FLEA

He was actually reviewing resumes for free. I had him look at mine and he definitely had a more nuanced approach than the prep companies there doing the same. He said he used to be a Capt for Delta and United I think.

DoS is resuming evacuation flights in December. No doubt this $$$ was a negotiation piece.

I mean, a lot of us here have experience with the ANA in one facet or another, and we are going to have different opinions for sure. I definitely believe there probably was a lack of commitment in some facets of the ANA but I've also worked with a lot of dudes who are true warriors and probably would have taken it to the end if there was a reasonable probability of success. There were certainly some differences in who ended up in certain positions and I could tell a huge difference in commitment from societal elites who were western educated and had family in high ranking government vs your average dude who is just trying to make ends meet.

Probably more to do with the fact that over 2 decades, we've slowly agreed as a country that this type of behavior is acceptable.

Anyone happen to be at RTAG? I've been incredibly impressed with this event and I've met lot of "good dudes" flying home with some great opportunities in their laps.

I mean, we will probably have to decipher lessons learned from this for years. But intelligence failure and surprise are non-negotiable. That absolutely happened. To the very end there was a belief that ANA would hold out long enough for us to complete withdrawal and maintain security of the Kabul embassy. Why that didn't happen? Well, its probably multi-faceted, and some of what you said is probably true as well. I'm also not certain we know the exact end-strength of the Taliban though. We spent years whacking off these dude's patriarchs and created a multi-generational army of people that hate us. I think they were a lot larger than we expected them to be. I mean we've killed SO MANY of them, and instantly, 2-3 were already right there to backfill them. You have to wonder about this.

In short we taught them our good habbits but we taught them our bad ones too.They were "making the slide green" on their readiness numbers to ensure following fiscal year funding etc... The Brits and French suspected this but never got deep into researching it. We, in all of our awesomeness to make the slide green, loved seeing the ANA slide's green. So we reported the good news up to our senior leaders and now our slides were green too! Noone ever questioned it. Why would they, the slide was green!

This. It's easy to judge but when the President flees who issues the orders? Furthermore, there was a lack of US inteligence on ANA readiness, we believed their army was two to three times larger than it actually was. Lastly, they had no means to protect their families from retaliation making many unable to leave their homes to fight. It's easy to judge but putting myself in their shoes it's hard to fully comprehend their decision.

Posting this because there was a misconception that the majority of people that we evacuated were military age males. That wasn't my experience and certainly isn't what the DoD is reporting. There is a disproportionate amount of adult men, but certainly not majority, and not an army. https://www.yahoo.com/news/pentagon-almost-half-afghan-evacuees-211802805.html

Definitely know people who were in my squadron got the boot but I believe you had to have multiple failures. A lot of people were 1-2 failures in already when the red shirts became a thing and they went into their repeat test thinking nothing has changed. They were utterly destroyed with how specific the FACs were at upholding the standard though. Also knew 1 lieutenant who didn't make Capt on time because he failed a single PT test for pushup depth. 61 reps but only counted 22 or so. The issue here wasn't really the civilian FACs. It was that for decades noone upheld the standard and then overnight that changed. There was also a culture thing. The USAF went through some identity crises where it believed it's role was to augment the Army in war, and we needed to be "fit to fight" and start issuing M-16s in basic. It was utterly ridiculous.

This one was good.

What people relentlessly pushing this vaccine dont realize is the reason you have so many people weary of the vaccine is because they don't trust the institution (the US government, pharmaceuticals, and US media). When the news media push pieces like this that use deception (omission of facts, data, context or counterpoints), people see right through it, and it furthers their distrust. Why would I trust an institution that feels they have to deceive me? Maybe they're experts, but they're experts with an agenda, and any person's individual well-being is not part of that agenda.

Are you saying the experts were "surprised" when a virus mutated? If so we may need to evaluate their credentialed expertise. But this was totally predictable. Only the US is having these massive communication failures. In Europe they were talking about Delta concerns with the vaccine as far back as February. I remember a TIME article from January that predicted the virus would likely out mutate the vaccine and the likely conclusion to the pandemic would be mutation to a variant that human society can tolerate.

Bro I'm going to trust an arch bishop who went to seminary school 8 years and rose to influential levels of the Catholic church on moral interpretations before I trust some joe off the internet. Trust the experts man.

Most of the regionals I looked at for my own employment prospects will cover the ATP. You need to be hired with the minimums. I've definitely seen it say minimums for ATP or R-ATP.

Thankfully, because of the determination of the weapons school to continue to teach white board briefing I believe we are ok without PowerPoint. No email though? I think we are fucked....

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2021/10/12/pentagon-official-says-he-resigned-because-us-cybersecurity-no-match-china.html I think what I find most interesting in his post is calling out Google. Why did we let Google seize the narrative on that? At the end of the day, google caved to 12 employees that through a hissy fit that Google wanted to work with the USAF to reduce civilian casualties in Drone Strikes.

I mean with the rapid rise of inflation, a $600 transaction is pretty minimal. I can't understand how they are arguing this targets the super wealthy? I probably make 3-5 $600 transfers a month between wife's account, my account, etc....

There were several law suits in the late 90s and dudes were kicked out. Some dudes actually won their lawsuits and the anthrax vaccine went away for a bit until it got some new labeling/certification. Came back in early 2000s after the anthrax mail attacks, which ironically, were sent by the dude who invented the vaccine because he was angry the military stopped mandating the vaccine. (No shit look it up). We didn't know that at the time though and his identity wasn't known until a decade later, at which point he committed suicide before he ever faced justice. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Edwards_Ivins

There is a 130 Nav as well, lost her leg in a boating accident. She also got flight certified again and runs a non profit now for prosthetics.

I think I confused you with my answer. To be clear, I dont think Abbot should have made a mandate. My whole point is, keep shit at the lowest level and keep the government out. It's a corporate/labor dispute like anything else. Unless there is criminal conduct, just let it go.

Another idea I had, research alternatives to satellite communications for unmanned systems. A big limfac with unmanned systems is they are bandwidth intensive and SATCOM has a very limited and very saturated spectrum.

Was a Belgian astronaut in the European space agency. If you decide to go this route I can probably facilitate that connection. That is a worthy cause.

Ran into a dude that knows the dude who invented the rotatable rudder control on the HOTAS for Logitech flight sticks. Since you mentioned it let me see if I can make contact and see what he knows about.

Fucking DoD -_-