27 minutes ago, nsplayr said:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2025/02/19/trump-pentagon-budget-cuts/

BOHICA - Trump admin directing DoD to prepare for massive cuts in defense spending. Of note, Congress controls appropriations, at least under the U.S. Constitution, but who knows now...

5 years of 5% cuts, plus 5 years of projected 2% inflation equals an effective 30% cut in DoD spending by 2030 compared to if you kept the DoD budget flat. Plus the admin wants to add a significant new mission of policing the southern border.

So...do more with less money & manpower. This is much worse and dumber than the 2013-2014 sequestration that was intentionally designed to be as dumb as possible by Congress to motivate itself to work.

If this is the admin's starting position, Congress, including the GOP, is FAR FAR from it based on their draft reconciliation bill. Why Trump who is "very strong on the troops" wants to cut the Pentagon budget by 30% but also give us new expensive missions is not something I have an explanation for.

Not to mention all the civilians we hired to alleviate additional duties now all being offered paid separation.. and their positions will not be able to be backfilled. I'm sure that will be a boon for morale.

But I will say, I think we can find some room in the budget if we can be honest with ourselves about our biggest, dumbest, and most expensive mission: the collective delusion that we would actually fight WW3 against China over control of Taiwan. 

 

On 2/8/2025 at 6:15 PM, WheelsOff said:

I’ve been out of the AETC IP game a few years now. Sad to read it’s only gotten worse. But for those who are new around here and don’t know the history…it began when Kwast and Wills forcefully gang-banged the UPT enterprise into a training program that has set us on a course to become a 3rd-rate Air Force for decades to come. 

Don’t know what Kwast is doing in his retirement, but Wills was just appointed senior VP at HTX Labs, which—you guessed it—oversees VR training/tech for military training applications. 

The VR and pilot training next stuff wasn't originally a problem in and of itself. If you added VR sims to the legacy UPT syllabus us old hats are familiar with, you would end up with a better product. Full stop. I'm all for trying to modernize sims/chairflying and I'm all for auditing the syllabus to make sure we aren't wasting time on things that don't matter operationally, like fingertip takeoffs and landings or serially hooking kids on ELPs. The problem arose when the brass started using the VR and PTN/UPT 2.5 syllabus cuts to mask the fact that they can't generate aircraft. That's when all the newfangled VR and syllabi basically became a trojan horse to cut hours while keeping slides green. 

Caveat up front: there are good/bad/disciplined/undisciplined pilots in every community and this is not geared toward any individual. 

But I'm gonna be the asshole here. In my experience, the army rotary wing community ranges anywhere from  lackadaisical to outright dangerous WRT instrument procedures, airspace and traffic awareness, and flight discipline.

I've witnessed a 5-ship Army Apache mission brief take place in the lobby of the San Angelo FBO that was basically: "Alright dudes, we're gonna take off, head east, 200A, everybody fall in. Questions?" "Sick. Step complete."

I've been in control of a T-6 pattern full of solo students and had to send them all breakpoint straight through (half of them didn't even know what to do) because we had a 4 ship of army black hawks blast perpendicular through our pattern while talking to precisely no one on the radio.

The second I saw the news out of DCA my first reaction was "goddammit some army rw clowns got everyone killed." Then I felt bad for jumping to conclusions and not waiting for the report. But after a few weeks, each new piece of data points right back to them and I'm back to being pissed. Why were they off altitude? Why are they dicking around at night in the approach corridor of a major airport? Why are they not on VHF? Why was this even an approved routing for them in the first place? Why were 28 different agencies permitted to fly helos in close proximity to DCA?

These were not one-off, swiss-cheese-holes-aligning, mistakes. This was business as usual, proven by the fact there had been multiple near misses at DCA in the recent past including a helo-caused airliner go-around the day before. Obviously an airspace/procedure re-design is warranted, but I think we need to take a look at community-wide culture that was comfortable operating like this in the first place.

@busdriver said it best that these procedures are "no-step stupid." The problem with that is if you've been raised in a community of hot dogging and "we'll do it live" you're probably not equipped to make a good risk assessment.

15 hours ago, tac airlifter said:

And this is why DEI is toxic, but moving on...

I get your overall point about empathy for the young Capt-- but how do you suppose her unusual treatment is perceived by passenger families? I'm sorry for the family of Capt Lobach, it's terrible to lose a child and especially so having to hear her service disparaged.  But if she did in fact cause this collision her privacy concerns are subordinate to victim family rights for accountability and Army transparency.  We'll cross that bridge if the investigation validates what's been publicly released so far.  I think it was a mistake for the Army to deviate from SOP.

I have zero issues whatsoever with the army response. There wouldn't have been the need for the Army to withhold the name to give the family time for damage control if Trump hadn't painted them into a corner with his completely out of line comments.  Everyone else is still trying to get the facts straight and pull bodies out of the Potomac, and we have the leader of the free world talking out of his ass in the least possible productive way during a crisis. 

DEI is toxic, but even more toxic than that is blaming a crash on DEI less than 24 hours from the accident when you have zero facts to support it.

2 hours ago, Shakermaker said:

Sat in a wing staff meeting yesterday, wing leadership is all in on it.  When he started to give the "if I can't trust you to wear the right patches, how can I trust you to make the right decisions in the aircraft.." speech I swear I could hear the boots song playing in the background and my desire to reach out to the embassy kicked in.  1 more year of this BS.

The O-6's I interact will fully agree all this uniform revamp BS is dumb and a waste of time.. behind closed doors. They just can't publicly say that, so they have to fall back on the tired "get the basics right" refrain

On 1/14/2025 at 9:14 PM, tac airlifter said:

One of the most pertinacious and wrong ideas which senior Air Force leadership has embraced is this: every standard is equally valuable therefore if your zeal for all standards isn't equal you are unprofessional.  They believe a lack of rigidity about seemingly 'small' rules, like Friday patches, will result in negligent fratricide or crashing aircraft, etc.  They see (based on faith) a direct link to extreme outcomes for overlooking small infractions.

The idea you might ignore trivialities to prioritize important things like victory or safety is anathema and their minds are unable to process this situation.  Those of us outside their bubble intuitively understand prioritization is a natural human phenomenon and should be embraced rather than shunned.  We want young Captain ACs making decisions keeping missions on task & timeline rather than stopping a joint ROC drill because someone's sleeves are rolled up.  But these cultists are like celebrate monks looking at sex, convinced it's the source of all ills and endlessly devising rules to guardrail us from it... not understanding it's literally necessary for the species.
 

 In combat prioritization is essential to success; even a cursory examination of military history would prove as much.  Look no further than the Taliban and NVA for recent examples proving uniform compliance isn't tied to battlefield objectives; examples are numerous proving the absurdity of their core idea but they can't have the discussion.  I've tried.  Ask them for proof that selective standard enforcement will result in mission failure and they might have anecdotes but zero data.  There is zero data supporting their belief.  Ask them if standard compliance is so important, what is our process to test new standards before instituting and what is the process to repeal if data proves it isn't required?  No answers.  You'll go to SDE and study works from historic military minds, who all sported beards, then be told beards are incompatible with military success.  Then you'll go on an exercise with Allied nations who have beards, call them our indispensable partners, then with a straight face tell ourselves beards are unserious for military professionals.  This example is just beards but uniforms are the same.  Go find paintings of the continental army defeating forces of the tyrant King George and tell me which military has the most standardized uniforms, lol.  

The answer to your question is the moment you embrace ideas asserted without proof, cannot rationally convince those who ask for proof, trust only those who share your idea and ignore your own obvious intellectual hypocrisy... that's the moment you've gone full retard in pursuit of rank.  At that point even losing multiple wars is insufficient to free your mind, you've been captured and are unfit to lead despite what rank or position you hold.  This is the unfortunate state of our Air Force.  

 

I think it's actually really simple. The GOs see that the air force is falling apart and they know real solutions will be painful and risky to their career advancement/political ambitions. So they focus on things they can easily control like uniform nonsense, and pretend that's the "real" root cause of our issues.

Same thing happens in politics.  Can't solve any of our real problems.. just do some dumb shit that makes it look like you're addressing problems, like re-naming Fort Bragg or the Gulf of Mexico

Heard recently that the parts contract for T-6's is so f-ed right now that a small fraction of the fleet is flyable. Can any UPT bubbas confirm? 

I literally said people are in hysterics online.. it would be ridiculous to expect there not to be. But I couldn’t give two shits what some blue haired gender studies major posts on IG about the election being their own personal 9-11, because there will always be people like that on all sides, and ultimately they have no power in the national conversation. 
 

The people who actually do have the power on the left sent an important message: accept the results, and we aren’t going to tear the country apart over an outcome we don’t like. Did they only concede because the results were so definitive? Maybe. Did they only concede because they’re starting to realize they burned all their credibility? Also maybe. 

But I don’t think we would’ve gotten the same reaction from Trump/Vance had they lost, and I think they primed their die hard supporters to dismiss any election result other than a win as fraudulent. Understandable as that sentiment may be, after decades of democrat fuckery, that attitude is a truly dangerous one for the long term viability of the country. 

 

I’ve actually been pleasantly surprised with how the dems have taken this absolute ass whooping. Lots of hysterics online and on the talk shows, but the people that mattered respected the process, conceded in a timely fashion, and honestly did a lot to de-escalate and re-instill trust in our election process right now. Honestly I’m really thankful for this outcome because I’m positive a trump loss would not have garnered the same reaction from republicans, and it would have gotten very bad.  

The left has shown a shocking amount of maturity and done something I think most of the maga crowd is incapable of right now: accepting election results that didn’t go their way.

Having said that.. I’m fully prepared to be proven wrong by the dems as soon as they regroup enough to concoct the next grand conspiracy about the right, probably involving them all somehow being nazis. 

On 11/7/2024 at 9:50 AM, Vito said:

Poster write,

“ With the George Floyd riots and covid bringing out tonsof low propensity voters and TDS at its peak”

 

  That’s kind of my point, were George Floyd BLM rioters and anarchists really that much more motivated to vote, and how many Rioters were there really? Add to this the absolute Hysteria that gripped the largely Democrat ranks, I find it incredulous that Covid, mail in ballots, or motivation to leave a safe home and vote during a pandemic that still scares most democrats today, would account for 20 MILLION EXTRA VOTES. A FEW MILLION, MAYBE BUT NOT 20,000,000. I’d love for some whistleblower to surface.

I absolutely think the conditions at the time could have drawn tens of millions of extra voters to the polls.

-Covid was the first thing for a lot of people where government policy directly impacted them.

-how many rioters were there? Idk like tens to hundreds of thousands in every major US city.. seemed like a lot of people to me when it was happening

Trump jumped 11-12 million votes from 2016 to 2020 which was a huge anomaly as well. I’d be a lot more suspicious if one side had insane turnout while the other remained basically the same. But both parties had a massive jump in 2020 which tells me something really big in the zeitgeist was happening at the time.  
 

… Or somebody faked 1/6th of all of the votes to the tune of 30 million ballots, did it for both sides for some reason, and we still don’t have a single shred of evidence of the largest voter fraud conspiracy in American history.

If you look further back Kamala’s turnout numbers aren’t the anomaly, they’re a reversion to the mean. Hillary got 65M in 2016 and kamala got 68M this year. This just shows how much of an anomaly 2020 was. With the George Floyd riots and covid bringing out tons of low propensity voters and TDS at its peak, 2020 was always going to be a record year for Dems. 
 

20M is a crazy number but it just shows how insane the country was at that point. Everything felt like it was on a knifes edge

I don’t think the B-1s were ever doing SEAD/DEAD in the traditional sense, but if you’ve got 24x 31’s, and you’re going in the MEZ anyway, and a few of them aren’t spoken for, whats a few extra bombs between us friends

11 minutes ago, dream big said:

Personally, I wanted Nikki Haley. But here we are and if Trump can put an end to the liberal madness these past few years, then I don’t give a shit if he says mean things or hooked up with a stripper. 
 

People keep saying the Republican Party should cut ties with him; doesn’t work like that when the republican voters voted him as their primary candidate unlike being propped up for being a woman of color by the Democratic machine with zero primary votes. 

problem is he isn’t going to undo shit because he isn’t going to win. 60-70% of voters thought kamala won the debate and trump is only trending more petty and more unhinged. He also doesn’t have coherent policy stances other than:

“Weren’t things great in 2016-2019!!”

and 

“if I was in office that never would have happened”

Cool dude, Both true. But how are you gonna deal with the problems we have now.

The problem I have with the right these days is they will continually complain that their party is hijacked by an incompetent buffoon…

..and then keep voting for that incompetent buffoon.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the only way the trump cult dies is if people stop coalescing around him. Sure his MAGA base will always be there. But every time a moderate Republican holds their nose and votes for him as the perceived lesser of two evils, it prolongs trump’s stranglehold on the party. Republicans are in a hostage situation entirely of their own making.
 

Between Biden and Kamala weve had the two most beatable candidates in a generation. But somehow, in a move defying all the odds, the right is about to extend their losing streak from ‘20 and ‘22, to a 2024 3-peat. The left is so insane these days that if the right, dumped trump and their fringe abortion policy madness, they’d cakewalk into the white house for at least the next decade. But they won’t because the party is far more stubborn than strategic.
 

For any moderate or center-right person looking for a viable Republican Party in the future, I think  the best strategy this year is to vote 3rd party. Counterintuitive, but It would detract from trump’s legitimacy and force him into irrelevance sooner. 

Not that it’s to the extent of Biden, but Trump seems to have really lost a step too. Like lost his ability to think on his feet and flex quickly to the situation like he used to. A prime example from the debate:

Moderators to Trump: “you said Kamala just started being black, I thought she was Indian”

what trump should have said: “that’s  called a figure of speech. Ever heard of that? What I mean is She’s being fake. She acts black around black audiences and she changes her accent to suit the situation. She plays up or plays down different aspects of her race for whatever is most beneficial to her at that moment. She’s a phony politician trying to be all things to all people.”

what trump did say: incoherent ramblings that honestly made him sound more racist

Conspicuously quiet here the day after a major debate..

Anyway, here are my takeaways:

Kamala: still as off putting and uncharismatic as ever.  The media pushing her as some sort of “joyful” generational talent will never not be weird to me. 

Moderators: hyper biased as per the usual arrangement. Teed up Kamala for multiple dunks on trump and never once fact checked her BS. Fact checked about 50% of the things trump said. 
 

Trump: stepped on rakes literally all night long. Honestly a disaster of a performance. Hopefully this will put to bed the nonsense narrative on the right that trump is this galaxy brain media manipulator who can bend any media situation to his will. He was good at debating compared to Biden and that is about it. To recap:

✅ baited into a crowd size pissing contest

✅ quadrupled down on the stolen election conspiracy 

✅ baited into more foot in mouth moments regarding Kamala’s race

✅ some wacky intolerant shit about immigrants eating peoples pets

✅ weirdly complimentary comments regarding Putin which set up Kamala for more dunks on him

✅ never addressed Kamala lying to the American people about Biden’s health

✅ baited into post birth abortion sillyness

If the goal of this was to appeal to anyone other than his most staunch supporters, it was an epic fail. 

18 minutes ago, kaputt said:

I don’t understand why the Republican Party always caters so much to the religious sect of the party. That group of people have proven since 2016 that they will overwhelmingly vote for the least religious person you could probably have as a candidate. 
 

So why are they wasting time throwing scraps to people who will vote for them anyway, when those same scraps will turn off moderates who would otherwise maybe consider voting republican?

Exactly

3 hours ago, Smokin said:

Maybe, but it might also be intentional for him to talk more about abortion.  Many actual conservatives in the Republican party are lukewarm on Trump since he isn't conservative.  So if Vance keeps talking about the things those conservatives want to hear then they're more likely to show up and vote on election day.

Dude abortion is a 70/30 issue these days. If it’s intentional then he’s intentionally being an idiot. The right wing religious types skew older and generally turn up in good numbers to vote anyway. Going hard on abortion buys you absolutely nothing. 

The people he’s firing up and driving to vote are on the left because he keeps handing talking points and OBGYN horror stories to the Dems on a velvet pillow. 

Outrage over the abortion issue already neutered the red wave that was supposed to happen in 2022, how many times do these guys have to lose to figure out it might be time to change strategy

32 minutes ago, ClearedHot said:

Honeymoon may be coming to an end...the day before her speech at the DNC convention where she will role out epic spending in what is being called Bidenomics 2.0, the Labor Department revises job creation DOWN by 800,000.  At the same time CBP announces they have lost track of 32,000 unaccompanied minors! 

The right could probably take advantage of these crap numbers if they were running anyone other than the current ticket.. 

But instead we have trump floating insane race-based attacks reminiscent of the Obama birther conspiracies, while Vance sticks his foot in his mouth over abortion on an hourly basis. 

14 hours ago, Pooter said:

https://open.substack.com/pub/radarblog/p/bone-of-contention?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

Since I posted the link with zero context.. BLUF: the Tony Carr (formerly JQP) rips the B-1 AIB a new one. 
 

Specific issues he brings up:

-Sq/cc’s being criticized for manning shortages entirely out of their control

-strange contextual omissions throughout

-potential conflict of interest with the board pres being in direct career competition with the people he’s investigating

-does no root cause analysis on why aircrew CRM/GK/experience/skill level were low enough to result in a crash

-OG/CC firing timing looks to be directly the result of AIB backlash and done reluctantly, Potentially indicating daylight between the SIB and AIB

-alleges deep culture problems but bends over backwards not to implicate anyone above the squadron level

https://open.substack.com/pub/radarblog/p/bone-of-contention?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

5 hours ago, Clark Griswold said:

I guess I’ll flip my script then… if it happens with enough hours I’ll order a big hot plate of crow and eat heartily


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don’t think you’re in any danger of eating crow. Name a time programmed UPT syllabus hours increased at any point in the last decade. I’ll wait. 
 

And if anyone thinks that’s gonna happen especially when we have a shiny new trainer that’s more expensive to operate, I would love to have some of the drugs you’re on. More likely is they’ll send heavies to a sim only track after the contractor IFT or whatever the hell it is, and the 38 track will have hours cut based on some stupid argument that the t-7 training is higher fidelity somehow.

19 minutes ago, SurelySerious said:

They had an experienced IP onboard who didn’t uphold standards or do the other things expected of someone in that role. There were a shit ton of complacency problems in this crew that are a unit problem. The commander and DO set the tone. There are things within flying that are independent of flying skill that are easy to set the tone on. These people weren’t doing any of those. You can blame big AF for a lot of things, but lackadaisical complacency isn’t it.

Instructors and squadron leadership should be setting the tone on the admin and tactical discipline. These people ed up, and their squadron mates displayed a lot of the same deficiencies, whether the AF has screwed flying training and hours over the last 20 years or not.

Quit trying to provide a cop out.

Edit: as much as can be believed from the nav AIB pres, anyway.

I’m not trying to excuse the crew. There are numerous cut and dry things they fucked up. It’s important to take those, debrief, and get better. If one person in a squadron doesn’t know or understand the things this crew missed, that is a foul. 
 

But, for anyone who has read an AIB before you know that they often tell half truths with one eye on the facts and one eye on the eventual public release and how that will reflect on the brass. 

On 7/29/2024 at 12:49 PM, norskman said:

T-6 line IP here, please submit the AGEP surveys (or whatever they're called now...) to actually document the noted deficiencies from UPT grads. Thats the only truth data the Bobs will take at face value to increase the hideously slim amount of actual flight time to earn wings. 

I’ve got a question. How many night sorties do you have to get to complete the T-6/UPT syllabus these days?

On 7/27/2024 at 4:56 PM, 1:1:1 said:

It might just be me but this thread reeks of Monday-morning quarterbacking. It makes me wonder if any of my close calls over the years had resulted in a Class A what people would have said about my own culture, mindset, scoffing of this or that. God forbid you found out I wasn't wearing gloves and AFE-approved boots along with my 100% wool standard-issue long john's at the time.

100%

And I think some of the highly experienced flyers in these forums should know better. 
 

Random question for the group: You’re king for a day and a crew in your command crashes a half-billion dollar plane. You need a scapegoat. Is it more politically convenient to:

 

A) acknowledge HAF and MAJCOM-level institutional problems like chronic undermanning and low flight experience

B) blame it on “culture problems” at the squadron level