Leaderboard

Some good points being made here. I fully support separating promotions by career field. It really wouldn't be difficult for the Air Force to allocate school/promotion slots to AFSCs based on current and projected manning. Then, you could have MLR-type boards for each AFSC. Bring the senior O-6/O-7 types together for a few days and have them provide their selection list to HAF. As mentioned before, this would allow each community to promote based on what they value and OPRs could actually be written to capture career-field specific achievement. In the developmental engineer world, acquisitions classes and AADs would be discriminators; things that are (should be) irrelevant to flyers. Instructor/evaluator/upgrades don't even really exist outside of ops, but are very important in demonstrating ability and potential. I think it needs to be by AFSC, because even within ops, the Air Force operates in three distinct domains that really don't align at all. Space ops is as different from air ops as it is naval or land ops. Same with cyber, SOF, etc. The Navy construct wouldn't work because of how diverse our ops community is.

Are cops, finance and contracting dudes getting promoted at some ridiculously high rate? Nope. Is Pawnman qualified (or would he want) to go be a security forces, finance or contracting squadron commander? Probably not. So I guess I don't get your point. Gumshoes aren't out stealing promotion opportunities away from rated guys, despite what many think. Just look at the promotion stats. We need some of them to get promoted too and we don't exactly have a glut of them at the O-5 level. And as for your deployment rate comment, If you haven't heard, cops are among the most deployed career fields out there, and they don't always go to an island or the west coast of the gulf when they do. But they are sometimes going out into Afghan villages and wearing body armor. So should they get promoted at higher rates because of that? You know what career field deploys at a 1:1 right now? Not bomber guys. FSS officers. Yeah, that surprised the shit out of me too, but there aren't that many of them and they do glamorous work like casualty affairs. So should they get extra credit for deploying at a higher rate than 12Bs in your mind? I would say no. Because deployment rate, in and of itself, is an irrelevant statistic to use and tells me absolutely nothing about your quality and potential. Be careful what you wish for if you think stuff like that should be the discriminator.

Are you saying that talking about the Air Force attempting to retire an asset that we recognize as valuable is tantamount to treason?

Or we could steal the Navy P-8, which is already tested and approved for a similar role.

True statement. I've never had the displeasure of meeting or working with this doofus so I have to live vicariously through the pain and suffering of others.

How could you pass up on such an opportunity?!? Plus, you gotta go if only to let all the rest of us know how it goes. Video tape it if you can, I honestly think it will be a treasure trove of combat coolness!

But the Cyber bucket-o-money doesn't get spent on the shiny EW platforms we all know, love and want. Don't get me wrong...I like cyber, but I love the warm fuzzy feeling of being radiated by an EA platform when I most need it. Don't tell Hostage that...

There's potentially a shit-ton of money to be saved long-term by having a common logistics tail across multiple MDSs. This of course means the idea is a non-starter for the AF.

Funny how wrong that article is... yes 105 for the J and most likely the W. And enough PGWs to party as well...

I either fake it and bail, or don't fake it and get it for realzies.

I think I'm tracking on the intent of your original post. I just want a new fat-kid EW bird that can fill the same role as the EC-130 in the SEAD triad. Something with lots of room for expansion of new capes, has a long dwell time on station, and is capable of finding it's own targets, etc. If that means putting it on a 2-eng 777, cool. If it means putting it on Js, also cool. I thought C-17 were the answer for a while, but that's gas guzzling SUV that's maybe not worth the induced fuel costs for the additional benefit. Really I just want the AF to quit dropping EW in priority. It's too important a force multiplier to be shelved. Annnnd at this point I'm putting a pin in it. We'll pick it up if we ever cross paths in a more appropriate forum.

Danny and Karl, I agree with nearly all of your points but I would point out a few areas where I disagree or have other thoughts. I'm short on time so this might be a little disjointed. - B-1s are actually on a 1:1 right now (first sq just got back from theirs). This is temporary and partially due to some intra-community logistics, but the bottom line is a good portion of the B-1 ops crews either have done or will do a 1:1 within the next year or so. I do understand your basic point that other career fields have a higher tempo. - This will sound very egotistical, but I do think that most rated dudes could transition easily to most non-rated fields and perform well. The same can't be said in reverse. After all, we don't send Finance B-Course washouts to UPT, but we do it the other way around. That right there says something about the difficulty level of the career fields. I'm not shitting on non-rated officers here - we all know some fantastic leaders outside of the ops world - but to say that a pilot/nav would not be "qualified" to go lead a SFS or FSS is, IMHO, not true. - Why don't we have a career field for execs? Either make it an AFSC or hire a GS civ. The outside world has executive and personal assistants, so why not let people who WANT to do that job do it? A friend of mine finished her duty in the AF (4 year ROTC commitment, non-rated) as an OG exec. She loved it. She was good at it. Why not just offer people the opportunity to do it as a real job and stop taking dudes who would be better used flying and training others to fly? - Although it might be difficult to explain or document flight/mission lead duties, we need to do a better job of capturing that performance. Being a mission commander at Red Flag, or especially in a real-world op, IS leadership. When done well it demonstrates exceptional decision-making abilities and highlights other characteristics we want to develop in our future leaders. That type of thing should absolutely be OPR/PRF material and should be right up there with leading a section, shop, or support squadron. Gotta run but I'll write more later. This is a good discussion. Edited due to double post.

All good points. I'd argue that we try to identify our future leaders way too early, which results in the "leading teams and projects" arms race we see. How many opportunities has Pawnman, as a 12B (I think), had to lead teams and projects as compared to a security forces 2Lt, a finance Capt, and a contracting 1Lt? Is that a bad thing? How long was his FTU? How long was theirs? How many deployments has he been on? How many have they? I haven't heard a valid argument for why we don't separate career field management by AFSCs, other than the AF is lazy and we're all "officers first", or something. Successful organizations provide the incentives (financial and QOL) necessary to retain talent to eventually assume leadership positions. Is active duty AF doing that? Based on how many "bright and shiny pennies" (read: IDE selects) I've seen who are turning down IDE and separating for greener pastures, I have my doubts.

You're missing the point. # of bombs dropped, pounds of gas given, pallets of rubber dog shit delivered is great stuff....but it isn't generally unique in this day and age. It tells me more about what you did than it does about how well you did it. It is also all stuff that can and is done primarily by captains. So what is it about people that shows how well they can do as a major or lt col? Those ranks should be increasingly about being in charge of teams, projects, issues, etc. not just as recognition that you were assigned and completed tactical missions as a captain. Plenty of clowns have the same statistics. I don't know where all this party planning crap comes from with you guys, as I've never seen that shit on an OPR (except maybe a lieutenant) and never put it on a PRF. But success leading teams and projects is relevant to the question at hand--is this guy capable of leading at the next rank. If a guy has never done any of that, then how would we know? I think we've all seen dudes who were awesome pilots and bros grow up to be shitty bosses. Showing experience and success with smaller scale leadership tasks at least indicates something about potential for success with medium to larger scale leadership tasks. And I'm not talking about leading a crew or formation. That's a totally different ballgame and tough if not impossible to convey on paper anyway. Air Medal-type data generally tells a board little about your true potential, other than that you have a foundation of combat experience that is very critical toward developing an officer, but again it's generally not unique and therefore doesn't set you apart. So ideally an OPR or PRF will highlight combat experience and achievements to make a point, but if that's all you got, then you probably haven't made a convincing case that you can successfully lead teams, think and act strategically, etc. Because either you haven't done it, or you chose not to include it because it was "lesser" or not important. If you just load up on combat stats, then you are essentially beating a dead horse. Deployed a lot. Was in combat a lot. Got it. Good stuff, but point made. What else? That's why good OPR and PRF writers try to include the "lesser" stuff. It shows breadth and depth. It helps tell the story of why you'll be a good major, lt col, or col rather than just a glorified captain.

It continues to amaze me that anyone on this board cares what Chang thinks

This is about as good as you're going to find in Kaiserslautern... https://www.rowdyingermany.com/2011/06/ktown-beer-garden.html Get the Bischoff, it's made in Winnweiler not far from Sembach. And don't be discouraged if there's no hot chicks in Dirndls... Prost! M2

A "solid bullshit call" is even better when it's accurate. But what do you call someone who throws the bullshit flag without having his own facts straight? According to King Abdullah II's website, ( https://www.kingabdullah.jo/index.php/en_US/pages/view/id/148.html )he was a qualified Cobra pilot with the Jordanian Air Force. So maybe the "news" outlets reporting he's a pilot know just a little more than BB Stacker gives them credit for. I don't really know what a "right-wing clickbait site" is, but I have heard that Brian Williams is reporting he was in the front seat of the King's cobra on a strike flown last night. Gotta love the MSM.

He's not a pilot. His dad was, but he never has been. Given the fact that the "news" outlets reporting the story are all right-wing clickbait sites I'm calling bullshit.