Pit, pod. . . I knew what you meant!

Dad informs me that I’ve mislabeled the “boom pod” as “boom pit.” Whoops.

     Sorry. . . I haven’t refueled in four years because I was in a non-flying assignment from 2004-2006, and then ended up waiting eight months on my security clearance review. That’s not the Air Force’s fault at all. Well, maybe it’s the Air Force’s fault for sending me to a non-flying assignment!

     I know how you feel about the changing bases. The unit I was first assigned to doesn’t exist anymore, and my last unit is moving from Germany back to the States (to Ft Bliss, actually, and I don’t know if there’s any way to make it more drastic, either!).

     I haven’t pulled any alert duty since my first assignment, and I certainly don’t miss it!

I’m still a bit stunned at the implications of the things you’re talking about–I hadn’t realized good ol’ USAF was so constrained that fighter pilots went four years without midair refueling. That seems a tad dangerous, no?

Ah well. All the bases we were stationed at when I was a kid are either fully closed or keep Reserve or Guard wings only. Different world. My dad sat alert for about one week out of four most of my growing up years until Bush Sr. put a stop to it. But the Guard over at PDX still sends the Eagles of the Columbia out on Memorial Day and the Fourth–heard the -15s go screaming over this morning but couldn’t get outside in time to spot them.

     In today’s world of constrained budgets, I’m afraid moving pilots out is the only feasible answer (the other weapons systems do need pilots, after all). If cash and time weren’t a factor, I’d say getting more maintainers would be a good answer. The other reality the Air Force is having to face is that with smart bombs getting smaller, we can carry more of them per aircraft, therefore we don’t need quite as many aircraft to take out whatever targets need to be struck. The F-22 is proving itself similarly capable in the air-to-air fight (refer to my article on the Global Hawk urban legend about a month ago). We really can do more with less.

     It’s not the same story with the Army and the Marines. It still takes about one squad per street to control it, and I’m not sure that wasn’t true from the Greek Phalanx through the Roman Legion to WWII to now. The more streets you need to control, the more boots on the ground you need. The Air Force can help a whole lot, but we still haven’t figured out a way for a fighter jet to help an old lady across the donkey cart path while shooing away insurgents. Ergo, the Army and Marines are getting more of the budget share these days. In many ways rightly so. If only we could just get the budget increased. . . .

     The tankers still take wives on incentive flights. I almost managed to hook up a bunch of Misawa wives with flights from the 909 ARS. Then the 909 decided at the last minute they couldn’t land here, so we missed out. We were bummed, but we’ll try again sometime!

Do you think moving pilots out, rather than support in, is the right answer?

     That’s getting to be the shape of it. Our problem right now is a couple of maintenance specialties are less-than-critically manned. We’ve got too many airplanes, too many pilots, and not enough maintainers to generate sorties.

     I think the problem will be ‘fixed’ in about 1-2 years. We’re going to start moving pilots out of fighters and into both special ops and unmanned systems. We’ll still have too many airplanes for awhile.

     Thanks for posting! Tell your Dad "NKAWTG!" He’ll know what it means!

My dad was a tanker pilot. Nice to hear some stories from the other side.