Search results

Nice video put together by our troops - not only did they spend a lot of time making this sound & look good, there are a lot of embedded truths in there...

Clammy hands? As someone who's stuffed a lot of blue brains, the easiest thing to do is just get new ones. Supply normally has a boatload, or if you ask them to order, have them order enough to serve the squadron into the next century. I would think that anything that might effectively...

For all you Prowler folks (and Prowler-wannabes...) getting out who still want to keep your foot in the game. (Note: For OPSEC reasons I've deleted the POC's name, email, and phone #; if you're interested PM me, or look up the original message) UNCLAS MSGID/GENADMIN/NAF WASHINGTON//...

Misawa. Great BOQ, nice club. Weather can kind of suck, though - can be foggy/cold. Good proximity to the Blue Route, one of the best low levels out there.

In the sterile world of DC politically correct language, that speech was the equivalent of "You guys suck. You're inertial and not on the same team. Start carrying your share of the load or there will be consequences." He heavily cited John Boyd, who was a pariah among many in the...

More like Red Delicious apples & Fuji apples than apples & oranges. Keep in mind that the purpose of the DCO program is to bring people with existing subject matter expertise into the fold, whereby the Navy can then milk them for all they're worth at a cheap labor rate. DCOs have their place in...

For good, cheap, and plentiful (the restaurant trifecta!) Cuban food, try El Siboney. http://www.elsiboneyrestaurant.com/index.htm A little off the beaten path from Duval, but damn good. Doesn't hurt if you habla espanol, but you can do just fine in English. Two of the better meals I had...

Good for Happy Hour (cheap margaritas) and appetizers, but kind of expensive for dinner. Also, I caught a distinct anti-military vibe when we were there last (Dec 06), at least from the bartender.

This is absolutely true, and is also a reason why I predict the mid- to long-term viability of the Navy Reserve construct is in jeopardy. Reservists (as well as AC folks) know IAs are here to stay, and have to keep that bogey continually in their sights. The downside is that the...

In the DC area, it would be impossible to know what unit you would be going to, so you could not know who your CO/XO would be. In other areas of the country, where there might only be one unit you could conceivably support, then you could plausibly identify them - but not in this area. There...

The one time I was involved in a fly-by, we had a pre-show brief with the producers on Fri evening, where they said "This singer tends to go thru the Anthem in x min and y sec." So we used that as a reference to plan our hold point and push time, and had a guy on the ground with a PRC-143 to...

I love the irony of the fact when you try and email your NAVFIT fitrep file to the Admin-O, NMCI screens out the attachment as "unsafe"...

That would be 3 squadron's worth of Prowlers, since there were 4 jets actually in the air simultaneously...

I should revise my previous statement to read "Only drunks, fools, and Flash are affiliating with the Reserves off active duty..." :p

I had a conversation about this exact topic with the RIA-19 OIC this past weekend. The DC area has probably the most ruthless competition for DIRCOM slots - everybody is grossly overqualified, so they are able to cherry-pick the uber-achievers. There are still a lot of qualified people...

Hell, just carry them in a box inside the cockpit with you. The downside is when the box springs a leak, and lobster juice runs out all over the seat cushion of ECMO-2. After the jet sits with a closed canopy for a couple of days in the mid-Atlantic summer sun, it can get pretty stinky. The...

Things certainly have changed since I went to DCO school 9 years ago - it seems far more rigorous now. Rigor is certainly not a bad thing, but I'm not sure I buy into the whole room getting trashed - you're already a commissioned officer, not a candidate. Inspections, sure - but trash my room...

Concur with Flash - FalconView can still do everything you need, and at a much lower bandwidth cost. And I say this as one of the bigger GE proponents on the classified networks. However.....some of the new things being pushed out via GE on the classified side are really game-changing, and...

We were rocketed a couple of times at Al Asad, and I slept through both; I figured my CAR would come with the Bronze Hammock Device for Satisfactory Performance... For better or for worse, our Front Office didn't even *consider* putting in for a CAR for the unit, even though other Prowler...

Here's a pic....

VAQ-133 had one in Bagram that has been back up that way for a couple of months. Sorry to interrupt the flow of cool helo pics....

Interesting brief. One thing I found interesting was how much the AF has drunk their own Kool Aid-flavored bathwater on slide 4, where they state F-22 costs as "$187 million each, including R&D costs". $187M is the (dubious) unit fly-away cost, which most certainly does *not* include R&D...

Google knows all and sees all. I saved you a few keystrokes: https://www.npdc.navy.mil/cennavintel/nmitc/index.cfm?fa=welcome.welcomeabrd

Pugs: while in Bagram, someone in -209 was relating to me the story of Fallon and the first night of DESERT STORM - and it wasn't particularly complementary, dealing with some serious buffoonery on his part on the strike he was nominally leading (and then the award he got for the mission). Does...

All good points, but there is now an actual requirement to complete JPME to screen for command. Don't know about the Marines, but this NAVADMIN addresses the Navy requirement: R 021653Z MAY 05 FM CNO WASHINGTON DC//N1// TO NAVADMIN UNCLAS //N01521// NAVADMIN 093/05 MSGID/GENADMIN/CNO...

That seems to be the case - when I did it (2005), there was no restriction on Navy, although the AF wanted you to at least be an O-4 select. I think so many Navy JOs (like yours truly) jumped in that they upped the ante - according to their website, you are now supposed to an O-4 or above...

All the negative comments I've heard about the Navy JMPE more strongly reinforce my perspective that if you're in the aviation business, ACSC (Air Command & Staff College) is the way to go. The amount of reading material they *send* you is large; the amount you actually *have* to read, not so...

A couple of years back I had ~$400 burning a hole in my pocket when the B-17 came through to the Manassas airport. A phone call and $400 later, there I found myself, in the bombardier's seat of a B-17G as we flew over the Shennandoah Valley. There are damn few experiences in aviation that come...

At least a couple of times last month when we were flying missions down south we spoke to British (or at least British-sounding) JTACs. I wonder...?

For those of you who are curious, this about sums it up (all except the last 5 seconds....) Apologies for the .zip; couldn't upload a straight WMV.

Here's a couple OEF (specifically Bagram) lessons learned: -December and January can be damn cold - when the guy you are relieving says "A good sleeping bag and an electric blanket are mandatory", you should listen to him. -North Face camp boots work extremely well, unless you like snow...

The answer to the question "What makes me deployable" is pretty straightforward - a 9600 NOBC. OK, so what's that? This is a code that you are assigned after you have completed the requisite amount of training that the Navy wants you to have before you are considered "deployable". This...

Apologies for the delayed weigh-in on this thread, but I was connectivity-challenged for most of January... HJ and Fester pretty much hit it on the head - you're either part of the Ready Room or you're not. The quickest and easiest way to tell if you'll be a good fit as an intel officer in a...

Let's just say connectivity can be challenging. The NIPR here in Afghanistan blocks any blogs/forums (including "job related" ones like this...), so the backup is the Hadjinet I have in my hut. But that can get kind of sketchy, so I haven't been a frequent visitor of late. As a sidenote, I'm...

The answer to the question is very theater/scenario dependent. Here in Afghanistan, the extra gear I carry is quite different from what I carried in Iraq. Also, winter is a far different season from summer (duh), so the things you'd carry here in January are different than what you'd want in...

Minor Threadjack: It's interesting that Levitt seriously screwed up with his data, and his conclusions about abortion are unsupported: "'Freakonomics' Abortion Research Is Faulted by a Pair of Economists"...

Anything worth doing is worth overdoing, so here's one more powerpoint - a comparison of Hooverpilot's diagram with the measurements Google Earth gives. As you can see, it's not exact, but good enough for govt work. I did this because a) I'm still bored, and b) it was a good little exercise...

My bad - I should have mentioned that I couldn't quite resolve the foul lines, so I went with the ladder lines. What look like the foul lines appear to be 120 ft wide at the 2-wire. And from the "there's only one way to skin a cat" department, you can go play the same Google Earth games on...

This is not exactly straight out of LSO NATOPS, but it's certainly close... If you fire up Google Earth and go to the carrier piers at Norfolk, CVN-75 is parked in all it's glory. If you use the Ruler tool to see how long the carrier is, it turns out to be 1092 feet. When you look up how...

If you're interested in such things, and don't mind (or deliberately seek out) primary source reporting, check out the story of Boxer 22: http://www.pjsinnam.com/VN_History/Boxer22/Boxer_22.htm (The Boxer 22 Documents at the bottom of the page are the primary source stuff.) The thumbnail...

One of the things the intel community has always taken it in the chops over is the issue of "not being predictive". If you're analytically gun shy, you will always heavily (and sometimes over-) caveat things to the point where the reader/consumer says "This is worthless - do they have nukes or...

http://i.a.cnn.net/cnn/2007/images/12/03/iran.nie.pdf I would highly recommend that anyone interested in WMD issues in specific or intelligence in general take a good look at the declassified Iran Nuclear National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) - and I mean read it, not just skim it. I...

From the "Piling on" Department - looks like no New Years Eve in Hong Kong for the USS REUBEN JAMES: China rejects port call by Pearl Harbor frigate http://www.honoluluadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071201/NEWS01/712010343/1001

Reminds me of the good Cold War joke: Q: How far apart are the towns in Germany? A: About 2 kilotons.

I heard the same thing: 4-wire + rollout for A-12 = swimming. Interestingly, I can't seem to find anything authoritative to back it up, even from the soup-to-nuts A-12 story "The 5 Billion Dollar Misunderstanding". (Which is an interesting read, up to a point - the author has a definite...

And the odd 1635 as well. That either makes me a big fish in a small pond, or a small fish in a sea of sharks. Since self-delusion is better than no delusion, I'll stick with the former....:) In theory, you could probably string together a set of assignments that would keep you in DC for a...

The concept of mensuration isn't even close to being a secret; it's just arcane. You don't find a lot on google about it because it's really a niche subject, and google seems to want to redirect you to <ahem>, uh, "feminine issues not related to targeting". The key element is elevation data...

Might be a nomenclature (or is it terminology...?) thing here, but the term "mensurated coordinate" means a very specific thing to the targeting community. I'm assuming you (and HarrierDude) mean "targeting quality" coordinates - given what you have to do hardware- and software-wise on the...

Awesome. You were ambiguous in your wording as to whether you were referring to the man or the organization. Tighten up your grammar, and you won't have those problems. You are spot on that the mismanagement of the Reserves belongs at the feet of the senior leadership of the Navy, past and...

Where I come from, the "Commander, Carrier Air Wing Reserve 20" was a guy; "CVWR-20" was an organization. Not clear which you are calling useless, which is a strong word either way. There's a long history with CVWR-20 (and -30...) as to whether Big Navy ever intended them to go to sea as...