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IFS Cut in Half

The Phiz said:
If I recall, the AF flies DA-20's for IFT.. It's deffinately not cessnas.
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Yes, I am aware, but my point was that it is a little ridiculous to do such a thing for an aircraft of that complexity level. Yes, any aircraft can kill you, but damn...how many ways can you skin such a small cat? I'll concede that it probably helps UPT types get into the right mindset for T-6's and the USAF method of instruction, but maybe just a wee bit excessive for a DA-20....or cessna.....or piper.....or bonanza......or mooney......or (insert light piston single here)
 
MIDNJAC said:
Yes, I am aware, but my point was that it is a little ridiculous to do such a thing for an aircraft of that complexity level. Yes, any aircraft can kill you, but damn...how many ways can you skin such a small cat? I'll concede that it probably helps UPT types get into the right mindset for T-6's and the USAF method of instruction, but maybe just a wee bit excessive for a DA-20....or cessna.....or piper.....or bonanza......or mooney......or (insert light piston single here)
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I'm looking for that quote about how to find a way to do anything less efficiently/comfortably, let someone in an Air Force uniform do it. That pretty much covers what I heard about IFT and what I experienced at UPT.
 
scoolbubba said:
I'm looking for that quote about how to find a way to do anything less efficiently/comfortably, let someone in an Air Force uniform do it. That pretty much covers what I heard about IFT and what I experienced at UPT.
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Please, if it's easy you can't get a fitrep bullet for inventing it.
 
hmm. . . .
da-20_4b.jpg
 
Diamonds are basically gliders with a lawn mower engine. Why be less comfortable under all that aramid?

the only gear I was ever required to wear at IFS were closed toe shoes...I usually threw a white T on with some board shorts and said lets do this, I've got waves to catch.....


I felt the collared shirt and belt rules were "more like guidelines."
 
There was a dress code? Huh. Who knew.

I guess I'll throw my two cents into the debate. I can't say one way or another if IFS helped or not. I was one of the first guys to go through Mobile. On the plus side, it was nice not being completely lost when it came to radio comms, and having a frame of reference when it came to knowing where most of the airports in area 1 (maybe I'm confusing it with area 2, which ever one was on the east side of Mobile bay) were. It was also a hell of a lot of fun. Other than that, IFS did not help all that much when it came to monkey skills, military comms, or emergency procedures. In fact, I remember sitting around in primary with a bunch of other students marveling at the fact that our "emergency procedures" were something to the effect of land on a runway or land someplace that isn't a house or tree.

From my point of view the intent of IFS is simply a way to wash out people who discover they aren't comfortable in the aviation environment, whether that be by natural selection or self selection. Nothing more, nothing less. Anything taken away from it is simply (minimal) icing on the cake. Wether or not IFS proves to provide the economic savings the Navy hopes, I don't know. If it turns out IFS saves no money for the Navy I see no point in it continuing to exist.
 
Why not just can IFS and give studs some extra time at the beginning of primary to learn these basic skills at a slower pace (i.e., 10 hours of fam work to include comms, VFR nav, and proper briefing techniques) without counting anything against their NSS? What would that be, 2-3 extra fam flights without the pressure of pass/fail tacked on? We already pay for the planes, the gas, and the instructors...a few hours at the start couldn't be as expensive as maintaining contracts with all of these private flight schools.
 
Because that's not the primary goal of IFS. That, and the T-34 fleet can't handle the additional load that your plan would create. If a stud attrites/drops 10 flights into IFS, it's only a couple thousand dollars lost by the Navy. If the same stud attrites/drops 10 flights into Primary, not only is that many times more expensive, but that's also 10 X's that are lost and ~20 extra hours on a fleet of aircraft that the Navy already has difficulty maintaining.
 
From the IFS brief this morning (Numbers may be a bit off, but are pretty close)

$5800/stud for "old" IFS (25 hours, 4 solos)
$3500/stud for "new" IFS (15 hours, 1 solo)

Since going from 70 (!) IFS schools nationwide to 9 spread between Pensacola, Annapolis and Quantico, attrition in IFS has increased, which is what CNATRA wants. The weird thing that I heard was that they didn't want to do a control study (one group do IFS, another group doesn't, compare the differences in the end) because of "Congressional considerations." Whatever that means.
 
Probably someone fails out of IFS, whereas they see their buddies just go straight to API/Primary, they call their Congressman and complain that they could have passed had they not done IFS.
 
I think someone mentioned it earlier in the thread, but the bottom line about IFS is its purpose. Introductory Flight Screening is a filtration tool to save the navy money. It hasn't been around very long and I can only guess as to the reason they created it was to try and attrite people as early as possible. As bad as that sounds it is actually a good thing for the vast majority of us who make it through the pipeline since that money saving could benefit naval aviation in the long run, especially with the tight budgets we are encountering.

As for the help IFS provides it obviously seems like there are varying opinions out there. I've spoken to as many aviators as possible: students at every stage in the pipeline, current IPs, former IPs, fleet pilots, etc. From what I can gather is that whether you have 25 hours in IFS or 2500 hours it all comes down to your aptitude and adaptability. So if a guy comes in with hundreds of hours but has his concept of flying and procedures ingrained in his head then he can very easily have difficulty in primary or even wash out while someone that just had 25 hours from IFS coming in but has the aptitude to pick up the fast pace of military flight training can succeed and get jets or whatever he wants. This all has to do with what I said earlier about saving the Navy money.

There is a second part to it and it is creating a flight program put the best people in those cockpits. That's why those of you that were A-pool this last Summer/Fall were taking those surveys and experiments for the new ASTB. History has shown that Navy has in the past taken the approach of allowing a broader spectrum of applicants in to the program and then filtering/weeding out at different stages of the pipeline in both academics and flight. Now it seems like the Navy is taking a different approach and focusing that filter at the very beginning of the pipeline, which equates to less money wasted overall.

Whether you get 25 or 15 hours of IFS, I would be glad to get any flight time prior to primary because it was not long ago that everyone went straight to the T-34C.
 
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