On the lighter side...

Any bets on how long it is before the UAV only "pilots" start to demand flight suits and pleather jackets?

 

MEM, are you trying to get inside my OODA loop? You need to be working at FEDEX ALPA. Great Post.

 

Kingbird, a John Boyd reference -- outstanding! It's the little things that betray whether the poster is actually familiar with or has given thought to the concepts they are discussing.

 

The book, "Boyd" is truly an epic volume, and one of the most riveting biographies I've ever read. Think of "A Beautiful Mind" in a flightsuit. His theories, so revolutionary, strike terror in enemies and the orthodoxy. The tragedy is the manic depression that drove his genius, and the self destructive emptiness that allowed his adversaries to deflect him, as the only means to defeat his logic. As an aside, General Robert Hilliard Barrow ll passed yesterday. General Barrow was the first Marine Commandant to sit on a full seat of the JCS, and his son is a life long friend. The later disciple of Boyd, Marine Commandant Alfred Gray was one of Barrow's kindred spirits in the USMC. Google up some bios of General Barrow to enjoy the spirit of a pure warrior.

 

I only speak for myself as a "young" officer, but your argument is poop. Your "high and mighty" attitude is what is killing the AF as a whole. Leaders who believe that no matter what they do to their troops, they have already "paid their dues" and therefore disregard the bigger picture.

Your opinion is that "I" haven't paid my dues as a young officer. I beg to differ, but it is my opinion vs yours. You sit pretty in your Reserve/Guard job not worrying about that next drop down 365 or getting selected for convoy duty as a pilot. I'll tell you what, you take a year remote to Iraq as a convoy commander and then tell me that you are "happy" with how you were employed.

I don't agree with the direction of the AD AF, but my opinion only counts for so much, and I don't have the power to make policy changes. If you really think the best thing for the UAS community is to take the most highly experienced aviators out of the cockpit and have them fly those UAVs, then you are willing to greatly destabilize the CAF and even the MAF. I have seen seasoned and highly experienced pilots get yanked out of the cockpit so that they can use that $2million worth of training to do a job that anyone can be TRAINED to do. How do you think you made it to the F-15...magic? You were trained, by people with experience and the SA to make it happen. The UAS community will build itself around a core of highly experienced personnel, but then it will have to thrive on its own, just as every specialty has in every branch of service.

We are a nation at war, and taking those that are not only professionals, but EXPERTS at their combat job away from where they are needed the most is a disservice to our armed forces. Lets build the UAS into an elite fighting force, but not at the expence of our current CAF and MAF core.

Rant over...let the flaming commence

 

I think you made some great points, the only thing i would comment on is ANG/RES quote. Alot of us have been on active duty orders doing our fair share of flying. One team on fight. But again I agree with everything you said.

 

Wow, lots of good, thoughtful posts here. I think the sad truth is that we need more experts than we have. The AF has mismanaged its aircrew force and we are about to pay the price. From the looks of things the priorities will be UAS, RC-12, and U-28/NSA positions. The MAF is overmanned in AFPC's eyes (those of us working our asses off in the flying squadrons know better), so we can expect to hemorage people in the near future. Leadership has been forced to prioritize, and like it or not, these systems represent the future. BTW, "Boyd" should ablolutely, positively be REQUIRED reading for all AF officers. "You can either choose to be somebody, or DO SOMETHING. Which path will you take?"

 

WAFP - No flaming, but I do have a reply.

First, I don't know you and I don't know what you have done. As far as me "sitting pretty", let me tell you what I have done so we can level the playing field - I was in Mogadishu in '93 for several months (8-hr notice to get to the squadron and I was gone for months - not back and forth to the US in 2 weeks or less) when daily mortar attacks were the norm, I was in Rwanda (again for several months straight, this time with 1 day notice) as part of the UN debacle, I was in Sarajevo and most of the rest of Bosnia in '96 and was part of the planning of an evacuation of US citizens from Burundi (all during a several month deployment and this time with 3 days notice), and I was near and over Iraq on numerous occasions in both OSW and ONW for varied length tours between '93 and the start of the war. I was targeted by an SA-6 (verified by off-board sources) and 100mm AAA (on numerous instances and verified by my eyeball). Although I wasn't able to drop the CBU that killed everyone (verified by off-board sources) at the AAA site (I was flying the F-15C); I did call the ROE trip, give the point out to the Viper bomb droppers, and provide the CAP for them. And that was all before 9/11/01. And, I am still in, albeit as a Reservist at this point. I am not bragging, but just stating a fact - you see I have been there and done that. Those jobs, by the way, were both flying and ground duties (as in deploy in with no aircraft around for months). People who are sitting pretty right now may have waded through some muck to get there.

On my first two assignments I averaged 240 days/yr overseas with my high of 270 days/yr in one year. I got an overseas assignment credit although I was assigned to a CONUS squadron. I have paid my dues - now you can tell me your resume and we'll decide if you have paid yours, yet. I am not saying that you are not going to pay your dues (and I was even talking about you until this post), but whether or not someone has paid their dues is fact, not opinion. You young Lt's and Capt's on AD need to do your turn absorbing the operational environment, deploying when required, and in general doing the things that you joined the USAF to do. I sure hope you didn't join the USAF to spend more time with your family - the young guys are the worker bees. That is just the way it is. Nearly every field grade officer has done his/her time putting the USAF first when they were Lt's and young Capt's, the whole being away from the family, etc. Now, it's their turn to consider the family when making career decisions. The young guys, it's not your turn, yet. It will be, but not yet.

Every officer must live with this, it's called RHIP. Not meaning to sound like a jackass, but do something for me. Picture the bad deals coming your way in the next few years. Picture those convoy commander jobs you are going to get and picture that 1-yr remote to some CAOC somewhere in some desert environment. Now picture yourself as a LTC, having all of those tours behind you, having the airmanship that comes with 4500 hrs of varied flight time, having the officership that comes from 17 years of leading people around the world, having the knowledge that people died on your word or action and having to KNOW that you made the right call, and then picture yourself listening to some future Lt or young Capt one or two years out of UPT tell YOU that it is only YOUR opinion that he hasn't paid his dues. Sit there and listen to why he needs to be considered the same as you because of all the bad deals that he is sure he will pick up in the future. No, there is no opinion about it - either you have or you haven't. Dues are one of those things that you pay backwards, not forward.

Here is another concept, you don't do yourself any favors by saying the dues that you are sure to pay someday are more harsh than the dues that someone else of some other era has already paid. If you want to compare, let's compare. Let's talk about how your life as a Fred driver sucks compared to the officers of WWII. Let's talk about how stepping to a broken jet 50% of the time compares to knowing that up to 10% of you and your friends will not return after every single sortie. You cover the Vul you were assigned (talk to your fighter friends about what a Vul is, if required). You step up to the plate and you take what comes your way - you have no control over when you reach commisioning age, you just step up to the plate and swing at what happens to show up. I didn't pick the '90's, they picked me - besides, as you can see, even officers of the '90's were busy - especially the ones who were around in the '90's as well as today - we are doing what you are doing plus all the extra previous stuff.

The final concept is the difference between tactical and stategic thinking. As a young officer, you are in tactical mode - you still don't mind when they send you round-trip across the pond to Europe empty because you are getting some good hours out of it and you really wanted to do some Christmas shopping over in Germany. When told to go, you go happily, no questions asked. We were all there, you need to start there. At some point, though, you start to realize that this is that waste that everyone is always talking about. Then you realize that, not only is it wasteful due to the ungodly amount of fuel being burned for no apparent reason, but it borders on criminal negligence because there are Army dudes who are still waiting for a trip home after 18 months deployed and they are being told that there is no lift available right now. At that point when told to go, you say to the dude in TACC "do you really want me to fly all the way across the pond and back empty? Is there a supervisor I can talk to about this? What the hell are you people in TACC doing, anyway? Isn't there something a little more important that we can be doing?" There is no breaking point, it just gradually happens, almost imperceptible. You don't know why you protested the mission, you just did as some sort of officer instinct. At some point you look back and you think, holy cow, I have been there / done that and I am thinking like a field grade officer. You realize that you are actually thinking differently than you used to, you have some larger sense of judgement and operational maturity about you.

That is when you realize that there is no way to train that maturity, it comes through experience and exposure. That is when you realize that, given a shoot or don't shoot scenario, you will probably make the right decision more consistently than that young Lt. That is when you realize that, when told to cover a specific objective in a certain way by someone in the chain but you know the dudes on the ground are counting on you to cover it in another way, you will do the right thing by the guys on the ground. You will have the confidence from all of those years of experience to stand your ground knowing you are right, knowing that you will be able to articulate why you did what you did when called on the carpet. That is when you ralize that you can't train every possible scenario that will be covered in an operational scenario, and you know that when you do see that first-ever seen scenario you will consistently make the better call. That is when you realize that any direct support that we can give the troops under fire any day takes a little priority over those Yakota SIDS or ORE support runs. And that is when you realize that sitting in the left seat in a UAS capsule has less to do with MS Flight Sim or playing PS/2 and more to do with judgment, decision-making, situational awareness, and confidence and the wherewithal to do the right thing. And that is when you realize that your opinions as a young Lt were being formed more out of selfishness than with true consideration for the overall mission.

In the C-5 you grow AC's from copilots. There are no copilots in the UAV, it's all you. If I had to take AC's from the C-5 to the man the UAS and force the squadrons to make AC's faster, that is what I would do. You know why? Because, even if you have to make AC's faster in the C-5, you are still making them from copilots who have at least seen an AC operate and have at least learned a little from osmosis through the experience of operating with supervision. They won't be straight out of UPT, they will have SOME experience that was gained with a mentor. Even if the new AC's do make a mistake or two, they will usually be flying missions that will not result in people dying if they don't go on time or are less than 100% due to poor decisions, etc. Those ISR asset commanders that come straight from UPT will not have that privilege. They will be brand new. They will know what menu to go to do a specific task, but they won't have that innate sense of when and why to do those certain tasks at those certain times. They will take exponentially longer to make decisions that more experienced pilots will make instantaneously They will not have had the privilege of operating under direct supervision for the first 18 months to 2 years of their flying career, they will not have had the time to just sit and watch it be done, they will not have the ready example of who to emulate - and our troops on the ground will be betting their lives that they make the right call on time every time.

P.S. For those of you who want to use the example of UPT grads going to fighters - even though they are alone in the jet, fighter wingman operate for 2 years under intense supervision. Fighter wingman are briefed pre-sortie in exacting detail, nearly every facet of what they will do and when they will do it is covered. During the flight, they are always where they need to be, doing what they were briefed to do, or they are asking lead for permission to deviate (sometimes they don't ask, but they had better be prepared to have an answer for that in the debrief). After the flight, the debriefs are....let's just leave it at painful (I was an Eagle driver after all). There is nothing like your HUD and VTR tape being put into the player for all to see and hear, with the flight lead stopping at all of the appropriate spots and pointing out your errors in excruciating detail. The point is, even a single-seat fighter wingman operates with much more supervision than a UAS pilot.

Tanker - my answer is DO something.

 

Good point and you are right. I take back that comment, it was a little....rough. My bad

 

Mem - several good points, but I have to disagree with a couple things.

I'm to young in the AF to match anyone's resume who has been around since the 90's. I watched 9/11 happen when I was in college. I knew I was joining the military during a time of war. I knew what I was getting in to. I can really only say that in my short stint in the C-5 I am averaging around 220+ days a year gone, and with the current trend of no one leaving the community and the war still raging with fewer pilots to do the mission, I don't see that ending anytime soon.

I didn't join so that I could spend more time with my family, in fact it almost cost me my wife when I decided to make the military my life. I've had a string of crappy commanders that have made many crappy decisions. Because of that I started to question decisions of those appointed to a "leadership" position MANY years ago.

I have flow empty across the pond and had the TACC O-6 tell me to shut up and color, only to watch a jet fly back to Europe (ONE day later) to p/u cargo that I could have done if they left me out in the system. In the C-5 community the "M" model is the new thing. With increased performance and fuel savings I naturally thought that Travis (being geographically further separated from the fight) would be the most "logical" choice to receive them. Travis flys 10 hours, on average, longer just to get to the East coast to p/u cargo than those jets from Dover. 18 AF/CC and the AMC/CC just "patted" the little Captain on the head and proceeded to blow off my question saying that Dover would be the first to recieve them.

If we take pilots out of the MAF community, shortly after making AC or even IP, then we only damage our core. A buddy of mine is in a KC-10 SQ where the chief of DOV is a KC-10 baby with only 5 years experience. That is a direct result of the shoddy assignments that the SQ recieved (UAV, AETC, Capts going to staff, etc) and has hurt them greatly. I can see this being an even larger problem in the CAF community, where I also have a friend who has done 2 Ops tours in a row, and is considered lucky not to be TAMI 21'd or sent packin to an ALO position.

UAVs will always have the luxury of being a 0/0 asset. They may be "flying" a CAF asset, but they are sitting at a place where they are in no immediate danger of taking that "golden bb" or constantly living in fear of that SA-18 poppin up out of nowhere. They don't opperate by themselves, but in teams, in that trailer.

Every warfighter has to start somewhere. We are not all built to be one, weather it be SA, reflexes, instinct, knowledge level, or whatever. The one thing they ALL have in common is that they were trained to do their job. Every grunt, soilder, seaman, and airman were grown from what you see when you pass your closest college or high school. The UAS may be the "wave of the future" but we are far from it being the backbone of our combat units.

I am just a Captain. It's not WWII, it's the 21st century. The AF doesn't number near one million, but closer to 300k. We are all streched pretty thin and I understand that I am a voulenteer and work for a dictator, not in a democracy. I'll go where they tell me, fly what they tell me, and leave when my family and I make that decision (after I have paid my "dues" and my 10 year commitment). I have been made to do some pretty stupid things and watched my family suffer.

Whenever anyone asks "are you going to make the AF a career?" I always answer them "as long as it treats me and my family well." IF the AF keeps making these dumb decisions, I'm going to join the ranks of those "rats that have fleed the ship."

I am WAFP and I approve this message!