Maybe he is just one of those dudes that would rather just do the damn flying himself. He seems like an Alpha and that would be consistent with Type A personalities.
Is an O-5 in the Air Force a major? Is that considered a senior officer or is that O-6 and above? I would think you'd need to be a senior officer to even fly it.
See, I thought the opposite. It's such a specialty air craft that I would think it would require an experience aviator to get qualified to fly it. Like the B2. I wasn't even considering the physical component.
An O-5 is a Lt. Colonel. In the Air Force, we considered a senior officer to be O-6 (Colonel) and above.
They enter pilot training as a 2nd Lt. and if they stay in the cockpit most if not all of their career they typically quit flying as a Lt. Colonel.
Geez . . . Just saw this thread. I was on the bean counter staff in the Pentagon that terminated the SR-71 program. I certainly did not pull the trigger but I was in the discussions representing the navy and some of the Unified Commands. Satellite capabilities, and the growing number of satellites, as well as the ability to move digital imagery around the world, at the speed of heat, doomed the very expensive manned flight program.
Based on my experience, mostly with naval aviators, but with some Air Force, many great pilots are not great leaders or managers. A lot of the traits that make the “best stick” are at odds with the skill set of an effective leader. The navy analog is the great ship driver who refuses shore duty. He, or now, she, will skyrocket to 0-4 or 0-5 but that’s about it without some Pentagon or similar, duty.
have you ever heard of the theory that a person will be promoted untimately to the point at which they fail...I see it all the time with electronic technicians. Companies promot their best technician to manager because they are great at repairing shit and they end up sucking at leading people...
