Cost of operating Military planes
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deadstick
Well-Known Member
I'll believe it when I see it.
Lawman
Well-Known Member
No kidding.... Had a captain in one of our staff shops who was a "Brony." He had us fly a couple my little ponies and a flag, I figured they were for his daughters.... Nope....
deadstick
Well-Known Member
drunkenbeagle
Gang Member
SAMs and AAA are a lot cheaper than F35's, you are never going to get rid of all of them. And if they aren't turned on, they are not so easy to find either...
av8tr1
"Never tell me the odds!"
deadstick
Well-Known Member
Air Force -- 'nuff said.
av8tr1
"Never tell me the odds!"
Sigh....I am ashamed to admit it but I spent a little time in the AF Reserves before acquiring my "Man Card" and joining the Army.
Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
This UPT class went through my T-38 squadron at Vance in 2013. Unlike what the press "reports" show, this was actually a bunch of young Lieutenants' reaction to the AF's "health and welfare" witch-hunt that demonized anything that was remotely deemed offensive by pretty much anyone, anywhere. This was the inspection where, I kid you not, the Wing Commander at Wright-Patt had the nose art on the two combat vet WWII bombers in the USAF Museum ("Shoo Shoo Shoo Baby" and "Strawberry Bitch") covered up while the "inspection" was taking place, just in case the temperature of the water broke in the direction of that being found "offensive" (and fortunately, it wasn't).
http://www.hanscom.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123333114
https://dalrock.wordpress.com/2013/...e-in-the-air-force-museum-for-the-time-being/
They'd had a tough time getting other class patch ideas approved by the PC police on base, and decided that to thumb their nose at the ridiculous atmosphere in the Air Force, they'd take it as far to the other unicorns-and-rainbows direction that they could go. While the idea of Lieutenants flipping the bird to the PC establishment is well in line with the warrior traditions, the methodology they chose wasn't really on-point, to put it mildly. Predictably, the patch was approved by the AF leadership there at Vance. The Squadron Commander of the Student Squadron at the time is an old bud of mine (and legit old-school fighter pilot type), and his reaction to it was, "well...if that's what they want to wear on their shoulders, they'll regret it soon enough."
And regret it they did, especially after these media articles made it out and more and more calls started flowing in to Vance AFB asking to talk to students in this class. They learned a tough object lesson in second-order effects, that the rest of the non-hipster world doesn't find "irony" as ironic as they thought it would be.
When they graduated T-6s, the Flight Commander of the T-38 flight they went to (a former fighter Major) ordered the students in that class to not wear it, and they didn't. To a man, all of the students in that class that I spoke to (on the T-38 side of the house -- can't speak for the herbivores over in the T-1 squadron) seriously regretted doing it. On their own, they designed and made a new class patch; I don't think they ever went through any approval process for the "replacement" patch, but as I recall it was a pretty cool patch and, thus, no instructors ever thought to make an issue of it.
deadstick
Well-Known Member
That story is both funny and sad. Something tells me your PC leadership is very proficient with PowerPoint.
Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
Most are, sadly, but some aren't. AF leadership is most definitely widely infected with the PC cancer, and there are a few real warriors in there who are desperately trying to both keep the ship steering in the correct direction and keep their own careers alive long enough to actually affect some change for the better.
The best I know is the current CFACC, Lt Gen Hesterman. I've worked for him twice, once when he was an O-6 Ops Group Commander and again when he was an O-7 Wing Commander. Both times, he had his eye on the ball and fought with a vengeance to ensure the units he commanded did the same. Even as a 1-button in charge of the entire show at RAF Lakenheath, his blade wasn't big enough to kill the queep machine that had built up over decades there. I have no doubt that he's trying to do the same as the AFCENT Commander, and I also have no doubt that he's trying to push the same batch of water uphill with a rake.
I spent a lot of my time as a Company Grade Officer trying to convince guys from other services of what I knew to be true: that the AF had plenty of real warriors that were out doing real gangster stuff. I saw that with my own eyes in the two communities that I'd been in (aircraft/munitions maintenance and the fighter community).
Once I became a Field Grader, and started to see the shenanigans as a guy on Wing Staff and in other places where "managers" ruled the Earth, I suddenly became aware that a lot of those criticisms from the other services were actually pretty valid. I stopped trying to defend Big Blue to those guys.
The real epiphany was when I started working in joint-ish jobs with other FGOs from the other services, and it became obvious that the HIV that infected the blue service also infected the others, and that Big Blue's infection probably wasn't even as serious as the others.
RDoug
Well-Known Member
Could you explain that one to me? Just curious, as I was a controller there in '76-'77, and my son-in-law was there in munitions back to the '00s.
Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
As I'm sure you're familiar with, local units can always write operating requirements that are more strict than what higher headquarters demanded. RAFL seemed to be the poster child of this concept, amplified by the fact that they have "two masters", working for both USAFE and NATO.
This has meant that the pace of work at RAFL, for as long as I've been associated with the AF (the early 90s), has been notably higher than other operational fighter bases. When I got there is 2006, it was crazy -- people regularly worked 7-day weeks (even though it wasn't formally required), as the demands of their "desk job" combined with the flying schedule meant that they just didn't have time to take weekends off. There were guys in my squadron who took leave (what we jokingly called "Laken-leave") so they could have the time free off the duty schedule to do paperwork in the office. Days were long -- so long, in fact, that it was practically a 24-hour duty period every day. For me, most days at home station I woke up and left for work before my school-age kids woke up, and returned home from work after they'd gone to sleep. A 14-hour duty day was pretty typical on days I flew, and when something was coming up (especially an exercise or inspection) 16 hours was pretty normal. The deployment pace was feverish, too. I spent 36 months assigned to RAFL, and of that time I spent fully 18 months off the island of GB and deployed or TDY away from Lakenheath. It was painful on the family life -- I still call it the best place I've ever been assigned but the worse place I've ever worked.
A lot of this pain was self-induced, from leaders who didn't see their subordinates' time as a finite resource and only cared about serving our USAFE and NATO masters, and keeping a high standard of compliance with our self-induced local requirements. I'm all on board for meeting mission requirements with excellence, but the self-induced pain was just ridiculous.
BG Hesterman had his eye on the one part of it he felt he could control: the self-induced pain. One day at a Wing Staff meeting, he told all in attendance that he wanted any and all local requirements in regulations and instructions that were more stringent than the higher-level instruction to be removed. That anyone who felt RAFL needed a more strict rule would have to meet with him personally to defend it. He decreed that anyone who was at work on the weekends (when it wasn't part of their normal duty schedule) had better have a damn good reason for it, and the supervisor who was letting it happen was going to be standing in his office explaining himself. He actively explained that work is a never-ending series of demands that one can never actually get to the bottom of, so when duty hours were over, Airmen needed to GO HOME and be with their families and enjoy being stationed in Europe.
Even with all this, he was only mildly successful in reducing the level of pain. He was the Commander for the first half of my tour there...and as soon as he left, things sprang back into classic RAFL over-working stance.
@hook_dupin was there with me, maybe he can add some more from how he saw it as a first-tour guy.
Queep= Needless BS work and requirements having nothing to less-than-nothing to do with any mission related requirements, and which only serve to give the perception that personnel are busy and productive doing something useful, when truthfully their time is being nothing but wasted.
The Machine= Elements in place, and personnel in places of higher rank/power who institute said bullshat and keep that self-induced pain flowing.
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killbilly
Vocals, Lyrics, Triangle, Washboard, Kittens
Aha. Understood.
Noting the comments about Powerpoint: I'm told that is a DoD thing - no one can get anything done at the Pentagon without a three-bullet powerpoint slide. I'm told by more cynical staff members here that that is also the primary mode of communication for any sort of idea.
Noting the comments about Powerpoint: I'm told that is a DoD thing - no one can get anything done at the Pentagon without a three-bullet powerpoint slide. I'm told by more cynical staff members here that that is also the primary mode of communication for any sort of idea.