Pooter

@Clark Griswold I just say 50 by going off historical precedent. We were supposed to get 700+ raptors and 100 B-2s. There are already talks of cutting F-35 production in favor of NGAD paper promises. We’re dumping the wedge tail and can’t field a single engine jet trainer without a litany of issues. I’ve ranted about this in other threads before but I don’t think we have the attention span to stick with programs or build jets in numbers that are tactically relevant anymore. I would bet on getting 25% of the airframes we originally planned for. 50 would be 50% of the original B-21 order number which given how f-ed our acquisitions are right now would literally be a moonshot best case scenario. Would love to be proven wrong

Back on the B-21 topic I think we should all keep in mind that we’re probably only getting 50 of these things (if we’re lucky) so the question here is how comfortable are you trusting a very limited strategic asset to a single pilot? Bomber pilots will all tell you these long duration sorties really wear you down and little mistakes creep in as the fatigue gets worse. The airlines have figured this out too and they operate with a far higher degree of automation than most military jets. I know our fighter brethren are all high SA giga-chad superheroes who can do everything themselves but with all due respect if you haven’t flown a sortie over 24 hours un-augmented, you don’t know what you’re talking about. You need two pilots on this plane unless you’re comfortable putting them into the ground on a semi regular basis.

I know I’m preaching to the choir here but even for a decent pilot it takes numerous hacks at landings and A/R in a heavy aircraft before they’re even remotely close to safe. And this talking about a winged pilot who has flown UPT fingertip/CT/fluid maneuvering and then done all that stuff again in the FTU as well. The scope of the upgrade required here is to bring the WSOs up to speed is basically just.. pilot training. This is an idiotic and borderline suicidal idea enshrined by a 4-star who was on their way out the door and in search of a silver bullet to fix their self-inflicted manning problems. Probably the suckiest part is that when it’s inevitably walked back the WSO union is going to feel even more betrayed and sidelined than they already do now. And then we’ll be back to square one where there’s still no plan of what to do with them.

An interesting wrinkle here is that the B-21 is already flying.. with two pilots. So I don’t know at what point they’re planning to transition to single pilot ops or how global strike plans to train up some WSO monitors who could theoretically AR or land in a pinch. Just an all around wildly bad idea. Root cause here is they have no clue what to do with WSOs as airframes that have them gradually go away, while we simultaneously hemorrhage pilots. Get stoned, kill two birds I guess.

Picking countries and percentages for tariffs:

ooof that is a bad day. The canopy fracturing system in the T-6 is gnarly

I know incentive riders can do wacky things and I have no idea what happened in this case... but you're fucking up if you don't put the fear of god in them regarding the ejection handles and the seat in general. I don't care how much egress training they got, every incentive rider I ever flew with got another cockpit fam brief from me and I personally helped them strap in.

I think we need to stop kidding ourselves that anyone in senior leadership is concerned with actual skillsets or experience. What is happening is very simple: We can't maintain the jets we have and we can't acquire new ones in a reasonable timeframe. At the same time we must keep the slides green at all costs. The only answer left (short of offloading the entire operation to the civilian world) is to retcon what a UPT grad is. It costs AETC nothing to churn out crap and dump it into b-courses across the other MAJCOMs. B-course instructors will still wash out the weak swimmers, but at that point finding them a new home is an ACC/AMC/AFSOC/AFGSC problem. AETC's hands are clean (on paper) and the brass at Randolph have figured this out. They can even pitch the UPT cuts as #innovation and cost saving to keep the (even more out of touch) GOs in the Pentagon happy.

AF AMN/NCO page must be tracking this thread revival because this is perfectly on cue

Why do that when you can just crucify the inexperienced crews when they inevitably put more jets in the ground

The fact that they're calling it "F"UPT without even a hint of irony tells you everything you need to know.

Yeah I think the word is out that these have durability/safety issues now. When I shot at small arms about a year ago people were stoked about the new equipment, and honestly I thought it was pretty smooth. But that could also be because my benchmark was the broke-dick M9's they've been abusing for decades. Shame that we can't even get new stuff that works, all the way down to a f-ing sidearm. The craziest part of this whole thing is the Air Force's insane "duty load" policy that they teach everyone - round in the chamber, safety on FIRE, and holstered. They even tell aircrew to do that which is borderline suicidal to do inside of a pressurized cabin. Sig mechanical issues notwithstanding, the other services think we are absolute clowns when it comes to gun safety and I have to say that I agree.

In other news, the saga of Sig P320 uncommanded discharges continues, this time tragically claiming the life of an F.E. Warren Airmen. I'm not super smart on the internal mechanisms that led to these problems, but I know it's been a controversy across the gun world for quite some time, with Sig even claiming they fixed the issue on newer models at one point. Sad it took an airmen dying to finally do something about it. In summary: classic air force waiting until it's too late to address a clear safety concern. Also Sig is absolutely cooked.

go easy on the guy he's having a hard day at work

RJ Capt doing a stream of consciousness debrief to the entire cabin 😬