HiFlyer

Well, a poor one, at least, since they haven't charged anybody anything at this point. Certainly is ruining options for those planning Christmas presents, though.

Your mother is going to be pissed if she sees this (C-9 flight nurse)! Your uncle is a retired F-4 WSO, and your cousin is an airline dude. BTW, Uncle Lloyd walked out of France after he went down and later became a pilot and flew F-84s with the GA guard.

Granted, I'm no math major, but 11752 fpm is only about 196 feet per second; 60 MPH is 88 fps, so 11752 fpm is only about 200 mph vertical vector, right?

My new answer to this topic...

When we were staffing the program recommendation for the TR-1 (U-2 airframes for EUCOM's tactical mission) back in the late 70s/early 80s we had quite a bit of coordination effort related to this. Eventually we had to get a waiver from the Secretary of the Air Force to allow the TR-1 program to proceed. If I recall correctly, the U-2 is a 7 or 8 on the scale, thus technically not acceptable to produce or fly operationally. I recall a couple of days when I agreed with that assessment!!

Do they still have train service from Shippea Hill station (I think that's what it was called...just a few miles northwest of Mildenhall up the A1101) thru Cambridge to London? That's how we used to do it, but it was a while ago. Cab to Shippea Hill was much cheaper than all the way to Cambridge, plus there was a nice little pub at the crossing where you could wait if it was raining (or any other good excuse).

It depends on whether the SIE was termed "with" or "without" predjudice, meaning simply couldn't hack the program and decided to quit or a serious issue beyond your control (bad family issue which you had to return and deal with). Most "without" predjudice cases are allowed to return within a reasonable time (one year?) if they have resolved the problem and are not likely to have to leave again. With predjudice generally kills you forever.

I can tell you from experience that it varies from day to day...not much chance of getting any kind of accurate figure six months out. People are moving in, people are moving out, the contractor is scheduling units on and off-line for updates, cleaning and repairs, etc.. Even if you call ahead and get put on the wait list 30 days in advance, much of the time you'll need to reserve a place in the TLF before arriving, then wait until a unit is available. With 25 person classes graduating every three weeks or so (although obviously not all married and living in on-base housing) plus normal PCS moves there's a fair amount of turnover.

Precisely where I met my tumbleweed...on the road down to Portales. Only about 20MPH that day, but more than enough to make it appear nearly instantaeously without warning. I was driving my spiffy new 1968 Impala convertable with the top down...my head looked like I'd been sandblasted. I had blood splattered all over the nice new white leather seats. Not huge wounds, but scratched to heck!

Clearly you have not met a real tumbleweed...some of those things are indeed small, but others are nearly the size of a small car! I hit one with a car once and it did $1400 damage to the front end!

I still remember the fight over that aircraft back in the mid-80s timeframe. Those were the days of the TR-1, when we had the 95th Squadron (TR-1) in the UK and the 99th (U-2) at Beale. Each wing wanted its numbered aircraft for their own squadron (1095 for the 95th, 1099 for the 99th), but the contract documents called for 1095 to be a U-2, and 1099 to be a TR-2. Even though the only difference in the two was a slight difference in sensor wiring, no one could get the Air Staff and the contracting people to switch the number/type around, even though Lockheed said it was a zero cost effort as long as they knew prior to construction. Eventually, 1099 went to Alconbury and 1095 came to Beale. After the closure of Alconbury, they all came back to Beale (via the depot) and were all once again U-2s.

Nope...its from "birth", but the farther back the better. BTW, here's the quote from the AFRSI on accession rules... "3.21.1. In most cases, substance abuse is disqualifying. Self-admission of pre-service experimental marijuana (including organic or synthetic cannabis or tetrahydrocannabinal (THC)) use without exposure to legal proceedings is not automatically disqualifying. However, any use over 15 times is disqualifying. (Refer to paragraph 3.22 for drug-related eligibility determinations [DRED].) "

Unless something has changed, you won't have that much time to worry about. My son graduated from Laughlin, left for water survival in three days, came back for a day, left again for Fairchild SERE, returned for four days, then left PCS for C-130 school. Others in his class didn't move quite that quick, but were gone within weeks. You probably won't have much time to move to someplace else and make it worth the time and effort (even if you could get a 30-60 day apt lease)..

Well, in case you have forgotten, the function of the Air Staff is to plan and equip the combat forces. Putting together the budget is pretty much most of what they do (from daily monitoring of current expenditures to program year execution to future year analysis of alternatives and costing of various system options, as well as the necessary lobbying of Congress to steal the other Services' money. The Vice Chief is the head guy for that, so getting the best budgeteer/cost analyst you can find into that job is your best hope for getting your programs into action!

In the OP's case, if the only real purpose is to muffle the mike in an open cockpit (where oxygen deprivation and hypoxia is not likely to be much of an issue), it really won't matter much if its an imperfect seal.

No. For OTS, there is no PT requirement for entry. The first PT work you'll do will be after arriving. However, they expect you to be in pretty good shape when you arrive so that doesn't mean you can live on the couch swilling beer and donuts prior to arrival (although that does have its enjoyment factor...). The exception might be if you're an AD entry...your losing base may want you to have a current PFT before PCSing. That would be their rule, though, not an OTS rule.

The current Senate marks for the FY13 budget put some money back in (not a huge amount) to restart this effort, but the House didn't. We'll have to see what happens in the final Conference Committee bill.

Not sure what the IFS rule will be, but if the AF flight physical says you need them, they'll be issued to you pretty soon after you get to your UPT base, and will probably have them by the time you get to IFS (unless you go pretty quickly) so it shouldn't be a problem. My son was in that situation and I believe he kept his glasses with him at IFS...in his suitcase, in his room!

If you are allergic to a specific medicine (like an anti-biotic,) they will probably just annotate it in your medical records for the record. It should have no bearing on your FC1. At some point, if they feel its an issue, they may suggest a test to see if you really are allergic. I once flew with a guy who was allergic to shellfish...he just didn't eat any.

They'll talk to you almost anytime, but won't give you reliable housing info until about 30 days prior to your arrival (because they don't really know much earlier...things change fast). Try http://www.laughlin.af.mil/relocation.asp

Yes and no. The student was actually a real guy, too, whom Ernie tailed through training. However, in the book his name was changed to "Hopper" to "protect the innocent". Virtually everyone else in the book was a real person and referenced their real name and position.

You guys gonna make it to Andrews in May??

I think there's a second order impact that may also become a limitation. Its easy to contemplate the technical requirement to fly an aircraft without a pilot, and even to calculate the economics of the craft, but its not just a matter of flying one aircraft...its about eventually flying hundreds or thousands of them at once. With a manned aircraft, "all" you need is a pilot, a VHF radio, and an assigned comm channel. With unoccupied aircraft, all the data will have to be monitered by the operating agency (the airline) and the ATC organization (FAA or whatever national agency controls the airspace). That will take a completely different communications and control architecture, potentially huge amounts of satellite connectivity over areas not covered by dense ground-based data link networks and potentially interconnected carrier to ATC links. Not an insignificant issue when expensive satcom links have to be used by thousands of aircraft!

By the way, while you may save some money by not having pilots to pay, you will have to replace them with a crew of flight qualified IT people to monitor the flights and make appropriate changes to flight plan routes (when you have to divert for weather or change altitude) or deal with little onboard equipment failures. Those will have to be highly trained and FAA certified, and will likely require average salaries equal to those of a cockpit crew. That will to some extent cut into any savings from a reduction in flight crews. Plus, we have numerous cases of lost, damaged, and destroyed UAVs (GHs, Preds, Reapers, etc) due to communications and equipment failure. Pilots almost always bring their aircraft back in those situations (I did on numerous occasions in the U-2 when the INS/autopilot or the Comm links failed)...unoccupied aircraft frequently don't have that luxury. Maybe for cargo airlift (FedEx) where you can bill the shipper for whatever it costs, but not for passenger service for a VERY long time! Also, when we started the GH program in the 90s, one of the big things all the GH proponants were always preaching was the large personnel reduction from the U-2's manning numbers. When I was a U-2 location commander, they were telling me my 220-man unit could be reduced to half that size. Sorry...didn't happen. Sure, they could reduce my pilot and physiological support staffing to zero (saving 3 pilots and 5 PSD techs), but they then had to man the GH's control van (7 or 8 people with more or less the same rank structure) so the net savings was, you got it...ZERO! Also, the decision to base the aircraft at a coulple of central locations saved a little infrastructure money, but (using Guam to Korea as an example) to fly a U-2 for an 8 hour mission required 9 hours; to fly the same mission from Guam requires about 24 hours...8 to get there, 8 on station, and 8 to get back to Guam. So, even if you could contrive to say the flying hour cost was 15% less, you had to fly three times as many hours to do the mission. Not much O&S savings there! By the way, I'm not saying the GH is not a useful capability, I'm only that saying you can't exchange it with the U-2 without serious mission compromises, and that "unmanned" is a totally misleading term for the GH as well as any "unoccupied" airframe. You will wind up with other types of expensive manpower requirements which will equal or exceed the cost of the pilots. I personally think we ought to keep some of both, at least until we develop what we really need...that which some of us called "Global Truck"; a long duration platform with sensors at least equal to the U-2's, and built so the sensors can be changed in a short time, not built into the structure of the aircraft so you can't replace and update them regularly. In the ISR business, the platform is only an elevator...the business is in the sensors!

1. Better 2. Lots of suck but outweighed by the pros. Plus, the $75K/yr the gov't is now paying me in retirement for the rest of my life smooths over the lows in the career.