Jesus Christ, so much "but her emails" copium in this thread right now. Not a lot of solutions. Here's a wild idea, although it makes too much sense for republicans to actually try it: 

Let trump go down in flames. Just let him go.  

If you think this is a big unfair liberal witch hunt or at the very least a terrible double standard, thats the fastest way to fix it. Take this opportunity to divorce yourself from the un-electable clown and get a frontrunner who can actually win.  Then when you win in 2024, you can indict Hillary and Hunter and Biden and Kamala and Dylan Mulvaney and Whoopie Goldberg and whoever else you want. 
 

This is a massive F-big opportunity for republicans, but they're so blinded by "ITS NOT FAIR" they won't even be able to capitalize. The fastest way to right past wrongs is to get power back and the fastest way to get power back is to dump the criminal lunatic who alienated more people than have ever voted in history into choosing the senile houseplant. 
 

We've been over this in this thread before. Why is the mainstream media running near-constant hit pieces on Desantis even though he trails trump in every poll?  Why is trump exclusively targeting Desantis?

Say it with me all together now:

Because. He's. The. Candidate. They're. Actually. Worried. About. 

Just once, I'd love to hear news about UPT getting more rigorous. Literally in any way

15 hours ago, Danger41 said:

For those staying AD, why is the UPT enterprise so derided? Predictable schedule, not deployments (mostly), fly a lot. Admittedly locations aren’t great but based on the above, why is UPT viewed so negatively?

Location cannot be stressed enough. They're not just not great.. they are in the absolute ass crack of America. And Im not talking about what I've heard, I've been to all the bases and lived at 2 of them.
 

For married folks it's terrible for the spouse and kids. For single folks it's terrible because good luck finding anyone to date other than the #peopleofwalmart locals. 
 

If you're one of those guys who thinks location isn't a big deal or the locations  aren't that bad based on your year and change spent there in UPT 10-15 yrs ago I've got an experiment for you. After work one day sit down with your wife and tell her you got orders to Laughlin. There's nothing you can do, you guys are moving at the end of the summer. See how that conversation goes and then come tell me location isn't a big deal. 

The mission and personal sacrifices associated with the mission arent what's driving people out of the Air Force en masse. If you ask, 90+ percent of flyers will tell you they love their mission and it's what gets them up in the morning. It's the mountain of queep and endless administrivia hoops we jump through on a daily basis that sours people on the Air Force. Its the daily grinding against the densest bureaucracy imaginable. 
 

I worked a civilian engineering job for 5 years prior to Air Force life and it was leaps and bounds more focused on my primary duty than the Air Force is focused on me being a CMR CAF pilot.  So we'll play a quick game of civilian world never-have-I-ever. 
 

Never have I ever in my civilian job:

-had a computer that takes 20 minutes to log onto email

-been voluntold to attend and organize social functions in my off time

-DRMO literally anything

-submit my co-workers for 15 categories of awards every quarter with nazi-regime level strictness of the award submissions

-use 1/2 and 1/4 spaces in a document to adhere to writing standards

-do HR functions onboarding/off boarding/ discipline/punishment

-had scheduled PTO cancelled causing me to eat plane ticket and lodging costs

-had my company open a credit card in my name, stipulate what I can use it for, threaten me for not using it, and withhold payment based on an archaic voucher system managed by literal retards.

-had basic structural issues with our office building go un-fixed for years

-been put in charge of entire programs wildly outside my job description

-pulled weeds, mowed grass, and plowed snow around my office building

-done 69 annual CBTs to maintain "readiness"

to name just a very very few.  
 

Most of this stuff just sounds like minor gripes and complaints but the list is endless.  If you have significant private sector experience prior to entering or a spouse you can compare stories with its very very easy to see the insanity of all this crap.  Most dudes won't get that perspective until getting out.  

1 hour ago, nsplayr said:

So when will this translate into voters electing Republicans to run major cities again? Like you said, NYC has had Republican mayors relatively recently. Why can't the GOP win in cities anymore? If it's all so self-evident, why isn't there a single city larger than Fort Worth with a Republican mayor? Only 9 out of the 50 biggest US cities have Republican mayors. 18% ain't good! Ya know what, I'll be charitable and give you another 0.25 of a mayor for Eric Adams in NYC lol.

People ask all the time why can't Dems compete in rural areas. There are endless "old guys in a diner in exurban Ohio" think pieces. I'm asking why can't Republicans compete in the country's major population centers? Why isn't there a "shining city on the hill" run by the GOP that all these "shithole" Dem cities can look up to and copy? 🧐

I mean it's mainly a question of demographics. Big cities lean extremely heavily left because big cities attract tech, finance, and corporate workers who also lean overwhelmingly left. And Americans are far too tribal to vote for someone of the opposite party who might actually clean up the streets over someone in their own party. No matter how heinous the results continue to be. 
 

If you're looking for a good model to emulate I'm not sure why it has to be a big city. There's excellent conservative governance going on in medium size cities/towns all over the country.
 

3 hours ago, Bigred said:

I’m really interested to see what happens in a few years when situations develop like Osprey dudes taking the bonus and choose OCONUS/Hurlburt to avoid Cannon. 
 

 

Except you already know what's going to happen. Surprise! Needs of the Air Force. Promising Base of preference on an enterprise level doesn't work when you have objective shitholes that you have to man with people. What happens when every eligible UPT ADO preferences Randolph? Are they just gonna stop manning the UPT bases with majors and above? What happens when every viper driver in existence prefs aviano/spang over holloman? No more b-course I guess. 
 

And if by some wild chance the Air Force does attempt to keep its word to the bonus takers, now they have to try and force free agents to PCS to the Laughlins and cannons and minots of the world, resulting in the same 7 day opt waves we've already seen. 
 

It'll take big blue 6.9 seconds to figure out it's totally unsustainable and turn it off. 
 

 

3 hours ago, StrikeOut312 said:

Concur. I think the AF is trying with the base-of-preference tied to the bonus, it’s just too late—and I don’t know how well it’ll work out.

I’d be intrigued by a one year bonus. I’m even intrigued by the possibility of sticking around as a free agent. But Guard/Reserve with a line number addresses the .mil flying and padding the bank account. Or so the old guys on here tell us…

Yeah I'd trust the base of preference thing about as far as I can throw AFPC.. which is to say zero

5 hours ago, HossHarris said:

Tell us a story pooter

Basically identical to this video

I've seen balloons, drones, stars, planets, farmer joe in a Cessna, and airliners etc.. many times through the pod, nvgs, and with the naked eye. If you trust that I have any level of competence operating military aircraft believe me it was not any of those things. 
 

 

4 hours ago, StrikeOut312 said:

I know one guy in the tanker world that did a 365 a few years ago. In the last year, my squadron got 3x 180s—2 guys got stuck with them for ADSC/bonus reasons, 1 guy 7-day opted.

I think it’s disingenuous to completely dog the AF and denigrate folks that stay in. Around the 10-12 year point, the AF is a comfortable, easy job with good pay and benefits. For some folks and their families, sticking around in the AF is the right and easy call. A close friend of mine said that for these guys, the bonus is an entitlement—almost a “thank you” for sticking around.

I know I’m not a golden boy on the path, and I’ve known for at least a couple years I’m probably gonna split when the ADSC is up next summer. The bonus is too little, too late, with too many unknowns—where am I gonna PCS? Where will the AF TDY/deploy folks? What’s the next once-in-a-career thing I’ll experience?

100% agree and I'm not bashing the dudes that want to stay in. If I was on the golden path for school and some joint gig in DC my calculus might change too. Because I'm fairly sure the #1 guy at my base doesn't have to worry about getting sent to Laughlin. 
 

But my point is if the AF wants the bonus to actually do anything for retention it needs to be very convincing money in the short term targeted squarely at the dudes getting out in droves. For the guys on the fence about getting out, taking on an additional 10 year commitment is a literal joke.. for any amount of money. 
 

You solve the retention problem by targeting the middle 50% of dudes and convincing them it's worth their while to stay another 2-3 years. 

It's wild because the dudes taking the 12 year 50 k extension were probably staying anyway. So now big AF just has to pay them more.

The actual crux of the retention problem is the 90% of 2nd yr majors  drowning in queep who are non school selects.. reading the tea leaves that a laughlin tour or bullshit Africa 365 are in their very near future. So maybe getting paid more to fly at the airlines with precisely 0% chance of a deployment and 0% you get domiciled in Laughlin is pretty attractive.

If the Air Force  is actually serious about fixing retention, they need to offer stupid money in the first few years after the ADSC ends.

 

Not sure if there's already a thread for this but.. 

How is this story not getting more attention??

https://thedebrief.org/intelligence-officials-say-u-s-has-retrieved-non-human-craft/

Also anyone got any good UAP/UFO flying stories? I honestly thought it was a bunch of navy dweebs seeing things after a little too long at sea.. till it happened to me.

On 6/4/2023 at 12:05 PM, brabus said:

The Army well surpasses the AF in queep and bullshit reindeer games. Wouldn’t have believed it until I spent enough time with them. The AF is a shit show,  it it’s less of a shit show compared to the Army. So we’re not the worst, yay?

That's wild. I wonder about the navy and marines.. maybe being on a boat mitigates some level of queep.. at least that's what I'd hope

11 hours ago, Danger41 said:

I may be super disconnected from the younger generation, but is all this drag show etc really popular amongst young Airmen? Like are 20 year olds actively seeking out this form of entertainment or is it just loud voices on the internet?

I am sure it is the few loud fringe voices as per the usual arrangement. 

Pulling out of a loop at 900 AGL in a gigantic helicopter JFC yeah that's gonna be a no from me dawg

On 5/25/2023 at 6:47 PM, Prozac said:

Well, I think we found our fix to fix nazi.
 

That said, you ain’t shit unless you can shack a F2F directly into a holding pattern, correctly apply the Mercedes Benz method for holding entry, proficiency triple the drift on the outbound leg, call ready for the approach after the first turn, then precisely fly a DME arc, compute the proper lead radial, and roll out on the NDB final within a degree, maybe a degree and a half (I mean, the needle does waiver a bit so I’m willing to cut a little slack here), figure your descent rate, execute a complex missed with a non-standard climb, and F2F yourself right back to the IAF to do the VOR this time. No GPS. Under the hood. In the Tweet. 

Lolol call me a F2F nazi all you want but I don't think figuring out a ratio between two numbers should be a task beyond our student pilots. 
 

 Its pretty telling that your paragraph comes off as an impossibly difficult joke now but you basically described a standard instrument check profile from 10-15 years ago

There are plenty of fighter wash outs doing good work in global strike and carrying far more weapons and gas than they would have had in fighters🤫🤫. Seen dudes move on to squadron command, TPS, WIC, you name it. A solid attitude and work ethic will serve you well no matter where you end up.  

2 hours ago, HeloDude said:

You did a barrel roll in the T-6 while in close trail?  When and where?

Countless times, all over the place, on bro level CT sorties. Never with a student or a bob. Can confirm the plane flies fine upside down and did not spontaneously explode

19 minutes ago, Biff_T said:

Yeap, you should always know basic instrument techniques.  As much as I hated doing a F2F, I always gave one on check rides (before it was removed from the 11mDS ).  One day (crazy world war or alien invasion), those moving maps and GPS waypoints may not be there or be that accurate.  That trusty TACAN will always be there.   Lol

Facts. Even more than the applicability to gps/alien doomsday scenarios, solar storms, raim issues and internal electrical malfunctions can totally hose GPS and moving maps.. I've seen the little airplane icon on the moving map glitch around or move backwards more than a few times. In those instances, control and performance instruments + a legacy navaid are basically all you've got.
 

But even more than that I just believe if you can't figure out how an HSI works you have no business operating an aircraft. It's like learning to make your bed in boot camp. Shows you have the wherewithal and aptitude to master basic tasks before you get bigger more relevant tasks. Why should I trust you to manage an autopilot coupled  approach to mins in a state of the art aircraft if you can't figure out two needles and a DME readout. 

 

44 minutes ago, Vito said:

 Some of this thread remind me of my Tweet IP’s in 1986 who were looking forward to flying the brand new Fairchild T-46 in a year or two (?). I retired from the AF in 2014. In 2003 the AF announced the T-46/767 tanker. My Goal was to get a plug on the new 767 Tanker before I retired (11 years in the future) it never happened, Procurement takes forever. 
The T-46, Tweet replacement that never happened

We haven't had an aircraft acquisition this century that hasn't been an unmitigated disaster. Huge cuts to the F-22 production run, endless delays and capability problems with the 46, they're prematurely gutted the F-35 order and it was plagued with problems.  B-21 first flight is a year late already (don't worry though we rolled it out of a hangar for 30 seconds!) We desperately need a new BVR AAM and hypersonics but the best we can do are embarrassing flight test fails with ARRW on the buffs resulting in program abandonment.  And the T-7 which is supposed to be the simplest of these is somehow the biggest poop show of the lot.
 

https://theaviationist.com/2023/05/22/what-we-know-so-far-about-the-u-s-air-forces-next-generation-air-dominance-platform/amp/
 

And now the Air Force is saying NGAD will start replacing raptors by the end of the decade. I couldn't write a funnier joke if I tried. 

😂😂😂 such a good edit

but actually.. fix to fixes, while completely outdated and illegal, are a pretty good litmus test for whether you have the aptitude to learn basic instrument flying concepts. If you can't get reasonably close on a F2F, you probably don't have a good grasp of where you are in time and space, or what the course and bearing needles are trying to tell you. 
 

We're quick to throw basics away these days because they don't directly translate to the ops world anymore, but we do new student pilots a disservice depriving them of basic aviation building blocks. The same idea as why you teach kids arithmetic by hand before using calculators.

2 hours ago, Bigred said:

I’ve yet to see wings fall off or engines explode. The jet isn’t difficult to fly if you respect the airspeed and op limits. 

Look at any dynamic aircraft over the last 50 years and you’ll see a bunch of mishaps, and the majority of those are attributable to pilot error. Structural issues, if found to be contributing, are remedied. 
 

I’ve only been flying the -38 for a year, but what am I missing here? 

To name a few:

-The relatively common occurrences of airframe mounted gearbox failure

-wings de-laminating

-extreme susceptibility of the engines to birdstrikes

-century series fighter era TOLD on runways that are irresponsibly short

-low altitude compressor stalls which PMP was supposed to fix

33 minutes ago, hindsight2020 said:

With the other two contenders of consequence both being COTS. That's the real criminality here.

I pretty much threw out my T-7 swag already. With a first retirement eligible date of mid-late 2020s, I'm settled in the fact I'm gonna retire in my grandfather's ol timey ride. That is if it doesn't kill me first, or cost me a second divorce. The weef already got smart on the airline "trade", she's now on the  "100% you're just taking a gratuitous risk now" camp.

Jest aside, it's not hyperbole when I say I have more than one former co-worker who lateral'd back to the T-6 or went back to a heavy, citing these concerns. Though I never had any interest in the 121 thing, it does not escape me that the income vs bodily risk ratio went lopsided a while ago for me as a multi-thousand hour in type grey beard in this enterprise. The consideration does weigh on me at times.

What I'm also confident on, is had we gone T-50 or T-100, we'd have tails on ramp last summer. It was the height of malfeasance what Boeing did with that shtick of unserious underbidding. Not so much that they threw the number, but that the AF entertained it with a straight face. 

I still carry the memory of Stuck with me. Human factors notwithstanding, he didn't have to die that day. These are losses squarely in the camp of the right side of the MTBF curve, aka the bathtub model. To say nothing of the fact we've exceeded Northrop's projected airframe life by thousands of hours and multiple decades, pacer classic potato or not. It doesn't have to be this way.

And as much as it pains me to say this, there will be more losses stemming from  *aging-structures (*term in engineering grad school for this issue) related failures, mark my words. Acceptable as it may be to HAF, it needs to be said anyways. Because for those of us who are in the community, nothing could be more personal, AVF platitudes be damned. Boeing has blood on their hands as far as I'm concerned.

Everybody stay safe out there.

 

Carry the memory Stuck and Trojan with me as well.  The 38 is well past it's shelf life and I would do anything in my power to avoid flying that death trap. Up to and including answering a few choice PHAQ questions honestly for the first time ever. 

1 hour ago, dream big said:

I’m sure you were well loved so don’t take this personally but what is it with toxic AFSOC senior leaders?? You guys must want to compete badly with AMC to see who can run their pilots out of the Air Force faster. 

More and more, what decides who moves up in the AF is about who is willing to stick around, kiss the ring, put up with the abuse, and accept life/family thrash.  So it's really a self-selecting pool. Majcoms that subject their people to high amounts of life thrash and abuse will naturally elevate the people willing to put up with it. And those people once in power will, in turn, inflict it on others.

3 minutes ago, Sua Sponte said:

The USAF pulled a boomer move and said “Well, that sucks, I got mine. Needs of the service” and completely left out the fact these kids had a dream they’d be working hard towards for years. Then they wonder why people vote with their feet and leave.

FAIPing, while not nearly as bad a dick punch as drones, causes very similar resentment and near-universal 10 yr ADSC punch outs.

Join the AF to fly jets and see the world! Or alternatively..

Spend the first 5 years of your career flying around the flagpole in one of the 4 sh!ttiest towns in the country, probably single too!  Experience the best squadron, group, and wing leaders their respective MWS communities didn't want to keep for themselves!  Get strung along in a 4 year rat race with your friends who were all also better than average in UPT only to get a drop list measurably worse than average!  

Then finally show up to your MWS as a senior captain to get immediately relegated to queep centric jobs because your tactical knowledge/experience is far behind pipeline dudes in your age group.

 

But one time a FAIP became a general so it's probably an honor and an amazing opportunity

 

On 5/20/2023 at 4:48 AM, StrikeOut312 said:

Probably waiting till after the Major SCODs closeout on 31 May so the new Maj (s) don’t have to scramble.

It's a hilarious Air Force non-solution to a problem they created.. you could just release the list and still have the Maj selects close out on the Capt SCOD date. The Capt SCOD is before the fiscal year ends so no one will have pinned on yet anyway 🤷🏻‍♂️ literally the end result is the same without keeping everyone in limbo.  
 

I don't know what I expected to happen, big AF has a knack for choosing the dumbest possible COAs