in food lines. They are innocent.