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Yeah, he’s become a minor social media sensation for his Twitter presence. Chowdah’s an E-2 guy, known him for a minute. Good people, glad to see the positive attention he’s bringing to his crew and Ike.

They’re MAs - see their badges - and that’s what the MAs wear on duty. If it ever got so bad that the MAs are running around topside during GQ, the Boat’s pretty well fucked anyway.

I would've sworn I already saw a Marine C-40 a while back...like a year or so. Maybe I dreamed it. I flew a couple of times on VMR C-9s. They kept those birds looking very smart and shiny inside and out, as opposed to the Navy C-9s; looks like they're doing the same with their C-40s.

The F-14’s ‘Vark DNA is a lot more evident in those pics.

The RT/ART position construct is one thing I really wish the Navy would consider adopting off of the Army/AF/Guard. Seems enormously beneficial for both the service and the individual.

Averages, means, or medians don’t really mean anything in this context. Stop worrying about it and accept that some things are going to be out of your control.

Mileage definitely varies depending on your community and command. Overall I think it’s a good way to go for folks who want to stay on active duty and enjoy the pay/benefits that come with it, but have found that the Sea/Shore duty grind isn’t for them for whatever reason. As a possible COA, I...

No. Basically active duty full-timers, but part of the Reserve Component. For all intents and purposes they're the same as any other active duty cat, but they (mostly) are assigned to Reserve units and have a different career track.

It's absolutely stupid, but {gestures broadly at everything else in how the NAVRES is administered}. The rationale behind it is that mil retirement pay between day 1 of retirement and age 60 is funded by the services; after that it comes out of the VA budget. So sanctuary works to the...

Training and Administration of the Reserve. It was the old name for FTS and they just brought it back 2-3 years ago.

In the Navy anyway (I don't know about the other Reserves), SELRES are forbidden from getting a 20-year regular retirement. You have to be authorized in writing to even go into sanctuary, and get a waiver to mobilize if you're over 16 years total active duty. Unless you're literally...

Bleah. I was there in 2007-08 when a lot of folks were still living in tents (CLUville was being built) and half the base worked out of the old adobe Legionnaire huts. Three Tuskers a day wasn't much compensation. The DFAC and the gym were pretty nice, though.

The differences are all under the skin, mostly avionics, so not from a distance, no. When I worked for Grumman the SAMC plant at St Augustine did rework for the Adversary birds and the few Swiss jets then still flying, so I got to climb into a few. Elegantly dirt simple airplanes.

The short hull FFG-7s originally didn't have RAST, though I think some of them were retrofitted with it later. The one I first cruised on didn't, and didn't have an LSO station either. When I later deployed on SBR, it was interesting noticing all the differences that came with the Long Hull design.

ISIS-K was my first thought, but mostly because none of the other franchises have any issues related to Russia. ISIS-K is only very slightly involved in anything to do with Moscow, though. And that Putin’s guys immediately blamed this on Ukraine, within 24 hours? Ukraine’s Muslim population is...

I like to think of myself as well-read, but I admit I don’t get why ISIS would be launching something this big in Russia. I know it’s been doing like AQ did and each “branch” of the movement is basically a franchise that adopts the name but is still carrying out its local grudges. I didn‘t think...

Sounds right. I cruised on one of the last surviving Short Hull OHPs - it was also the last USN H-2 deployment (HSL-84). The Short Hulls that didn't get the mod were relegated to CrackPacs and the like by the end of the 90s.

Went looking to see if there were any pics of VERTREPs to the forward station. Didn't find any but did find this nugget: mockup -60B on OHP's flight deck to test deck handling. I imagine this might have been when it became apparent the aft capstan/cleats would be way too close to the tail rotor...

Yeah some of the stories about military flight training in general during WWII are hair-raising. Now-NOLF Barin, for instance, got to be known as "Bloody Barin" when it was a fully-active training field during the war. Among other things, the CO insisted on the students flying as scheduled...

New Jersey is "underway"...well, getting tugged a short way up the river from Camden to be drydocked in Philly for a long-overdue overhaul. Still, cool to see a BB away from the pier again.

Like, a mishap reason? Or just, it was awkward/scary? I was HCO on my first ship (FFG) and the forward vertrep station stuff was still in the ACSM but we never used it.

March 1983, 41 years ago this month, the Coasties conducted the final flights of the HU-16, ending the era of US military flying boats.

Hangman and JJ Abrams dropping a new IMAX doc about the Blues. Real question: do we get to see the skintight flight suit fittings? I keed. Does look pretty cool.

When it comes to Haiti and the DR, kinda but not really; more like "shared history" but much different culturally and to a degree ethnically and very little to no mutual affinity. France and Spain had already agreed to divide up Hispaniola long before the Haitian revolution. A few years after...

As with most things like this, Haiti's problems aren't due to just one thing. That said, the French and US governments did just about everything they could to ensure Haiti failed after its independence. The Southern-dominated pre-Civil War American administrations did it because they really...

Not to be a buzzkill, but I think you're getting a bit ahead of yourself here. Being dismissed from ROTC and suspended from school isn't exactly going to make your OCS or HPSP package stand out - at least, not in a good way. You were kind of vague about the circumstances but I'm having trouble...

Little of that, bit of Transcom's mission of moving supplies the "final mile" up to operating forces. They got into the mission during WWII, creating harbors and piers where they weren't before (and that's been an Army Engineer mission since Bobby Lee was an Engineer) and doing near-shore and...

In the middle of this new title right now: America’s First Aircraft Carrier: USS Langley and the Dawn of US Naval Aviation. Turns out there’s quite a lot more to the story of Langley than typically gets presented in histories. Usually all you get is something like ”Langley was the first US...

Joint Logistics Over the Shore (JLOTS) is a huge mission set for the Army loggies and TRANSCOM guys. I’m sure there are some Navy and Marine guys in the game over there now but it’s always been a mainly Army mission.

For the Navy, I know lack of career flexibility is one reason very frequently given for dudes deciding to punch at MSR. Just about everyone I’ve ever heard speak about it - up to and including well into Flag Country - agrees that the very rigid career progression model for Line officers is...

It’s worth considering that BoB was atypical story that E/506th managed to be just about everywhere between D-Day and VE Day, and didn’t suffer a catastrophic level of casualties, so you could have a core cast of characters and stick with them through the entire story arc. I don't think they...

FWIW, some of the Commonwealth air arms that typically fly with Observers (WSO/NFO types) in their left seat as a COTAC-equivalent can and do flex to dual-piloted crews when it's deemed appropriate for the mission. Doesn't seem like it needs to be a one-size-fits-all solution.

The late, great Rosemary Mariner became Skipper of VAQ-34 in 1990, the first woman to command a Navy squadron.

On that theme, the TA-7/EA-7s of VAQ-34 (West coast EA/EW Adversaries) from back in the day:

Air Force employee accused of sharing classified information on foreign dating website Next time you find yourself on NKO churning through the pain of Unauthorized Disclosure, Cyber Awareness, or INFOSEC annual training, and find yourself wondering, What kind of moron would do any of this...

Give me a fucking break. Next I suppose they’ll be complaining that they cast too many Asians.

Holy crap. Never would have imagined the interior was so roomy. Makes you wonder what was there in the production birds? Hard to believe it was just empty fuselage.

The remake miniseries of Shōgun dropped on FX yesterday. Just finished the second episode and damn, it’s gorgeous. Makes the politics interesting and streamlines the novel’s plot without losing anything. Peep it.

Wish more people (including quite a few GO/FOs) realized this.

Yep, NOAA and the CG are her first choices. Trying to broaden opportunities and also maybe cover the “pay for college” thing if possible.

Shipmates - As I mentioned a while back, Fester 2.0 is now in high school and has become very interested in NOAA or the CG as a career path. Specifically she’s interested in Oceanography or related applied hard sciences. I suggested to her she might look into METOC (or is it “OCEANO” now?) by...

The AVO program is very new and I don’t think there’s a critical mass of successful applicants out there yet. I don’t think you can go too wrong following the same advice line officer candidates for aviation have been getting - search the OCS threads. Good luck, a lot of us are curious to see...

…and how many have you got? Probably about the same as me, and less than this devil dog.

A kill's a kill.

If you're willing to give up all the bandwidth you need for everything else...sure. Still wouldn't really improve SA all that much.

I don't know much about ASW, but the sheer lack of SA you have flying around a UAS is hard to grasp until you've had to do it. I could buy UAS as a bouy truck wingman for a -60 or something, maybe, and I think NGC was shopping that idea around for Fire Scout at one point.

Dude...I'm not going to tell you a FNAEB is something awesome, but you're carrying this like you're going to have an "F" branded on your forehead for the rest of your career. I get it, this is still raw for you and it sucks. But I've also known dudes who this has happened to and they managed to...

If they're offering you a chance to retread, then in a weird way it's a vote of confidence from your CoC. I don't disagree with @Brett327 that usually it isn't just the stick-and-rudder stuff that's the problem...but, sometimes, it is. If the folks who know the most about your performance and...

The vast majority of the money being appropriated in the Ukraine foreign aid bills and related actions stays in the US. That money is going to the US DIB (or whatever we’re supposed to call it now) to replace what’s being taken out of war stocks and sent forward. Most of the rest is going to...