Leaderboard

Longtime lurker, first time poster here. In the interests of disclosure: I am not rated. I found this board by accident in 2011, when I was trying to find any kind of intelligent discussion on the force management programs that year. This year is the first year I ended up being eligible for VSP, so I came back and have been happy to find that the discussion has kept up. I appreciate you all for your comments, I learn more from reading this board than my command, the A1 community and my functional combined. It's sad that this is where my information has to come from, but thank you nonetheless. Given all that I have learned from you all, I wanted to share some tidbits that I have come across. Take them for what they're worth. This week in our staff meeting, our FSS/CC said that officer VSP packages will not be reviewed for at least two weeks. Apparently the Chief heard you all. The VSP packages are being held up while a package routes through A1 to look at waiving ADSCs for UPT. Finally someone realized that it isn't fair to have a blanket denial for VSP and then subject folks to the RIF. That's not saying that UPT ADSC's will be waived, but it is being looked at by the Air Staff. Second, our functional works pretty closely with A1. He said that the initial overage matrix put out by AFPC aren't necessarily a lie, but in all probability they won't be the final number of cuts. Apparently A1 puts a worst case scenario for cuts out there at the beginning, knowing that isn't what's going to happen. In theory this is so that everyone is on notice that the cuts could be bad. It isn't lost on them that one of the effects of this is that people freak out about how bad the cuts will be and get out voluntarily. Expect the number of "overages" to drop. Like I said, take these for what they're worth. Thank you all for putting this discussion out there.

have you met with him to ask the status of your application? Make him tell you to your face that he's slow-rolling it, or conversely you calling him out may actually get him to act in a timely manner.

Kids and their face books.

This is a strawman argument and has very little to do with the ACA.

Based on your post, I'm guessing you haven't read a post in this thread........ AFPC said they will process in monthly batches per the PSDM

Unfortuantely these leadership issues are not limited to the 13N career field. I hope whatever fix they put in place gets adopted AF-wide as much as practical. 'It has become a self-perpetuating caste. “It’s command incest—you get a bad leader who finds a subordinate who’s just as bad as he is, and he promotes that subordinate, and on and on. It’s been going on for four decades now and so you mostly get a crop of leaders who are more interested in their careers than they are in actually leading,” he says. “Leadership is a human endeavor, and the Air Force takes the humanity out of it.”' I've met an O-6 who believes if your sole purpose in life is not going after O-6 then you are not AF "leadership" material. He likes to say "Oh you won't make O-6 if you took that assignment" to junior officers filling out the ADP and will it hold it against them if they don't take his advice and follow his path.

So....grandfathered. Just like the President promised.

He's a contractor, so give him the obligatory "Go fukc yourself" and carry on.

There's one thing that I think needs to be understood in all this (and this will kind of bleed into the Force Shaping and Pilot Bonus threads)--and that is demographics. In my estimation, it has more to do with the mess the Air Force finds itself in than individual leaders' decisions. Here goes: - Leader selection: -- Our current batch of Air Force four-stars entered the Air Force between 1976-1980, and our current O-6s entered generally between 1983-1991 (pin-on somewhere around 22 years & stay as late as 30 yrs) -- Peak hiring in the last hiring boom was between 1996-2000ish -- What this means to me: Our current four-stars hit 20-year retirement eligibility, and our much of our current O-6 leadership hit bonus eligibility in the midst of the hiring boom and stayed in, while their peers were getting out in droves -- What this means to me is that Big Blue had a smaller pool of candidates from which to select future senior leaders, and it is quite possible that there was a decrease in quality as a result. Dudes that might have stayed in and made the Air Force a better place pulled chocks instead Note: I have no solid evidence of this, but choosing leaders from a smaller "gene pool" has to have a qualitative impact Looking forward: - Baby boomers are hitting age 65 in ever-increasing numbers; the peak of the Baby Boom was in 1961 (4.3 million--will hit 65 in 2026), so they'll be leaving huge holes in the workforce well into the future (for we pilots, as we know this translates into significant hiring) - At the same time Boomer retirements accelerate, those Air Force officers who were born in the worst of the Baby Bust years (lowest births in 1973, with only 3.14 million) will hit 20-year retirement eligibility (born in approx '73, commissioned in approx '95, retirement eligible in '15) - The year groups in and around the '95 year groups were ones in which Big Blue grossly underproduced pilots--and in particular produced way too few 11Ms To sum up: - In the next several years, rapidly increasing demand (most importantly pilots in our example, but they'll need experience across disciplines and industries) will be met by some of the lowest numbers of recently-retired Air Force pilots (and in particular mobility pilots) in many years - Historically high demand will meet historically low supply, which will lead the majority of those who stuck it out 20 yr retirement to walk into the readily-available airline--and other--jobs out there. Given the inevitably small (sts) number of pilots that bother to stay in past 20 yrs and thus meet their O-6 boards, how much quality control do you think Big Blue is going to have? If the bumpy ride we've had in the Air Force over the past several years is in any way due to poor quality control (driven by low numbers of folks who stayed in during the late-90s as stated above), then we're in for a really bumpy ride over the next decade and a half or so. - I guess the good news is that if you're a 15-20 year O-5 type and you've played the game reasonably well over the past several years, you'll have a historically good chance at making O-6. You won't have any competent minions (read grey beard O-4/O-5 types), since they'll find much greener pastures outside of the Air Force, you won't have any money for your organization, and you'll deal with senior leadership that for the most part has destroyed institutional morale . . . but you'll have some really cool, shiny birds on your shoulders. Good luck with that. I hope we get some combination of competent/inspirational leaders and useful bonuses to ensure that we retain what leadership talent we have. Rant off. Edited for a math error

translation: nope.

When it comes to corn, I think simplicity is beautiful. Jalapenos, corn, cooked like one should learn in pilot training. Thats about it. And booze, lots of booze.

In his defense, it's about time a CGO came out (STS) and said it in public, because his "leadership" probably doesn't give a damn. I applaud him for having the balls to use his real name and stating something that many of us agree with. He's the opposite of Col (s) Tater Tots.

Up in Iowa the other day an infant was found in a tote outside in subzero wx. Apparently not from Iowa so not covered by Iowa M.A. No one at the time knew who the kid was. Let's see.......HeloDude.....you get to make the decision.....hauled free by the local ambulance? Yes or No? seen in the local emergency dept? Yes or No? Admitted to Peds at U. of Iowa? Kid has no wallet and is a John Doe. Grandaddy shows up from Terra Haute and instantly has an asthma attack. M.A. thru Indiana (at least that is what admissions is told). Admit or out the door? Grandaddy will be getting a call from a personal injury mouthpiece in a few days Helo Fellow...hows YOUR insurance? Oh? It's free market and nothing written for "deliberate" harmful actions. ...........................I forgot one. "Dad...booted out of Rottcee for a heart murmur....since i'm a free market fellow like you i'll just pay cash if I can find coverage.....you got any? Cash I mean"........