“who wouldn’t want to travel that easy route? Hot machines to have fun with, courtesy of the taxpayer. Hero worship from every angle, no meaningful maturity required. “
“truth: that fighter pilots haven’t yet learned to distinguish friend from foe. “
Something tells me you were never in the Air Force if that’s what you think. It ain’t easy to be a good pilot, hero worship isn’t from every angle (very few actually), and without maturity a pilot flunks out. I wasn’t an AF pilot (flew spacecraft instead, and currently a private pilot), but I know many military and civilian pilots (many civilian pilots were military pilots) and without maturity the career is very short lived.
Not sure that you mean by “distinguish friend from foe.” If that is from the air then get up in the air and let us know your genius thoughts on how a two dimensional looking flat brown Earth distinguishes friend from foe without some help from friend.
“...Something tells me you were never in the Air Force if that’s what you think.”
CodeToad might be able to make more sense of the situation if he found a “something” with higher accuracy. See my post #85 in response to Hulka’s comments.
“... It ain’t easy to be a good pilot, hero worship isn’t from every angle (very few actually), and without maturity a pilot flunks out. ...”
It’s laughably easy to be a “good pilot” in the sense of driving the airplane. (Yes, I’ve a private pilot ticket too. My total taildragging time exceeds that of most USAF pilots).
In fact, many modern combat aircraft were deliberately built to be easy to fly. I participated in more design studies, acquisition milestone reviews, data collection/analysis taskings, after-action report analyses, and the like than I can recall at the moment, but some glimmer of understanding dawned evnetually. Frightening sums of the taxpayers’ money have been thrown at the problem.
“I wasn’t an AF pilot ... without maturity the career is very short lived. ...”
CodeToad’s claims are not supported by any evidence.
I spent my career working for senior officers who were pilots; “maturity” (as understood by us lesser mortals) was not a required character attribute for advancement. In truth, maturity was a hindrance as they pursued endless rounds of rough-and-tumble and one-upmanship. “Short-lived” is not a term that applied to their careers.
And the hero worship arrives from more angles than one can find on a compass rose (for those of you who follow GPS everywhere, there are 360 degrees of them). Even from official sources: note how many fighter pilots are placed in command of units that haven’t any association with things fighter. Said fighter pilots are assumed to know everything about everything - and to have the abilities to artfully employ their unbounded knowledge in executing leadership duties. Reality is 180 degrees out of phase with such assumptions.
“Not sure that you mean by ‘... distinguish friend from foe.’ ...”
In actual action, fighter pilots need all the help they can get to do this right. Not that they admit it; more than once, people like me had to force it on them. Our efforts were not always successful: lethal screw-ups still happen. Then they leap to cover up for each other.
But my remark was in response to Hulka’s citation of the “fighters and targets” commonplace. Since some forum members apparently have trouble reading, I’ll restate:
Hulka (and any number of fighter pilots) might claim that stuff like this as a joke (in public anyway), but they all believe the truth of it. Indeed, it’s a bedrock belief, and does extra duty as moral justification for much lower-order nonsense. I’ve seen it in journals and diaries dating to the Second World War, written by fighter pilots, who were not joking at all as they scribbled quotidian thoughts into their private record. Even pilots who flew other machines wrote it, usually to the accompaniment of whines about not already being a fighter pilot, and complaints about the personnel bureaucracy, which was still (still!) turning a deaf ear to their never-ending requests for transfer to a fighter outfit.
And I’ll reiterate what I posted to Hulka: standing by for all the smart remarks, sneering condescension, and middle school bathroom humor that is invariably directed at navs.
I do have to confess my puzzlement at people who are not fighter pilots, but who take such indignant umbrage when some other lesser mortal dares to utter the stray doubt about the probity of the fighter community: seen it happen among USAFA grads (used to think we were better than that, but I was wrong). Do you live in hopes the fighter pilotry will toss a bone or two your way? I must warn you that you hope in vain: none of your kowtowing or genuflecting will matter in the end, and you will collect a knife in the back when they find it convenient.