Attack designation versus fighter

[MD]

My advice is that you downplay your enlisted background...not that you would be hiding anything, but in this instance, less is more.

One last piece of advice...

When you first get into the squadron, don't ask how long it takes to upgrade to FL.

Another one to add: At your ops squadron, whenever you're visiting scheduling and you happen to notice the daily schedule looking screwed up, just move the pucks around to where you think they should go. Scheduling always appreciates this kind of assistance to their puzzle and the initiative demonstrated will be duly noted.........

Edited June 26, 2007 by MD

[Guest Ghost63]

I have to admit I'm not up to speed on the UPT to operational unit transition goes these days...so it's not clear to me what your status is right now. Are you still in UPT?

No sweat - so we're on the same page, I'm UPT complete, waiting for an IFF start date.

If so, up till now, all you've had to learn is how to take off and land with minimal airwork. In the fighter world, it's assumed that a pilot can take off and land...your work is done out in the area. It's work that not everyone gets a handle on regardless of their UPT position. It's a large pie to try to eat...take comfort in that the A2A guys only get served a half piece.

As far as the other, that's exactly what I said here: "I know I started with everyone else in learning to fly the airplane, and it will be the same in IFF and RTU." We have wings, which to the AF means we are expected to know how to get from a MOA. With an IP in the back.

Not sure where (especially in the initial post I made) it sounds like I have a chip, but so be it. And from the IP's and fellow FNG's, I've never felt like I had to defend what I've done - I was just talking about here. I do downplay what I've done. Someone asks - I answer the question. Some ask more, I answer more. Usually followed up with, that and $2 will get you a sh!tty haircut. Otherwise, I shut up.

Also not sure how laughing off the fact that my fellow UPT grads bag on the Eagle for "not having a mission" is going to alienate them. They don't seem to think so.

So, that's it from me. Maybe there's a filter here somewhere that everyone else is reading something different than I do. With the IP's and bro's I fly with, I have a good reputation and attitude, and I intend to keep it that way.

[drewpey]

Some at the top would get rid of both the F and the A designations (and I guess even "E" and "R"...they'd like an "I-xx" maybe):

Air Force ISR Chief Foresees Downplaying 'F' in F-22, F-35 (Posted: Friday, June 22, 2007)

[Aerospace Daily & Defense Report, 06/22/2007, page 02]

Michael Bruno

Lt. Gen. David Deptula, Air Force deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), is looking to take the "F" out of the F-22 Raptor and the planned F-35 Joint Strike Fighter and to recast the aircraft as much for their ISR capabilities, he told defense reporters June 21 in Washington.

"The F-22, the F-35 - they're not 'Fs,'" he told the Defense Writers Group. "I'd like to [take] what we term today 'nontraditional ISR' and turn it into traditional ISR."

Deptula predicts a "normalization" of fighter-based ISR missions while sensor and targeting pods, now loaded onto fighters for counter-improvised explosive device and other missions in Iraq and elsewhere, will become a "regular" part of the air fleet's makeup.

Deptula said he is looking for an "effective" balance of fighters as "shooters" and "sensors" and acknowledged that it entails a "different mindset" from historic air-dominance roles such as dogfighting, electronic jamming, ground strike and close-air support missions. The changes mean Air Force officials may have to rethink everything from how pilots are trained to how and where fighters are deployed and how many are purchased.

"How do we extract the capability that is resident in these aircraft," he said. The dual emphases, shooting and sensing, could even help make the case for more aircraft than currently planned for production, he acknowledged.

The Air Force has been working on how it might justify production of the Raptor beyond the 183 aircraft already in the budget to a total nearer the service's oft-stated requirement for 381. With deployments across the Pacific Ocean this year, the Raptor is beginning to demonstrate unique electronic surveillance, electronic warfare and air-to-air and cruise missile defense capabilities. The JSF, meanwhile, is supposed to feature a suite of next-generation sensor and electronic systems.

This month, Air Force officials finished reorganizing the Air Intelligence Agency at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas, under the Air Combat Command as the new Air Force ISR Agency under Deptula (DAILY, May 21). Gen. T. Michael Moseley, Air Force chief of staff, called the realignment a key element in transforming the approach the Air Force is taking to ISR organization.

"ISR has never been more important during our 60 years as an independent service," Moseley said a month ago when the reorganization was announced.

The Air Force ISR makeover will help the service treat intelligence as an Air Force-wide enterprise, coordinate and integrate ISR capabilities and provide them to joint combatant commanders and the intelligence community. The move also could help promote Air Force officers back into top joint staff and combatant commander positions, Deptula told reporters.

Deptula is leading to conclusion three ISR working groups that are examining Air Force ISR capabilities, personnel and organization. After taking stock, Deptula told reporters he will assign "integrators" to help better coordinate acquisition, operation and other elements of the service. Program officials will remain in charge of their acquisitions, he maintained.

same drum, different day...I bolded my favorite part...

http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2009/12/airforce_deptula_121909/

Official: Fighters should be used for spying

By John Reed - Staff writer

Posted : Sunday Dec 20, 2009 11:41:43 EST

The Air Force’s intelligence chief wants to use the stealthy, sensor-laden F-22 Raptor to collect information because spying isn’t about specific platforms.

Lt. Gen. David Deptula made his case for a different use of the fighter during a speech before the Air Force Association, a civilian aerospace group that promotes air power and national defense.

“If I was king for a day, I’d get rid of these traditional, industrial-age labels” — the Pentagon-wide aircraft designation system that puts the F in F-22 — and use each aircraft for a wider variety of missions, said Deptula, deputy chief of staff for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.

Deptula was firm in lobbying for the F-22 as an ISR tool, saying the jet that officials have called a “Hoover vacuum cleaner of information” could “absolutely” replace intelligence planes such as the RC-135 Rivet Joint, but pointed out a technical challenge — getting the data off the fighter jet quickly.

Right now, the F-22 can share data only with other F-22s, using Intra-Flight Datalinks that can swap data undetected while over enemy territory. At last year’s Joint Expeditionary Force Experiment, though, an F-22 shared IFDL data with several older fighter jets using a modified Northrop Grumman Battlefield Airborne Node data translator.

For Deptula, the F-22 would satisfy one of his biggest needs: a long-range, stealth spy plane that can survive the latest air defense systems being sold around the world by Russia and China.

Nonetheless, Deptula noted that large UAVs have “lots of potential.” He showed a slide of a notional stealthy medium-sized UAV dubbed MQ-Xa, which could handle close-air support, ISR, electronic warfare, communications relay, collection, dissemination, specialized ISR and aerial refueling using a “modular payload” system sometime in the near future.

Deptula’s comments Dec. 2 came two days before the Air Force acknowledged it is flying a stealth UAV, dubbed the RQ-170 Sentinel, in Kandahar, Afghanistan.

While sources in the Air Force and Sentinel’s builder, Lockheed Martin, would not say anything more about the drone, there is widespread speculation that it is being flown from Afghanistan to spy on neighboring Iran, which has concentrated its air defenses on its border with Iraq.

Teal Group analyst Steve Zaloga, however, surmises the RQ-170 is simply a prototype. Flying the drone in Kandahar would let the Air Force “try it out in a more realistic environment than you could get in the U.S.,” he said.

“I can’t imagine the U.S. government would want a UAV [getting shot down] in Iran,” since this would put the Air Force’s latest stealth technology in Iranian hands, he said.

Instead, the RQ-170, nicknamed the “Beast of Kandahar” by the media, is likely the tip of the iceberg for a bevy of secret unmanned combat air vehicles, he said.

Aircraft such as the RQ-170, Zaloga pointed out, fulfill part of Deptula’s call for stealthy planes that can penetrate 21st-century air defenses.

Zaloga said he sees stealth UCAVs as part of a project to build a replacement for the Air Force’s retired F-117 stealth fighter in the suppression of enemy air defenses, known as SEAD.

The F-22 has its own mission, and it’s not SEAD, he said. “Why are you going to waste an aircrew in the SEAD mission?” he said.

[Jimmy.The.Engineer]

Sounded that way to me too, Mambo. When are you coming here? You are missing out.

[Spoo]

There's an easy solution to this letter designation quandry. Stick with what works - call it a U-22. OH...ZING!!!