Originally Posted by
Sputnik
Ah this again.
I disagree but of course it's unprovable. I will add this, I was a Tweet FAIP in late 90s, when the Tone track was still relatively new. One of our DOs pulled the washout numbers back to the beginning of split tracks. The washout rate for T1s was exactly the same as the washout rate from the 38--to within a tenth of a percent or so.
FWIW my 38 IP buds often complained it was too hard to kick people out of 38s, a fact they felt was reflected in the numbers of 38 grads who subsequently washed out of IFF/FTU.
I have no idea what the numbers are now.
In my pipeline of training the highest washout rate was in the T-41. We lost almost 25% in a 5 week class. UPT and RTU came nowhere close to that added together over the next two years.
The washout rate has nothing to do with how challenging the airplane is to fly, but how challenging the instructors/evaluators make the course to pass, then filtered by how much leverage or willpower leadership has to actually enforce those standards.
I was an F-16 instructor for a million years (no kidding, one million) and more than one kid who snuck through because we'd already washed out one or two and we didn't have the backing of upper echelons to wash out another. It was considered our fault for not being able to train them.
F-16 RTU is in my opinion is more technically oriented now than it was 10-25 years ago with a lot more missions to cover. The kids we get are for the most part, pretty smart. But the mission has gotten much safer (medium altitude, less visual a/a, smaller formation scenarios, no nuclear mission, IAMs vs blue bombs) and that's covered for the weak swimmers.