goosegagnon2 said:
haha, ok im not quite in the miltary yet, so fill me in on the acronyms so im not out in left field.
Sorry gang,
Way too much time in and around Pentagon results in propensity to talk in Pentagonese (or "tongues"). That is why it taskes almost a year there to figure out what people are talking about because most meetings sound like everyone is speaking Greek (when you don't know a word of it).
"Across the FYDP"
Every year each service (and communities within the service) puts together their Program Objective Memorandum (or "POM"), which eventually gets sent to OSD and then onto the President who submits it to Congress as a Budget for them to work over as the President's Budget (PB07 is about to be sent over in a few weeks). Congress just finished up with the FY06 submit (two months into overtime BTW). So where does the FYDP play in all of this? The POM is built on a six year "programming" plan called the Future Year Defense Plan (FYDP). Only what's contained in the FYDP ("Across the FYDP" means what's in all six years or a wedge planted in latter years to start a new program) matters (as "programs of record") and really only what Congress puts into both the Authorization and Appropriation Bills for the President to sign (only the first year of the submitted budget) matters as the FYDP gets updated every year...things fall out; things drop in....Don't try to figure thsi all out until you get your turn inside the "Puzzle Palace", it can drive you to drink or worse trying to make sense of it.
"OCA" - Air Force fighter doctrine has been built on Offensive Counter Air (read: fighter sweep in this case) and Defensive Counter Air (read: Combat Air Patrol). Their "promise/contract" to warfighters is "air dominance or specifically "air superiority". They use aggressive OCA (like Desert Storm) to keep any threat air activity beat down. Takes a lot of fighters dedicated to that task and one reason they sold their souls for the F-22. They don't want any hinderance to their OCA sorties (like a nasty double digit SAM). So in the case of V-22, Air Force would say no escorts needed, we'll have the skies clear for you and take care of any IADS to boot (Air Dominance).
"Boss to LSOs" - There is always the pressure of time on a flight deck (like in Blade Runner, sort of): Minimal time to launch, minimal time to recover to keep carrier from having to stay in the wind one minute longer than necessary. The goal in cyclic ops (one event launches and another recovers immediately and gets parked on the bow...ship takes a break and aircraft get respotted (refueled, fixed, whatever in this brief respite) for next "cycle". Now you have that concept, aircraft are pressed to land every 45 seconds during the day and every minute at night. The Air Boss (in tower) owns the flight deck and Landing Signal Officers (known as "Paddles"..see A4s posts on subject and images of when they actually "waved" aircraft aboard with paddles) "wave" every pass. When an aircraft shows up and the deck isn't ready, the Boss and LSOs will wait until last second to decide it ain't going to happen and then Boss will announce over radio and addressing system "no chance, Paddles!". The controlling LSO will then use wave-off lights to send aircraft around. Just a "been there" way of saying "No way, man!"