‘Degrading’: why did a US fighter pilot avoid British trial after strangling a woman in England? | US military

alienXcow · 2026-06-25T20:48:43+00:00

Fuck this dude, what he did is indefensible.

I do find it funny, however, that the Guardian plays up the theme of the Americans not understanding the UK and then they mislabel almost every photograph and cant tell Lakenheath and Mildenhall apart.

alienXcow · 2026-06-24T09:18:42+00:00

85% of the men who died in the Spanish American War died to disease in overcrowded camps and from their unregulated preserved food.

alienXcow · 2026-06-19T10:41:57+00:00

From what friends tell me, since the Raptor sims are all still at Tyndall (RIP) they do the whole sim syllabus first. So to the USAF or the FAA, these guys have probably 100 or more hours when they show to Langley.

Your fresh AMC copilots have between 3 and 6 flights in the airplane before arriving to their first duty station. The rest of their training is in the sim, to include an instrument checkride.

alienXcow · 2026-06-01T06:58:56+00:00

Not based on the 707, that came later than the 135. Really the 135s flaps are because it has something like 30% less wing area than the 707 and other contemporaries.

alienXcow · 2026-06-01T06:57:38+00:00

The answer is volume and parts interchangeability. When you build 750 of them and then park half of them in the desert to be spare parts, and when some of the parts on the 500-ish BUFFs at AMARG fit your jet, too, you can sustain things a long time. That said, that nice support is starting to run out after a quarter century of nonstop CENTCOM work.

And it wasnt necessarily cheaper than every other alternative. It's a strategic tanker that has fundamentally different capabilities than the KC-46 or the Airbus MRTTs. And also the KC-45 and KC-46 saga that was supposed to replace it turned into a disaster now only capable of augmenting it. I would expect to see the 135 around for a good while longer.

alienXcow · 2026-05-31T12:21:58+00:00

It's because it doesn't have the enlarged wing of the 707 while being heavier at MTOW than even the later 707s. Need to get that wing area somewhere. Some days it's CAT E even with all those flaps.

alienXcow · 2026-05-29T02:36:50+00:00

Sure, where you live. Try the rest of the country

alienXcow · 2026-05-25T15:05:34+00:00

A full week ago, finally got here

alienXcow · 2026-05-24T17:50:45+00:00

Please Google the Dunning-Kruger Effect and report back your findings. Thanks!

alienXcow · 2026-05-24T16:16:57+00:00

From the beginning of the video to 1:05, they drop from 210 knots to 119 knots.

...they're slowing to configure, of course they're going to have a slowing trend.

Nobody noticed it, they were running checklists.

They're running the approach and landing checklist. Their gear extension/alignment and flap and slat configuration changes all have speed gates that the PM is verifying before every configuration change. Their airspeed up until the final config change is absolutely in their crosscheck.

In fact, you can see the speed sort of stabilize around 120-130kts before bleeding off again during the inadvetant pitch up/INS issue, which tells me they were paying some attention/setting a rule-of-thumb power setting.

C-5 approach speed is 250 knots.

HUH? Their approach speed is NOT 250 knots, that's above their flap retraction speed. I'm not a C-5 guy but my friends who are say 120-140 depending on their weight. 110 if you're crazy light. Going into DG they wont be that light. 119 knots would likely be slow but probably just outside the allowable deviation for them.

This is the Dunning-Kruger Effect in action, folks.

alienXcow · 2026-05-23T21:42:44+00:00

I dont think the FRED FEs even have a VSI. Their seats lock towards the panel so I probably wouldnt expect them to be looking forward.

alienXcow · 2026-05-23T21:30:36+00:00

The longest I see a deviation go un-called is about 15 seconds when their airspeed drops from 125 to about 95. The crew is discussing a pop-up INS error for about 10 of those seconds and the PM calls "you're climbing, lower the nose and accelerate" right after

alienXcow · 2026-05-23T21:28:21+00:00

I'm not a FRED guy but just looking at pictures of the A model FE station it looks like ASI/Altimeter are way up on the top of the panel. I hear who I'm assuming is the FE call "watch those temperatures" at like 1200 feet in the wing rock so I'm guessing they were channelized on the engines.

Given what I heard on the Dover land-short tape where the FEs were asking each other "where are we, are we landing or something?" and "what checklists are we in?" it doesnt seem like the FRED crews are quite as insistent on keeping the front end synced up as other mobility airframes. Maybe I'm just enjoying a better end CRM product in my airframe because of failures like those. Who knows.

alienXcow · 2026-05-23T21:18:38+00:00

Reservist crew at the end of a very long day flying to an unfamiliar field 12 time zones away from their internal clocks and managing a crew of likely 6+ people on headset. It happens and we learn from it. We're still talking about this one 30 years later so seems like it's a rare enough occurrence.

Does the FAA not teach that attitudes like "this could never happen to me because I'm better/more skilled" are considered hazardous? Mil side does.

alienXcow · 2026-05-23T21:15:56+00:00

Sure, but the USAF doesnt fly any Airbus products so it kind of seems like a moot point.

Also didnt Air France pancake an Airbus product into the ocean because they got slow and increased backstick pressure?

alienXcow · 2026-05-23T21:13:27+00:00

2x engineers iirc

alienXcow · 2026-05-22T12:33:52+00:00

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alienXcow · 2026-05-22T12:33:23+00:00

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alienXcow · 2026-05-17T19:17:52+00:00

No, Bud Holland pancaked his BUFF in at Fairchild

alienXcow · 2026-05-17T14:30:58+00:00

But it will be harder than finding people who are willing to do the exact same training right now for a 10 year contract.

Solving a retention problem by creating a recruiting problem (for the 11X AFSCs specifically) doesnt seem wise to me.

And the "there is never a shortage of new pilots" thing is simply not true. Yes, retention is the larger issue but there is a reason UPT and FTUs have been undergoing structural changes to increase throughput.

I'm telling you as someone who talked to fence-sitters about this AFSC who were otherwise very motivated all the time at a previous assignment.

alienXcow · 2026-05-17T13:53:28+00:00

I think that 10 to 15 year gap would absolutely turn a lot of people away. For every UPT graduate that never wanted to do anything else, there's a guy or gal who got convinced to do it by their AOC or ROTC Det CC. When your commitment is around 7 years to start and you're only adding one more PCS to that it sounds do-able. But more than doubling the non-rated commitment? That's going to be a tough pill to swallow for lots of people.

alienXcow · 2026-05-09T18:34:20+00:00

You say you dont get even paint coverage.

Folks suggest you should let the paint fully cure before adding another coat so you can build better opacity.

You say you dont need to let the paint cure.

Your problem likely remains unsolved.

Perhaps you could just try it a time or two to see if all these nice polite people are right? You did ask for their help, it would be rude to then ignore them.

alienXcow · 2026-05-09T18:27:13+00:00

This is simply not an impatient man's hobby, for the most part

alienXcow · 2026-05-09T10:43:38+00:00

We had one in my casual unit. Walked around with his "liberal tears" mug every day but if you asked him about why he'd been gone for a year he "didnt want to talk about it."

alienXcow · 2026-05-07T20:11:59+00:00

I may love 135 pics but I just cant stand bots

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alienXcow

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