Leaderboard

Good god, man. Surely you jest. Flying should, by all accounts, be just the most awesome job ever created. Tactical flying is just about as much fun as anything. The job pays well. You get to serve your country in a meaningful way. And airplanes... f**k yeah. If the Air Force can only get people to do it by A) getting people too young to know better to sign an obscenely long contract, or B) by abusing the terms of the contract to keep people around, then senior leadership really needs to ask how they f***ed it up that bad and shake things up as much as necessary to fix it. Best of all, your people are screaming the solutions at you. Just step back for a second, listen without brushing them of as malcontents, and realize that you do actually have the power to do 75% of what they're asking for, and that you can do it with precisely 0% negative impact to mission effectiveness.

https://video.foxnews.com/v/4892301647001/widespread-problems-plague-the-us-air-force/?intcmp=hpvid1#sp=show-clips Feel free to delete this post if it duplicated somewhere else. Another reason we're doomed. I know it's Fox News and it shows F-18s for the first few seconds, but as a prior B-1 guy, the struggle is definitely real.

Typical--tactical solution to a strategic problem. You really don't get it, do you?

The Air Force should probably be asking themselves why people hate the job so much, when so many look at it as desirable, that pilots won't even stay for $250,000 extra.

Not sure we're f'd but certainly some communities have been ridden hard and put up wet, no sarcasm or smartass comments as this is about real people's lives, families, careers and their well being. My sympathy is for those who bear the weight of piss poor head in the sand stubborn as a mule thinking a-holes who refuse to change with the times. Years ago at my first assignment right after 9-11, everyone was deployed all the time and between trips to the desert at home station the squadron was a ghost town but the training got done, the local flights happened and you got ready for your next trip. That was evidence enough that most non-mission day to day bs was just that bs that shoe clerks imposed for the imagined purpose of leadership development. Along with that, I remember an OG all call where he explained how the days of the garrison AF were gone and we were now an expeditionary AF. He may have believed that but the big shoe clerks sure as hell didn't and still don't and that is why the AF is in free fall. We are a force needed to be expeditionary in nature - lean, mission focused, not beholden only to the previous way of accomplishing the mission, open to new ideas and responsibilities and above all honest about what we do, how we do it and if that is working. It amazes me the level of self-delusion, rationalization and denial that senior leadership exhibits when most of these guys started their careers as officers in the flying world that would or should never let that happen. If a sortie went like shit, that was not swept under the rug; if someone was not cutting it in their crew position they were pulled from it for the sake of the mission - when did these formative lessons of honesty above all, even when it was uncomfortable and the ability to recognize the need for change and character to act on it get forgotten? Rant - Complete (P,CP).

Adrenaline eventually wears off. The hangover is staff work and 365s to Al Udied for no reason.

You are missing something

Shack. It's not about money for a lot of people, it's about the horrendous level of bullshit/terrible family QoL that makes guys run. I know too many dudes who "would never fly for the airlines," and we're not driven there by the money, but ultimately by how the Air Force had mismanaged the shit out of their "work life," which directly impacted their "family life" in a negative way. It shouldn't be hard to kill bullshit deployments (especially 365s), it shouldn't be hard to knock off the queep/taskers that have zero utility to anyone, and it shouldn't be difficult to see that taking care of people on a personal level is extremely important. Keep people happy and they won't leave...it's simple.

If you want to see how 6 year commitments for pilots will work out, give it 2 years. Thats when 18Xers start hitting the end of their 6 year URT ADSCs in large numbers.

Guys, this is easy from the AF perspective...if we start having a significant long-term problem with retention, we'll stop-loss in the near term and move to 15-yr commitments long term. Take it to the bank. And before you pilots start whining on this forum, you knew this would be a possibility when you signed on the bottom line. The more of your friends that take the bonus, the longer we can put off S.L. and expanded commitments.