About VADE
VADE is a small educational effort focused on where military aviation and VA disability intersect. This page explains who runs it, why it exists, and what it is deliberately not trying to become.
Twenty years in the air — and a career studying what happens when things go wrong.
The website is run by me, Joseph Wolfer. I’m a retired Air Force officer and career aviator with more than 4,100 total military and civilian flight hours, approximately 3,100 as pilot in command. I flew and instructed in the T-37 and C-17 during a 20-year Air Force career. After retiring in 2020, I worked in civilian and military aviation, including approximately two years in the United Arab Emirates in an international aviation-management role and three years flying the Dassault Falcon 900 in Part 91 and Part 135 operations. Today, I am back to instructing C-17 pilots as a simulator instructor.
I hold an ATP and CFI-Instrument and a master’s degree in aerospace safety systems from Embry-Riddle, where I have taught accident investigation, human factors, and safety-program management since 2001.
Investigating mishaps is the discipline behind this work
As Chief of Wing Flight Safety at Altus Air Force Base, I held accident and incident investigation authority over 42 aircraft and ran the safety program for more than 900 aircrew. I served as lead investigator on multiple mishap investigations, work that had to withstand headquarters-level scrutiny. After retiring from the Air Force, I later helped draft DoD-level policy integrating aviation safety data programs across the Army, Navy, and Air Force safety centers.
Mishap investigation is a specific discipline. You are handed an incomplete record and asked to establish what happened and why, in a form that holds up when someone senior disagrees with you. You work from maintenance records, medical records, training histories, and interviews, and you build a causal chain that can be defended.
A VA disability claim is a different subject with a similar structure. The record is incomplete. The question is causal. The finding has to be documented well enough to survive review by someone who was not there.
That overlap is the reason VADE takes the shape it does.
A diagnosis ended the flying
I chose to stop flying in 2022 after a cardiac diagnosis — a condition VA later determined to be service connected. A special issuance was available; however, I chose not to pursue it, for reasons that will be familiar to anyone who has weighed a medical certification path against the rest of their life.
That experience is the other half of why VADE exists. The questions aviators ask about diagnosis, documentation, and certification are not abstract here. Neither is the calculation about whether the path back to the cockpit is worth what it costs.
Most material written about VA disability is written for veterans generally. Very little of it is written by someone who has weighed a grounding against a family, or who understands what an aeromedical summary actually contains.
Small on purpose
VADE is intended to stay small, selective, and technically serious. The goal is not scale.
That means a defined focus — military aviators, aircrew, and veterans whose disability questions run through flight medicine, Guard and Reserve service, or medical certification. It means education before anything else. And it means being direct about the limits of what VADE knows and what it is authorized to do.
VADE is not a claims mill, not a lead-generation service, and not an attempt to be expert in every corner of veterans law. There are people who do those things. This is not that.
Where things stand
I am currently pursuing accreditation as a VA claims agent under 38 CFR § 14.629. Until that process is complete, VADE is an educational publication and nothing more. It does not represent veterans before VA, prepare or file claims, or offer individualized claim advice.
When accreditation is granted, this page will say so.