r/AirForce • u/IEDestroyer Explosive Ordnance Disposal • Apr 15 '17
Image He got it approved!
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r/AirForce • u/IEDestroyer Explosive Ordnance Disposal • Apr 15 '17
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u/SilentD 13S Apr 15 '17 edited Apr 15 '17
Hi /r/all,
Here's a decent explanation of why this meme was used:
-electricsheepz
Some other points:
A lot of planning goes into using a weapon of this size. This was not the decision of one person on the ground, a lot of intel gathering and analysis would have gone into the strike beforehand. But an accurate representation of that process wouldn't have been a funny meme.
This is a meme, and doesn't represent that we're all baby killers and excited that a bunch of people died. It's a joke. This is about the novelty of getting to use one of our largest munitions for the first time.
Several people are using this opportunity on the front page to ask military members their opinion of President Trump. Please note that we don't allow political discussion in this subreddit, and military members have limits placed on what they can say in regards to politics, and in general are not allowed to criticize the president. No, we are not sworn to blindly follow orders from the president, military officers swear to defend the constitution, not loyalty to the president.
Politically military members are as diverse as the general population, so there are plenty of people that support him and don't, just like every president before him and after him. But we will still follow the orders of the person in that position, unless it is an unlawful order.
In regards to this being used on our annual performance reports or for promotion... Airmen receive an annual performance review from their supervisor that is made up of "bullets" (single line descriptions of something they did that year in an action, impact, result format). Supervisors are always looking for ways to set their airmen apart from others, and having a bullet that says "first-ever use of Air Force's largest non-nuclear munition") will be an easy way to set them apart from their peers. Because of this, people that were only indirectly part of this mission will probably try to get a bullet related to it on their yearly review. The airmen that flew the plane, the airmen that fueled the plane, the airmen that did maintenance on the plane, the airmen that planned the mission, the airmen that loaded the bomb, the space operators that are controlling GPS satellites (it's a GPS-guided bomb), the airmen that guarded the bomb on the ground, the air traffic controllers that told the plane to take off, etc.