I want to see someone with time and the Photoshop skills, do up a T-45 in a F-11 paint scheme. I'd have to agree that cammo is unnecessary, but something different is a good thing. The whole point of 2v1 is not to try to figure out who my wingman is. The only time this would be a useful skill would be if we went to war with Canada, or Switzerland, or Spain........ Pretty useless. I want a guy to be able to put his jet in the right piece of sky, in the shortest amount of time. I understand that T-45 2v1 is mostly a comm drill, but all it really teaches is a bunch of bad habits that then get re-learned once in the fleet.
Advanced flight school 2v1 is a drill in talking and flying at the same time while trying to maintain some SA in a mostly scripted 3-D enviroment ... nothing more, nothing less. It's not trying to teach tactical 2v1 flying. I would submit that by the time a dude gets to Fighter Weps in the Hornet FRS, most of his T-45 2v1 habit patterns have long been lost or forgotten. No doubt that if a Hornet CONE at the FRS brings up how he did 2v1 in the T-45, the Hornet IP will verbally abuse him for the entire brief and well into the debrief.
I know what advanced 2v1 is. I also know that when dudes first show up to their fleet squadrons, more often than not, they fall back on what they learned first. Which is not proper 2v1 mech. They also say ghey stuff like "switch, switch, he's coming to you." It would probably be better to teach the important stuff like keeping sight of your wingman and killing, not extending to the point where you have to then figure out who's who. Maybe Marines are just better at forgetting things than the Navy dudes are.
Are you really seeing this in your fleet squadron? In all of my tactical flying in the Hornet, I've never seen anybody fall back on their T-45 2v1 training. Four FNG's have checked into my squadron over the last year and none of them have displayed any "T-45" tendancies in BFM (1v1, 2v1,2v2), just the standard low SA that new dudes have. I'd be interested in what dudes that are instructing Fighter Weps at the RAG's have to say...if they are seeing dudes fall back on their T-45 2v1 "skills" when doing 2v1 in the Hornet, or any BFM for that matter. I understand that T-45's teach a DBT by going >30 nose low to the deck...are dudes seeing that out of Hornet CONEs? If you are hearing fleet Hornet FNG's "say ghey stuff like 'switch, switch, he's coming to you.'" then => ....abuse him. We can agree to disagree on this. I personally think the 2v1 at the training command as well as the 2 plane "Road Recce" low level flights are good methods at teaching guys how to talk and fly at the same time. They should also bring back the gun pattern as well. Nothing tactical about any of it and I don't think they teach bad habits, especially once the CONEs get into the books at the FRS. Just my opinion. I think we can both agree that more TacForm needs to be taught though!
Considering that a new guy spends on average 4-6 months of time being stashed prior to starting the syllabus at -101, I'd think that most have forgotten nearly everything from T-45's by the time they get to BFM 10-12 months later. I know I did.
I'd love for the NAMI shrinks to do a project on correlating performance in various phases of training to the amount of stash time in between. Maybe they already have. I'm pretty sure what they'd find, "perishable skill" and all, but I'm curious as to just how much of an effect there is.
It comes and goes, but that is good that things are moving more quickly now. That being said, I enjoyed having the summer off that year.
When I first learned about SCAR/AR in the fleet (granted, its not taught in the RAG), the easiest way for me to begin to understand it mentally was "its kinda like the road recces we used to do in T-45s." I think those are pretty useful flights. I think instead of painting it cammo colors, they ought to let each squadron paint 100 up in squadron colors for a little squadron pride like we do in the fleet. Because that's really the whole point of this-- to look different and cool. I honestly forgot what the paint scheme was on the skippers' birds in advanced. The only problem would be keeping it out of the hands of the other squadron since each wing shares a common pool of jets. As far as tac form, I would have liked to do more CAS in the RAG where the wingman stayed attached in tac-wing, rather than getting detached to his own altitude block. That was one of the harder things for me to do when I first got to the fleet: copy and input the 9-line and do JDAM validation all while flying off lead and working the pod at the same time.
Haha yeah that was me on my first fleet cas flight. He clears me to detach and I just peel off rag style, lead is like "dude you're still flying form".....some confusion ensued. Makes perfect sense though, I guess just another example of the PTT in the rag being different than reality
Saw both of these this weekend. The top one looks cool but the bottom is just a hair above clown colors, let me know when they finish painting it.
