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The interesting world of VQ

magnetfreezer

Well-Known Member
Sorry guys for the gap in responses...that j.o.b.
Capable? Absolutely. Willing? Not at all, and despite orders...that willingness is encapsulated in institutional momentum that will take DECADES to change.

True story...you'll note that the ingress route from "an undisclosed location in SWA" to Afghanistan passes close to a "target of interest" that sometimes puts warships to sea/conducts exercises we may be interested in etc...Well, during one of those exercise we came up with the great idea that we could maximize our ISR coverage of their activities by asking the RJ to pass us any information/tippers/a quick "who's who in the zoo" if you will about what was going on...you know....since they were flying right over it about three hours before we did. Turns out, the RJ wasn't even monitoring their sensors for the transit. That's right, they would take off, transit for 3 hours into Afghanistan the entire time within smelling range of Iran and right over a major Naval exercise...and their sensors weren't even active. We suggested, and had our Chain of Command suggest that there might be a better way and were told flatly, "That's not in our tasking order. We can't do that."

Bingo... It's the AF cultural difference more than anything else - the NATOPS "here's the book of everything you can't do" vs. AF "here's a 4 foot stack of pubs with the only stuff you're allowed to do". I'll bet the aircrew would have been fine with helping you out individually, if not for a culture that would have crushed them for doing an untasked mission. There's a reason O-6 FITREPs in the AF are full of bullets from (and the O-6s emphasize) Unit Compliance Inspections instead of Unit Critical Thinking and Flexible Support Inspections.
 
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