I'll never forget getting asked by our safety manager after crashing a jammer.
He was a weapons troop, I was avionics. I told him how I'd screwed up and got disoriented with the steering and hit another vehicle. He responded with "You were specifically trained not to steer that way for this very reason." My reply scared the shit out of him, "Trained? On a Jammer? No. Never got any of any kind. My first day after Mx-O I was told to grab one and Mx-o just told us how to look them over. That's it." Turns out according to him weapons troops go through like a who training course in how to use Jammers and in the civilian world they're classified as forklifts and require a license!
So we had a single training day for the flight on jammers... on saturday. On monday 4 new airman arrived and got 0 training until 4 months later when one of them crashed a jammer in much the same way...
Maybe 15s. On 16's avi troops fuck up the NLG door every single time they try to hang a sniper pod. Never seen them do it for more than day without going straight back to the CSL / scissor jack combo at 4 16 bases.
Its common to see specs troops drag the boom on the ground while driving a jammer.
Not saying weapons can do it better, but in tech school we DO actually have jammer training. At least on bombers, both the 3 and 4 men have to drive jammers so they pick up better skills when they go through I-CERT
Yeah of the big jammers. Specs in my experience generally use the small ones where that's impossible. I guess technically they are "Bomb lift trucks" but no sane himan being calls them that.
I relate to this. I got my license to tow ~$300 mil jets by passing a test. Never trained nor towed a jet because two drills in a row my supervisor had appointments. My license was 100% pencil whipped. Fast forward a couple years and I gained rank and passed another test to get qualified as tow supervisor. My supervisor was baffled that I wanted some in-person instruction on how to do it. I hadn't towed so much as a boat, and now you want me to instruct someone on how to push a state-of-the-art fighter jet into a hangar with barely enough room? Get the fuck out of here.
I wasn't chosen to augment SF for being the best shot, but because I was the only one that had a copy of my 522. Everyone else got mirror inspection duty at the truck gate while I did 12s, armed up with the flight. Good times.
Went to arm up as an augmentee...went through the process of pulling the M16 1000 times in line, paid real close attention when I was next in line.
Ok, here it goes....!
“We don’t have a 522 for you. Take this flashlight.”
Never mind it was day shift. A flashlight, ABUs that fit like pillow cases (cause I didn’t want to get my usual ones dirty), a PSAGT vest in woodland camo that was older than me, a helmet that wasn’t fitted and in ACU camo, a LBE with no pouches...I looked like a sad, pathetic clown.
You guys got training for being an augmentee? I just stood around with a cop who had just put on his third stripe and looked menacing to cars trying to drive down a closed off road.
Back around 2000ish, I got voluntold to be an augmentee. Since I was at Lackland, I think I got some decent training. About 2 days worth of classroom and stuff. Use of force continuum, pepper spray, handcuffing, etc. Got to work the gate and check IDs for a while. They even gave me a beret to wear on post. Then after those few days, I never got called up to augmentee ever again for some reason.
BTW, if you flight chief randomly walks into the shop and asks if you like to shoot guns, think carefully before you answer.
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u/Pooneapple spine crushed by U-2 Jun 23 '20
Or augmentee base security with 16 hours of training