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Here is what you can do to get out of the regular AF absent Palace Chase. Twice Failed of Selection (2x FOS) to the next higher rank requires, by law, that the officer be separated (unless continuation is offered and accepted). ADSC is a service-level regulation and the law trumps ADSC. 1. Write a Do Not Promote me letter to the promotion board. If you do this for your APZ board, this will get your separation pay revoked, but since it's an advance on retirement pay and you intend to get a Reserve Retirement, it doesn't much matter. The law also stipulates no separation pay for an eventual separation for writing a do not promote me letter to your IPZ board, but I don't know if the AF tracks this. 2. If you make the promotion list anyway, decline the promotion. 3. If you are offered continuation upon your 2nd FOS, decline it. You won't get separation pay in this event. Doing the above will get you once failed of selection, so you'll need to fail selection a second time to get your date of separation which is normally 6 months after the public release of the selection list. You can move this to sooner, but due to bureaucratic processes any sooner than 2 months after the public release is probably too soon. You'll need to get on the scroll to get a reserve commission and that won't happen until you get a waiver. Even after you get a waiver, the scroll process can take two months. Getting on the scroll before separation will enable you to Palace Front. Since 2x FOS disqualifies you for a reserve commission, you'll need a request for waiver signed by your losing wing commander and gaining wing commander to go to the ARC, so hopefully you can do the above without burning any bridges. Since the ARC needs people these days, it shouldn't be much of a problem as long as you have a good relationship with your command. As long as you don't have a break in service between the regular AF and the ARC (i.e. you Palace Fronted), you'll meet a promotion board in the CY after your separation and probably be promoted provided you have your PME done and don't have any adverse indicators. You can also avoid having a break in service by being placed in the IRR, but this rarely happens. Many involuntarily separated officers are not placed in the IRR due to bureaucratic ineptitude. Regardless, the scroll process is required to get your reserve commission and without doing that, AFPC *will* give you a break in service and then *may* place you in the IRR. The end result is that you will meet a promotion board in the 2nd CY after your separation instead of the 1st. It's much better to go to the SELRES or ANG via Palace Front than to try to get a scroll done for the IRR. I don't know if it can be done because the gaining wing commander equivalent in the IRR may not cooperate to sign the request for waiver. From everything I've seen, the Air Force has very little interest in properly managing IRR officers. I say all this because by virtue of receiving separation pay, the law requires an officer to serve in the IRR for 3 years, but many are not placed in the IRR or are not scrolled and therefore have a break in service. Any unearned portion of a bonus already paid will be recouped. It is within their right to recoup a portion of any tuition assistance paid, but not "earned" because you didn't fulfill the ADSC, but I haven't seen this happen except for voluntary separation programs. As far as transfer of education benefits with the GI Bill, it is within their rights to revoke the benefit, but if this happens you can reinstate it in the ARC. Contrary to popular belief, there is no continuation that is forced on an officer--it is offered and then the officer either accepts or declines regardless of ADSC. sources: AFI 36-2501, AFI 36-3207, 10 U.S. Code § 1174

Well, your SR is required to give you feedback on your PRF if you want it, so I would start there... During that discussion, I would not use the words "should I be excited about my PRF bottom line", but there is no reason you shouldn't ask him directly how he arrived at that BL and how he feels your PRF will compete-- that's called mentorship. You're asking a bunch of internet advice experts who probably don't know you, and are also not actually experts. Ask the man that actually made the assessment.

Holy shit you two. Seriously. I am not complaining about the contract or the length of time. What pisses me off however is that some of us were told "plan to not have a job" and when things started working out for us in the civilian world the Air Force said "Kidding!" What I don't want is to burn this bridge for what would ultimately be a much better life for my family. If you don't get that then maybe you and the Air Force deserve each other. Bottom line, the way this whole VSP/RIF debacle was what I was complaining about. And btw I am not going to start failing PT tests to get out. I still desire to serve in the Guard after I am out. Looking forward to your guys next worthless replies

I can't deny any of that logic. It all depends on where a particular guy is in life. If I was a young Lt growing up in AFRC, that ART money makes a lot of sense as I build hours toward the airline minimums. Why not get paid more (although it does come with some type of desk job) while you're waiting. What I don't understand are the Lts who choose to slug it out at a regional airline while building those hours. I do see your point about potentially getting into a major sooner, but holy crap, in the balance of effort vs money, the Reserve squadron flight line seems like a no brainer. I don't know of a single regional where it's anything more than a temporary pain endured to build hours. I guess if the trough at Reserve unit X isn't paying the bills, I would understand. I'm also seeing ARTs picking up more admin queep duties, driving almost every ART I know to keep those airline apps up to date. If the timing were perfect and every one of those guys got hired in the next year (which is possible), the ART corps, which is already hovering at around 60% AFRC-wide, would be decimated. Those few left behind would most certainly get an increased workload while listening to those newly minted airline guys talk about the good life once a month during UTA. What's the incentive to stick around? Your 5-year "too late" argument holds water there.

If anyone ever had aspirations to be an airline pilot, now's the time to go. I came off AD as a Palace Chaser almost 10 yrs ago, troughed and took every MPA, temp ART, temp AGR tour I could at my ANG unit while I waited for the "old heads" furloughed from Brand X (or on mil leave) to go back so I could pick up something permanent. I've been an ART for almost 4 years now and this gig is just not something I see myself doing anymore. It's an exhausting job. It's WORSE than AD in my opinion. Yeah, I'm home a lot and pretty much get to control my schedule, but I'm at the unit 10hrs a day, not including the few 15 hr days per month we night fly to burn our AFTP's. All while our AGR bretherin are making twice the coin to work less. What's worse than AD is that full-time manning is not enough to run the operation at the ops tempo we're at right now. Back in the day when the airlines weren't doing well, there were Lt's and young Capt's running around the squadron looking for projects to work on and helped a lot of the ART's out with random duties. That's not the case anymore. All of our Lt's coming back from UPT are landing jobs with the regionals. The workload has gone up. Our O-4/5's are doing admin duties an E-3 should be doing and the flying mission suffers from it. TR's are not participating as much because we're shoving PACOM and CENTCOM rotations down their throats every year. ART's fill a lot of our flying schedule to keep the flights from cancelling. People are done and one by one, our ART's are leaving for the airlines. Even AGR's are thinking about leaving before 20. I've passed up 2 AGR opportunities in the past year to remain a free agent for when I get my call. They've thrown around the idea of offering ART's a bonus, but nothing official has materialized and honestly, they're about 5 yrs too late. Most of the legacy companies first year pay is $75-80k with 2nd year pay around $110k; to WORK LESS! That's a lot more attractive than it used to be. Another thing most people don't realize is that ART's hired after Jan '14 now pay 4.4% into their FERS instead of the .8% it used to be before 2013. Figure out how much of your money is going into paying your own pension when you retire. $4,500 per year ON TOP of the TSP. This compared to Brand X doing a 16% direct deposit 401k. If I was a brand new Lt out of UPT, I'd probably go for a GS-13 time just so I could fly my arse off at the unit, upgrade to AC/IP in as short of time I could and go to a major, but even then... I'd probably get to a major faster if I got hired with a regional and flew 1,000 hrs per year. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

An addendum to Chida's great and thorough post... 2. If you get promoted, you may decline promotion. However, per AFI, you remain on the promotion list. The only way off the list is by submitting (some AF Form that's listed in AFI 36-3207 I think, under the "Declining Promotion" section), which must be signed by your Sq and Wg commanders. This is the gray area, because I have no idea the (dis)incentives for your chain of command to sign or not sign. My understanding from the AFI is that this process is meant to stop the promotion of someone who beat their spouse (for example) subsequent to being notified of promotion but before pin-on, or maybe if that happened during the time between selection and notification. If the form is signed by all parties, then you are removed from the promotion list and it is the same as being a non-select. The only resistance I can think of off the top of my head would be your Sq and Wg commanders not wanting to take you off a promotion list that five O-6s put you on; but who knows. BL: Declining promotion is not the equivalent of being a non-select. You are still on the promotion list, you just won't get promoted. And yes, that's dumb.

Read "A Random Walk Down Wall Street". Buy low cost passive index funds and once you come up with an asset allocation you are comfortable with, stay the course and tune out the noise. Rebalance yearly. Im actually excited about this downturn. Lots of things on sale!

This post made me think of this from Good Morning Vietnam

Not directly on topic, but applies to the discussion I think. Last UTA, my Reserve base just had a visit from the AFRC/A3 to brief the ARTs on retention. The picture did not look good, and they are bouncing any potential ideas to (1) keep the current ARTs attracted to stay, and (2) continue attracting potential baby ARTs. The core problem from my perspective is a simple numbers game. The older ARTs who already have 20+ years of federal service are doing the math (adding 1% for each additional year to the already secured civilian retirement vs. starting an airline career in their 40s). The potential new ARTs are doing even more lopsided calculations where they'd had to stick it out for 20 years as an ART to realize any retirement, vs the beauty of starting an airline career possibly in their late 20s. There is no golden carrot that a government job could possible offer that counters becoming a millionaire while progressively working less for more money. As a former Active Duty pilot, I'll say that the great thing (which totally works against AFRC) about the Reserves is the openness in which we discuss careers options that ACTUALLY benefit ourselves and our families. We have airline cockpit posters up all over the squadron, most of the TRs fly for major airline X, the TR squadron commanders are airline guys. So the discussion about doing what's best for your family is open and honest. On AD, these conversations do not exist. Every pilot with the potential to jump is playing those cards close to the vest until the very end due to overbearing leadership forcing everyone to project a false facade of loyalty to the company. It's total bullshit, with fake "support" coming from AD commanders that everyone knows is not genuine. There is not one person in my Reserve unit that would ever say "Oh, FedEx just called you? Before you take the interview, let's talk about how wonderful your ART job is and the impact on the unit if you left." All (including commanders) would actually say "You're an idiot if you don't take the interview and the job if offered. That's what I would do."

I've had months where I got more than that.

How dare I point out the ridiculousness of our promotion system! Interesting that you feel it's an either/or- get in line and play these silly games, or "move on to the land of ice cream and blow jobs". FWIW, I really like my job on AD. I work hard and have put myself in a position to have lots of options going forward. Unfortunately, the things I like to point out as problems with AD- how we promote, work/life balance (or lack thereof), inane political correctness, toxic management, etc- are making my remaining on AD past my current assignment extremely unlikely. I'm here because this is one of the few avenues where our senior management interacts with the masses. Sometimes they need to be reminded that the emperor doesn't always appear to be wearing clothes. And I'll continue to be here in the future, regardless of if I'm on AD, ice cream and blow jobs or not.

I'm confused, you liked your job but now your mad because you get to stay?

Guess you shouldn't have gotten into a business that required you to sign a 10 year labor contract.

Sounds like any normal office job. You want to be home more but you go to the airlines. You don't want to be an ART or AGR because you can make more money at an airline. Nothing makes you guys happy.