Chad Irby posted:

Maybe back in Vietnam, but I can guarantee you that a good number of
pilots had a severe lack of interest in ECM matters in the early 1980s.

Regarding the "severe lack of interest," I pointed out:

I'm guessing you're talking about Phantom pilots. As one of them, I'd
say you're wrong. We got tested on it in RTU '80-'81 all the time in
USAFE '81-'84, as an RTU IP '84-'86...

So now Chad says:

"Getting tested on it" and "caring" are, as any high school kid can tell
you, two very different things.

Come on chad, we've gone from "severe lack of interest" to "caring?"
If I'm NOT getting tested, asked questions during
certification/verification briefings, mission qualification training,
and plain ol' ordinary day-to-day simulated "Fence" checks on a
flight...I guess you're right. But I'd feel kinda silly as a pilot
saying I "cared." Alan Alda might say he "cared" but I wouldn't. I had
to know about certain aspects of EC...as a guy in the FRONT seat I
couldn't operate the ALR-46 or the ALQ-119/131. As an IP, I could when
in the pit...at that point you would say I "cared."

Exactly. If you don't use it, you don't care.

Clearly that is the only conclusion you are able to draw. Others would
disagree.

And the way many officers dealt with it was... blow it off. If it's not
important, why care?

Again...negative training, that runs counter to "train like you
fight." C'est vrai?

Try being the guy who has to load it on the plane and then figure out
what was "wrong" with it when it comes back with a writeup that
describes, basically, normal operation.

Life isn't fair. But it would be fair to say that the guys making
those write-ups were not PILOTs...correct?

Juvat