I knew those are working, but I haven’t seen a plan for the pilot production into them. Definitely the right direction.
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NEWS Air Force leadership talks frankly about pilot retention
- Thread starter ChuckMK23
- Start date
I doubt it will be put into the VTJ jets, the quoted prices were way too expensive. I do think we will see something VMTS like in the sims.
I wouldnt think pilots will get them (and there are no current plans to). With a year long syllabus as it is for T-45 SNAs, don’t know how palatable it will be to throw in basic intercepts into the syllabus.
It's the ability to bring the new capabilities with current processing power that's bloated. Per NAVAIR (over the course of the previous 3 NARGS), Hornet had the same issues as H60 as it related to this. Yes, H60 gets "annual" updates as well. We're talking the underlying processing ability over the lifespan of the airframe(s), not the incremental ability to improve capabilities over the short-term.
I'd definitely like to hear Huggy's thoughts on it too.
I think it's a matter of will. We accept the rollercoaster in Navy flight school just because.
One of the details I always thought was funny was that our primary pilot training bases have some statistically high number of days per year when it's VFR. Well, sure, if you're some beancounter and you see "yup, it hit 3000-5 on that day, check" or whatever the criteria for that is. Well 3000-5 is no good for a fam solo in a T-6 and by extension no good for a checkride along with a crap ton of the VFR part of the syllabus (i.e. most of it). (That's not so much of a problem for advanced helo and advanced multiengine training.)
On the other hand, the variety of weather we get along the gulf coast and the dynamic nature of a lot of it is something I believe is intangibly invaluable for our students' training. It's sorta like from day one they get exposed to aeronautical decision making because of weather that you simply wouldn't get in a place where it's CAVU almost every day of the year. I really do think that exposure and experience is an enormous benefit, but it's one heck of a tradeoff when it takes a year or three to put wings on somebody's chest.
Two things jumped out at me when I went through Vance and then Meridian:
- At Vance we were required to be in the ready room 12 hours a day. There was no written flight schedule, just pucks on a board managed by each flight. It was not uncommon to get thrown into a flight when an open spot presented itself. I.e. we can’t get this spin flight done, but we can knock out an instrument flight. Your syllabus moved in parallel vice linear in Meridian.
- What I alluded to earlier is the Air Force has always specialized their pipeline, even for TACAIR. In the Navy it didn’t mattter if you were an S-3,F-14 or F-18 guy, you did bombing, low levels and ACM in advanced and then got your wings. For the Air Force, why would an A-10 guy do as much ACM as a F-15 guy and vice versa for bombing. The Air Force T-38 syllabus is primarily formation flying and low levels then wings. After aircraft assignment, they go to IFF for the tailored tactical training for their particular aircraft.
Interestingly, the Navy's adherence to a more linear program became more prevalent as it adopted some of the AF-isms. With the old scheduling system (CASS...? I can't remember, but @Jim123 will know), you could schedule events ahead of pre-reqs, although that was frowned upon at the Primary level. But with TIMS (which was a JPATS system), it would enforce pre-reqs and wouldn't let you schedule stuff out of order. This was more of an issue with IUTs than with SNAs, but a thing.
On the macro level, though, it's a fine line trying to balance getting "a" X versus getting "the" X. I know when I went through as a CAT II for Romeo, I got scheduled for events that I hadn't had the pre-reqs for and it was frustrating. But that skeds at the time seemed to be run my mildly-trained monkeys, so as with everything, technique matters.
TIMS has allowed scheduling events ahead of their pre-reqs for a while now, but I think it's one of those things where the scheduler has to have override access (or whatever super user permissions it's called).
The old system was STASS or STASS Flight. I couldn't tell you what the acronym stood for, I just remember the program was built on top of [drumroll] wait for it Microsoft FoxPro and I remember having to learn how to log a flight record on it for my primary solo in 1999.
CASS is the system that keeps track of airline pilots' flight deck jumpseat access. Here is a pictorial description:
STASS, that's right. The same program that would randomly uncheck graded items on my worksheet, which I first discovered when I had a stud I took on the road go up for his final "we're kicking you out" review. That didn't go over well.
I had over-ride access back then, as well. But it wasn't unheard of to get a call from the Wing Academics officer (who was actually a super-laid back AF O-5) who would get in my business if I did it without a very good reason.
Looks like T-SHARP is on the way for the TRACOM. And from what I heard from the LANT SHARP guy (who I was chatting with last week), the new SHARP is supposed to be significantly better for gradesheets. It would be hard to be much worse than the previous SHARP.
I had over-ride access back then, as well. But it wasn't unheard of to get a call from the Wing Academics officer (who was actually a super-laid back AF O-5) who would get in my business if I did it without a very good reason.
Looks like T-SHARP is on the way for the TRACOM. And from what I heard from the LANT SHARP guy (who I was chatting with last week), the new SHARP is supposed to be significantly better for gradesheets. It would be hard to be much worse than the previous SHARP.
LOL. Our CVW is one of the first to SHARP 7.0. Overall it's great, but the gradsheet feature will timeout without telling you, causing a loss of anything since you hit SAVE, and SAVE closes the window. So now it's a 3-step process:
- open gradesheet and enter numeric grades; save
- reopen gradesheet and enter comments; save
- reopen gradesheet and sign; save
DoD websites that abuse the session variable make my inner Web developer get stabby. Shit shouldn’t randomly time out without warning the user. If a session times out and the user wants back in, fine. Delete the Goddamned cookie, kick them to the login screen, and let them try again. Don’t just say “sorry, your account already has a session open. Try again in 15 minutes.” No, I only have to try again because the person who coded this site is either lazy as fuck or incompetent. Looking at you, NRRM . . .
Based on all-calls with CNATRA staffers and the previous CNATRA himself, I'm under the impression is they want to make Primary through Advanced more linear than it already is.
I'm also under the impression that USAF (UPT at least) will keep a guy on schedule by flying him on weekends when he gets a day behind, doesn't give CO's as much discretion to approve student leave (I've seen this pendulum swing back and forth depending on the CO wrt to SNA leave), and their XC's they fly every day with no more than 1 night in the same location. Additionally, they were assigned flight leaders (used completely differently than we do in the VTs and HTs) that they almost exclusively fly with and those O-3 types are the ones responsible for keeping them on their timeline and it's their weekends they are giving up. All of this is according to my former squadron mate of mine there, they still miss targeted completion dates... we had an academic discussion trying to dissect what worked and didn't for a Master's class I was taking at the time.
I assume @HuGgYu2 has better insight as to one IP's perception of one squadron, but it's a data point.
I'm also under the impression that USAF (UPT at least) will keep a guy on schedule by flying him on weekends when he gets a day behind, doesn't give CO's as much discretion to approve student leave (I've seen this pendulum swing back and forth depending on the CO wrt to SNA leave), and their XC's they fly every day with no more than 1 night in the same location. Additionally, they were assigned flight leaders (used completely differently than we do in the VTs and HTs) that they almost exclusively fly with and those O-3 types are the ones responsible for keeping them on their timeline and it's their weekends they are giving up. All of this is according to my former squadron mate of mine there, they still miss targeted completion dates... we had an academic discussion trying to dissect what worked and didn't for a Master's class I was taking at the time.
I assume @HuGgYu2 has better insight as to one IP's perception of one squadron, but it's a data point.
*I only quoted the above, but this is in reply to all the USAF JSUPT discussion...
This was the case, at least in 2007, when I went through VAFB. You spent all fucking day at the squadron until the last third of the program. I lived on base and had an infant, so I found ways to get out of there, just to avoid a blue on pink incident against my AF overlords.
Ridiculous things said were:
“You can’t smoke while in a student status.” (I immediately walked to the gazebo with the MX guys and burned two just to prove a point)
“You can’t take leave while a student.”
My stepmom retired after 31+ years in the Navy and they initially denied my request to take a Thursday to Monday to attend, until the 3-Star AF Officiant sent my flight lead a request for my presence on his letterhead.
“Standup EP’s are important.”
We discovered they weren’t a gradable item for USN so we stopped caring about getting “sat down.” We still tried, but didn’t get wrapped around the axle about their patronizing questions.
The thing they did well, and that we used at VT-3, was you were always ready for your next Sim AND flight, and were expected to be ready to go if called up on standby.
We would hard schedule anyone opted for a flight event into a STBY period (AM or PM) and they checked in with Sharon (FDO executor) and we’re ready to go in place of the inevitable IMSAFE (or if we just didn’t feel like flying with the Saudi kid that day).
They (the Air Force) put the almighty schedule ahead of all, which had results, but at a cost of QOL and maturity level for their JO’s. They got treated like kids, and acted as such.
He did mention that. I'm no longer in a position to argue if it was better or not. Even with 6.0, I would copy the body of text in the comments before saving in case SHARP lost connectivity and I didn't want to type everything again.
I guess it went from an unknown unknown to a known known. Mission Accomplished.