Danny Noonin
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Posts posted by Danny Noonin
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Hoss quotes this forum's rumor about the airline meeting not going well and asks for clarification. That post is deleted by the mods and called "deliberate misinformation" and "fake news." Hoss is given a snarky (imo) "thank you for your service" by the other mod and removed from the group because the rules state fighter pilots lose their eligibility when they retire.
That's exactly how it went down.
I'd agree except for the snarky part. Hoss implied here he was kicked out for "dissent". He was kicked out because he retired.
Roto explained why he deleted the original post and, after a discussion that seemed (to me) to clear it up, he invited Hoss to repost with source.
There's a literal handful of dudes up there trying to make things better. Roto is one of them. Doesn't help any of us when dudes are throwing spears at him and implying dark motives where there are none.
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And I've been kicked off the page. There will be no dissent !
Not exactly how it went down Hoss.
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Dude...you sound like you want to speak precisely but offer broad generalizations. WTF does "in the ballpark of millions" mean? Come on now. Further, your example of the quarter mil made as a senior captain is flawed unless the individual is not earning retirement, a paycheck, or any other compensation elsewhere. Then I'd buy it. What does a retired O-6 make in retirement? What will they likely bring in in their second career (airlines or other)? How short of the "senior captain" pay will they be at that stage in their life? Not likely as short as you seem to think. If you want to quote the RAND study then do so, but your statement is flawed at best.
Ive seen the study. Apparently you haven't. I also can't recall the exact numbers but RAND showed getting out at ADSC was financially best (for pilot), getting out at 20 as an O-5 next, and 25 as an O-6 last. All examples included going to the airlines. There was another situation or two but I don't recall what. And yes, the difference was in millions. About $2.5M at the far end and $1M at the min.
That's what the study showed. He's not making it up.
What the study didn't account for was life after 65. The comparisons were all made AT 65 as I recall. So it didn't account for the value of the pension at that point (active retirement or guard/reserve retirement) or life expectancy. Nor did it account for health care costs at all.
It's impossible to show accurate math because there are too many variables with companies and who the hell knows what the industry will be like in 10 years. I will say that in the late 90s, all my buds were believing the same "indefinite hiring" and "we're all gonna be rich and have tons of days off!" stories that people seem to believe wholeheartedly now. Do you guys think you'll be the only pilots in the history of the industry to go through without a major downturn (furloughs, massive pay cuts)? I hope it's true, but the airline industry has embarrassed a lot of predictions in the past. The only constant is that it's volatile. My sim partner at Delta years ago sold farm equipment 3 days a week for 2 years to get by while furloughed. That wasn't in the brochure when he was hired.
Dudes keep saying you can't put a price on quality of life and that's true. Realize for many people, there is also a value to the security blanket of a pension and health care that probably exceeds its direct value.
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They were manned
Valid.
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WW1, balloons counted
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Is this urban legend or are there actually guys still around who experienced this?
It absolutely happened.
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Can we earn enough from these programs to eventually receive an Active Duty retirement? Say 18 years AD and I pick up an IMA job that provides 91.25 days a year, it will take me 8 years to accumulate the 2 years of points... but will I receive the Active Duty retirement with $$ in my pocket immediately? Same for CAP and ALO?
Most points you'll get are INactive duty points. They count toward a reserve retirement calculation but not towards earning an active duty retirement.
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can one just convert from AGR to TR whenever they want
No.
1) The unit would have to allow you to curtail your AGR orders
2) there would have to be an open TR billet for you to move into, and...
3) they would have to allow you to move into that billet (potentially over someone else if the unit is full on part timers)
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Same reason he loves the gripen.
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One year
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Ok I'm being totally selfish but would stop-loss affect AGRs at all? Right now, AGRs are curtailing orders once hired by the airlines. If stop-loss somehow prevented that - um....gamechanger.
Stop loss does not likely affect AGRs. But nothing says they have to let you curtail an AGR tour. You have orders for X time. They never have to let you out of them. They typically have let folks go because over the last 15+ years there has typically been a line of folks that would want to take that job. If that's not so anymore that could affect someone's ability to get a curtailment approved. Theoretically.
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Sorry Danny the world needs ditch diggers too and I completely disagree with your comments.
First, who said we have to take other peoples money, this is a question of choices and priorities. Maybe just maybe we say "NO SIR, we can't do that mission without completely breaking the force." Living within your means doesn't mean live on this budget but continue to operate your people and equipment like a drunken whore driving a rental car in Vegas. How many hundred thousand hours did we burn flying pointless "No-Fly Zone" missions? Do we stay in Afghanistan, Syria, South Korea, Europe, South America, and continue to project power into the South China Sea? 80% of the USMC Hornets are hard ing broke, 80% of their heavy vertical lift as well, 50% of the Navy F-18's are down for the count, 50% of our B-1's...it goes on and on. You are correct, everyone has the same problem so how about we think outside the box and say no for once. Most aviators are type A and we don't like to admit defeat, most of the folks I know and flew with are hard charging mission hacking mother ers who will find a way to get it done...but we have been doing that for too long and it is now at risk of major parts of the enterprise. So if are going to live within our means then lets operate within out limitations. If a Service Chief fell on his sword and said I need more money or less mission period dot, I think it would make a difference, if more than one did it I think we would have change.
Now, GET OFF MY LAWN.
Wholeheartedly agree with the above. I didn't perceive the "saying no to missions" part on first read of your original post. Though you just wanted more money. I agree with what you are saying
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That is an unproven assumption you are treating as fact.
Of course it's unproven. The only way to prove it would be for it to actually happen.
Again, who are they supposed to get the money from? Each service is way short. Each service chief has equal grounds to fall on a sword. But the AF already demanded more. A lot more. And we lost. So is anyone seriously saying Goldfein should quit in protest?? How exactly do you think Mattis would respond? Do you really think he'd cave to that and give us more money? Gimme a break.
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I still don't get why we haven't seen a GO do as you state above. We are facing a crisis. Either our leaders disagree and think our force can continue stumbling through it, or they're unwilling to make the level of stink required to fix it. Either way: WTF?
Fellas, everybody gets it. Every GO gets it. They aren't shy about telling anyone to include SECDEF and congress.
We have too much mission, not enough resources. But what exactly do you think "falling on a sword" will do for that problem? The Navy is worse off than us. Most of their jets can't even fly. They don't have nearly enough boats. They don't have enough people. Same for the Army. Same for the Marines. So if CSAF and or SECDEF falls on their sword, who do you propose DoD should steal the money from? We're all in the same situation.
We have to live within the bounds of the money we are given by DoD. Against direction, the AF tried repeatedly to submit for more but it was thrown back by SECDEF. That pretty much ended the rebellion.
Just because management isn't announcing everything they do publicly doesn't mean they aren't doing all they possibly can. Falling on a sword only makes sense if it will actually accomplish something. It would be absolutely futile in this case.
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I said take a page not copy and follow the whole thing.
Like it or not we may have hit "peak fighter" with our 5th Gens not only being deadly to the enemy but to their own forces by their relentless consumption of resources to the detriment of everything else that might need sustainment, upgrade or replacement.
Some people like to crow that we spent the Soviets into oblivion with SDI and the 80's build up but in a way we're doing that to ourselves by a non-stop obsession with the absolute best or nothing. There is a point when you say that is just too much to do it that way.
We've been here before with other airplanes from way back in the day, ref. the XB-70 Valkyrie and the XF-108 Rapier, both the pinnacles of design for their times in their mission types but the AF realized (wisely) that it can't spend the lion's share of the team's salary on one player. We cancelled the programs and thought about how to accomplish those missions better not just focusing on what will fly/fight in them.
I'm not saying that in the USAF, USN, USMC, etc... pilots flying a multi-role strike aircraft have to be in some barely relevant old POS, what am saying is that the core aircraft(s) of Tactical Aviation by the sheer number of aircraft to be bought can not be so expensive to procure, operate and maintain that they degrade the Total Joint Team.
5th gen isn't bankrupting us Clark. Massive recap combined with expanding missions are what's bankrupting us.
We're not just buying 5th gen fighters, we're recapping most everything both simultaneously and at the same time...F-35, B-21, KC-46, T-X, CRH, plus looking to "re-host" capes like JSTARS, EC-130, maybe AWACS, etc. We're recapping all of that now because we stiffarmed it for far too long and now we can't push it off any longer.
Now throw in the rising emphasis on space and cyber. Do you have any idea how much it costs just to launch a satellite, let alone design/build/operate? The numbers are staggering. And they want tons more money too.
F-35 is about $95M right now...still at low rate production prices so that will continue to fall. Your suggested "significantly improved" 4th gen concept would easily be $80M. Easily. Hell, the POS Gripen brought up earlier in this thread is $60+. And it's useless.
SECDEF Gates once gave a speech in which he highlighted that America has 11 carriers and the next closest nation has 1. It was a ing useless comparison and embarrassing for our boss to make. Unless we plan to refight Midway with carrier vs carrier battles. We fight away games. That's what we do. Sometimes that means we have to bring our runways with us. The numbers of enemy carriers have nothing to do with the numbers we need. Just as the commie mix of 5th/4th gen has nothing to do with the mix we need on our side.
But you're absolutely right. We can't afford to buy everything high end. But don't get sucked in to uninformed arguments that a high-low mix weighted low will work for us. Because in case I didn't mention it, we fight away games. In many potential fights, there won't be enough runways in the AOR for us to park hoards of airplanes and even if there were, we would not have enough tankers to gas them up. Each airplane has to be a "force multiplier". I hate that phrase but it's true. We could be 2/4 v lots and we'll be dodging sophisticated air defenses. Every sortie has to count. If you don't understand how 4th gen has limited game in many realistic scenarios, you are behind the curve.
To paraphrase Mobile Holmes, If we're not going to have an Air Force that can hold targets at risk anywhere on the globe, then why have an Air Force at all? That's our job. We need the tools to do that. Those tools are expensive but they can be applied to lower end fights even though it's not ideal. The reverse cannot be said for 4th gen in the same way.
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Word.
Circling back to the original subject of this thread, substantially improved existing designs in lieu of an all 5th Gen fleet, seem to be popular to our two realistic peer AFs, China & Russia.
Perhaps it is time to take a page from their playbook as our budget doesn't seem to be able cover that and all the other missions / systems we have or need to do.
If you want us to follow their playbook, then clearly you must be suggesting we invest in huge numbers of modern, mobile double-digit type SAM systems that we can overlap into a giant super mez to protect our forces.
Does that mean we have to begin any future conflict with a massive land invasion to take all the ground we'll need to set up our SAMs on their dirt so we can execute IAW their playbook? Innovative idea. We'll also have to secure large numbers of their airfields to operate our hoards of non-5th gen fighters IAW their playbook.
Or maybe the commie playbooks are different than ours for more complex reasons than just budget.
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So let me get this straight...
The suggestion is that we should invoke the ghost of John Boyd to buy a bunch of Gripens, which most people view as a complete POS, but it will be better because we'll buy it without a (big) radar. And since they have no/small radar, they won't be as hot so enemy IR sensors won't see them as well. And without a (big) radar they can have a smaller nose which of course makes them harder to see on enemy radar. It's RCS will even be smaller than an f-16 even though it already has a tiny nose and tiny radar. To make them useful as combat airplanes, we'll still have to hang a bunch of external pylons and missiles and shit on them which reflect RF energy, but it's okay...because it won't be as hot without a radar. Then it's one tiny motor will let it supercruise for long periods of time, despite the drag of hanging a bunch of shit under its tiny wings. Which is awesome because supercruise lets you surprise the enemy even though they see you on radar. Because you're going wicked fast. But that's okay because magically it will never get very hot because even though it's blasting through the air with a hot motor it doesn't have a (big) radar. So that means they won't find you as easily with an IRST. Even though they see you on radar. And it will have fantastic range because it won't have a (big) radar so the gripen's already tiny, pointy nose can be tinier and pointier because that's where all the drag comes from. And heat. And RCS. And the lack of radar will make it super cheap. To make up for that we'll embed some wicked awesome magic sensors in the wings but they won't cost very much of course because it's not a big radar. And radar is bad. Because it's hot. And because it won't have a radar, the price will somehow go down by $20 million enabling us to buy a few more of them so we have enough to get shot down because an attrition game plan aligns perfectly with our modern political will to accept huge losses. But that's okay because we can turn more sorties with the ones we have left so pilots can fly more so we'll retain more pilots. The ones that are still alive anyway.
Did I get that about right?
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Not an airline guy with a dog in this fight, but the medical "drop dead" scenario is such a small risk...how many billions of single seat flight hours point A to B have occurred without the pilot having a heart attack, head exploding
Absurd comparison.
How many single seat fighter guys are 45 years old let alone 60-65 years old? I get several emails a month telling me about dudes who work at my company that died. Not retirees, current pilots who died.
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The med group treating medical problems on actual human beings in actual field conditions is pretty much exactly the kind of thing AT is intended to be used for. Squadrons doing group activity base cleanup or toys for tots over drill weekend is highly questionable.
An individual person trying to be put on status (and get paid) for the stated purpose of doing individual community service off base is most certainly not within the rational bounds of AT or any other mil status. I'd tread carefully.
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Not sure I understand your question. Are you asking how to get the government to pay you for doing volunteer charity work?
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Are there IMA opportunities at an ANG unit by chance? Or are they strictly attached to AD units?
IMAs are AF Reserve positions
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Read the book?
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oh for fucks sake.I'm sorry but ATC better have a damn good reason for having him this low at 20NM out, especially given that MSA is 3100ft. 1600 MSL is glideslope intercept altitude for R-15. That happens at 5.8 DME. Anyway, enough said. It will all come out in a few months. Just sucks 2 lives were lost and one ruined.
What does MSA have to do with vectoring altitude? Do you know what MSA means?
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Holy shit Kenny, you're making this too difficult.You're right, it doesn't, I just used it to make the calculation without having any other known variables (i.e. FAF alt) assuming a 850 FPM VVI (rounded to 900).
ETA: I'm too dumb to do trig without a calculator if that's what you are implying. Using speed to figure nm/min to find time on final to use with FPM is much easier.
Track Selects and Assignment Nights
in General Discussion
Posted
Road trip to Austin.
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