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Choke yourself you sanctimonious prick. For the record, you are not as smart as you think you are, you have simply become a mindless part of the collective, endlessly spewing the same old PA verbiage. Here is the thing, I know the game, I’ve done all the in-res schools….ACSC, ASG, War College in DC…and I’ve sat behind the glass doors on the E-Ring as an exec and watched the buffoonery. Playing the $ money card overlooks a GLARING error, we did it to ourselves. The lack of vision from people like Buzz and Zatar is what got us here, for all too long we have been stuck in the endless Do Loop of “we can only have a fifth gen force” and we are paying the price for it in spades. 10 years ago a LOT of very smart people tried to tell them the $ crunch was coming and we could not afford a force of only F-22’s and F-35’s. Despite the fact that on the second night of OIF A-10’s were fighting inside the “Super MEZ”, the seniors insisted we double-down on fifth gen and now we cry when we have no $ to buy anything else. What do you expect when we are flying Raptors that cost $44,000 a flying hour and F-35’s that cost $36,000 a flying hour instead of a mixed high-low fleet that could have economically fought the fight we have been in for the 15 YEARS! Then as we piled ever more coal into the 5th gen steam engine that we couldn’t afford, we decided to cut people to pay the bill, and we took those people from the admin heart of the Squadrons (CSS), where they were needed most…Now, after purposely cutting people we suddenly come to the conclusion that the Air Force is On Verge of Manpower Collapse…freaking brilliant! Sadly, we had multiple chances to off-ramp this road to perdition and the Navy tried to show us the way like in 2006 when they broke the “no more 4th gen fighters for any service pact.” I was there the day the boss found out the Navy was getting 24 extra Super Hornets and I was in close trail as he barged into the N-8 office screaming explicatives at the CNO and his XP staff. The Navy response “well the Super Hornet is not a 4th gen airplane, it is a 4.5 gen airplane and we probably can’t afford all the F-35’s anyway.” Congress has been more than willing to gift us extra Vipers and Eagles every year, but we foolishly keep saying no and doubled down to the point we had to start closing fighter squadrons to pay the bills. The last ten years have seen a steady retreat from the TacAir redline, No lower than 2,300 fighters!…Ok No lower than 2,100 fighters! There was a huge gasp at 2,000, but we sliced right past that number faster than some late night yaki mandu through your system after a Friday night in Aragon Alley. As we started closing fighter squadrons we suddenly had fewer to fill AEF taskings so the bros and sisters on the end of the whip have to run even faster to make up for the shortage…starting to see the picture now? When it comes to your "retention tools" again, you don’t get it…what you call having bigger fish to fry than keeping pilots on the right side of the happy meter and using STOP LOSS as a retention tool is the PROOF that the entire thing is a scam. How can senior leaders profess to care about the force, mission first…people always, and say things like “Morale is pretty darn good” almost in the same breath they admit the Air Force is on the verge of a manpower collapse? This CSAF has made countless impassioned speeches about caring for people and “every Airman has a story”, but in the end as you admit the people are just numbers and their happiness doesn’t really matter. I get it that you will never make everyone happy and there will always be sport bitching, but this is something very different. This is the heart of your ability to be an Air Force, your professional pilot force telling you with their feet…”THINGS ARE Fed UP!” Only 38% of the pilot force took the bonus last year and the numbers look worse for this year…so I would submit you better make time to fix the happy meter. It is not about hating the messenger, it is about hating the smug asshat that parades around the room showing glee in his pronouncements from on high. You represent much of what is wrong with the current system.

It amazes me that anyone would call stop-loss a "retention tool". Granted, you keep a few people a little longer in the short term, but if the problem is that you are burning out the force, it only accelerates the burn and speeds the increasing percentage of the force that makes the decision to bail out ASAP. Additionally, a lot of potential accessions see the burn and decide to go elsewhere to either fly, or adopt a different career, so not only does retention of the existing force suffer but it makes it harder to get new bodies in the pipeline. Retention means appealing to the force in a manner to make them WANT to stay in, not MAKE them stay in. BTW, I'd sure like to see some of those other "long term solutions". If pilots are getting out for a set of definable reasons, I'd hope the solutions address them, and not a few PC headliners that look good in the media, like working hard on that multi-gender bathroom issue. Maybe I'm just an old dinosaur, but in my 49 years of AD and contractor service to the AF and DoD I've seen this road traveled three times and it hasn't worked yet!!

This is going to be comical to watch. The view of those like Chang will truly be the downfall of the Air Force. Once the true volunteer aspect leaves with stop-loss or indentured servitude type contracts, the train will come off the tracks. As a red blooded, combat proven American, there's one thing I value more than anything. That's freedom to do what the I want with my life. I gave 13 years of my life to the defense of my nation. I am proud of that, but the moment I felt that was being taken for granted, I stopped playing the game and took my ball elsewhere. My advice to anyone on the fence is to start getting your plan together yesterday. If there is stop-loss, go back to your SERE days of using passive resistance. If I was stop-loss'd, I'd stop doing every single additional duty and focus 100% on flying. I'd call out sick at least once a week. I'd fail every single PT test. Hell, I'd find a way to go DNIF without messing up my airline prospects. I hope it doesn't come to what Chang is proposing, but realize your Sr Leadership, both in Congress and in the Pentagon may have just become your enemy. I thank God every day I was able to get out when I did. I landed on my feet and I know you guys will too.

A suboptimal technique, but it appears her aim is impeccable.

^^^This is exactly what I was thinking. I've assumed for a while now that the AF thinks we're being whiny little pricks and they're not going to "negotiate" with us. Look at the evidence. Senior leaders mentioning the ability to stop loss, no real reform coming down the pipe, not acknowledging that there is a problem, sending out surveys and asking questions but never sending any responses to those surveys or any change to the status quo. I could go on and I'm sure there is a lot of evidence that I'm not thinking of. The only assumption that all of us should make is that nothing is going to change. Things will probably only get worse when it comes to additional duties, 365s and morale. If we're not preparing for things to get worse and a stop loss then we probably have ours craniums in the sand.

And our Commander-in-Chief is spearheading the vital issue of Transgender bathrooms!

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.

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.