StrikeOut312

My dog is a lab mix, for a reason. Easiest option, IMHO, is to get a vet or a piece of paper that says your dog is a mix breed. Not sure how the emotional support animal strategy would play out. Good luck. Very sweet looking pup!

You mean the Caspian right? I agree with you in principle, but my head spun for a second. Unless you’re thinking of the other war going on over in that hemisphere.

What's your plan if you DOR and separate? Think long and hard about that. The airline hiring pendulum has swung back the other way from 1,500 hour wonders getting hired at the legacies. Once you get through pilot training, it is a different AF, and flying is (usually) awesome. You're in an exceptionally competitive program...study hard, let it ride. My gut says stick with it. My $0.02 is you'll regret it if you hang up the flightsuit.

If you have to ask, get out. If it’s good for you, good for your family, you’re having fun, and you like what you’re doing, stay in. Otherwise, punch when your ADSC is up. Keep your doors open by finding a job in the ANG or AFRC.

Not even close to the dumbest thing I’ve seen from the boom operators.

I was surprised when we didn’t leave in 2011, and surprised when we did leave in 2021. Not surprised we’re going back though…we love doing that kind of thing.

I don't disagree with this sentiment, Trump's "shock and awe" playbook is absolutely disrupting stability. We are in a position now where we get to wait and see how the dust settles. Right or wrong, what's done is done. Maybe Congress will stop ceding power to the executive branch, or the R's will get trounced in '26. If his strategy is to create chaos and get to a negotiating position, perhaps it's working, or that's my misguided optimism.

If you're active duty, you are essentially on retainer. If nothing is going on at the squadron, don't be there. If you're a supervisor and your folks aren't busy, send them home. Depending on the organization/mission, that mentality can be more/less tricky to implement...but in my life AD life flying the tanker, there were plenty of times I was called or my bros got called last minute to go into crew rest. Going home when the squadron is slow means you're making up for the time when you're gone short notice for an indefinite amount of time. Acting SECAF is either a clown or a puppet directed by clowns. Bad policy put out at a bad time.

Globalization was great during the "end of history" period (what a bunch of hubris). For all the virtue signalling that happens in the US, it's funny to me that folks are ok exploiting cheap labor overseas so us Americans can feed our consumerism addiction by ordering more cheap stuff than we know what to do with...go abroad, you'll be hard pressed to find 1/4 of the self-storage places we have here in the US. If we're anticipating another big conflict, makes sense to me we'd bring back some industrial capacity. There was a time where we made stuff here in the US, then it got cheaper to make it overseas, so we sent manufacturing abroad...at what cost? Got it, life will get more expensive, but we might claw back some self-reliance instead of depending on other folks to make our stuff. This episode was posted in another thread, applicable to this thread, and worth a listen.

This isn't a perfect analogy, but here goes: you've got a confirmed date to the ball with the 2nd prettiest girl in town, but the 1st prettiest girl just broke up with her boyfriend and you think you have a chance. You could take the sure thing, or take your chances, possibly ending up with no date to the ball. You're still waiting on OTS dates, and if you need SERE, you're probably looking at 2 years minimum in training with OTS->UPT->SERE->FTU and any other delays in the pipeline. A lot can change in 2 years. My gut says to take the sure thing, crush it, and someday down the road if you want to move and change units, that's not too hard of a stream to ford. If you do want to pursue getting hired on another unit's board, transparency is your friend here. Like Brabus said, have a frank conversation with your SQ/CC and get his opinion.

No. They should get fired or they should resign. A little accountability would be a huge breath of fresh air. I keep trying to wrap my head around a reason why they used signal and included a reporter, and all I can come up with is occam’s razor—they’re doofuses. Most of us on here know better, and we’d all get canned if we did the same thing. extra thought—is this some kind of misdirection? Lots of attention on this one huge SNAFU…what’s going on unnoticed?

A part of me wonders if it was intentional. Or if the reporter has a similar name as someone that was supposed to be added to the group chat.

Hopefully that means there’s a different solution or these future planes all have long legs. The -135 fleet is pretty old. Hilarious how much the AF relies on the cold war era aircraft.

I would love to hear the crew's side of this story. Seems crazy for the crew to behave that way.

We got a 6th gen fighter before a KC-135 replacement! Hell yeah. Can’t wait to tank this bad boy.