Leaderboard

Karl, I have no idea if stop loss is being considered or not. But, we've done it before, so I suppose it's not out of the question. If 7 of 8 IDE selects are PCing, then the ARC (and the total force) benefits. Nothing wrong with service in the ARC. If they are separating, then I'll thank them for their service and wish them well. It sounds like the SR at that wing is stratting based on merit and not member's intent...that's a good thing, right? I think so. People bloom at different stages in their careers...some excel at tactics or WIC, then perform less strongly on staff or in command. Others do the opposite. Leadership's challenge is creating a winning team with the players you have. I used "diverse" to cover areas of airpower thought, not physical attrubutes. No where did I say we were doing it well, just that we'd been doing it to ourselves. We've all looked at O6 and O7 promotion lists and wondered how some dweeb got promoted. But we've also nodded in concurrence at other names on the same list. But, this thread is about enlisted RPA pilots, so I'll shut it here, and the discussion can continue about whether we think this idea serves Airpower well, or not.

A dinosaur perspective for your consideration: American airpower has always been conceived, planned, and employed by officers. Missileers are officers, fighter and bomber pilots are officers. All are our primary trigger pullers for airpower. Their doctrine, tactics, plans, operations, joint and combined integration and c2 are all built and executed by officers specifically experienced and grown to do those jobs. "Farming" out isr (armed or not) to e's or wo's is doable, but there will still need to be a large experienced cadre of officers to do the employment planning and execution. Enlisted and wo's have different training and expectations (not capability)....none of which exist higher than wing level. We let folks fly bombers as CGOs so we can use the best of them on staffs...where the hard work of airpower exists. This is why lots of senior guys say "you're easily replaced"...there are a lot of folks who want to be CGOS and fly jets. It's a cycle, guys...and what's good for the Air Force over decades is growing a diverse officer corps capable.of thoughtful airpower employment. LJ

My rebuttal to that and the "If I can't trust you to wear your uniform in exact accordance to regs, how can I trust you in the aircraft" argument, is always... If your primary worry in life is how we wear our flight suits and closely we follow AFI 69-69, or substitute in any of the countless queepy things the AF cares about these days... How can we trust you to lead us? Given you've just made it glaringly obvious you don't prioritize tactical proficiency, job performance, morale, retention, or anything relating to effective leadership. I'd even go so far as to say that attitude is often indicative of poor performance in the aircraft as well. So much of aviation is prioritization and the ability to recognize the next most immediate [and real] threat. Worrying about say... zipper height, as opposed to how effectively one does their actual job... Is akin to checking if your last four are written correctly on the flight orders as you CFIT into the side of a mountain, or the proverbial rearranging of the deck chairs on the Titanic as you plow into an iceberg.

Airline Pilot Central Forum

Things haven't changed much since the late 50's. Where would the Air Force get the positions from if they ever go back to the WO program? Historical USAF WO document (long); The In-Betweeners. https://warrantofficerhistory.org/PDF/AFA_1191tween.pdf Excerpt; In 1958, Congress created two new enlisted grades, E-8 and E-9. The rationale was that enlisted members were reaching the top NCO grades midway in their careers and had no place to go from there. The services did not want to use officer authorizations to make more warrant appointments, so the solution seemed to be to add another tier to the enlisted ranks. In 1959, the year that the Air Force promoted its first master sergeants to E-9, it also announced plans to phase out its warrant officer program. At the time, officials insisted there was no connection between the two moves, but the correlation is hard to ignore. The Air Force admitted that it had decided that warrant officers constituted an unnecessary layer of supervision between the commissioned and noncommissioned ranks. Some years later, officials concluded that the new senior noncoms were "capable of doing the same jobs as warrant officers." Unlike warrant officers, the new NCOs were charged against enlisted strengths, and the services could afford more of them. The law allowed only three percent of all enlisted members to be in grades E-8 and E-9, but that was more than four times the number of warrant officers the Air Force had at the time. Pentagon Foolishness; The advent of the supergrade NCO was not without its problems. In its first burst of enthusiasm, the Pentagon foolishly passed most of the new slots to major commands to fill as they saw fit. Many went to deserving master sergeants regardless of their specialties or positions. Commands again were using the appointments to reward individuals rather than to fill valid requirements. It took USAF several years to regain control over the supergrade program, define the superintendent slots, and begin to fill them by centralized promotions. Meanwhile, the Air Force had to make use of those several thousand warrant officers who were left in the system. Most were assigned to commissioned officer positions. The service encouraged early retirement and, in some cases, forced attrition.

Concur. We had enlisted pilots...but Eaker had no enlisted planning ops at Pine Tree. This is "of our own doing" and we've done it on purpose since 1947.

The full ADSC for IQT in the new airframe, not the full WIC ADSC. I crossflowed as a young captain, served out my 3 year sentence for Initial Qual in the second jet, and am now a free agent (completed my 6 year sentence for JSUNT two years ago). Going to 16A and used the same chapter and verse you just linked to get AFPC to remove the ADSC message.

3yr. ADSC IIRC... The application PDSM will have all of that info. I can't speak for AFSOC, but I can tell you that overall patch wearers are in high demand both in the traditional tactics role and elsewhere. Being a WO will open more doors for you than it will close. However, if you are worried about what opportunities you will have upon graduation you may be interested in WIC for the wrong reasons. I'm not saying this is the case, but that type of question would certainly raise suspicion in my community. Apply if you want to be the best leader you can be in and out of the airplane. Don't apply if you are only interested in the benefit you/your career might get out of it. Edited to correct years.

All - don't ask for or send information via PM in this topic, unless for some reason you're worried about the information being shared. It defeats the purpose of this thread if the information is being shared one-on-one.

Which is bullshit. And another reason why ATC folks are leaving in floodgates as well.