What’s the date on cnaf you’re looking at? May 22 still has 500, and I wasn’t tracking a change.
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Flight School backed up
- Thread starter Cowgirl
- Start date
Maybe it’s an interim change? I just left my DH tour and thought that the rule changed to 450 in the Dec/Jan timeframe.
It’s always amusing to me when the military plays the “make a ‘cool’ sounding acronym and then find the relevant words to make the acronym make sense” game. NIFE, BLADE, COPTR, CORPS, etc. It always came across as pretentious.
I finished Primary with high 60s in terms of flight hours. I was Charlie which had significantly more flight time than my avenger counterparts.
COPTR grads finished with similar # of hours.
As I said earlier, they jump into flying very quickly and cut a lot of academics.
Have you ever had to come up with a name for an exercise? It’s equally inane.
They wouldn’t want me naming one of those. I’d probably call it READINESS BULLSHIT or something.
When we were off the coast of Oman for what felt like 8 years straight (Lincoln 2019-2020), my ops team took to calling it operation Enduring Training. We finished squadron SFWT. All of it. Literally had zero JO ULT upgrades left that we could do from the Boat. Everyone was level 4 except the FNG.
Same boat made a grand total of 3 or 4 level 3 quals across four fighter squadrons through the duration of an 8 month 2022 WestPac - did a lot of CK DCA though.
Haha that was the most ridiculous deployment for all of us in the TO seats (fortunately we all had some pretty solid OPSOs for the most part 💋 ) I remember the nightly SFWT event 8 division DCA, because why not? And all the NCEA (is that the right term? I’ve forgotten now) runs to that target in Oman. Which was pretty fun to strafe, and was also the last time i ever shot the gun (just realized that now, thinking about that). I bit**ed a lot at the time (since i voluntarily went on that deployment) but in hindsight, it was a good end to my 3 yr TO tour 🤣
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I have nothin’ but love for you guys who extended into that shit show of a deployment.
Glad you got some land range time- it was surprisingly hard to come by. As compared to my previous ME deployments, the powers-that-be were very averse to us playing with security partners in theater, a fact I still don’t fully understand. Somehow I never got into Oman, except as a CSAR fighter lead. Usually above an undercast layer. Check in, COMEX, take hard altitudes and max-E until it was time to head home to the case 3 stack…
I think my highlights of that deployment were 1) leading or flying wing with all 4 of my new FNG idiots when I first showed up, by then new level III's and in the level IV syllabus, into their first combat flights in AFG. They did awesome, and that was literally the highlight of my entire career. I'll be 100 years old and still remember that. But 2) was doing this weird photo ex with a B-52. That was just cool, flying basically parade, all around that almost 70 yr old bird. I can't remember now if you were part of that formation. I think it may have been around the time that my compatriot in your squadron left for greener pastures, possibly his last flight. I know I was on that one.
Wasn’t on the B-52 flight; maybe I was at the CAOC or something since I don’t even remember that happening. I’ll be honest- I’d like to forget most of that damn deployment- minus the people. We had some amazing folks in the airwing. But before they powers-that-be sent us to hide in the corner of 5th fleet like chumps, I got to do some training CAS into Romania with big wing support and three of my buddies from across the airwing. That’s one I’ll remember for a long time. Another was leading one of my superstar JOs on his first combat mission into AFG (and nearly going to war with Iran that night). Plus that early port call into Palma… and the relief of finally seeing Hawaii.
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Many years ago my Midway-based squadron planned an ACM exercise with some Japanese F-4EJ folks. It was initially named "Pipper to Nipper", but the CO nixed it. Shame.
Current version dated 1 September 2023 says both tiltrotor and helicopter pilots can credit up to 50 simulator hours towards the 500 hour requirement for aircraft commander. Different COs have different policies on whether or not to do so. Some are cool with designating people at 450 flight hours; others make you wait until 500.
@SteveHolt!!! - here ya go. Sorry, have been mid PCS with spotty internet and computer access.