Small Potatoes

[nerwengreen]

For the past few months I've been rather deeply embroiled in helping debunk the pack of morons who think that the Large Hadron Collider will make black holes that will destroy the earth. Long story short, the lead guy, Walter Wagner, is neither a physicist nor a lawyer, and has only a biology BA. Most of his minions appear to be mental patients and the like.

Anyway, that's not what this post is about. This post is about Fuzz's recent claim that he's a) in the Air Force, and b) about to deploy to Iraq. I took the opportunity to show his little tale to a retired Navy guy, Jim Wright, and there has been much pointing and laughing ever since. This post is a reprint of what Jim had to say (quoted with permission from a private forum). Please note that Jim is retired from the Navy, and he swears like a sailor, so there is some strong language in the rest of this post.

So to start, here's what Fuzz said:

I'm in the Air Force reserves, only one small little bitty problem, my personal unit is being sent to Iraq for six months, we were'nt to go there AT ALL! So we ask, "wehy are we goingto Iraq?" We are told "crowd control" then told to "not worry, you wont see any fighting. We just need your help in controlling traffic things like that for the inauguration on the 20th"

I said "OK we'll do it"

Then in the mail today, we get our notice of how long we are to be in Iraq, six months, at least I'll have internet!

And here's what Jim said in reply:

• First the AF doesn't go in country. AF bases and aircraft are outside Iraq for numerous reasons - but mostly because expensive planes are vulnerable on the ground. AF is based in Kuwait and Qatar.
  
• current deployments are 12-18 months for units. 6-8 months for individual augmentation. His "sent to Iraq for six months" as a unit doesn't make sense.
  
• AF rarely, if ever, provides 'traffic control' (a Euphemism for Check Point and Patrol), certain not a unit not trained for it, it's about the most dangerous job there is short of kicking in doors, or defusing IED's. (edit: let me expand on this, traffic control, in a foreign city, surrounded by car bombs and IEDs and crowds WHO DON"T SPEAK ENGLISH and drive on the other side of the road, security routes, secure route, cleared routed, non-cleared, vehicle recognition, cultural familiarization, conflict resolution and escalation, anti-terrorism training, weapons training, small unit emergency tactics, communications procedures, chain of command, terrain and geographic familiarization, and etc, etc, and etc ad nauseum. Getting the picture here? It ain't like directing traffic in the parking lot at the little league game. Welcome to fucking Iraq, asshole, BOOM!).
  
• personal unit? or Personnel Unit?
  
• "...weren't supposed to go AT ALL!" An army or Marine Corps unit might deploy on short notice, certainly a Navy unit (which is sort of SOP for us), but an augmentation AF unit? In a pig's eye. That's scheduled 12-18 months out, money has to be funded, training completed (especially for a reserve AF unit that has never deployed), equipment procured, issued, prepped in a unit unused to doing such. A unit deployment would hardly be a surprise - they'd have been recalled to active duty six months out and training hard.
  
• "You won't see any fighting." In a pig's eye - nobody would ever tell a deploying unit that, especially one going to Iraq. What they would say is - you will see hostilities, guaran-fucking-teed, some of you are likely not to come home. Get your POA and Wills filled out, check your SGLI (life insurance), and make Goddamn sure you pay attention during training prep.
  
• "So I said, OK we'll do it." WTF? What is this guy, the commanding colonel? And if he actually is the CO, the only thing he'd say is "Yes, Sir."
  
• orders, especially unit order don't come "by mail."
  
• Inauguration on the 20th, again short notice, way, way, way, way too short of notice. A special forces combat team (not unit, team) in A-96 ready alert might be able to meet that target date, nobody else. The logistics don't work. You couldn't arrange either funding or transport, let alone garrison, for a full reserve unit in anything less than 60 days under the most dire of circumstance. This guy has 13 days to get ready for a six month no-notice combat deployment and he's fucking around on the Internet in a gaming forum? Riiiiiiiight.
  
  Bottom line, I think his unit might have been activated for the inauguration, 6 hour job in DC. Active duty and Reserve units are called up to provide crowd/traffic control in D.C. during the inauguration, it's considered an honor. I've done it myself, during the first GWB inauguration (directed buses on the National mall. Chicks, they dig a guy in Navy Dress Blues, just saying. Especially the 70+ widowers). But the duty last about 6 hours, and they feed you, and it's a blast. Then you go home.
  
  The most hazardous thing you have to deal with are enthusiastic blue-hairs driving in D.C. traffic for the first time with all the streets blocked off. And the units activated are usually just D.C. area units. And it's usually voluntary for individuals, at least to some extent. Each is called on to provide a given number of personnel, it's a high visibility event, units only send their sharpest and very best. Usually young junior personnel who will best represent the command and deserve a reward (usually your Sailor/Soldier/Marine/Airman of the Month/Year, etc).
  
  There's a lot of crap packed into that one paragraph. That's why posers are usually hauled up short pretty damned quick when they meet real military folks - sort of like poser physicists.
  

So, armed with all that, I asked a single simple question: "What's the name of your unit?"

Fuzz's reply:

I'm just a Airman in my unit, nothing more then that, so I have no idea. Never asked I guess. I got the deployment notice that my unit was going for six months, and worldn't see any fighting where we'd be located. That was it.

...

80th FTW (80th Flight Training Wing) no oders of what I'm to do to in Iraq, other then crowd control. We will be flight training in a combat zone for all I know. I'm only part of the mechcanic crew for two blackbird choppers, so I don't ask questions of why, I just follow orders given.

So I passed all that over to the private forum again. And got the following replies:

(from John the Scientist)

First of all "blackbird" helicopters? WTF?

Second, the 80th is a jet fighter training unit. Helicopters?

And it seems to be an active duty unit. Reserves?

(from Jim Wright)
Yeah, this guy is bullshitting you to no end.

- I don't know what a blackbird chopper is. H-60 Blackhawk maybe, but, uh, that's an Army bird. The AF doesn't fly them.
- chopper is a term used commonly in Vietnam to describe the UH-1 Huey due to it's single rotor design giving it a distinctive chop chop chop sound. The term is rarely used nowadays, and certainly not describe the H-60 which is a four-blade aircraft. Navy calls it a "Helo", CG calls it a "plane," Army calls it a "bird," and the AF usually calls it an aircraft or a bird. Nobody but Hollywood types uses the term "chopper" and people who watch too many Hollywood films.

Ask him what the designator for the "blackbird" is, including the variant. (any mechanic no matter how junior would know that blind drunk in his sleep).

John's already pointed out the problem with the 80th FTW. It's a training wing, not a deployment wing. It's an active duty wing, not a reserve. It's ALSO a Euro-NATO training wing, i.e. they train NATO pilots on US Aircraft, specifically the F-16.

The more this guy talks, the less sense he makes. I call shenanigans.

My brother was an instructor with the 80th at Sheppard. I knew that sounded familiar. Just talked to him. I'm wrong about the F-16's, well sort of. The 80th uses jet trainers to teach basic jet flight instruction. Then the foreign pilots move over to a different squadron to get the F-16 training. Whatever. The 80th is a training squadron, they don't deploy. Certainly not to the desert.

Now, here's the thing, this is basically a school house, everybody assigned there is a senior enlisted or a flight instructor officer. He says "I'm just a Airman..." That's interesting. An Airman is an E-3, that's just about as junior as it gets in the AF. No, seriously, I don't think I've ever heard of an AF enlisted outside of bootcamp who was an Airman Recruit or Airman Basic (E-1 or E-2), everybody is a Senior Airman (E-4) out of school.

This guy is a fucking student.

Now, it is possible that a couple of these guys are going over to train Iraqi pilots for after the pull out. But again here's the thing, if he was part of a unit going to train Iraqi flight crews - well, for one thing we don't send some junior dipshit, he would sure as hell know what he was doing, and he would have to be prepping lesson plans and etc.

Here's the thing - scheduling those big ass cargo bird (especially a C-5 which is a special strategic asset) is done months in advance. They can be diverted for an emergency, but to break TPFDD (Time Phased Force Deployment Doctrine - I.e. THE SCHEDULE) is a major, major issue and you have to have basically National Command Authority to do so (it's called a having "strategic special tickets"). There's about 4 units in the entire US military that have that authority. There used to be about 8, I was the XO of one, all of those units are now decommissioned. Trust me on this, ain't no way, no how that some rinky dinky training flight out of Sheppard, AF no less (no insult intended, but in this war AF has exactly dick priority, this is a ground conflict) has any kind of priority scheduling. Period. It just doesn't work that way. There are only so many transport planes, and they are all scheduled to the absolute maximum in advance.

Now if the "blackbirds" aren't going - what's he supposed to do? Traffic Control, I don't fucking think so, for the aforementioned reason.

Inauguration duties, from Sheppard? In Texas? For six hours of helping with traffic in D.C? Yeah. Sure.

This guy is so totally full of shit that it just boggles the mind.

That's where we are at the moment. I see that there has been some more conversation about this on RPoL in a member-run game/forum, in which Fuzz backpedals like there's no tomorrow, but I haven't passed anything new to Jim. Though I could, if someone wants me to get him to snark some more. ;)

Anyhoo, small potatoes. As everyone who has spent any amount of time talking to him knows, Fuzz is well known as a pathological liar. This is just his latest in a long line of tall tales. I hope the info posted here is useful to everyone who isn't as experienced with the U.S. military.