Tag Archives: Air Force

Chapter 98, Stupid Comment #1

Fall has finally fallen. I’ve been waiting for the first hard frost to finally wipe out the last vestiges of pollen and this weekend should do the trick. Looking forward to clear sinuses!

I was an Air Force instructor for over 30 years and one of the first things I was taught at instructor school is that “There is no such thing as a stupid question”. I took that to heart and I always managed to convince myself, and hopefully the asker, that it was true. There is however no similar axiom that states that “There are no stupid statements”. Now I know that it’s not politically correct to use the word “stupid”, at least that’s what I hear parents tell their kids almost daily, so I could default to “moronic” but I’m not sure that it’s more socially acceptable. So let’s just stick with stupid statements. I think I’ll start a short series called “The most stupid statements anyone has ever made to me”.

We hear lots of stupid statements from “I did not have sex with that women, Monica Lewinsky” to “Don’t let people tell you that businesses create jobs” to “If you like your doctor you can keep your doctor”. Although there can be a fine line between a lie, delusional, and stupidity. I could spend weeks on stupid statements by politicians but I’m going to narrow this to stupid things that have actually been said to me or in my presence. Here goes.

“You don’t know anything about leadership. You were in the military and you just ordered people around and they had to do what you told them.” Wow, I think my IQ just dropped 5 points typing that!

I had many jobs during my 34 years in the air force but I think my favorite one was pilot scheduler. Most of you who are flyers probably think I’m crazy but it’s true and here’s why. I love solving problems. I’ve always loved coming up with solutions to complex problems. Maybe it’s the engineer in me or maybe it’s because my dad always presented me with tasks and no resources to accomplish it. Either way, I enjoyed the challenge of not just filling the flying schedule but getting the training requirements done at the same time. A little background for my non-air force friends.

Every pilot has over 100 training events to accomplish every six months. Takeoffs, landings, Night vision goggle landings, night low level routes, day low level routes, personnel airdrops, heavy equipment airdrops, etc., etc., etc,. It’s a daunting list. But if they’re not all accomplished by July 1st or January 1st then they become “non-current” and have to fly with an instructor which then complicates the scheduling process even more. It can be a maddening process. Now add to this process the fact that the Reserves are voluntary. You can’t “make” someone come out and fly. You can’t order them to show up on Tuesday night to get their last NVG airdrop. That brings us to why I enjoyed being a scheduler. You not only had to fill the lines and get the training events completed, you had to know what motivates each person.

Some guys just love to fly. You’d think they would be easy but you have to make sure that they’re not pissing off their civilian employer and that the wife isn’t getting neglected (I’ve had to have conversations with both). Some guys love flying tactical mission but get bored on pilot proficiency flights so you have to mix up the missions a little or put them on a cross-country that has a little of both. Some guys are motivated by the destination. Some are simply motivated by the money. The bottom line. You have to know your people. Know what motivates them. Know what buttons to push to get them to sign up for the missions they need to complete the training and stay mission ready. All of this has to be done within the framework of a volunteer organization where your schedule is probably number 3 or 4 on their list of priorities. Scheduler is where the rubber meets the road. But this balancing act is at the core of any volunteer organization and weaves its way through every level of planning and is the greatest leadership challenge.

Sadly, our society has created a huge pool of people who think that they’re above be followers and aren’t willing to take on the responsibility of leadership. They sit in the back of the proverbial classroom and bully those who want to learn and shoot spitballs at the teacher. I’m certainly not the perfect leader and I’ve made my share of mistakes over the years but I do understand how to be either a follower or a leader and when to be which.

More stupidity next week.

Chapter 94, The Hard Thing

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I’ve always been intrigued by expressions. Years ago my brother-in-law Lou bought a book about the origins of phrases in the english language and eventually we got a copy as well. I know it’s kind of geeky but that’s what I am! For example, the other day, Peg and I were watching the news and a reporter used the term “tarmac”. Peg turned to me and said, “You flew for 35 years and I never heard you use that word. What’s the story?”. Unless she really wanted a long dissertation, she shouldn’t have asked.

In the early 1800’s a Scottish gentleman by the name of MacAdam came up with a process of paving roads, called macadamization, which involved layers of crushed stone and sand. It made a better drained and less rutted road for carriages and wagons but produced lots of dust and was prone to washouts. Years later, in the 1830’s, tar was added to the process, originally coal tar, which significantly improved the process. This tar reinforced macadamization became referred to as “tarmac”. With the exception of one airfield in Scotland, tarmac was replaced by asphalt and concrete decades ago. It seems like only the news media is holding on to the term, but then the media isn’t well known for actually checking their facts.

The phrase that really got stuck in my head this week is “going native”. I think we all know what it means but where did it come from? At the height of the British empire, with the British military stationed around the world, the problem arose that members of the military and foreign service would become so immersed in the local culture that they would begin to set aside their british air of superiority and embrace the “inferior” native population. To prevent this “going native” problem, troops were limited to short tours and rotated regularly.

We’ve come a long way. At least we think we have. When we’re deployed overseas we encourage our military to immerse themselves in other cultures. To learn the language, or at least bits of it, to make a good impression, and to become involved in communities. I understand that our purpose for being deployed is totally different that the purposes of the British empire but I think we did inherit their fear of going native. We’ve just applied it differently.

I’ve spoken before of the evils of careerism in the military. How the constant movement, at great expense to the taxpayer, facilitates upward mobility. Get in, make some “great” change to the organization, get promoted, and get out. Let’s not get too involved in people’s lives, in local problems. That could get messy, that’s could get hard. But here’s where we can’t let active duty ignorance infect the reserves. Going native isn’t a liability, unless you want to use the military against the local population, native is what the reservist already is. Reservists are already invested in the community. They embrace the local culture because they are the local culture. They care about the members of the unit because they’ve grown up with them and are willing to do the hard work to help each other and make the unit the best it can be. Sadly, I’ve hear AFRC senior leaders use the phrase “going native” as a pejorative. But let’s not limit this discussion to the military.

There is a trend in our society to move on to something “better” when the going gets tough. To do what’s fun for us in lieu of what’s going to have a real impact on our family and friends. To eschew the hard work of daily involvement and, sometimes, drudgery in favor of what we want. Sacrifice, commitment, dedication, loyalty, words that I’m afraid have been lost in a world of self-promotion, selfishness, and narcissism. Do me a favor. Find someone this weekend who is doing the hard work. They’re not always easy to find because, well, they’re busy doing the hard work. Thank them for what they do. Look around for opportunities to go native.

Chapter 89, Foot in Mouth Disease

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Last week’s story brought to mind an incident highlighting my long history of putting my sizable foot in my mouth.

During my 34+ Air Force career there was one job I did longer than any other and that was Chief of Stan/Eval. I know I’ve explained the job before, and for this story it’s not particularly relevant except that one of Stan/Eval’s duties is to relay time sensitive, higher headquarters, flying related safety issues to the aircrew. More on that later.

The Wing I was a part of at the time had a flying squadron, which was made up of all of the Pilots, Navigators, Flight Engineers and Loadmasters needed to fly the airplanes, but we also had an Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron or, AES. An AES squadron is designed to man missions which pick up the wounded and move them, while providing inflight medical care, to a facility capable of dealing with the severity of their wounds or injuries. It’s made up of Flight nurses and Med Techs who work together as a crew in the back of the airplane and maintain a close relationship with the “front end” crew. It’s a natural symbiotic relationship that works best when they are collocated with a flying squadron.

Front end crews have very formal schools to attend that train them in their particular crew position and when a new guy returns from school he’s pretty much ready to plug right into the flying schedule. At the time, however, AE crews didn’t really have that luxury. They would attend a ground school but there was no flying training. They would return to their unit and then begin the long process of getting trained and checked out at the local level. It was a continuous flow of new nurses and new med techs waiting their turn for the next sortie.

The fun part of training the new young ones was you never knew how they would fit in to the culture or whether they would be able to hold down their lunches once they got into the back of the bouncing C-130 for the first time. The nurses were usually highly motivated but personalities ran from the stern Cratchetts to the spouse shoppers and everything in between. So, one lovely spring day, in walks a brand spankin’ new Lt Flight Nurse and it was obvious she was what I would call “bubbly”. She was outspoken, friendly (some might call flirty)and it was obvious she enjoyed what she was training for. An all around good attitude. Her training progressed normally over several months and I always enjoyed being Supervisor of Flying (SOF) when she was flying because she brought a little sunshine to the front counter.

Well, all new crewmembers finally grow up and eventually the day of her checkride arrived. Checkrides are, of course, very stressful for all crewmembers. You have some looking over your shoulder, listening to your every word, and taking notes the entire time. A necessary but painful process. Luckily she took the whole thing in stride. She and her AE crew of eight arrived at the SOF counter early and I was lucky enough to be SOF that day. It’s time for the Stan/Eval part of the story.

That day we had received a new “special interest item” from Air Mobility Command, which usually means that someone on active duty did something stupid and they wanted us to remind the crews to not do the same stupid thing. I had just added it to the list of things that all aircrew had to be briefed on prior to flight. This particular item involved a flight nurse who had failed to removed her earrings (something you were always required to do) and during an emergency egress the earring caught on her headset and ripped her earlobe off. I hate to overstate the obvious and tell folks to do things they already know there required to do so I always tried to interject some levity during my SOF briefings. Rewind a bit. This was the decade when body piercings were coming into popularity. Folks were getting nose piercings, lip piercings, and tongue piercings. But, of course, Air Force members weren’t allowed anything but a single ear piercing. Fast forward. So there I was giving the briefing and I got to the special interest item and I said, “New special interest item. Make sure you remove jewelry from your piercings, wherever they are.” There was a chuckle from everyone on the crew except our new flight nurse who gasped and simply, slowly looked down. All eyes turned to her, looked down as well, and then slowly turned to me. It was then that I realized piercings must be happening in places I had never imagined nor wanted to imagine. My face turned beet red, at least it felt beet red, and after what seemed an eternity I finally spit out the words, “But the ones we can’t see are OK” I wasn’t sure that was Air Force policy but it was the best I could come up with on short notice. She looked up, smiled and said, “Great! Is the briefing over?” “Sure”, I said and she bounced down the hall with her crew in tow. She passed her checkride.

Chapter 88, What?

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I feel like I should come up with another lame excuse for being so far behind but I won’t. Who would have thought that retirement could be so time consuming!

I’ve never been one to keep up with the latest trends. I wear clothes until they fall apart or Peg yells at me. I listen to talk radio so I really have no idea who the hottest groups are. And when it comes to new phrases or made up words, I’m always the last to know. Let me give you an example.

Several years ago, I was enjoying a pleasant afternoon in my office. Just minding my own business. Answering emails, catching up on some reading, banging out some CBTs (computer based training for you civilian types). One of those afternoons you don’t often get. But then again, you should always get nervous when things get quiet. I heard some footsteps outside my door and then a head sheepishly peeked around the doorframe. “Yes”, I said, “I am in here, what do you need?” A body emerged from behind the head. It was Fred, one of loadmasters. (As a reminder, “Fred” is the name I use whenever I don’t want to identify someone although they know who they are when they read this!) “Well”, he said, “Fred and I were over at the gym at lunch time (I know it’s the “Fitness Center” but every moron, except the Air Force morons, know that it’s a gym and while I’m on the subject, It’s the chow hall not the DFAC!) and something weird was happening”. Now my interest was piqued. Weird is something that always get’s my attention. “Go on, how weird”.

“Well, we finished our workout and headed for the locker room. I grabbed my towel and headed for the showers and noticed someone else in there but didn’t think anything of it until I noticed what he was doing”. “What, pray tell, was that?” I asked, barely able to control my curiosity. “He was, well, shaving”. The wind dropped from my sails. Shaving in the shower, big whoop. Maybe he cut himself and they had to use “self-aid and buddy care” on him. So I said, “Then what happened?”. “I ran out of there as fast as I could and told “Fred”, (the other guy. Maybe this Fred thing only works if there’s one anonymous participant), that maybe he shouldn’t go in there.” The story still isn’t making sense so I asked, “What did Fred do?”. “Well, he went in and then came running out. He was totally freaked out too!”

Now I was really confused. Two old crusty Loadmasters freaked out by a guy shaving in the shower? I’ve heard some pretty hair-raising stories about loadmasters and fear of shaving doesn’t seem to fit the paradigm. “So, let me get this straight? There was a guy in the shower shaving. Was he not using a mirror and cut himself? Was he trying to use an electric razor with an extension cord? What am I missing?” A sudden look of realization came to Fred’s face and in a quiet tone he said, “Sir, he wasn’t shaving his face” Ohhhh, I thought, guys shaving their legs is a little odd but I knew that some swimmers did it and there were certain skin conditions which require you to shave off some body hair. “Well”, I said trying to be instructive yet supportive, “some guys shave their legs for medical reasons or….” But before I could finish he said, “He wasn’t shaving his legs he was manscaping” And there you have it. What the crap is manscaping!? All kinds of scenarios passed before my eyes. Was he shaving his back? His arms? I quickly ran out of shaveable parts so I had to ask the question. “What in the world is manscaping?” He didn’t say a word. He just looked down. Why!? I don’t understand! Since when do men care?

At this point all I could do was ask. “What do you want me to do about it?” He asked, “Isn’t there some regulation against doing that in a public shower?” (I almost left the “l” out of public) I told him that the regs probably hadn’t caught up with manscaping yet but give them time, they always get around to regulating everything. He and the other Fred had talked to the manager at the gym and he had actually called headquarters looking for guidance on how to deal with the issue. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for that phone call.

Thanks for reading. I’ve got to go. I’m late for my pedicure, mud wrap, aroma therapy, and bikini wax!

Chapter 86, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly”

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Another week missed! I think I was trying to catch up on sleep after two busy weekends of Cotton Patch. Time to buckle down and type.

I like to think there are three different kinds of leaders. I call this the Clint Eastwood theorem. They are the good, the bad, and the ugly. Named after the 1966 spaghetti western of the same name. The “Good” is pretty self-explanatory as is the “Bad”. The interesting ones are the “Ugly”. These are the ones that actually get things done but it’s never on the straightest or most logical path. It’s a pretty broad category but it’s also the most entertaining.

I’ve written several blogs about guys I’ve worked for. Mostly commanders, but I’ve also worked for a variety of folks who were what we call “section chiefs”. These are guys who are in charge of specific squadron functions like Current Operations or Scheduling, to name a few, but aren’t commanders. They’re guys who are ambitious enough to take on a bigger job and hope to, someday, be given the opportunity to be actual commanders. In other words, they’re getting to learn by making mistakes in a area that won’t screw things up to badly for the whole squadron.

As a young Air Reserve Technician (full time reservist/civil servants for those unfamiliar with the program) you often find yourself the sole full-timer in a section trying to do what, on active duty, would be accomplished by a staff of five or six. It’s one of the things that makes the reserves so efficient but it can mean a lot of pressure to manage the daily flying program. There might be another four or five reservists in the shop, but they may only be there two days per month leaving you to do the lion’s share of the work. On top of that, the section chief is usually a reservist and unless he fully grasps the reality of the workload, you can find yourself working for someone with, shall we say, unrealistic expectations.

I once had a reserve supervisor who had a highly successful civilian job but he had absolutely no management experience. He would come in for the UTA (drill weekend) and decide that the entire program needed to be revamped. He would brief the squadron commander of the new direction and promptly disappear for 28 days. He couldn’t be reached, because he was too busy, and I was left fend for myself. He would reappear on the next UTA and complain that his new program had not yet been implemented. Because of him, I identified a new subset of the “Ugly” category. I call it “I think, therefore it is”.

I’m sure, if you think about it, you can come up with someone that fits into this category and maybe we all do a little. We can have all of the best intentions of doing or changing something but unless we actually DO something it won’t happen. I see all of these programs to “raise awareness” about every disease or social ill but being aware is not “doing”. You might feel good about how compassionate and caring you are but feelings accomplish nothing. Leaders don’t throw out ideas and assume things will get done just because they’re in charge. Leaders coach, mentor, manage, follow up and clarify when necessary. These are skills that are learned through years of experience. Years of observing those who have already figured it out and years of making mistakes along the way. You just can’t take someone who has never managed anything but himself and put him in charge.

Thankfully, my ” I think, therefore it is” guy never became a commander. Sadly, our nation is not so lucky. The current healthcare debacle is a direct result of putting an “I think, therefore it is” guy in the White House. Someone who has never run anything but his own life is trying to take charge of our lives. His failure to take any interest in a process that will negatively impact the lives of millions demonstrates a complete lack of leadership. He claims to be a visionary but the only vision he offers is a backwards look to the failed socialist policies of the last 100 years.

There’s no substitute for rolling up your sleeves and doing the hard work. Managing without micromanaging. Surrounding yourself with people who will tell you the truth not what they think you want to hear. I pray it’s not to late.

Chapter 85, First Encounter

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I’ll start off with a plug for my brother Tim. Here’s the link to his interview with “The Blaze”. It’s a bit lengthy, over an hour, but it’s interesting and entertaining and well worth the time spent!

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2013/10/04/7-secrets-of-powerful-storytelling-from-one-of-americas-most-insightful-actors/

Last week a wrote a bit about the beginning of my career on active duty so I think it fitting to talk about the end of it.

In 1983 I was stationed at beautiful, tongue in cheek, Ellsworth AFB, SD. Millions of Americans have made the pilgrimage to the Black Hills of South Dakota to visit Mt. Rushmore, and Custer State Park, and Deadwood, and Sturgis, and a myriad of other tourist destinations. Not to mention stopping at Wall, SD, the most overrated tourist stop in America, for free ice water. Folks comment on how lovely the tree covered hills are but that’s only because, on the way there, they hadn’t seen a tree for 400 miles! So, while millions of people have fond summer vacation memories of Rapid City, my take is a little different.

First off, tourist destinations mean high prices on everything, including restaurants and gas stations, during the tourist season and the locals have to pay the same prices. I discovered during my first summer there that I was allergic to just about everything that grows there and, because the wind was always blowing at 25 miles an hour stirring up the allergens, there was no escape. The Air Force would give me Sudafed and tell me to stay indoors in air-conditioning as much as possible. Great, trapped inside when the weather was good but as soon as the snow started in August I could go outside and freeze to death. And, yes, it did snow in both June and August while we were there! Alright, I’m done whining. I did get one wonderful thing in the state of South Dakota, my beautiful daughter Erin.

Since there was precious little else to do there, Peg and I jumped into volunteering at church and I was able to move up quickly in the flying squadron. By the spring of ’82 I was a flight examiner and on the “S-01” crew which was the top crew in Stan/Eval. It meant a lot more office work but, by regulation, we only had to sit alert 70% of the average alert time of the regular crews. A huge deal. So there I was, in a plum job. I had done all of the career developing steps. I had worked hard to get a great reputation and the next step was to maneuver myself into my next job at my next base. My only desire, that it wasn’t anywhere colder or drier.

At the time, the FB-111 was still in service in Strategic Air Command. It was a supersonic, variable geometry wing bomber with a crew of two and, after talking to a couple guys in the squadron who had flown it, I decided it would be a good fit for me. I had been fighter qualified out of pilot training so I met the requirements. I got letters of recommendation from up the command chain, put my application package together, submitted it to Higher Headquarters and then waited or the selection board to meet. But then I got “the phone call”.

I’m not very good with names. If you asked me to write down the names of more than 5 guys I flew with in 1983 I probably couldn’t do it, but there is one name I will never forget. One name that opened my eyes to what unbridled, unchecked bureaucratic power can do to your life. The name is Kent Rindy. And I say Kent Rindy with all of the derision with which Seinfeld said “Newman”. Kent Rindy was an Air Force poster child. He had left the active duty Air Force, was unable to hack it in the civilian world, so he came back in with his tail between his legs. They made brochures and posters featuring him telling us that life on the outside wasn’t fulfilling and that staying on active duty was the only sane decision we could make. He didn’t just drink the Koolaid, he invented a whole new flavor. It was Kent Rindy who called me.

The conversation started off pleasant enough. He said, “Our records show that it’s time for us to start the process of moving you to your next assignment. Here’s what’s going to happen”. Notice the lack of interest in what I would like to do. He continued, “We have an excess of B-52 pilots right now and I need to fill some instructor slots at pilot training bases so I’ll be putting you in one of those.” I was curious to see where he envisioned my career going so I asked, “So after three years of being terrified by students, where would I, potentially, go after that?”. “Well”, he said, “since you haven’t had a northern tier assignment yet, we’ll send you to either Minot ND, Grand Forks ND, or Loring ME.” In the Air Force’s eyes, South Dakota is equivalent to Florida. Needless to say, I wasn’t impressed. I answered, “I actually have some other ideas. I’ve applied for the FB-111 selection board and if I don’t get that I’d like to instruct T-41 students at the Air Force Academy so I can work on a Masters in Aerospace Engineering. I’m also filling out an application for test pilot school (Although I later found out I was too tall!)”. I thought I had presented a convincing case for myself but I wasn’t prepared for his response. The phone went quiet and then he said, “I see here, in your records, that your wife just had a baby. It would be a shame if you had to spend a year in some cold lonely base in Korea away from your little girl. I’m sure you won’t get into the FB-111 program, T-41s aren’t available to YOU and you’re going to take what I give you or suffer the consequences.” “CLICK”. That was it, end of discussion.

The next month I went TDY to California for 6 weeks to participate in the contract validation program for the first full motion/visual B-52 simulator. I called back to the squadron one week into the TDY and asked a buddy to check my squadron in-box. Sure enough, there were orders for me to report to Del Rio, TX to become a T-38 instructor. Old Kent knew I would be out of town so he cut the orders so I wouldn’t be able to turn them down by resigning from active duty. I thoroughly enjoyed the TDY because I knew, since the orders weren’t presented to me personally, I would have a week after my return to make up my mind. I walked into the squadron the day after I returned and there, displayed prominently on the bulletin board, was a poster begging pilots to volunteer to teach T-41s at the academy. I took my orders and the poster to my squadron commander and told him the story. he took it to the wing commander who called Air Force Personnel Center and was told that it was too late. I should have told my career counselor I was interested in the position. Go figure! Also, after many calls by the Wing Inspector General to Headquarters SAC, it was determined that some “unknown” person had removed my name from the FB-111 application board database. Had my name been in the database my orders to Del Rio couldn’t have been published until the board results. Hmmm, interesting!

And there you have it. My first experience, but certainly not my last, butting heads with bureaucrats who are way too big for their britches. Remember, one of the answers in the top ten list of lies is: “We’re the government and we’re here to help.” What percentage of dollars spent on welfare programs actually makes it to people? 27%, where does the other 73% go? You figure it out!

Chapter 81, Del Rio Part 2

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First of all I’d like to welcome some new members to my little community of “Hoverers”. As a quick recap to catch everyone up, I started this blog over a year and a half ago to pass on thoughts and experiences of my 34+ year career in the USAF. It has, however, evolved into a somewhat wider format. The name “Hovering over Send” comes from the experience we’ve all had when we write an email in a moment of passion and then hover that little pointer over the “send” button on the screen before we make the final decision whether or not to click. More often than not, I click. That’s it, the whole history. I thought I would do this once a month or so but, as you can see by the title, I’m up to 81 and I’ve only missed 2 or 3 weeks since January 2012. If you would like to be removed from the list, just let me know. My feelings won’t be hurt. All past chapters are available at hoveringoversend.com and I’m on Twitter at hovringoversend. It’s no typo, there’s is no “e”. I had to remove one letter to keep it short enough for Twitter. And one more thing, you can’t access the website from an Air Force computer, The computer Nazis have it blocked!

Last week I wrote about my trip to beautiful Del Rio, TX to begin my Air Force career in Undergraduate Pilot Training or UPT. After my first night of cockroach horror I set off to find a furnished apartment since there really wasn’t any furniture in the trunk of my Studebaker. I wasn’t going to be too picky, I just wanted something I could afford on the pay of a new 2nd Lt, and that wasn’t much. After a few frightening drive-by assessments I found a very clean and quiet apartment complex, with a pool, that obviously, judging by the license plates of the cars in the parking lot, catered to UPT students. I parked the car and headed for the manager’s office to see if there were an vacancies. I knocked on the door and heard footsteps. The door knob turned, and then it got a little weird. A short, elderly woman opened the door, looked up at me, began to smile, opened her mouth to speak, but nothing came out. Her face went blank, her jaw fell open and she just stared.

Now, I’m not what you would call a handsome guy. I knew she wasn’t stunned by my manly visage. I’m tall, but not freakishly tall so I’m sure that wasn’t it. I wasn’t quite sure what to do. I said “hello” 2 or 3 times. I waived my hand in front of her face. And, just as I was about to call for help thinking she was having some kind of seizure, she snapped out of it. She just kind of shook it off and said hello. I introduced myself and asked if she had an apartment. And she did it again. Only this time it was a little different. She obviously heard the question but it was like she was thinking real hard about how to answer it. After an uncomfortable pause she said, “Yes I do, let me show it to you”. It was a second story, furnished, neat as a pin, one bedroom unit with monthly exterminator visits to keep out the pervasive Texas roaches. Perfect! I moved in immediately.

Nearly a year later I had my last flight at UPT. I graduated second in my class but got my last choice of aircraft to my last choice of geographical area, but that’s another story. The night of my last flight two of my classmates invited me over for dinner. John and Todd were best friends at the Academy and shared an apartment in the same complex. After dinner we sat down in their living room and they got very serious which, for them, was radically out of character. “We invited you to dinner tonight because there’s something we need to tell you. Something we promised we wouldn’t tell you until you flew your last flight. Do you remember your first day here, when you came looking for an apartment?” I had to think for a moment but then I recalled my first encounter with the landlord. “Oh yeah”, I said “She was a bit odd that day”. “Well”, Todd said, “There was a reason for that and she’s the one that made us promise not to tell you this until today”. I was getting, more than a little, creeped out. “Several months before you got here there was a T-38 crash in which the student pilot was killed. He lived in this apartment complex. In fact, he lived in the apartment you’re living in. And, you could have been his twin brother. When the landlady opened the door that day she was terrified and when you asked to see the apartment, his apartment, she almost told you she wouldn’t rent it to you but couldn’t think of a reason to send you away.”

I thanked the guys for telling me and waiting to tell me. I’m not superstitious but I didn’t sleep much that night.

The year of UPT is tough one. Lots of studying. Highs and lows. But it flies by (pun intended). At the time, you’re glad when it finally ends and you pin on those silver wings. But, in hind sight, it was one of the best years of my life. The camaraderie, the challenges, the pure joy of flying, there’s almost no better experience.

Chapter 67, “Stories That Peg has never heard” #1

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…..He asked, “What’s the highest peak in the rest of the route?”, and the Navigator answered, “Just under 10,000 feet”. “We’ll fly the rest of the route at 11,000″……

Let’s start at the beginning……..

My first operational assignment was flying B-52s. I had graduated #2 in my class and somehow I was deluded into thinking the higher you graduated the better chance you had getting the aircraft you wanted. The problem was that I wanted a C-130 or C-141 but I was FAR (Fighter, Attack, Recce) qualified and, unbeknownst to me, that combination set you up for the venerable B-52. It all worked out in the end, but I found myself at the most northern of SAC’s (Strategic Air Command) southern tier bases. Only in the Air Force would South Dakota be considered a “southern” base!

After a year in the buff my first Aircraft Commander, a crusty old LtCol, was moved to a staff job. We ended up getting a brand new, straight from upgrade, AC. With an experienced AC you usually got the “good” deals but once you got a new guy you were stuck with the less than desirable duties. In this case, we were doing a practice ORI (Operational Readiness Inspection) and since our new AC wasn’t fully trained yet the rest of the crew was stuck flying as safety observers. This meant that I would sit in the instructors seat, which was no more than an aluminum box with space for size 10 boots, I wear a 13, with a parachute on my back and no ejection seat, for a 10 hour mission, at night. But at least I was flying with the S-01 crew. They were the number 1 crew in the wing and the “S” meant that they were a Standardization/Evaluation crew. The creme de la creme. I figured I could at least pick up some new techniques.

The route we were flying was a brand new route that no one in the wing had ever flown. It snaked its’ way through Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska and a bit of Colorado. Three hours of low level flying 300′ above the ground at 350 miles per hour in extreme mountainous terrain. SAC’s idea of a good time. To truly appreciate the hazards of this type of flying you have to understand that this was long before the days of NVGs (Night Vision Goggles). The aircraft had two cameras mounted under the nose. A FLIR (Forward Looking Infrared) and a Low light. The Low Light was an early generation night vision system but required some pretty significant moonlight or starlight to give even a grainy image. You could select which camera image you wanted to be presented on your screen in the cockpit. Along with the video presentation the screen also included a ribbon radar altimeter (height above the ground), airspeed, a little cartoon airplane in the center and, what I called, the “squiggly line”.

The squiggly line was a continuously updated presentation of the highest terrain in front of you at either 3, 6, or 10 miles. The shorter the distance the more aggressively you would fly the route. Theoretically, if you kept the cartoon aircraft above the cartoon squiggly line you would miss the, not cartoon, mountain by 300 feet. All of this at night, with no moon, in unfamiliar terrain. To add to the fun on this particular night, the gyroscopic stabilization of the squiggly line was malfunctioning. This meant that the line was totally unusable unless the aircraft was straight and level. Good times!

Now that I’ve set up the scenario, and given you way more information than you really needed, let’s proceed with the rest of the story. So there I was, at 1:00AM( 0100 for those in the military), sitting on the little aluminum box, parachute on my back, helmet on my head, in the mountains, a lowly 1st lieutenant, flying with the #1 crew, 300′ above the ground, 350 miles per hour, a less than stellar terrain avoidance system, peering into the blackness. We had just crossed over a 9,000 ft mountain peak and had started a large left, descending turn into a valley. The squiggly line was useless and, since there was no moon, the cameras showed nothing. There was that odd silence that occurs when an entire crew is unsure of the situation. It’s a very unnerving silence that, once you’ve flown long enough, sets off a little voice in the back of your head. At that point, inexplicably, I did something that you normally wouldn’t do while flying low level at night, I looked up. On the B-52 there are two windows high up in the cockpit. They’re used during air-refueling to see the tanker. Otherwise you rarely use them. What I saw, through those windows, were stars but the stars ended in the blackness of the silhouette of a mountain straight ahead and thousands of feet up. I reached forward, pushed all 8 of the throttles to the wall, pulled the yoke back into the pilots lap and screamed “Climb!”. Once the AC realized what was happening he took control of the aircraft and all I could do was watch as the airspeed bled down to 200 knots and the radar altimeter descended through 500′, 400′, 300′, 200′ and then started climbing again after it bottomed out at 134′. After what felt like an eternity, someone finally spoke. It was the AC. He asked, “What’s the highest peak in the rest of the route?”, and the Navigator answered, “Just under 10,000 feet”. “We’ll fly the rest of the route at 11,000”. It was a very quiet flight home.

Chapter 51, The ORI

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It’s been ten weeks since retirement and I’ve had some time to reflect on the things I miss and the things I don’t. At the top of the “don’t miss” list is the dreaded ORI. For those of you who aren’t, or haven’t been, in the military, an ORI, or Operational Readiness Inspection, is a process devised to determine if an organization is capable of executing its war time mission. It sounds pretty simple in theory but somehow they can never seem to get the process quite right.

When I started out in SAC (Strategic Air Command) it was all pretty straight forward. During the Cold War our mission was to nuke whoever decided to attack us back to the stone age. We had to be able to accomplish this at a moment’s notice with no opportunity to spool up prior to employment. Launch within minutes, fly for a very long time, and drop/launch a bomb bay full of crowd pleasers. Pretty straight forward. And that’s the way the ORI happened. The inspection team would arrive with no advance notification and we would generate all of the aircraft on base and fly them all on a mission simulating the end of the world as we know it. You either dropped the bombs on target or you didn’t. Pass or fail, it was pretty clear-cut. That was then. Now things are a little more complicated.

The world changed and the ORI process tried to change with it but it became mired down in everything but evaluating the primary mission of a flying wing. It became more about operating in the, never seen but much feared, chemical warfare environment and bureaucratic minutiae than in the reality of how we’ve operated during the last three wars. It hasn’t really kept up with that paradigm shift. There have been some efforts to fix the process but little success. The best example, in my experience, was back in 1999.

I had just arrived at Youngstown as the new Ops Officer of the 773rd Airlift Squadron. It was my dream job. I had always loved being in the thick of things and the Ops Officer gets to run the day to day operations of a flying squadron. There were new challenges, new problems, new taskings every day. It never stops and that’s what I loved about it. Several months after I arrived on base, the senior leadership attended an Air Force Reserve Command Senior Leaders Conference down in Georgia. It’s a weekend of briefings, networking and getting to know your counterparts around the command. One of the briefings was from the newly appointed IG (Inspector General) at Headquarters Air Mobility Command (AMC). He stood up and boldly described his vision for the new ORI process. His new construct would be centered around mission execution. There would be a small chemical warfare exercise in the middle of the three days but after several simulated attacks over a 8-12 hour period we would pack up the gas masks and move on to other, more timely, scenarios. The crowd was thrilled. Finally someone with half a brain and some common sense was in charge of the process. My wing commander stood up and volunteered the 910th to be the canary in the mine. We were ready and willing to try out the new improved process and maybe even having a say in working out the bugs.

We prepared for months. We practiced with our partners, the active duty guys out of Little Rock, and when the day of deployment arrived, we were more than ready. But that’s when things started going terribly awry. As soon as we arrived at the inspection site, the scenario put us into a potential chemical warfare environment. It was a little odd since you would usually have 12 hours or so to build bunkers, unload cargo, and set up operations before having to suit up in chem gear but I concluded that they were just going to get the chemical exercise out of the way early. That concept worked for me. I couldn’t have been more mistaken.

For the next three days we did little else but dive into bunkers, put on our gas masks and trudge around the base like space aliens. At one point we had the masks on for nearly 8 hours straight and as we were packing up to redeploy we were still in chem gear. We even had to react to a chemical attack while we were in the passenger holding area waiting to get on an airplane to go home. I wasn’t happy. I took some time to cool down, but the next week I wrote an after action report which I upchanneled through 22nd Air Force to AFRC. As you all know, I’ve never been one to hover long over send.

A month later we flew to HQ AMC at Scott AFB for a face to face sit down with the IG to discuss our thoughts on how the new system worked. When it was my turn to speak I simply passed out my report and said to the O-6: “What you told us at the AFRC Senior Leaders Conference was the exact opposite of what actually happened. I can come to only two conclusions. Either you lied to the faces of 300 people or you are incapable of managing your staff and are incompetent. Neither speaks well of you or the United States Air Force.” I sat down and the meeting continued. Maybe not the smartest thing to say to an O-6 as an O-5 in front of your O-7 boss. I guess I needed more time to cool down.

Years later I was talking to one of the ancient civilian, former military staffers in the IG office, a guy that had been there for decades, and in a moment of accidental honesty, he told me that; “We get these new bosses all of the time who come here with new ideas. They try to rock the boat and change things but we know if we just slow roll it they’ll be gone in two years and we can just keep doing things the way we know how”. And that’s it. That’s the problem with all bureaucracies. The inertia of “the way we’ve always done it” prevents real change and real efficiency. What was the last problem a government bureaucracy solved? What’s the motivation for any bureaucracy to fix a problem? Altruism? You know better than that! We’ve spent trillions to eliminate poverty but the poverty rate is unchanged. We just make staying in poverty more comfortable. Throw more money at a problem, you just get more of the problem.

One more thing on ORIs. I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon in the Air Force. Some people seem to get stuck with ORIs more than others. I know an O-6 who, in over 30 years in the air force, has never been through an ORI. He has either transferred from a unit just prior to one or to a unit right after they had one. On the other hand, some of us get just the opposite. In the first case it could just be that all of his bosses were wise enough to hide him!

Chapter 45

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Ah, it’s that time of the year again. The lights are going up, the air is crisp and the stores are packed. It must be Christmas! So what’s on your wish list? Wish lists are interesting things. Over the years I’ve known lots of people who have wanted very specific things. They’ve made lists, searched for days or months or years but, in the end, wound up with something totally different. Let me give you an example.

Years ago we had some friends who were looking for their first home. They sat down, put together a list and off they went on the hunt. They wanted a brick home, on a corner lot, off-street parking with a garage, 4 bedrooms, 2 baths, older, with character, and a great school district. We all pitched in and directed them to every house we thought might be a contender. After months of searching they bought a wood frame house with 3 bedrooms, 1 bath, on-street parking, in a sketchy neighborhood. When we asked them why they picked it, they said it had a nice front porch.

I’ve seen the same thing happen with cars. People have asked my opinion. They’ve told me they want the best gas mileage they can get because they drive a lot. Something nimble, great handling and reliable but, in the end, they bought a huge SUV. They then tell me they got “a great deal” and it gets the best mileage “in its’ class”, 20 mpg instead of the 19 mpg the others get. But I think the most disappointing choices people make are the everyday ones that lead to consequences they don’t really think out to a logical conclusion.

Folks want to save for their future, be financially responsible, not have to worry so much about retirement, but “wanting” to do it and making the day to day choices to make it happen are completely different. It’s really all about simple math. We are not the government. We just can’t spend as we please and print more money when we run out or steal it from someone else. Our finances are a zero-sum game. You really only have two choices, earn more or spend less. If you like to eat out 4-5-6 times a week, enjoy several nice vacations per year, always drive a new car, and give your kids everything they ask for, I don’t want to hear whining about not being able to pay for college, having no money for retirement, or me not being taxed enough. Dave Ramsey says it best, “If you want to live like no one else later, you have to live like no one else now”. In other words, every dollar you spend on something you “want” now is 3-4 dollars you won’t have for something you “need” later.

Let’s take the car example. If you’ve resigned yourself to having a $250/month car payment for the rest of your life, that’s $30,000 every 10 years. But if you spend $15,000 on the right car, new or used, and keep it for those ten years, treat it well, spend $5,000 to maintain it, you come out $10,000 ahead. Invest that, plus the $10,000 you’ll add to it every 10 years, and you see how much you can save.

Define the goal, make a plan, execute the plan, and make day-to-day decisions within the framework of the plan. Organizations should work the same way. Earlier this year the Air Force came up with a poorly conceived plan to save money and restructure its’ forces. It produced the plan in a vacuum and then dropped it on the country with little or no pre-coordination. I think we all remember the results. There was a blistering wave of protest from all sides and Congress sent the Pentagon back to the drawing board. Several weeks ago the Air Force decided that, since the last method didn’t work so well, they would try a different tact. They sent out briefers to Congressional staffers to float a trial balloon. Nothing in writing, just “talking points”. The problem was that there was still no strategic planning done, just political maneuvering and an attempt to appease the Council of Governors. For example, for some bizarre reason they added aircraft back into the 908th at Maxwell but still proposed closing the 911th at Pittsburgh. The only reason for proposing to close Pittsburgh is that they mistakenly calculated that it has less than 300 civilian positions but, in reality, the 908th actually does have less than 300 civilian positions and they could be closed unilaterally without a BRAC or Congressional involvement. In fact, AETC has been trying to defund the maintenance and operating costs of the airfield for years which would save the Air Force budget millions per year. This all comes back to keeping your eye on the goal and thinking long term.

There are plenty of ways we can personally and, as a nation, save money. We need a safety net in our country but that net has become a hammock for way too many people and raising taxes never solves fiscal problems. What works for you on a micro basis also works for the country on a macro basis, stop spending! But that’s a discussion for another day. If there’s something you really want or need it’s never too early to start planning and saving. Make a list, check it twice…..

Next week, more on goats.