Leaderboard

Had our Flight Safety NCO win an annual award (FSNCO of the year for the MAJCOM)...participated in numerous community events (tornado rescue/clean up, etc). He's done a TON of stuff in the office to improve the program. He's made a lot of progress on his CCAF degree. Went from a high 70s to high 90s on his PFT in the past 6 months. Started teaching tobacco cessation classes...I could go on. Anyway, my boss and I recommended him for a STEP promotion. The wing command chief shot it down, saying he doesn't have CCAF complete...and we're trying to promote him to Tech. My question to my boss...why the hell is the chief making the call? Why can't the wing commander make that call? Next example...here in the AOR, we submitted someone for a medal. The chief out here shot it down and said he won't approve it because a couple years ago this individual failed the PFT. Despite the fact the past year or two this individual has consistently scored in the 80s and 90s (last test was mid-90s)...and the rest of their record is exemplary. But because they screwed up 2-3 years ago and failed, they can't get a medal. You know what I think that says to our airmen? it. Don't try anymore. No reason to improve or get better because if you failed once, you're ed and you'll never get another pat on the back. Doesn't matter that this medal would have acknowledged your stellar performance over the past half a year...you screwed up many moons ago so it's all for nil. Not to mention...why can't the officers in our leadership chain say "sorry chief, but I'm giving this person a medal...it's deserved". I wish I could raise more of an issue about this, but it seems everyone else (O-5s, O-6s and O-7s) seem to just roll over and say "well the CMSgt said no". So I realize a junior FGO like me is standing at the base of a cliff with no rope...so vent and bitch on baseops.net it is!

There is some truth to what ETAero said although its not straight forward. A guy in my squadron who had a ton of civilian jet time in fact bypassed IFS (and it was as recent as this past summer, 2011) , only because someone in my squadron did some research and found they were able to get some kind of waiver for him. If you only have a PPL and a few hundred hours or less I'll bet that you have no option of getting out of IFS. Based on my experience and all my reserve buds...AFRC UPT candidates stay with their home squadron and only report to UPT usually 10 business days prior to their class start date. IFS is a TDY from the home unit.

Time for General Schwartz to be retired. Our Air Force has lost its focus. Too many years at war and ops tempo while leadership and tone has been on service dress jackets, airline stripes, the color and name our our fatigues, a new AF logo, new PFT, new AF motto, new PT uniform, joint bases/everything, new AF chant, and PT civilian testers. And we're disrespecting our brothers and sisters who have given their last breath for our country with landfills and this atrocity. Our service right now can't be trusted with two very sacred acts...returning our heroes and handling nuclear weapons. Leadership has failed us.

Steve, This opinion coming from a non-fighter guy, but a guy who has worn the mask almost my entire career (3800 hours), because the gunpig is unpressurized. I think the answer as always is "it depends"... First, was he hypoxic because of lack of oxygen or because of other contaminants in his bloodstream. As I recall carbon monoxide bonds with hemoglobin 230 times stronger than oxygen so simply dropping the mask may not be a simple recovery solution. There are too many unknowns to kn ow the actual situation. Second, A lot depends on his altitude at the time of the incident. As you know the higher you are the less time you have to react, and in the high 30's you may have less than 5 seconds of useful consciousness. Hypoxia is nothing to fuck around with. I can tell you I had an IFE in OEF where multiple members of my crew began to experience hypoxia symptoms as we climbed unpressurized to our combat altitude. The aircraft had just returned from heavy fuel cell maintenance. We just crossed the fence and were climbing to altitude when folks started complaining about an extreme fuel smell. Our bold face tells us to have everyone get on the hose and go 100% oxygen...we were already on the hose and within a few minutes several of my guys started experiencing hypoxia symptoms. It took us a few minutes but we determined the oxygen hoses were mistakenly soaked in J-8...I was faced with a dilemma but I order the crew to drop masks (against the Dash 1), and started an emergency descent to 10K. I got lucky and judgement carried the day.