TT,
The beauty about statistics is 69% of them are pulled out of thin air. I love how you make up rough approximations and apply them to eligibles to make exact numbers of golden boys, slugs and fence sitters. Here's the reality - the golden boys and slugs are staying in anyway. A few fence sitters may be tempted by cash but I know a lot that are passing on the bonus. I've yet to meet a single person to say the money convinced them to stay so until I do then I propose that the bonus retained no one. The fence sitters I know that signed the bonus stayed for the AD pension, not the bonus money. Fact.
Prozac, AFPC can't control QOL things like bases, ops tempo, and work hours due to shitty leadership. Our leaders, mil and civ, control that. We all know the shit leaders on AD (Rat, Yogi, he whose name should not be spoken), but the civvies are to blame too. Who in Nm is so influential that HO got vipers and we screwed out SOF guys with Cannon, at huge expense to the taxpayers (and troop morale) with the accompanying drop in FTU output at HO. Fuck politicians that put their local interests ahead of combat capability and bang-for-buck, and that's all of them. All AFPC can do is throw money at the problem. Increases in QOL in the current system are a pipe dream.
Assignments will continue to go to BNRs and dudes that know their porch guys first, then to #1s then to rank and file. Maybe commitments will come into play too, but AFPC will never just hand good deals to free agents and screw over golden boys promoted in the self image of shitty 0-6s, the brass won't allow it.