Pilot select...

[eagl]

Originally posted by Russian
Eagle, sure but it will take sometime....wouldn't that be odd if you teach me

I'll be here for another 2.5 years.

[Russian]

Originally posted by eagl
I'll be here for another 2.5 years.

In that case I will see you. I looked around and it seems average after selection is nearly 5-6 months. My only main concern is with top secret clearance...that might be a hassle.

[FiLtH]

Only if you have something to hide.  Are you hiding something? Its ok..everybody hides SOMETHING...you can tell us. We are your friends. Cigarette?

[SaburoS]

Originally posted by FiLtH
Only if you have something to hide.  Are you hiding something? Its ok..everybody hides SOMETHING...you can tell us. We are your friends. Cigarette?

LMAO!!!

Russian,

WTG and good luck!

[Gunslinger]

Originally posted by eagl
I'll be here for another 2.5 years.

I hear your job is gonna get easier over the next year sir.  Something about selecting a few hundred less zeros for pilot training.

[eagl]

Less zeros?

I do know that they're spinning the flight screening program back up, and that should weed out a whole bunch of people who don't need to be in the business.  The Italians have a great screening program, and their students tend to do very well except for in instruments, because the language barrier is significantly worse when the flight task involves a lot of work with ground controllers.  But it's rare to have an italian wash out for simple flying skills.  Yea some are good and some sort of suck, but a lot of the problems they have are caused by having to think too much about the language.

An hour of T-6 instruction supposedly costs about half of an hour of T-37 instruction.  I assume that some of the cost savings is eaten back up by the more robust simulators, but still in the long run I think the T-6 will save money.  Assuming they can fix some manufacturing glitches...  They found some wing spars that may not meet specs so the FAA isn't certifying any new airframes and T-6's already delivered are flying with some operating restrictions.  I hope they figure that out in a hurry even if they have to cycle every single T-6 back through the factory for a spar refit.

Outsourcing is a b**ch when the contracted company delivers a couple million bucks worth of defective wing spars...  If they have to outright replace the spars, it could turn that whole contract into a massive loss because the problem appears to be that the spars simply do not meet contracted specs or requirements.  Gonna be some pissed off investors if that happens.

At least the wings haven't started falling off though.

[Viking]

Russian is to be an Air Force pilot? Guess we'll see more ejection seat demonstrations in the US now!

(J/K of course)

[AGM65]

Big and Congratulations Russian. Remember, if you have a drivers license, you push a mower. No license you rake and sweep. Btw, watch out for them jet jockey HOers.

[Dnil]

hated my time at shepard.  It made keesler look like maui.

[Gunslinger]

Originally posted by eagl
Less zeros?
 

zeros = enlisted slang for officers.  

O in the pay grade looks like a zero....

[Wolfala]

Originally posted by Gunslinger
zeros = enlisted slang for officers.  

O in the pay grade looks like a zero....

Its about what you make after taxes too.

[eagl]

Ah.

Well, I'm not sure about any downturn in pilot production.  There is a shortage of aircraft to fly that's for sure, but they still need officers with rated experience (ie. pilots) to fill an awful lot of non-flying staff jobs.

The current plan is to keep a bunch of F-16s around, send pilots through pilot training, get them 2 or 3 years flying vipers, and then send them to staff jobs or UAVs with very little chance of returning to fly.

That sorta sucks.  We're back to spending the smallest percentage of our GNP on defense since pre-WWII at the same time we simply MUST modernize our front line equipment (re: F-15s falling apart).  That means we're a few short years away from the proverbial paper force...  We'll have all sorts of capabilities on paper, but nobody around with any current skills to actually do anything.

Those nukes that got "lost" at the B-52 base...  That sort of thing doesn't happen if your nuke certified folks are current, qualified, and spend an appropriate amount of time training in that mission.  Instead, those nuke warriors (maintainers too) are also part-time finance officers, part time personnelists, janitors, painters, amature civil engineers, etc.

So... I wouldn't bet on a drastic reduction in pilot production but then again maybe I'm wrong.  I do know that if our washout rate drops because of more effective screening, and if our UPT grads do better in follow-on training due to adjustments in our syllabus with the new T-6 and T-38C, then they won't have to START as many students in training in order to END with fully combat qualified pilots after training.

[eagl]

Originally posted by Wolfala
Its about what you make after taxes too.

Officer pay isn't all that bad, at least after you make Capt.  The biggest problem I see with military pay is that more and more junior enlisted troops are getting married and having kids before they are earning enough to support a family.  The pay scale has increased, but the social dynamics have shifted a LOT faster than I think many people thought.

Back in the day, a first shirt would do almost anything required to keep a 17 yr old recruit from marrying his 16 year old sweetheart, or to keep two tech school students from getting married and popping out kids at the beginning of the wife's 5 year comittment.  Those are simply stupid decisions to make at that time, and everyone knew that.  Kids now show up and figure they are owed respect they havent' earned, and nobody is going to tell them what to do or not to do.  So they do the dumbest f**king things imaginable with their lives.

Part of me says to hell with the kids, because they were told and the pay scale is public knowledge so they ought to have the basic intelligence to not buy into comittments they aren't being paid for.  Another part however tells me that this is a social phenomena that's much larger than other considerations, and we should simply increase the pay rates at the bottom of the pay scale and hire fewer troops to make up for it (with corresponding tougher entrance requirements).

But that's just my opinion.  If I was in charge, E2's would be treated just like cadets where it comes to dependents...  Cadets can not remain enrolled at the Academy if they have dependents.  So if you're an E2 and you get married, you get shown the door because frankly you're more trouble than you're worth.  But that's just me.

[AKIron]

Originally posted by eagl
So if you're an E2 and you get married, you get shown the door because frankly you're more trouble than you're worth.  But that's just me.

Well, they would be more trouble than they're worth if the military bothered to be troubled by them.

[DYNAMITE]

woot!