DirkDiggler

In my experience, AFSOC doesn't get that many AIS slots to begin with. When a slot becomes available there's usually multiple volunteers (lotta guys want to get it on their record for airline apps, don't know if it legit helps or not). Yet it seems a lot of the time there's people due IRC and we're scrounging for someone to teach it.

Congrats on Hercs, great cross spectrum of mission sets and she's a lot of fun to fly. You will not go through Little Rock, they ended that a couple years ago for HC/MC-J guys. After pilot training you'll head direct to Kirtland AFB in Albuquerque, NM for HC-130J Pilot Initial Qual Course. I'm an MC-130 guy so my knowledge of HC-130 stuff is all second hand info; if you have any other HC-130 specific questions that you can't get answered by actual HC-130 guys on this board let me know and I'll ask around here (I'm currently in ABQ doing an MC-J transition course). Good luck at UPT and study hard.

I know for a fact that it's a problem in AFSOC, can't speak to other commands so maybe it's better other places. I've heard second and third hand that it's becoming a problem in other commands but I have no evidence of that. To your point on leadership "understanding" opt outs, that's probably a pretty tough thing to make happen with any regularity unless attitudes about leadership and what it means to serve change in the AF. O-6 assignments are handled in a separate system from the rest of the rank and file. Believe it or not, a lot of O-6s that are thinking about getting out don't show their cards until they have to, just like the guys on line. I would imagine that telling a guy like Slife or his most probable successor (CAT 5) that you're opting out of command but want to continue serving isn't going to go very well. Guys like that have serious difficulty processing that someone wouldn't want a command opportunity; the risk of vindictiveness through a shitty deal or assignment is simply too high for a lot of O-6s to be long term honest brokers about their goals/intentions.

Lol agree to disagree, at least for the present. Last two AFSOC/CCs have been Pave guys. As that generation retires and with the pending "long term storage" of a big chunk of the CV-22 fleet, that dynamic will probably shift but its definitely here for the present. Going forward, I'll be interested to see how the RPA and U-28 communities influence the higher up AFSOC hierarchy, but I'll probably be a Mr. long before then (interesting side note, Slife has been pushing STO guys into some Grp and the AFSOC A3 position, not sure if that trend will continue once he's on to bigger things). Break Break Clark Griswold, you wanna post your top names for this new seaplane? Here's mine, in no particular order 1. Typhoon (harkens back to British aircraft in WWII) 2. Sea Witch (goes back to Russian WWII Night Witches) 3. Sea Drag-in (those big draggy floats....GET IT!!....I'll be here all day) 4. BUWF--Big Ugly Walrus Fucker (unlikely I admit, but I'm a Broken Lizard fan)

Good question and not the easiest problem to solve. Disclaimer: I declined command with prejudice two years ago so this a is topic that I have fairly strong feelings about. Second hand info, so take it FWIW, but I've been told that our MAJCOM/CC has stated that AF leadership is fairly concerned about this. Long term projections/trends aren't good; supposedly there's a real possibility that there won't be enough qualified O-5/6s in the coming years to fill all the required command billets. At any given point AFSOC has about 110 or so O-6s; about 3 years ago there was an O-6 blood bath where 42 of them punched in the same year, was a rude wakeup call. From what I can tell there's another big wave of O-6 retirements currently under way. I honestly don't know why AFSOC was surprised this happened, we're coming into the era where you have people who've been at war for their entire career. Once you make O-6 you're a company man and your control over your future is often times much diminished, and in the last couple years your chances of an undesirable 365 increased dramatically (admittedly this risk is probably diminished now). I'd agree with your pitch that there is and probably needs to be a middle ground. I personally know several guys in the last two years who made O-6 and still retired prior to getting 3 years TIG. If the AF tries to push guys/gals into commands they don't want, I'm of the personal opinion it'll be a lose/lose for everyone involved. The people in question will most likely just retire so we'll lose the talent, or they'll stay and do a job they don't want, which means they people they're leading could suffer. In my small corner of the AF: 1. I think we could do a better job about being open with guys/gals about what their future looks like if they're on the command track. AFSOC does a horrible job IMO giving guys on the command track feedback on the DT results/discussions. Almost everyone is in the dark until if/when they get a hiring phone call. That makes it very difficult to prog out family life or have any idea about what your future holds. 2. I think we could also open up DO and CC slots to more non-school selects/line guys (not just top 10-15% people). I know plenty of bros in the ops units that would've made great commanders and would've been interested in serving in that role but never got the looks or opportunity cause they weren't put on that path as a Captain. This would serve to widen the command gene pool and not limit senior leaders' choices for command billets to careerist twats. One of the better CCs I've had was one of these guys, always a line dude, no school or jt staff and was a great commander during a challenging year for the squadron. 3. I believe keeping productive O-6s that decline command would be win for the AF and for those individuals. I worked with/around a decent amount of worthless/not smart/downright cockbaggish O-6s during my time on staff. Every guy on here has probably seen things come out of at least the MAJCOM that were uninformed/bad policy/caused issued at the ops units. Letting good O-6s go to staff lets those guys/gals continue to serve and leverages their experience where it could have positive effects at the squadron level. Standing by spears/thoughts.

🥃 Rest easy brothers, not that there's ever a good time but doubly terrible with the holidays rapidly approaching.

Read an article yesterday that seemed to confirm this, made it sound like that effort started almost immediately after the guy pulled the handles!

https://www.stripes.com/branches/air_force/2021-11-10/air-force-seaplanes-special-operations-command-japan-3563136.html Interesting AFSOC visit to the Land of the Rising Sun

I haven't been in the 492nd for over a year now so some of my info may be dated. The C-145 fleet hasn't been deployable/deployed for at least 6+ years now at this point. They are solely used as a training platform for 6th SOS pilots in CONUS. Last I heard the remaining airframes will be divested by FY23. The future of the C-146 is almost always up in the air every FY, mostly due to how they're funded. The -146 bubbas do great work, but they lack advocacy in AFSOC (and in SOCOM) IMO. AFSOC is a very tribal command; the Pave Low/CV-22 mafia, AC-130, and MC-130 groups exert a huge influence in what happens within the command. The bulk of the work that the C-146s do is supporting TSOCs; the TSOCs ability to influence what capes AFSOC brings to the table is limited. I've heard a lot of different COAs with what's supposed to happen going in future FYs so I'm honestly not sure what the current plan is.

The big problem (conceptually) with the US-2 concept IRT to SOCOM employment is the lack of a cargo ramp/door. Its pretty difficult and expensive to engineer that capability into an aircraft that wasn't designed with it from the ground up. Unfortunately the MC-130J float concept, as Blue mentioned above, is going to suffer from a massive increase in drag index since it wasn't engineered as a floatplane from the ground, thus limiting it's performance/capabilities. The biggest problem with an American US-2 is that it's extremely unlikely (though not impossible) that SOCOM would unilaterally source and pay for brand new iron; they'd only pay the SOF peculiar mods to it after somebody else (theoretically the USAF in this case) buys it. I'd doubt that Air Force leadership would have any interest in this with all the other things they're buying/recapping right now (NGAD, B-21, new ICBMs, hypersonics, AWACS/JSTARs/Compass Call replacements just to name a few). Navy isn't gonna jump on it either, they've got SSN/SSBN procurement and new surface ships on the mind, which means the Corps won't get it either. Coast Guard isn't getting any aircraft right now that isn't a hand-me-down from somebody else. Hurc Hunters and Guard Rescue guys have relatively new J models so recap for them isn't a viable argument. Ideally I'd like to see an MC-130 specifically designed as floatplane (similar to the C-130 floatplane concepts that Lockmart pitched back in the '60), if SOCOM is serious about this. Unfortunately I don't think there's a snowballs chance in hell of that happening.

I thought this was a very well written and researched article and while I have a huge amount of respect for General Elton as both a leader and a person, I don't agree with several points in the article. 1. In their first point, I agree we should continue all efforts to get any remaining US and SIV individuals out of Afghanistan (no brainer). I disagree with the importance/focus on the human rights/humanitarian situation in Afghanistan (they dedicate 3 full pages to it). A good segment of the population either overtly supported the Taliban or passively allowed them to take control (several news reports from Afghanistan post-withdrawal have documented the rural area populace support for the Taliban). People get the government they deserve and quite frankly I don't care if the people of Afghanistan want to live in the stone age. 2. The issue of Afghanistan becoming a competitive space in Great Power competition between us and China (return to the Great Game as it were) is interesting and I'm honestly not sure how it will play out. It's somewhat ironic that the issue of REEs has almost caused a return to industrial age thinking about conflict and critical mineral supply (quest for autarky in some ways by China and now the US). If history informs us about anything involving Afghanistan it's that no foreign power looking to exploit the country fairs well in the end (except maybe the Mongols). I just read an article about a direct legal shipment of pine nuts from Afghanistan to China, I'll be curious to see where the Chinese-Afghan relationship goes. I personally didn't/don't feel that continuing our presence in Afghanistan was worth it to counter China's influence in that part of world. Additionally, none of the infrastructure is currently in place to exploit the REEs in Afghanistan and the security situation in-country continues to be extremely volatile. 3. I would probably agree there will be the possibility that there could be an increased terrorist threat from Afghanistan due to several groups now having increased/uncontested freedom of maneuver. That being said, I think the possibility of Ex-Ops emanating from Afghanistan can be countered by the vast increase in intelligence gathering we've put in place post 9-11. I don't agree with their premise that ISIS-K is/is becoming a terrorist proxy of the Taliban. See article below for the most recent example of why I don't think the two groups will be buddies anytime soon: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/afghanistan-kabul-hospital-bombing-attack-taliban-isis-deaths-2021-11-02/ I think going forward there will increased fighting between the Taliban and ISIS-K, not less. Several of the policy recommendations going forward are good, especially regarding the CTF piece (always follow the money). I also agree with not recognizing the Taliban as the legitimate rulers of Afghanistan (for a variety of reasons). I think officially recognizing the NRF is probably futile at this point (they've been defeated militarily and I don't know what the long term value in supporting them is). The focus on revamping/increasing our IO efforts towards China and Pakistan is spot on, but unless the US drastically changes it's approach to IO, its unlikely to happen anytime soon or be effective. Finally, I believe that a cross-GCC effort towards countering China would absolutely have benefit. Taking this from concept to execution in the real world is very difficult. I've been out of the staff world for going on 3 years now, but in my albeit limited experience, getting the GCCs to cooperate/coordinate/share resources is a royal pain in the ass. They tend to get stovepiped into dealing with the problems specific to their respective AOs, and mostly view the competition for resources as a zero sum game. Coordinating authorities are only of limited use, because they can't actually order anyone to do anything. Overall though very good, reasoned article, thanks for posting.

Fail

I thought a lot about your question last night and to be honest I don't have a good answer or even know if there is one. I've said it before but I personally felt that Milley and McKenzie should've resigned for the way the Afghan withdrawal was conducted. That isn't really an answer to your question though, because they just happened to be the guys in charge when everything came crashing down; tough to blame them for at least 18+ years of official fallacies we (both State and DoD) were telling ourselves and the American public about how the war in Afghanistan was going. My thoughts in no particular order. 1. Part of this is cultural, both in our military and in our political leadership. We (in the officer ranks) all should bear some responsibility for this. On the military side, we rarely (almost never) want to or will actually say "no". It's in our DNA that if we're given a task or mission, we'll figure out a way to get it done. And nobody gets promoted for saying they can't accomplish something (see the Navy's destroyer mishaps as the latest example of severe consequences of this mentality). We've grown and groomed our leadership this way. Almost no one from the top generals/SESs down to probably the at least the FGO level wanted to admit that things weren't going well and that the goal of an independent, democratic Afghanistan free from most Taliban/VEO interference (if that was the goal) wasn't attainable (at least not in any reasonable timeframe). 2. We (talking the royal we, USA at large) tend to have a belief that the US is capable of accomplishing anything if we set our minds to it. And in the late 90s-early 2000s we were still coming off of the rapid, smashing success of Desert Storm. The American public was willing to keep things going so long as the casualties were relatively low and they didn't have to personally pay anything for it. Our public is also as separated from the military as it's ever been and our political class hasn't voted for "military action since the AUMF back in '01. A lot of us also mistakenly hold the belief that everyone in the world wants our version of democracy. 3. "Sometimes you have to let things fail". Don't know how many times I've heard senior leaders say this one in my career but I've rarely seen it actually utilized. I get that "failure" with something as large as the entire Afghan campaign is orders of magnitude different than some new process at the squadron level but it feeds back to point #1. Nobody in our senior leadership wanted to be the guys holding the bag when things ended in the Stan. They would have rather kept the war going indefinitely than admit our ever shifting goals were unattainable. Honesty was less acceptable than the static quo because no one could admit that we were going to fail. 4. Tactical success vs. Operational/Strategic failure. This one goes without saying. If our Operational/Strategic goals were unattainable from the get go, 20 years of killing people and spending money was never going to translate into a win. To answer your original question about who to hold accountable, I honestly think it's probably the bulk of the DoD and State leadership chain for the last 18 years (from at least O-6s all the way to the top, maybe lower). I don't believe the US military was able to be honest with either itself or our civilian leadership about the war. I understand that's probably not a popular opinion. I know a lot of vets were having trouble (a lot probably still are) processing what happened two months ago. The bulk of the rhetoric/messaging has been aimed at us doing our duty, no more attacks on the homeland, etc. That's all well and good, and probably appropriate for the time, but we lost, and I think we need to figure out how to avoid these sort of mistakes/failures going forward. I don't think anyone is going to get fired over this, so to your question over accountability, it'll probably be hashed out in the history books versus public hearings, resignations, some GO/FO or retired GO/FO actually saying "I'm responsible". Not a very satisfying answer I'm afraid.

In my opinion, it extended much further down than just the top level GO/FO leadership. Long but interesting anecdotal story. When I was a young staff officer I was assigned to be my command's GSOS lead (Global Special Operations Synchronization, it's how SOCOM is supposed to prioritize where it puts SOF, feeds into the GFM process). BLUF is its a multi-phase process with a lot of data collection/processing and in person PPTs to a board. During my second year doing doing this, SOJTF-A J35 was presenting their Campaign Plan for the conference (presented to a board of 6 O-6s from SOCOM), SOJTF-A team was made up of an O-6 and several O-5s and civilians. The SOJTF-A team VTCs in and has this very bright, optimistic "this is the year we turn it all around, X years to stem the tide, XX years to seize the initiative, we're gonna take it to them with this new strategy, etc, etc, etc). I think they even used the word "defeat" in some of their presentation. The O-6 board receives the presentation, asks a few minor questions, then says great job, go get'em, we really appreciate you", or something to that effect and starts to move on. That would've been the end of it except for 1 O-5 Army Strategist (extremely intelligent guy who was about as cynical as they come) in the audience. He stands up in this room full of 50 people with god knows how many others in VTC land and politely asks what's different about this year compared to all the other years in the Stan (this conference was in early 2018). When SOJTF-A says they don't understand his question, he expands by saying what they've presented looks remarkably similar to his 2005 experience, which also mirrored the time he was there in 2009, while not differing all that much from the strategic plan in 2011, seemed shockingly similar to his deployment in 2013, and he didn't see all that much change from 2015-2017. He then asked how on god's green earth they were going to seriously degrade or possibly defeat the enemy with a fraction of the resources previously available and an ANA that wasn't that much more capable and suffering a record high number of casualties. The crazy/really eye opening moment to this whole thing was that the SOJTF-A guys just sat there dumbstruck, like they couldn't believe anyone wouldn't believe in or would dare question their plan. They literally had no answer. I seriously think several of them honestly believed the nonsense they were presenting. The O-6 board quietly ruffled through their notes or stared at their hands. The O-5 strategist shook his head and sat down. Will always be one those random moments in my career I'll never forget and the moment I knew we could've been in the Stan for another 20 years and it wouldn't have changed the ultimate outcome one bit.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2021/10/21/partner_capacity_building_needs_a_serious_re-examination_799956.html Decent article on the failure of BPC/DIB/SFA in Afghanistan and some recommendations going forward, worth a read.

If you get a chance, read The Fighters by CJ Chivers. Its a great book, just a collection of stories from line guys who served in Afghanistan and Iraq. Its a very tough read at times and doesn't have an overall point or agenda but definitely worth the read. One of the stories centers around a young infantry private serving in the Korengal; he and his buddies summed up the reason for their year long deployment as "we're here because we're here". Basically how I felt about my last tour in the 'Stan.

I've never heard of anyone getting one, and I haven't had to get one for the Pacific, European, Middle Eastern, or South American theaters. Honestly didn't know there was a vaccine for cholera.

I was immunized against smallpox in 2005 by the military, got the scar to prove it and it's annotated in my immunization record.

M2 wasn't referring to the ethnic slur in the COVID thread.

The PLAN is not currently capable of enforcing a naval blockade of Taiwan (though they're definitely striving for increased capabilities across the board). If we catch wind that the PRC is going to execute your above scenario, maybe we should give the ROCs their own nuclear weapons capability. Reverse order of the Cuban Missile Crisis. I'm only half joking, nuclear weapons being the ultimate guarantee of a country's security and all that.

Lol I'm getting old but not that old. I had to get mine when I showed at my first ops unit back in 2005. As a funny anecdote, on my deployment last year, NONE of the guys I was deployed with had seen the movie from which your screen quote is from. Literally hurt my insides.

Short answer is yes. There are other vaccines that have/had a mandatory DNIF period after receiving the vaccine. As an example, the Japanese Encephalitis Vaccine (JEV) used to be a 3 shot series when I had to get it back in 2010. I was DNIF for 2/3/2 days after each injection if I remember correctly. As an aside, I think the DoD has finally upgraded to the 2 shot JEV, don't know if that one has any DNIFing actions following the injections.

There’s a book on this topic worth reading if you have some spare time. It’s called War Without Mercy by John W. Dower. I don’t agree with everything he posits in the book and it’s kinda dryly written but Dower does a good job of showing how large a part racism played a factor on both sides in the Pacific theater. I’d apologize for the thread derailment but IMO this thread ran way off the tracks about 24 pages ago.

I’ll be PCSing out your way beginning of next year, if I’m able to coordinate said visit I’ll definitely reach out.

I'll definitely keep this in mind, thanks for the insights.