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I'd prefer that the President pick the next SECAF based on their ability, not their looks. If Mrs. Wilson spends half the time managing personnel that SECAF James spent taking selfies, it'll be an improvement.

So, you'd rather be deployed to the CAOC, than do the exact same job from St. Louis? BTW, the Army's (read CENTCOM's) notions of unity of command lead to stupid stuff like 80 CAPs worth of UASs/RPAs sitting in Army garrisons back in the US, while the AF struggles to meet COCOMs' requirements for 65 CAPs. But, hey, unity of command is far more important than providing combat capabilities to warfighters . . .

That bill in some form has been put forward every year for something like 20 years and it goes nowhere. It would have happened this year no matter who was elected. And it'll die this year like it always has.

The mobility enterprise is way ahead of you on this, for once. There are folks with stars asking the same questions, making the same arguments, and that's a good thing... Similar to the MAAP function consolidation from "home", they're also asking why we need a separate AMD... why mobility isn't integrated with the rest of everything else... why we can't do more C2 from the 618th... even working (from above and below) to force a discussion on things like OPCON and TACON... because right now in the mobility and some other communities (GS, etc), we operate between the lines more often than not in execution of global missions. It's nice to see smart, engaged leadership re: these topics instead of just going along with "the way it's always been." Chuck

Ask and you shall receive:

This was news to me: https://www.doctorofcredit.com/barclaycard-significantly-cuts-benefits-active-duty-military-cardholders/ BLUF: Barclaycard is no longer going to drop interest rates/fees to zero on their cards for active duty servicemembers. Current cardholders are grandfathered until they leave active duty, however.

That being the case... Even in the most asinine of times, the AF has been worth it for the people you get to serve with. I'd still try to go Guard/Reserve if at all possible. I'm a CSO, came in knowing there would be a 6 year commitment, and have stayed for 11 (punching for the Reserves at end of the year). I would not sign up for a de facto 12 year commitment in the current environment. Even if President Trump made fixing the Air Force a top 10 priority and dumped a crap ton of money into the project, it would take many many years for the changes to materialize because of limited production capacity for new pilots. On AD you'll be entering a world that is chronically undermanned and can expect to spend 12 years chasing your own tail in terms of ops tempo. But if you have to choose between AD and no slot at all, by all means go AD.

I get what you're saying. The issue--and trying to keep this related to the "fighter enterprise"--is that unity of command for the CAF, but particularly fighters, fits well with unity of command under geographic COCOMs. You deploy to CENTCOM with your A-10, you're never going to support anyone other than folks in the CENTCOM AOR. For heavies, the issue is whose unity of command is more important: the geographic combatant commander, or the functional combatant commander? Unity of command for CENTCOM suggests the CENTCOM/CC (via the JFACC) should have OPCON of all the heavies in theater. Unity of command for TRANSCOM--with its responsibility for airlift & tanker ops around the globe--would suggest the TRANSCOM/CC needs to exercise OPCON through the TACC and manage heavies globally (rather than giving each GCC his own rice bowl of assets). We don't penny packet out A-10s to each Army division, for the same reason we shouldn't just penny packet (CHOP) heavies to geographic commanders, when those heavies can support multiple COCOMs from one day to the next. Anyway, sounds like we both agree--we'd both like to have more C2 tail at home (sts). TT

Ive deployed to the CAOC and I made the same argument that you're making now. My point is to keep OPCON aligned with CENTCOM/AFCENT, not to 18AF/TACC. Where I agree with you is to do those jobs from Shaw/Tampa instead of in the desert. Edit:PM me if you'd like to take the discussion to .mil. There are plenty of examples of COMREL arguments taking precedence over "providing combat capabilities to the warfighters"

As you alluded in your post, there are lots of options out there to be a UPT spouse and member of the ARC. We'll need some pics of your fiancé to help you narrow it down some more.

I agree. Although my experience goes back 45 years, as an OV-10 FAC I usually flew solo and handled things fine (good weather, known friendly locations, minimal bad guy actions, etc.) but when the poop hit the fan (multiple TICs, really bad weather, poor visibility, nighttime, and frequently a combination of most of them) the ability to launch with two guys really helped to figure out things, keep track of multiple situations, keep an extra set of eyes on which way was up and where the high terrain was and track where other dangers were. Two seats for that kind of mission is very helpful, but you can always operate solo if you need to do so. Also, if the aircraft carries an FMV sensor, you definitely need a separate set of eyeballs focused on that! I never had a crew communication problem, but its easier with two than with 13.

That's what I was fulfilling; just figured I'd go ugly early!

Hush. You're going to give 18 AF ideas. There's plenty of OPCON that remains at Scott. There's that whole unity of command thing that makes me think OPCON should reside with the geographic COCOM, not 18AF.

That'd be a crazy Austrian. But I quibble...

This is an internet argument, so clearly you're talking about Hitler. Kidding.

Is there anything the MAAP cell does at AUAB that can't be done at Shaw?

I vote 90-120 days for flying units and 180 days for the CAOC (but better yet, move 90% of its functions to Shaw or Tampa and make it a PCS)... 180 days is way too long for multi-mission aircraft to focus on doing only one or two things. As a BUFF guy I can tell you everything except for CAS and Nuke has dropped from the crosscheck since April of last year, and we still need to be prepared to sprinkle a little MALD/JASSM/CALCM dust on other situations that may arise. I suspect that similar things happen in fighter world with OCA/DCA/SEAD, although probably less so now than when Afghanistan was the main show in town.

Having done a 180, I'll agree with you to an extent. Our unit didn't really hit its stride till about 60 days into the deployment. I would say 120-180 days is the ideal length, I noticed no appreciable difference between the 180 day people & the 365ers besides the later usually were more disgruntled. Two things that make shorter deploymenus work is good handoffs by the outgoing personnel and good leadership helping to bridge the gaps between rotations (I know preaching to the choir). The POC of one of our main customers rotated out about 2/3s of the way through the deployment but he gave his replacement a good handoff and we continued to work with only minor issues till he got his feet fully under him.

I would agree for some key jobs a year is helpful. But IMO we went full retard on 365s for a while to prove we were in for the win. For a while back in the late 200x's, those thing were dropping all the time for jobs I'd categorize as less than critical. I'd also argue that someone who's there for 3-4 months can make an impact, as long as others around them are willing to listen to new ideas. Problem is it doesn't look good to our Army brothers who always deploy for 12+ months. And I personally wouldn't presume Big Blue has done the robust calculus on which jobs need a 12 month stint, although someone may think it's a good idea. Maybe I'm too jaded but I saw FAR too many unnecessary deployments in my time to believe we did a good job using our manpower downrange. I'd also argue that turning an otherwise fired up warrior into a bitter hater of all things Blue during a painful 365 doesn't help the greater AF situation.

In general, the justification for 365s is, or at least should be, that it's long enough for someone to make substantial changes, if they're called for. If deployed to a CAOC, for instance, it takes some time to get the lay of the land/get settled into the job. If on a 90- or 120-day rotation, by the time you really get to know what's broke, know which key players you need to convince to fix whatever's broke and earn their trust, you're basically out of time to actually enact any value-added change. The more people there are in the CAOC/JTF-Whatever you're deployed to who are on 90-120 day rotations, the worse this dynamic is. Jjust about the time you're ready to pull the trigger on a substantial change, the other key players rotate out and you're back to square one. Gotta educate and build trust with the FNGs. Before you know it, you reach the end of your tour, and--despite your and others' best efforts--the status quo remains. It's hard enough to enact change in the CAOC, where you're primarily working with other AF bubbas, with a smattering of air minded folks from other countries. It's even worse when working in a JTF, where you have to convince senior leaders from other services to make changes to processes or programs. Their experiential blinders and service parochial interests can be (and frequently are) huge impediments to success. I presume Big Blue has done the calculus, and has determined that losing some folks to 7-day opts is worth it, in order to ensure we have staffers who can save lives and money by fighting bad ideas (the Army is especially full of them) downrange. If we're deploying folks to 365s to serve as Powerpoint rangers and other monkey-work billets, though, that crap has gotta stop. TT

99.9%

I would almost go back for the free go-pills alone. A guaranteed nine-line on every sortie only ads to the job satisfaction. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

11Bs and 12Bs are picking up a LOT of 11F 365 and 179 taskings. My wing alone has filled something like 7 365s in the past year...which is not helping the FTU manning (currently at 43%) which, in turn, puts a crimp in production, which means less 11B and 12B folks to take the next round of taskers...

It defeats bureaucratic inertia from cutting the purchasing power of payment recipients that happens because of inaction rather than purposeful cuts. Take ACIP for instance. The tier that many of us are likely in has been $650 per month for approx. 25 years...and it's purchasing power has been eroded by inflation almost every single year. $650 in 1990 buys way more booze and hookers than in 2016. Bar napkin math (and an online historical inflation calculator) say that $650 in 1990 dollars has the same purchasing power as $1,179 in 2015 dollars. This effect amounts to real cuts in pay over time. Do you believe that Congress and DoD has purposefully lessened the incentives for aviators to fly in the service, or have those cuts happened simply due to inaction and the fact that they happen slowly over a long period of time? What I'm saying is that our appointed leaders in DoD and elected officials are free to reduce expenditures on personnel. BUT, make them (namely Congress) stand up and vote for cuts rather than allowing them to slyly let costs decrease due to inflation. Go on the record saying you're reducing a program or budget line item rather than doing nothing, which in effect is a small cut year after year after year Same goes for all payments the government makes or programs it funds. Someone or some program shouldn't get more purchasing power out of a dollar received from a program just because that received that dollar in the past. By god, if $650 per month was what seems fair to pay air crew in 1990, then $1,179 should seem equally fair today. The apollo program took us to the moon for around $20B over 15 years...today spending $20B on a space program with similar goals wouldn't get us to shit.

Let's see.... I'll take a stab at this. The Guard and Reserves used to be a real good deal, but things have changed a lot since 9/11. We're being abused. The difference now is that we have options and leverage. Is it still a better deal than AD? In a lot of ways, yes, but our government's expectations from the ARC is over the top. They've gotten used to the ARC's willingness to bend over backwards to get'r done for a paycheck. Furloughed airline pilots, ARC bums, ART's looking to close the gap between a shitty net pay and an AGR salary, you name it, the ARC has risen to the occasion with just about everything they've thrown at us. Yeah, we all raised our hands and are as patriotic as the next guy, but at the end of the day you have to make it worth our while to do rotation after rotation to PACOM and CENTCOM. We don't have the reprieve the AD guys do of a staff tour (gasp), being detailed to the Wing or getting a white jet tour to break up the monotony of living in the desert. Traditional guardsmen/reservists are pretty much line pilots for life. You have the option to stay in as a Lt Col for 28 years and fly the line every day of those 28 years. We've relied on a lot of volunteerism, but when you've got guys who've been doing this for 15-20 years, they're getting tired and it's come to the point where it's just not worth it to them anymore. I don't care what some of the AD guys think, it's not easy to be a mission-ready pilot at less than 1/3 the cost of our AD counterparts while holding a full-time civilian job. We don't have to do any less training than anyone else out there. Add that to the mountains of ancillary training, DIY administrative queep, and the neverending shift toward support agencies being allowed to run the AF the way they want it run, not the way it should be run. Our traditionals don't get a bonus to stay past 10 years. In the past, our retention program was good deal trips to cush destinations and unparalleled comradery while we were there, but those deals are few and far in between. Add that to anal retentive policies that have shit-canned just about any fun you could possibly have in fear of an article 15 or worse, jail time. On the full-time side, the ART program is going to destroy the ARC's ability to maintain mission-ready flying squadrons and they're about 10 years too late trying to fix it. So yes, I see there being many challenges for the ARC and I'm not looking forward to it. I need 5 more years to get my guard retirement. It's gonna be the longest 5 years of my life. Speaking of retirements, this new military retirement system coming online soon will NOT work in the ARC's favor for retention. Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

FY 2000 or thereabouts, Toners could drop a bomber. Then it went away. It's not earth shattering change by any means. The ethnocentrism of the Air Force track system is retarded anyways. We're now prepping for T-38 instructors to come from T-1 tracked MWS guys who've never flown the thing. Of course, PIT is such a high-ROI water-into-wine making outfit, they'll have zero problem cranking out quality.... As to expectations, manning is falling apart but it sure is a great time to be a T-38 student. It's like an episode of the Oprah Show. YOU get a fighter, YOU get a fighter! LOL There's some real shitbags being pushed who would have never made the cut back in mid 00s, and we've tried documenting away and trying to bring solid candidates for the B-courses, but in this environment it's about impossible to wash someone out of UPT/IFF. In time, this too will change again. It matters none, timing and luck has always been the driver, et al. I sleep with a clear conscience, let the B-course IPs sort through the guano. Not on me brotato chips. --BREAK BREAK-- On the AFRC front, the last email I got was the ART-to-AGR retro-conversion plan that's being thrown around, as they grapple and panic on an 5-year on going 55% ART manning rate, after the whole six years of pushing the ART conversion on everyone during FY11 when the airlines were merely hinting at opening the floodgates. Ah vindication sure is sweet. Fuck em. Let them eat cake for 15 years of non-choices and garbage treatment of their operators. It is an absolutely great time to align fuselages into whichever status you want to be in long term. Make no mistake, just like the airline hiring, once it stops, and it WILL stop, the hiring will also freeze in the military side and whatever chair you have at that time is the chair you'll have to like for quite a while. The only way they can change the ART dynamics for the better is to allow that job to be considered USERRA-eligible based on the part B. That way airline aspirants can mil leave into an ART. But since it's being driven by the part A (civilian), no dice. Same thing for the AD recall volunteer call. You give the guy a flying club gig for 3 years and all these junior guys will jump at it. Pilot shortage fixed overnight. But big blue ain't interested in giving out good deals. So they'll sit on it and keep sucking. Oh well, suit yourself. P.S. One gratuitous pot shot observation of the airline gig. You know, for the greatest job in the world, people sure spend a lot of time hiding from it in the military. Any job is great when you're the senior guy. I judge a job's worth by how the middle guy does. From my vantage point, the middle guy at the airlines does ok, and I'm certainly not making a plug for an AD-on-the-cheap ART job, just keeping it balanced. I was a trougher in the mid 00s, I know what the airline job looks like on the back end of the waves. No free lunch fellas. Everybody walk with the Mk 1s uncaged and tracking now. No excuse in the age of the internet.

Why are guys so hung up on the airlines? Are they worried that after 3 years they could be told to walk? Is the airline lifestyle that inticing or is the AGR lifestyle not worth it even for the guys who commute? As far as the fed government retirement the Army guys don't seem to complain. Maybe it's the lack of airline opportunity or supporting the guys on the ground mentality. Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

Gross.