LowSlowT2

That's just dangerous! We can't have pilots out there deciding on their own how to do missions! Preposterous!

Truthfully, the AF long ago made the decision they'd rather a pilot follow their objective, binary, nested if-then decision-making AFI rather than use their experience and judgment in the subjective and dynamic environment we operate in to accomplish the mission.

Personally, I 'blame' Fogleman. He introduced his concept of accountability over the blackhawk shootdown, but retired in protest when they hung Schwalier out to dry over Khobar (I respected him for that) leaving it incomplete. So, he never really saw his concept through and Ryan turned this into the one mistake AF. Couple this with a very micro-managing political administration and we grew a few generations of officers and NCOs who wouldn't make a decision unless it was run up the flagpole first.

Now, people don't know how to make decisions and the few that do and will get branded as cowboys or gruff or non-team player or whatever and everyone watches them for any perceived error so they can make an example of them.

So now we court martial guys over an interpretation of the regs. Tragic that the jumper died, no question, but to go after the AC for these types of charges is ludicrous.