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CSO drop nights


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  • 3 weeks later...

C-130 PR ANG

AC-130H (NAV) Cannon

B-52H Barksdale

C-130 MN AFR

AC-130U (NAV) Hurlburt

B-52H Barksdale

B-52H Barksdale

EC-130 EWO Davis Monthan

MC-130W Cannon

C-130 PA ANG

B-52H Barksdale

B-52H Barksdale

U-28 Hurlburt

F-15E Seymour-Johnson

RC-135 Offutt

EC-130 EWO Davis Monthan

C-130 GA ANG

C-130 Little Rock

C-130 MN ANG

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  • 3 weeks later...

11-07's drop:

Buff

C-130- Elmendorf

C-130- little rock

AC-130 nav - Cannon

Buff

C-130- little rock

JSTARS

F-15 E

EC-130 EWO

F-15 E

RC-135

Buff

Buff

F-15E

AWACS

AC-130 EWO- hurlburt

Buff

Buff

RC-135

F-15 E

MC-130H EWO- Kadena

C-130- NY ANG

Good drop. Lots of eagles. Their mafia was out in force tonight.

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Whoops. Too much free beer.

You'r welcome :beer: Seymour must have been screaming for us to get so many Eagles. 11-08 looked like they shit a brick...

It was a great drop. The majority of our class got their #1 and the rest were pretty darn close to the top. No big surprises other than all those eagles.

Edited by GO BIG BLUE
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Guest cody6766
You'r welcome

x2! haha.

It's not everyday the guys that get JSTARS and AWACS put them as their #1. We got some funny looks from instructors when asked about that one!

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You'r welcome :beer: Seymour must have been screaming for us to get so many Eagles. 11-08 looked like they shit a brick...

It was a great drop. The majority of our class got their #1 and the rest were pretty darn close to the top. No big surprises other than all those eagles.

Seeing how SJAFB is going to have 1-2 B-courses w/o a single WSO, it's about they dropped some assignments...

PS- Don't forget, it's a Strike Eagle... I made that mistake once.

Edited by lazlo
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Where do the guys dropping AC-130s out of PCola typically rank in their class?

Completely depends on the class. Some classes there are a lot of people that want AFSOC, other classes are strike heavy, and my class was a huge mix of everything.

Just do the best you can and hope AFPC is in a good mood. Timing is everything.

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Completely depends on the class. Some classes there are a lot of people that want AFSOC, other classes are strike heavy, and my class was a huge mix of everything.

Just do the best you can and hope AFPC is in a good mood. Timing is everything.

Not concerned about getting an AC-130, been on them for 6 years, wondering if we're getting sharp dudes or shitbags.

There's concern in the community that the "Cannon factor" is keeping otherwise sharp guys from putting Gunships down on their dreamsheets. The H-model schoolhouse went 1 for 4 last year on new guys making it through the program. Not sure if it's a factor of an overall drop in CSO quality, or just a drop in quality that's heading our way.

It's unfortunate because Cannon or not, crews are still consistently laying waste to the enemy downrange on a regular basis (Example). Dropping tons of ordnance is fun and all, but there's only one place where you can chase Muj down one by one to ensure they don't live to fight another day. You can run...but you'll only die tired.

On another note - interesting that AC-130 would be lumped separate from "strike".

:beer:

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Not concerned about getting an AC-130, been on them for 6 years, wondering if we're getting sharp dudes or shitbags.

Oooh. My bad. In that case it's a mixed bag. Most of the people who have gotten AC's so far are really good dudes.....but a couple are less so. Though that is judging from amount of douche, no idea where they were ranked in their classes.

There's concern in the community that the "Cannon factor" is keeping otherwise sharp guys from putting Gunships down on their dreamsheets. The H-model schoolhouse went 1 for 4 last year on new guys making it through the program. Not sure if it's a factor of an overall drop in CSO quality, or just a drop in quality that's heading our way.

It's unfortunate because Cannon or not, crews are still consistently laying waste to the enemy downrange on a regular basis (Example). Dropping tons of ordnance is fun and all, but there's only one place where you can chase Muj down one by one to ensure they don't live to fight another day. You can run...but you'll only die tired.

Most people rate Gunships pretty high up on their dream sheet. Though most people put Hurbie above Cannon obviously.

On another note - interesting that AC-130 would be lumped separate from "strike".

:beer:

Didn't mean anything by that. Just usually think of F-15E's and bombers when I think of the word strike, and think of Gunships as part of AFSOC. Probably due to brain washing.....there is a large number of WSO instructors around here and not many Gunship guys.

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Oooh. My bad. In that case it's a mixed bag. Most of the people who have gotten AC's so far are really good dudes.....but a couple are less so. Though that is judging from amount of douche, no idea where they were ranked in their classes.

Being a good dude is good, being able to do the job is better. Hopefully they can hack it.

Most people rate Gunships pretty high up on their dream sheet. Though most people put Hurbie above Cannon obviously.

I don't blame them. That being said, the mission is the same, so hopefully guys are factoring that in to their decision. Are they still masking which base the AC is at when the drop comes down until drop night? I know at Randolph they were only telling guys it was an AC-130 in the drop, and you found out location at drop night.

Didn't mean anything by that. Just usually think of F-15E's and bombers when I think of the word strike, and think of Gunships as part of AFSOC. Probably due to brain washing.....there is a large number of WSO instructors around here and not many Gunship guys.

Not surprising. Yeah, the CSO schoolhouse is a very rare assignment due to it being outside the "normal" flow of AFSOC assignments (meaning it's rare for guys to get assigned back outside of AFSOC, with the exception being the Kirtland guys since they're technically AETC...but it's still basically an AFSOC assignment).

Edited by backseatdriver
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I know at Randolph they were only telling guys it was an AC-130 in the drop, and you found out location at drop night.

This was not true in my class at least. We knew we had one gunship to HRT and one to CVS before the drop.

Our flt/cc did our drop differently though and let us choose on drop night instead of being assigned based on dream sheets. The two guys who wanted gunships were right next to each other (sts) in class rank, so the higher ranking dude got his pick and he chose HRT and the lower ranking guy got the Canon H-model. Non-standard but it worked for us.

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This is totally just a rumor, so please don't bite my head off...

Word around Pcola is that a dude has already washed out of the AC FTU at KHRT. Seemed like a sharp guy too. Any AC guys notice anything missing from studs coming out of here?

Can't speak to Pcola specifically cause I'm pretty sure all the guys we (H-models) washed out last year were from Randolph, but the problem areas typically are:

- Inability to multi-task

- Lack of SA

- Task saturation

- Can't talk on the radio (kind of important for a Gunship nav) - however, this is rarely a stand alone thing, usually a function of lack of SA/task saturation - don't think I've ever seen a guy know exactly what's going on, but just not be able to communicate it

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Not concerned about getting an AC-130, been on them for 6 years, wondering if we're getting sharp dudes or shitbags.

There's concern in the community that the "Cannon factor" is keeping otherwise sharp guys from putting Gunships down on their dreamsheets. The H-model schoolhouse went 1 for 4 last year on new guys making it through the program. Not sure if it's a factor of an overall drop in CSO quality, or just a drop in quality that's heading our way.

It's unfortunate because Cannon or not, crews are still consistently laying waste to the enemy downrange on a regular basis (Example). Dropping tons of ordnance is fun and all, but there's only one place where you can chase Muj down one by one to ensure they don't live to fight another day. You can run...but you'll only die tired.

On another note - interesting that AC-130 would be lumped separate from "strike".

:beer:

I believe that there's only two instructors here from the gunship community and one is doing a pretty good job at making himself and (potentially in students eyes) his flying community look like shit. This guy is a complete tool-bag and I think some people are turned off at the "opportunity" of actually being around this guy for most of their career. There's definitely a metric shit-ton of other instructors, from other platforms, that are douches and making a name for themselves amongst the students, but this guy is taking the cake. I say all this because people here have an opportunity to see more than just two guys from the other flying communities and can weed-out the anomalies. The gunship doesn't have that luxury here. Unfortunately, I can see some people seriously being turned off to flying the gunship because of this and the fact that a lot of students here tend to have a very narrow FOV.

On a side note, the other guy who's here from gunships is cool as shit, down to earth, and will buy you a beer at the bar on a friday while he makes fun of you to your classmates about your low-level skills--pretty much what I expected from a gunship guy. :drinking: Rant over

On topic though, our top 8-9 people got their first choice and no one had AC-130s at the top. I know a good portion of our class had ***DO NOT SEND ME TO CANNON** written about 50 times on their dream sheet, but I don't think that influenced our top people. Like FlyingBull said, we had a pretty good mix of people and plane preferences to include a guy who wanted AWACS as his top choice and another one that wanted JSTARS as his top choice--both of which were received respectively. I think what influenced people more in our class was the possibility of being an EWO. That scared the shit out of a couple people and I think the community lost out of at least one guy who knows his shit because he ABSOLUTELY did not want to be an EWO.

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I believe that there's only two instructors here from the gunship community and one is doing a pretty good job at making himself and (potentially in students eyes) his flying community look like shit....

On a side note, the other guy who's here from gunships is cool as shit, ...

On topic though, our top 8-9 people got their first choice and no one had AC-130s at the top. I know a good portion of our class had ***DO NOT SEND ME TO CANNON** written about 50 times ...because he ABSOLUTELY did not want to be an EWO.

Thanks for the gouge. Like I said, this is a concern across the community (both sides of the aisle if you will). We all discussed it at last year's AFSOC ops conference, and the issue of CSO studs having limited exposure to the mission, crew dogs, etc was voiced as a concern. I know there was talk of both squadrons trying to get guys over to PCola to talk to the studs on career day, etc, and the U-model guys had mentioned dropping in with a plane (it is next door after all) and doing some statics, show some Kill TV, etc - not sure where we're at on that. Sucks to hear there's guys there that are turning students away from the community by their actions...we need to do a better job of mitigating that kind of stuff.

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