9 minutes ago, Day Man said:

https://www.borsight.com/news

Updated, cache thing, refreshed and their site had these links, 

Day Man 1 Clark 0 

https://thedefensepost.com/2025/06/18/us-texan-aircraft-avionics/

https://www.govconwire.com/article/borsight-t6a-avionics-replacement-usaf-military-trainer
 

Edited June 25, 2025Jun 25 by Clark Griswold

20 hours ago, Arkbird said:

This feels like another T-1 moment where by the time they update the avionics on the T-6, they're going to send them to the boneyard. They need to just start buying PC-21s and call it a day.

Well, it does run through 2034...

https://www.aerocontact.com/public/img/aviaexpo/produits/catalogues/297/Pilatus-Aircraft-Ltd-PC-21-Brochure.pdf

Looking at this PDF the PC-21 probably has all the avionics upgrades Borsight is going to be upgrading the T-6 to. I spot large MFDs, HUD, a mission computer, and probably a GPS that isn't from the early/mid 90s. Pilatus website even has some airframes with pylons for simulated weapons. Sounds like something the Air Force could use as a front line trainer and to bridge the gap for the fighter/bomber bros before T-38s/T-7s. Seems like a no brainer to me which is probably why the Air Force isn't going this direction.

PC-21 would be great

I could post again this plane or that one, this many hours in this one then this one but really it’s all about getting the institution of the AF to admit that the effort to privatize too much of UPT, to cut from UPT and to radically change UPT is the problem. Not the fact and inherent costs of owning training aircraft(s) at dedicated training bases.

I don’t know how you get a champion(s) with equivalent authority to those who wish to cut everything but the upcoming T-7 but if ever a training mafia needs to be formed ala the fighter mafia it is now.


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Just curious but in all these machinations on UPT NEXT, FUPT, etc… has the Air Force Safety Center been asked or done an analysis on the effectiveness/impact of curtailing/changing pilot training?


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1 hour ago, Clark Griswold said:

Just curious but in all these machinations on UPT NEXT, FUPT, etc… has the Air Force Safety Center been asked or done an analysis on the effectiveness/impact of curtailing/changing pilot training?


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Safety is a Commander's program. Commanders ordered and approved the changes, what do you think?

Safety is a Commander's program. Commanders ordered and approved the changes, what do you think?

Yeah, good point
Just thinking there was a way to throw a flag on the field


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Complete side comment.

Can somebody from AETC world send me a PM with a POC at the 479th FTG at Pensacola?

Trying to put some forward thinking people designing training efforts at our school house in contact without it getting continuously sidelined or hijacked.


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On 8/3/2024 at 9:19 PM, hindsight2020 said:

Here's the problem green suiters never seem to understand about this tired "contractor deus ex machina" COA. Every.single.time the question gets posed in the real world (and it has, ad nauseam) it boils down to the same self-evident retort: "Where and for how much?".

And the answer continues to be the same: "No thanks." The contractor undergraduate training pipedream cannot be scaled to the requirement, unless and until you get rid of the unholy Trinity: Laughlin, Columbus and Vance. 

I'd give details of what it takes to staff the place, but I don't want to doxx myself, plus I'm not even sure some of the stuff I've dealt with is fully JTR-kosher anyways, so 1 2 3 4 fifth. "Senator, that hooker was dead when I got to the gangbang....." 😄 

BL, it is my lived experience that what you people want, cannot be had for what your bosses are willing to pay. A few townie-married check o the month types willing to teach "back waivered" UPT in a Grob are not going to save this enterprise.

If you don't move the enterprise to metro USA, that COA is DOA. Reality.

There's zero political will to move XL and CB. Reality. 

The number you get is equal to however many green bags you can non-volunteer to do the job for 3 years at a time + the aggregate cost of 7-day opts. Reality. 

Wish I was as well written and in the know as some of the followers of this thread so I thought I would just let things stew for a while (didn't help) and see how this contracted Flight Academy issue would work out. My information comes from first hand accounts but may not be indicative of other contracted flight academies.

In this particular case, one AF Captain back at the home AFB is tasked with keeping contact with that home base's TDY students as an additional duty and not as a primary job. Essentially there is no day to day monitoring of the civilian flight academy's performance or treatment of the students. The result is this flight academy in this particular case has to a large extent abused its students. Stretches of 12 days or more of being scheduled on duty, literally no regular scheduled days off each week, and the instructors have been abused too, and told to quit or be fired if they didn't like the non-stop 12-hour days. In some cases this has built up a huge animus towards the students . There is absolutely no consistency amongst the cfi's except that they all operate under FAR's. Instructional rides sometimes last up to three hours in the peak of heat in a small, hot cockpit. Can't remember if I ever in my career had initial instructional rides longer than an hour and a half.

My understanding is it took a couple RAF guys, more senior in rank than the second lieutenants to call back to home base and threaten an IG complaint. That worked for a while but the civilian boss had other ideas.

It's not unique that this Flight Academy is trying to push the Air Force students through as quickly as possible, and cheaply as possible, using new, young cfi's and schedulers that have no clue about duty days. And the word is out, every flight academy is different and some, like CAE, are top tier and very professional .Others have sent initial solo students out in planes that have had engine failures and were not fixed.( yes solo student had an engine failure on departure after it had supposedly been fixed.)

Suffice to say, these flight academies, from Atlanta to Southern Florida to Texas and Arizona , sourcing instructors from every corner of the globe in no way shape or form will deliver a consistent, across the board equal product back to the respective home bases --from what I am seeing and hearing.

I would love to hear this is just sour grapes from a couple students and I'm not getting a proper perspective.