Godholio posted:

Utter loving bullshit.

Gibfender posted:

This is probably one of the most hair-raising takeoffs I've seen, thank goodness for T/W ratio I guess

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koXL3HGqOss

quote:

Neil Anderson belly landed the second prototype on the grass in front of GD on May 8th, 1975 while doing a practice show before Paris. On takeoff, he did what was then an unique maneuver... almost as the wheels left the ground, the gear was cycled, the aircraft put into a 270 degree roll, then immediately placed into a 9g turn. Unfortunately, one of the tires was slightly out of balance, and this combined with the abnormal torque on the gear from being in a roll caused one of the main gear tires to jam on a ledge when it entered the wheel well.

Neil had no choice but to put the wheels up, and put it down in the dirt, right in front of thousands of GD employees and their families. He was unhurt, but the damage to the hand-built prototype was too expensive to repair.

According to John Williams:
"Neal's gear-up landing was more embarassing than is generally known. The day before, during a practice air show, the landing gear hit a small bracket in the wheel well and knocked it off. No one thought much about why it happened, but were mainly concerned with preventing it from happening again. So, what did they do? Strengthen the bracket of course. Then, the next day, when the gear again struck the bracket, it jammed against it. No amount of high g or rolling maneuvers freed it, so it was landed gear up. Neal wanted to stay up longer and try to free the gear, but ran out of fuel. Only about 5 gallons were found in the tanks after the landing. There was a USAF KC-135 sitting at the end of the runway on alert with engines running, but it was not allowed to take off because it was over weight. It probably did not matter, as the gear was well-jammed into the bracket."

quote:

YF-16 Wheels Up Landing.
The airplane would have been only slightly damaged except it hit a ditch during the slide-out which broke the fuselage structure in the middle.

One other important piece of damage occurred: When Neil Anderson got out he threw his $300 specially-painted helmet on the ground in disgust. It was then run over by one of the rescue vehicles.

The USAF accident board criticized Anderson for landing with only 5 gallons of fuel left. He replied it didn't matter since he planned to shut the engine down anyway to avoid damage. Another criticism was that he used profanity on the radio when he begged the KC-135, cleared for the mission personally by the SAC Commander, to take off immediately and give him some gas. The pilot replied his wartime load exceeded the allowed max gross takeoff weight in peacetime and he was still dumping fuel onto the grass at the end of the runway.. Neil said he could live with that on his conscience.

Submitted by Thomas H. Clark, a GD engineer.

Linedance posted:

Admittedly my experience in military affairs is limited to being in Air Cadets as a kid, but if the Air Force needs to save a bit of money and they figure they don't really need 3 squadrons of these trainers and can get by fine with two, why is it bullshit? Other than missing the cool GI Joe paint jobs? (which are cool, don't get me wrong)

iyaayas01 posted:

They aren't trainers, they're Aggressors. The pilots who fly them train extensively to model and mimic the tactics of various "bad guy" air forces (think countries who fly planes with a red star). The reason the USAF has been so dominant at air combat over the past 25 years isn't because we have great technology, it's because we spend a shitload of money on providing training, and we spend even more money on ensuring that the value of that training is high. It's all well and good to spend plenty of time tooling around the sky because you had lots of flying money, but the real value-added comes when you are faced with someone flying a plane in a manner in which you have never seen before (i.e., "threat" tactics as opposed to USAF tactics). That's why AGRS are such value-added assets.

Because of budget realities that require the prioritization of acquisitions over everything else, we've been forced to cut training (cancelling Red Flags, shuttering an AGRS, curtailing WIC, etc). In the opinion of many (including Godholio and myself), this is extremely short-sighted and stupid.

Ola posted:

Same pilot one year later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuFmTPdIE2k

iyaayas01 posted:

Because of budget realities that require the prioritization of acquisitions over everything else, we've been forced to cut training (cancelling Red Flags, shuttering an AGRS, curtailing WIC, etc). In the opinion of many (including Godholio and myself), this is extremely short-sighted and stupid.

Linedance posted:

oh yeah I get that, I called them trainers because their role is training, they aren't combat aircraft (though I guess they could sent to war if the need was great enough). I'm in agreement that cutting training in any discipline is generally a bad, and only really a way of getting short term gains at the expense of future capability, I'm just thinking that maybe a 3rd squadron is genuinely superfluous. Probably not, but you know, maybe it's not so bad as it seems?

Godholio posted:

fknlo posted:

So exactly what the gently caress is being done with all of the money being set aside for "defense"? Just funneling into defense contractor pockets through stupid programs?

Godholio posted:

A fair amount of it, sure. There are a billion charts online that break down military spending. What those charts don't do is break down what training is useful and what's not.

There were many occasions where our fighters cancelled before we took off, usually because they had bad weather to deal with. Without any aircraft to control, my team of 2-6 officers and I had nothing to do or contribute. But because it was getting more difficult to fly because the hours were getting cut, a rule was established that EVERY seat on the jet would be filled to maximize training. So we couldn't come off the flight and catch up on the stacks of paperwork we had to do since there were no more personnelists anymore. We had to fly that 9 hour mission and try to shoehorn a half-assed simulator event in (we can run sim on the AWACS system). I say half-assed because we're given a small handbook on how to do it but only like half an hour of actual training is allocated in the syllabus. And the people running the sim (typing in the command lines to make each plane turn or shoot or whatever) are also the people trying to practice tactical aircraft control, it's drat near worthless.

But on paper, it counts as a loving control event and you get 9 hrs towards gaining "experienced" status which actually puts you in a different category that requires literally half the training events (ie, only 1 flight per month instead of 2 for inexperienced crew members) and makes you eligible for a new crew position. Officially it does not matter if the training was absolutely worthless.

Linedance posted:

I mean, everything you said is completely valid and definitely qualifies as 'what's wrong with the world', but to someone who's only experience is outside the military, it just sounds like 'mmhmm, yes, that does sound like what every job I or anyone else I know has ever had is like'. Sucks, but whatcha gonna do?

Ola posted:

Same pilot one year later:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuFmTPdIE2k


http://www.f-16.net/f-16_versions_article25.html


e: bonus quote

Godholio posted:

Fun mental exercise: what would Putin's hobby be if more than 3 NATOS members were meeting their military obligations and Europe hadn't run out of bombs on a crazy weekend in Libya?

fknlo posted:

So exactly what the gently caress is being done with all of the money being set aside for "defense"? Just funneling into defense contractor pockets through stupid programs?

hobbesmaster posted:

To play devil's (Congress's?) advocate has dissimilar combat training been useful since Vietnam?

Snowdens Secret posted:

Don't underestimate deterrence. The best wars are the ones where the enemy looks at you and decides you're so badass they're not even going to play.

Linedance posted:

Or the ones where the enemy doesn't even bother looking at you, because you're a non-factor. And whether you're think it's right or wrong, the fact is, the US has always had a significant portion of its populace and politicians who have asked "why the hell are we getting involved in this, it has nothing to do with us".
I get that if you're in the military, you want to be in the biggest, baddest military that there is, but the people running the show probably figure it's much more cost effective to have one of the biggest and baddest militaries, and let someone else spend the money to be top dog, as long as they play nice and don't bother us too much. Oh and also while they're spending the money, they might as well buy our poo poo, cuz then we'll all be loaded.

fknlo posted:

So exactly what the gently caress is being done with all of the money being set aside for "defense"? Just funneling into defense contractor pockets through stupid programs?

Godholio posted:

Nobody is pushing for an isolationist policy.

hobbesmaster posted:

Obama promised to get out of Iraq when elected. He did it. Now Iraq went to poo poo and everyone in congress wants him to go back in and public polls seem to be coming around too. You can't win!

YF19pilot posted:

When it comes to calculating "acceptable loses" money is almost never a parameter when dealing with the human side of things. Money may dictate decisions regarding material loses, but generally never personnel.

Godholio posted:

No. As someone who has flown in exercises against them, I can tell you that there are times where they already don't have enough. Of the three squadrons, two were at Nellis AFB in Nevada, supporting the main Red Flag exercises, the USAF Weapons School (sort of like Top Gun), occasionally assisting the Navy with their exercises in that area of the country (Air Wing Fallon and NSAWC-the school of which Top Gun is one part) and the Marines' Weapons Training Instructor Course, which is their version of Top Gun. The other aggressor squadron is in Alaska, doing the same type of work, but providing it in a different environment and to units that, because they actively have a real mission at all times, they can't go TDY to Nevada. The Air Force used to have other aggressor squadrons, but consolidated all this work into these two locations because of budget cuts. So we're already around 50% of what we had 20 years ago. We used to have probably a dozen major exercises around the world. Now we're down to 2 or so Red Flags (the premier aerial exercise anywhere in the world), maybe two Red Flag Alaskas, and overseas COPE exercises don't even happen every year anymore. These events are directly tied to the Air Force's radical improvement during the Vietnam War and the dominance displayed in every conflict since. Similar training efforts (which were not permanent) can also be found during Korea, where the USAF went from getting its poo poo pushed in to racking up a loving 10:1 kill ratio (the introduction of the F-86 was also a factor).

In short, aside from the ICBM, this is the single most important and effective tool the USAF has. This is the tool that led to the AF turning its performance in Vietnam around. This is the tool that led to the F-15 being undefeated in American hands (and Israeli, indirectly). This is the tool that was developed by sifting through the wreckage and remains of American pilots in the loving jungle and having leadership that had the balls to fight for its people. And it's being cut, I suspect, by people who have never set foot on a military aircraft.

I suspect that in my career I've attended more major exercises at Nellis than that base will host in the next three years combined. And that's loving sad. I still have a lot of friends who are doing the same job I was, and some of them haven't been to a real air-to-air exercise in 2-3 years. I was an instructor and managed my squadron's predeployment training for a couple of years, so I still talk shop with these guys, and they have nothing of value anymore. It's gotten so "do more with less" that it's more like "do everything you did before except you're not going to get any off-station training and we're not even going to develop a simulator event for it...you do it all."

So the short answer is, if the Air Force thinks they can keep making cuts like this, they're absolutely WRONG. There's already a significant decrease in both the quality and quantity of training. The Aggressors were the perfect example of that military cliche, the force multiplier. Simply by existing they made everyone better.

Edit: It may be worth noting that for several years we saw our flying hours cut by 10-15% per year, with the explanation that we'd make up for the lost training by attending multiple exercising during pre-deployment training (instead of spreading it out over the year like you'd normally do). Now the exercises are going away, but the flying hours aren't coming back. They're still being cut. There are situations that have developed in the past years that don't belong on public boards but if I ran into IYAAYAS in a bar I could probably make him spit beer and/or poo poo his pants.

Godholio posted:

Die. Possibly kill a bunch of innocent people. Maybe lose a war.

Edit: it's easy to shrug it off and pretend it's no big deal, because it hasn't HAD to be a big deal in decades. The US military hasn't been challenged conventionally since Korea. The problem is that when our shortfalls become apparent it's too late, it's bloody, and it's expensive in dollars and lives to recover. And due to the high tech and complicated nature of modern war and equipment, it's going to be even worse in every way when it happens AGAIN. This is a lesson that's relearned every few decades, then forgotten. And every time, the lesson is more brutally hammered home.

Arcella posted:

Is Aggressor pilot the most coveted fighter pilot job? because as a layperson it seems like far and away the coolest job in the military as a whole.

iyaayas01 posted:

Couple things to add to this...

First, even if we did have enough in sheer numbers of aggressor tails, having F-15s flying as aggressors opens up a whole new realm of capes and further dissimilar tactics for red air that you just don't get with F-16s. There's only so much a single engined fighter half the weight of a Flanker can do to mimic it.

Second, I was working RF-A at the height of sequestration. It was depressing how many units would send reps to planning conferences and be like "yeah, there's about a 98% chance we're not going to get to play but we sent a rep just so we'd be prepared to go in case money falls out of the sky because that's how badly we need this event." There was one Tier I Flag where the number of Aussie/Brit/Canuck and USN/USMC units participating actually outnumbered the number of USAF participants. That's loving sad.

mlmp08 posted:

To add even more to this:

Someone will point it that sim training is way better today than it was thirty years ago. Yes, this is true, but it still doesn't hold a candle to live air training. Even SAM crews sitting in an air conditioned box get way more out of live air than Sim, and they don't even have to deal with things like realistic g forces, picking things up visually irl, vs on a graphic simulator, etc.

Patriot used to go take part in WTI at last once per year, if not twice per year. It was awesome, as both our operators and the pilots would surprise each other on a regular basis. We stopped going, due to cost and deployment cycles. We nearly started going again about three years ago. But then sending THAAD to Guam, deploying a battery to Jordan, and deploying two batteries to Turkey pretty much squashed it, even though the Marines were willing to subsidize our costs considerably.

Hell, during sequestration, the Marines scrounged up the tdy money to get two crews out to Yuma to at least work in the TAOC and white cell to sim patriot and serve as our joint crew certifications, but our damned GS comptroller wouldn't even let the marines pay our way for reasons.

Godholio posted:

They actually collect intelligence on the "good guys" during exercises and use it in their own planning. Then in the debriefs afterwards they show you what they collected. Things like the frag (the literal list of every plane, callsign, loadout, takeoff time, time on target, altitude blocks, etc) made quite an impression when it shows up in that portion of the debrief.

One time they had pictures posing on our flight deck.

Wingnut Ninja posted:

Of course, AWF red air have a rep sitting in the mission brief, so it's not like they need to work very hard to get the blue forces OOB and plan.

Godholio posted:

When I was at WTI there were no Patriots, only about 10 stinger dudes. I'd like to think they just went to the strip club across the CA border instead of going into the range, because we gave about 5 seconds' thought to planning for them and they were never a factor.

Mortabis posted:

I assume delousing is what it sounds like, you fly low through friendly air defenses and they shoot down the enemy planes chasing you?