60 driver

"DMV with some guns"

Kadena aircrew, Alaska ANG PJs. Studs all.

Where did you find this? I looked all over the NGA and DLA sites, but even the NGA "app store" page didn't appear to link to anything, even from a .mil computer.

Went to the first one (I think) in 1998 at Nellis. If I remember correctly it was the first full up debrief of the Streetcar 304 mission by the guys involved since the shootdown. I'll echo Rainman - well worth the trip.

Not from the Deid, but from another deployed location. Even after all the other dumb shit I've seen over the years, I still had a hard time believing this one is real, but I've been assured that it is. The email is bad enough, but what's worse, this dipshit's commander is clearly OK with it. Enjoy. ASAB Enlisted Corps, Welcome to 5MT accountability one and all. Today marks the day that you are required to know the Airman's Creed and Air Force Song as outlined in my first 5MT to the Enlisted Corps. At no time did I alleviate ANYONE from this requirement, so the demographic is clear. If you are an "E-something", this applies to you. To some it applies even more, especially if you are a supervisor. If in a supervisory role, you are also accountable TO and FOR your people. MANY PEOPLE ARE ASKING WHY I INITIATED THIS 5MT TO BEGIN WITH. Well.Before we delve into the "whys," let's first revisit the "Who, What, Where, and When" parts. Those were provided in BOTH the initial and follow-on emails that I've attached. The "how" was left completely up to you. - Who: Every Enlisted member assigned to the XXXAEW. - What: Be able to RECITE from MEMORY the Airman's Creed and "sing" the first verse of the AF song - Where: In public forums during Wing events or when asked by senior leadership. - When: Primarily by 1 September 2011 - How: Based on your personal preference - WHY: To forge LEADERSHIP and FOLLOWERSHIP capability and to drive Enlisted uniformity during ### AEW ceremonies. BACKGROUND: - VECTOR 1 came directly from AF Leadership: As CMSAF Roy's direction when he told all USAF Command Chiefs to."Champion the Airman's Creed and ensure you and your Airmen are able to recite it". Period. - VECTOR 2 came from me as a reiteration of CMSAF Roy's direction. From both a Leadership and followership perspective. - VECTOR 3 should have come from Your Supervisor: That vector should have mirrored CMSAF Roy's as a matter of loyalty and in a manner of professionalism. - VECTOR 4 should have come from YOU DISCUSSION: Everyone presented with the 5MT requirements had options in CHOOSING their personal way ahead. Their choices will place them into a category of compliance as listed below. Almost everyone should be able to recognize which demographic they primarily align with. Here are the 6 categories: 1. Someone who just recently arrived here & hadn't had 50 days to meet the 5MT requirements. You are still accountable, but you'll be granted more time. Get on it & get there within 50 days from your DAS. You are NOT DONE yet. 2. Someone who already knew both recitations, and were able to deliver them from day 1. You were good to go from the initial vector. Good on you. You are DONE. Would ask that you assist others who aren't quite there yet. 3. Someone who didn't know either of them BUT accepted the requirement and made it happen. If you took it upon yourself to learn them, you are a leader by example. If you took the direction of your supervisor, you are a competent follower. Regardless, you met the requirements and did not fail. Good on you. You are DONE. Hopefully you help those around you. 4. Someone in a supervisory position who knew or learned it, led by example, kept your Wingmen in sight, and pushed your subordinates toward success. You embodied the ability to Fly, Fight, and WIN. You have proven yourself as someone who wasn't prone to sit-back, give-up, and allow failure. Good on you. You are DONE. Your people are probably thanking you for pushing them to succeed. 5. Someone who TRIED their hardest but still couldn't get it memorized in time. You may not fully be there yet, but since the words are in your memory.chances are you'll be able to recite it in a crowd. In any event, I (and other Wingmen) will recite along with you and together we'll all succeed in this 5MT. Good on you for giving it your best shot. You are NOT DONE, so KEEP TRYING until you get 100% of it. 6. Someone who dismissed the entire requirement and neither worked at it personally..nor pushed their Airmen to success. You Faltered and Failed. Period. If you're one who either complained about the 5MT, or openly refused to comply.you're still on the hook. If you're a Supervisor who failed to lead your Airmen to success.you're still on the hook. If you think this is over, think again. You are NOT DONE, and that will become even clearer in the future. DELIVERABLES: The Commander and I have already been asking Enlisted Airmen to recite the Airman's Creed in public. Yes folks, the Wing CC is also on-board in this exercise. So my hope is that we encounter Airmen in categories 1-5 when we're out and about. So far.it's been good. Two excursions, 11 Airmen.11 successful deliveries. WAY AHEAD: I will periodically ask folks if they know it. If they say yes, I may recite or sing along WITH them. I will ask how they gained their success. I will ask if they were vector checked buy their immediate Supervisor. The answers THEY GIVE will tell me who Led and Followed appropriately. If they say they don't know it.there will be tougher questions. BOTTOM LINE: If you are an Enlisted Airman who fell into categories 1-5 - No need to read on any further unless you really want to. Continue to move forward and keep finding ways to meet requirements. If your Supervisor pushed you toward success.thank them. If you Led and followed appropriately.you hit the 5MT and will be able to execute from here on out. ROCK BOTTOM LINE: Hopefully the Airman's Creed will become personal to you. Hopefully you'll realize that EVERY activity you perform EVERY day provides you an opportunity to Fly, Fight, and win. By realizing that "Fly" equates to rising to face the challenge, "Fight" equates to expending energy to meet the challenge, and "Win" equates to overcoming the challenge...it may make some sense. Hope you Flew, Fought, and Won on this challenge. Category 6 personnel.read on below my signature block. There's more. V/R Chief Xxxxxxxx CMSgt X. Xxxxx Xxxxxxxx Wing Command Chief Master Sergeant ### Air Expeditionary Wing (AFCENT) CATEGORY 6 Just so there's no ambiguity here. If you blew off the requirement , you've failed as a follower. If you're a supervisor who told your people that it wasn't important, you have failed exponentially as both a leader and a follower. By ignoring what your Senior Enlisted leadership directed you to do, you purposefully missed the mark and took down a couple of our Core Values with you . First, You didn't demand Excellence in ALL we do and Secondly you put yourself ABOVE a tasking. two of the 3 core values destroyed in one fell swoop. Now.before anyone starts complaining about the difficulty of the Airman's creed requirements; let me dissect the task into bits and pieces that are easier to swallow. Hopefully this will clarify the failure a bit more. NOTE: The first 5MT went out on 12 July, so the entire period of "training" equates to 50 days. Nice round number, but roughly 7 weeks if you received it on 12 July. - Basic Trainees have 7 weeks of "training days" to learn the exact same things CMSAF Roy asked of us. They do so without the Military experiences that we have. So, the advantage should have been YOURS. - Reading the entire Airman's Creed out loud takes less than 40 seconds, even if you momentarily pause between stanzas . That's less than one minute from end to end. - Chances are, by reading it out loud for 2 minutes a day you'd have had it memorized in 20 days. 3 times in a row per day.20 days in a row. If you did that, you'd be in category 5 at the very least. - Even if using the entire 50 days, you would have expended 100 total minutes of effort. Less than two total hours of time stretched over nearly 2 months.simply reading out loud. No sweat. No toil.simply reciting. - There are 18 total lines in the Airman's Creed, so that equates to learning 2 lines per week. Actually it's a bit less once you realize that 4 of the lines are exactly the same. - If you broke it down by stanzas, there are four. So you'd have had 12 . 5 days to learn each stanza WHAT I HAVE HEARD: Some thought the 5MT was "stupid" so they QUIT on day one and TOLD others to blow it off as well. Instead of shaping the environment through followership and discipline they chose to ACCEPT or even DIRECT failure. That is intolerable. WAY AHEAD: Right now, I don't even know who fits into what demographic.But I'm about to find out. I'll see who knows it or not. If they don't know it, I'll ask how much time they put into "learning". I'll ask for their immediate supervisor's name. I'll ask what their Supervisor did to ensure their success. I'll ask if they were vector checked by their immediate Supervisor. That should tell me enough to categorize those who failed.and those who let them fail. Then they will BOTH make it right. It's called accountability. In this game, everyone gets a trophy. BOTTOM LINE: Never leave an Airman behind, Never Falter.and do not fail. If you're off-track.return to the fight NOW. If you tell me you're reengaging.I'm good with that. V/R Chief Xxxxxxxx End email

Your feelings seem to run a little deeper than mine on this issue. I was just expressing surprise at their change in marketing strategy after all these years, i.e. to produce something that apparently isn't intended to taste like hot sick ass.

Not sure whether this is more of a WTF or a YGBSM:

3

Then it shouldn't be in the news. At the risk of starting this argument again, the use of the word "operator" implies that they are in more than a support role. The headline was purposely misleading.

Rgr

Check PMs.

We think about you every day, brothers. We'll never forget.

If it wasn't already mentioned, Kadena helos, Alaska ANG PJs. Our AK guys have had a hell of a year. This is their second mission of this magnitude just from this rotation, and incidentally, two of the guys in the linked article were also on this one last summer up here: http://www.alaskadispatch.com/article/seasoned-alaska-pilot-recounts-knik-glacier-crash-landing ...along with many more non-headline making missions both deployed and at home. They and the Kadena guys are all ######ing studs, and they're leaving some big new footprints to follow.

In the recent topics column, the thread title reads "Iraqi General killed by Herk Driver."

No argument there.

Maybe so, but for the record, that is exactly what Magpul teaches in their carbine course. The snake eaters train with these guys pretty frequently, and given the superior quality of AF small arms training (insert eye roll here), it's probably not too much of a stretch to think that a career cop has attended one of their courses or a something similar.

I think I remember hearing the chase car radio story, now that you mention it. The pilot was young in the jet, a normally solid guy that got distracted during the wrong ten seconds and ended up having a real bad day. Fortunately our commander at the time was an old school Robin Olds type who saw the situation for what it was and went to bat for our boy. I can't remember the specifics, but I recall he had to brief the wing safety standup, flew with an instructor for awhile, and got a bonus checkride out of the deal, as well as a new callsign. It didn't ultimately hurt him that bad, I don't remember that it even slowed down his upgrade progression. It probably helped his case that other than not getting the god damn gear down, it was actually a pretty good landing - the two TGM-65s under the wings got written off, but the only actual damage to the aircraft was to the bottom end caps of the vertical tails. We replaced those and flew the airplane home 3 or 4 days later. How long did your guy end up being airborne? He flew over the Rosie VOQ on final well after dark, and he got a big cheer from a bunch of half shitfaced hog guys out on the balcony there. How big a deal is it to land that thing at night?

Rosie Roads? Which reminds me: Any of you guys been around long enough to remember the hog that landed gear up down there in the late '90s? One of your guys got a couple extra hours added onto an already long day and a bonus night landing while waiting for the Navy guys to figure out how to sling a gear-up A-10 off the runway. If I remember right, I believe we delivered a keg or reasonable facsimile as a peace offering after that cluster ######. If anyone remembers it, it'd be interesting to hear the story from the other side.

Yeah, I'll buy that. The only problem is, if you or I went UA for three days on a deployment and lied about why, there'd be no opportunity for healing and getting on with life, it'd be straight to a well-deserved court martial.

Pretty much, except I'd replace the number with 50.

Steve, It occurs to me (again) that I'm getting old, since it's not the first time I've been surprised to hear these questions asked. I've heard the same ones recently from young LTs, and the first couple of times I did, I guess I looked at them funny, until I realized that all this happened almost 20 years ago. Hard to believe. Kind of the equivalent of expecting a 23 year old me to know what the assignment process was like during Vietnam. ClearedHot and Crog covered a lot, but I don't remember seeing this mentioned, although it's probably obvious. The reason the banked pilot program came into existence to begin with was due to the massive defense cuts after the fall of the Berlin Wall, followed by the Gramm-Rudman bill. At least from my perspective at the time, it was not in any way a forward-looking program. It was a very reactive, last ditch effort by the Air Force to prevent the UPT program from being decimated. As best I can describe it, the flesh peddlers knew even then there would be a pilot shortage by the late '90's. At the same time, although they knew that in the short term the number of UPT students now greatly exceeded the number of available cockpits, they couldn't just cut the student production to zero and still hope to have a viable UPT program X years later. So the banked guys became the shock absorber, with the intent of A) maintaining the UPT program, and B) hopefully providing a "bank" of rapidly retrainable pilots when demand resumed. I'm sure at least a few here have both a better memory and narrative skills than I do, but that is what I was able to drag out of the depths. I will add that if the concept seems confusing now, it was very much so to us (or me, at least) at the time as well. When I graduated UPT in 1992, our time in the bank was estimated to be 2.5 years. That turned out to be just about spot on for me. Like Crog, I could talk for hours on the subject, but I won't other than to say that a lot of guys had problems coming back from the bank, and a lot of guys just chose not to. The AF provided a lot of us a very effective tool to figure out what was really important, even if they didn't quite do it on purpose or with our best interests in mind. I have some just weird stories from being banked, but I'm not sure they'd add much other than what ClearedHot mentioned earlier, so I'll shut up now. edit: I answered a question in this forum a while back about whether banked pilots were handicapped in their careers afterwards. My short answer was I didn't think so, but these links will answer that question better than I did. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts131/interview_dutton.html'>http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts131/interview_dutton.html http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/shuttlemissions/sts131/

Cool picture. Pretty cool comment. What's the problem?

Let's get straight to your point. What is it?

You should really do some research on who you're rebutting before you open your yap. That said, I'm interested in your opinion on every single MOH recipient and why it's relevant to Rainman's point.

I hear you - in fact, I recognize those words as my own, from 10 years ago. However, do your research before you punch out for the promised land of the Guard. When I transferred over from active duty, I believed that I could now fly for the rest of my career and no one would give a shit about PME and promotions anymore. The first part was true - not so much the second. As a Guard guy, you will meet a ROPMA board after you've been at a certain rank for the prescribed maximum number of years, and if you don't get picked up for promotion, they can- and will - kick your ass out, just like on active duty. At least in my state, you will not get promoted (by order of the state adjutant general) if you don't have PME finished. This didn't used to be the case; now it is. There are such things as selective retention boards, but for the most part a passed over captain will hit the streets at the 12 year mark, a major at 20ish. I'm sure someone will be along shortly to gnat's ass those numbers, but they're in the ball park. Most guys have no desire to be the chairman of the joint chiefs - but for those who want to keep flying (and a job) a while longer, we have to bite the bullet and do PME anyway. I swore up and down I would never get a ######ing master's or do ACSC just to get promoted - now I can only say, I will never get a ######ing master's. Just a heads up. edit: basically what GA and slacker already pointed out - oops