Leaderboard

Tail rotor vibe checks and main rotor track and balance may be tedious but it's a lot less queepy then making sure the correct UEM posters are in the squadron and that the staff meeting slides are updated. Plus when it gets released you have actually accomplished something rather than making a stoplight chart green.

I chose the wrong word to describe FCF. FCFing is very detailed, and it IS about the little things, but the difference is those little things matter. It's not senseless bureaucratic nonsense.

In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below. We are the Dead. Short days ago We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow, Loved and were loved, and now we lie In Flanders fields. Take up our quarrel with the foe: To you from failing hands we throw The torch; be yours to hold it high. If ye break faith with us who die We shall not sleep, though poppies grow In Flanders fields. --1Lt John McRae, RCA, WWI

Except she can say "no."

heehee...

The Cartels are already all over the country and have been for many years. There has just been a concerted effort by politicians and law enforcement to cover it up.

Herkbum Posted from the NEW Baseops.net App!

I'm not blaming you for working the system to your advantage--kudos! But this is a big driver in what is wrong with the system. We hire contractors because the are "cheaper" and more "efficient", we don't give them the queep or have them deploy. This means fewer AD guys to do the queep and deployments. That make the contractors look even more efficient because they aren't doing the queep. If a squadron were 50% contractors and 50% AD, the AD would get 100% of the queep and << 50% of the flying. The response from the Pentagon is more contractors AND more queep. The result is an AD force that is burnt out from deployments and feed up with queep. Not contracting out these positions would give the opportunity to catch their breath between deployments and would spread the queep thinner. Also they need to send less queep.

I don't know you and I don't know this colonel, but something strikes me as rather chickensh!t to call someone out by name in an anonymous forum and not give a reason why.

Really? Conversation heard everywhere: "Where did you commission? The Academy. What squad were you in?" Instant bro club in a lot of places. And hot chick sleeping up the ladder? Seen it more than once. Just a lengthier process...and the liberal use of the word hot.

I'll bite, even though I might have a few contrary opinions. The Air Force didn't drive me out with their micro or macro personnel decisions, management actions or culture changes. I chose to get out because I'm ready re-assert control of where I live and where I spend each night, plain and simple. Flying has been fun at times and monotonous at others, but in the end, the benefits of a flying career don't outweigh the costs for me personally. As far as the Air Force queep, I fully expect to find a new but different set of queep at whatever company eventually hires me. I don't believe the grass is really greener on any particular lawn, just different shades of green. The Air Force at least makes a rough attempt to establish a meritocracy, and gets it right a lot. (Flame on) There's a plethora of individual examples of the system not working, but in my decade in the Air Force, I never saw a suggestion for a better ranking system that truly made sense across the board. Objectively and subjectively grading people simultaneously is damn near impossible, but differentiation has to occur somehow. Unlike the civilian world, I wasn't looked down upon because I didn't go to an Ivy League college out of high school. I also never had to put up with the douche-bag son of the company president who's untouchable or the insufferable hot chick who's sleeping her way up the ladder. There's bullshit everywhere. The trick is to mentally rise above the mess and still perform. I finally saw the light on my path about a year ago when I was thinking about the book The Five Love Languages. Since BODN is a macho-centric forum, I'll spare everyone the intricate details, but if you really want to learn more about how you personally relate to others, read the book. My top three methods of connection required me to be in the presence of the other people who meant something to me. So I finally realized I would be an idiot to pursue a civilian aviation career or continue in the military, as I'm guaranteed to be absent from "home" and the people I care for at least half of my life in either pursuit. Why would I knowingly accept a situation where I know I personally don't thrive? So in the end I gave up my promotion and school slot and I'm punching. I'm studying for the GMAT now and I'll go to the highest tier business school that will admit me and then I'm moving back to my home state. I'll still be running just as hard as I was in uniform, just in different directions and I'll have the backing of a community that remains stable. I'll finally mentally stretch out and form real roots. Can't wait... In closing, I actually don't understand all of the "congratulations" people are passing around. I'm glad those who got VSP got what they wanted, but we haven't "accomplished" anything more than those who didn't get VSP. We got lucky. Lucky that big blue needs to downsize now and lucky that our names were picked from the hat. As much as I'm excited to control my own destiny again, I also can't shake the feeling that I'm quitting and leaving my country's service before my agreed-upon obligation is fulfilled. I will accomplish something someday (hopefully soon) that warrants a "congratulations" but I don't feel like accepting the VSP falls into that category. (again, flame on)

I wanted to be an Air Force pilot my entire life and if you asked anyone that knew me back in AFROTC they would tell you I would stay in for a full career. However once I got into the "real" Air Force I found the focus in C-17s to be about anything but flying. I was never talked to by management about my last tactical approach but about how I was an "embarrassment" for not having my zippers zipped to the appropriate length etc. Thinking that it must be an AMC thing I headed over to T-6s to see if the grass was greener. However it was anything but. Regardless of how hard I worked as a USEM or Chief of Programming I was given second class treatment by our fighter centric management who were the castoffs from the F-15 community. Fear, sarcasm, and intimidation are their tactics in managing a squadron as I came to find out. They looked after their bro network and literally couldn't care about any of my goals or desires to become A PIT instructor FCF pilot you name it. The kicker was my squadron commander directly lied to my face about how I was not selected for 2+2 because of time on station when in reality he never pushed my application beyond the squadron level. I wish the next assignment would mean an improvement however seeing the calibre of the people the Air Force Deems fit for command leads me to believe that VSP is the best option for me The Air Force has helped me out as an aviator in so many ways but it's time to move on with a new phase of my life where I decide who I want to work for, where I want to live and how I wish to live.

Just delete the "%C2%A0" at the end of his link. TLDR version of the story- James O'Keefe gives us another edited video to show things out of context and Americans being greedy to finance a film.

Better check yourself with throwing out the racist card. Not every illegal alien is someone just coming here looking for work. If you actually did the job of working down the border areas, you would know the numbers of hard-core felons that are caught coming across the border into the country. People with wants/warrants for rape, murder, sex crimes, child crimes, human and weapons smuggling, kidnapping; and the list goes on. Go to the ICE detention center in Florence, AZ and see who is being held there that were caught by BP. And that's only those who were caught. Who knows how many haven't been. That is the reason there isn't an open gate to the border nor should there be. While yes, the immigration system in this country does need some streamlining and updating, simply opening the border wholesale isn't the way to fix that problem. Holding those who hire and exploit the cheap labor illegals provide, preying on their fear of never going to the police to complain, is what needs to be done. Come down here and work the desert southwest sometime. It would blow your mind what kind of people are caught and what their backgrounds are......or even what they're currently caught in the act of doing. Until then, your exercise in pure academia is nothing more than that.

If you think that all that's going on down on the border states is "playing catch and release with Mexican immigrants", then you need to come down here actually see what's going on that isn't getting reported in your daily news. There are some persons and threats coming through that are caught, and many that aren't, that would make your head spin. There are situations, engagements, and other scenarios both with military and military-style forces, as well as cartels and other organized factions, where our outmanned and outgunned CBP can't (and in some cases, aren't allowed to) stop them. Come down and see sometime, it would open your eyes a bit. So yes, playing masters of the universe around the world with every problem and situation large and small, shouldn't cause there to be a complete ignoring of the realities of what it slipping through central America and across our own "secured" borders. Without going into SIPR, it's a heck of alot more than just a couple of Mexican immigrants looking for work, that you and many others are under the incorrect and assuming impression of. While I agree with you on not blurring the lines between military and law enforcement to the max extent possible, the military isn't being used for domestic law enforcement; and acting against or being used to counter external threats to this country, shouldn't blur those lines either. Take care of things overseas as-needed. Don't leave the gate to the yard open while doing it.

Every RPA dude recommends the above quote.

You separated because you were burnt out from deployments and tired of the queep, so you took a job that you are saying is entirely queep and still has a chance to deploy. Congratulations.