When I was at DFW, I ran into a Miramar NFO going through twin Beech school sim. (Navy sponsored)

speaking of which, congrats are in order.

They have always done annual open-application lateral transfers from certain other designators to pilot, and that includes 1320s.

The program I was talking about was a specific F14 RIO to F14 Pilot program. They were guaranteed to go back to tomcats as long as they had jet grades IIRC. Theory was they already knew the platform and the fight.

Because white dudes have an exemplary record of safety and decision making in military and commercial aviation. Grow up.

My TFS in 1960 had two black pilots, nobody thought a thing about it.

I was very very close to throwing the grenade on going back in the service as an NFO many years ago, basically had it all lined up. While a civilian job prospect came up in the interim, I think sitting in the back with my flying knowledge and ability would have driven me insane (or at least made me eject) if I had actually gone through with it. Couldn't do pilot due to medical, but was going that route to stay in aviation, etc.

I know it’s easy to criticize and that the crew mostly was ashore and most of the yard dogs these days are civilian, but for an alleged warship to take this much damage without even being in a battle just seems wrong. They may have to write her off...

He may mean towed out to sea to be a coral reef...my brother (Navy Nuke) seems to think the amount of damage sustained to the structure would not be salvageable.

I've taken ships into the yards. It's amazing how sloppy the civilians (especially .gov shipyard civilians) can be compared to USN sailors, back in the day it seemed like they partied all night, came straight to work, and tried to find a quiet corner to sleep it off in. If they couldn't do that, speed would help get them through the shift. I saw multiple fires, leaks, and flooding. Including one guy who opened up a live 3000 psi hyd system because he was too lazy to do the tag out paperwork... a very large hyd system, with massive accumulator capacity. He was lucky the engine room didn't explode when he aerosol-ed a few hundred gallons. They had to bring in a special crew and take a couple weeks to wipe it up in all the nooks and crannies.

Midnight shift was the worst.

There may be a systemic problem, but don't blame the crew just yet. Their role is often hall monitor, and the civilians don't want to be monitored.

It is a lot of damage.

But the engineering spaces are intact, that's the high-dollar stuff. The rest of an amphib is just a bunch of boxes, pipes, and wires. They can just cut out the burnt areas and rebuild those from scratch in that case, cheaper than a new-build.

But if they can't afford a new ship or the repairs, it could get decommed. But given the situation in the Pac, I suspect they'll fix her up unless they can budget for a near-term new build replacement.

LHAs and LPDs are in production, neither of those are an exact replacement for an LHD. But the LHA is based on the last LHD (Makin Island) so maybe they could use the active LHA production to just build another Makin Island design LHD.