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It's not about overriding. The JTR only specifies what you get paid. So your commander cannot stop you from getting paid, if it happens. But your commander can order you not to do something that you would get paid for BEFORE you do it, and it would be legal. Then, if you disobeyed, you would still get paid per JTR rules, but you can be punished for not following an order. Two examples. You have a TDY coming up, leaving from an airport 45 minutes away. Commander tells you to use the base shuttle service to save the squadron money. You're a piece of shit, so you just take a cab because you didn't want to use the base long-term parking lot. JTR says you will be reimbursed for the cab. Commander says you get an LOR for telling her you would use the shuttle. Both happen. You, a C-17 AC assigned to UPT, want to take a T-6 to San Francisco for the 2017 Brony convention in the Castro district. Commander says the squadron can't afford it. You tell him you and your hetero life partner, a FAIP, will stay at a friend's house in Alameda to save the squadron mad cash. But when you get there, your FAIP mentor immediately finds himself overwhelmed by a deluge of nonbinary polysexual panda-kin sex addicts. Swept away by the raw sexual fury and unkempt body hair of your fellow Brony convention-goers, you decide to each get your own hotel rooms in the heart of San Fran, where the lodging per diem is a conservative $12,500 per night. After returning to Vance in what can best be described as the moistest T-6 in the fleet, you submit your travel voucher. Seconds later, the lights go out, because your voucher was so expensive the squadron had no choice but you use the pot of money dedicated to utilities to fund your pseudo intra-species erotica vacation. Your commander, who for some reason looks just like a certain purple Clydesdale you got way too close to over the weekend, is reasonably upset. Per JTR rules, you must be reimbursed for the lodging. Per UCMJ and AFI, your commander is entitled to rip off your souvenir unicorn horn and stab it straight through your lying heart. See? Discipline and reimbursement are separate issues.

After much thought and discussion, after getting on the ad alternate pilot list I decided to accept a CSO slot. Though not pilot, I'm just excited to be in a rated career field flying in a plane, wearing a flight suit, and dropping bombs ;). With this being said, I've been trying to find more information, with no luck on what the future of the career field is? Are there any new jets being created with two seats. Seems like all the new jets are single seaters. Also, what should I expect when I get to Pensacola? I'm 26 so I'm hoping to live off base. Any and all information would be great! I'm really excited to actually be in a plane!

Do better in T-6's, questions?

Life is not fair. In the Air Force, timing is everything. This is true well beyond UPT. Do the best you can and the rest is out of your hands. With the drops that are coming down now, if you do well in whatever track, you'll get what you want. UPT assignments were much worse even just a few years ago (see 2008-2009 timeframe). I'm sure the guys from the 90's who did tours as a non-rated officer before UPT slots opened up could tell stories of how it was even worse...

I've got my boat driving license, was worth the cost. I only bled a little.

The trick to summoning the hot ones is to grab the Ship's Wheel at the Viking.

they were hot as hell every time I went, you just needed to drink a lot more.

The Air Force will disappoint you. Consistently. Get used to it now. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network Forums

CBM 17-06 38s: 1 x F22 TY 1 x F15E SJ 1 x A10 DM 1 x T6 Faip 3 x F16 to Kelly Showed up late and didn't catch the whole T1 side. I'll update as I hear it AC130 KC10 Mcguire C17 McChord T1 FAIP T6 FAIP C146 Duke KC135 BHM

Mine was sent to state HQ Jan 25th and I was told it made it to NGB at some point already but not sure how long ago. I'm still waiting on approval but was told any day now. I hear it's within 5 weeks or so.

A bit older article but a good comparison between the A-29 and AT-6: https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/light-attack-aircraft-the-super-tucano-the-at-6-and-the-blue-kool-aid/ Taking CSAF's comments from the recent speech and if we really want this we have to strike when the iron is hot, either of these two plus the Scorpion Jet are the lowest risk, ready to fly options. Or could we go with what is behind Curtain 3? A split buy of Scorpions and A-29s? I say A-29s as their is already a training unit established and that is what Allies / Partners are seeming to choose, it is operationally proven and lower risk. Buy 125 Scorpions and establish an FTU to entice potential FMS customers (India for example) and give confidence in purchasing the jet, learning the lesson of the F-20 failure to launch. Buy 25 A-29s and continue the training mission at Moody AFB. Enough USAF capability to support one FOL and encourages participation with the USAF for BPC. Scorps at Seymour, Duke, Maxwell (training with Ft. Benning) Kirtland, Nellis. Look for 5-7 ARC units to change MWS or set up AA units at their locations. A-29s at Moody and Ft Campbell.

TRIGGER WARNING: below is an opinion piece from foxnews, please no one shit their pants. Or do so, you're not in my house so IDGAF. Seriously though, its the best piece I've seen on the subject of leaks in this WH, and possibly an area where liberals and conservatives can find some common philosophical ground. I like that the blame for our current situation is shared equally between past administrations, and the real culprit isn't R or D ideology, it is the nature of mankind. Those are all ideas I agree with, and think he makes a compelling case for our collective concern. Andrew Napolitano: The chickens have come home to roost By Judge Andrew P. Napolitano Published February 23, 2017 https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/02/23/andrew-napolitano-chickens-have-come-home-to-roost.html Napolitano: A warning to President Trump Last week, The Wall Street Journal revealed that members of the intelligence community -- part of the deep state, the unseen government within the government that does not change with elections -- now have acquired so much data on everyone in America that they can selectively reveal it to reward their friends and harm their foes. Their principal foe today is the president of the United States. Liberty is rarely lost overnight. The wall of tyranny often begins with benign building blocks of safety -- each one lying on top of a predecessor -- eventually collectively constituting an impediment to the exercise of free choices by free people, often not even recognized until it is too late. Here is the back story. In the pre-Revolutionary era, British courts in London secretly issued general warrants to British government agents in America. The warrants were not based on any probable cause of crime or individual articulable suspicion; they did not name the person or thing to be seized or identify the place to be searched. They authorized agents to search where they wished and seize what they found. The use of general warrants was so offensive to our Colonial ancestors that it whipped up more serious opposition to British rule and support for the revolutionaries than the "no taxation without representation" argument did. And when it came time for Americans to write the Constitution, they prohibited general warrants in the Fourth Amendment, the whole purpose of which was to guarantee the right to be left alone by forcing the government to focus on bad guys and prohibit it from engaging in fishing expeditions. But the fishing expeditions would come. In 1978, Congress passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which was intended to rein in the government spying on Americans that had been unleashed by the Nixon administration. FISA established a secret court and permitted it to issue warrants authorizing spying on agents of foreign governments when physically present in the United States. People born in foreign countries who are here for benevolent or benign or even evil purposes have the same constitutional protections as those of us born here. That’s because the critical parts of the Constitution that insulate human freedom from the government’s reach protect “persons,” not just citizens. But FISA ignored that. And FISA was easy for the government to justify. It was a pullback from Richard Nixon’s lawlessness. It required the feds to seek a warrant from federal judges. The targets were not Americans. Never mind, the argument went, that FISA has no requirement of showing any probable cause of crime or even articulable suspicion on the part of the foreign target; this will keep us safe. Besides, the government insisted, it can’t be used against Americans. That argument was bought by presidents, members of Congress and nearly all federal courts that examined it. We don’t know whether the authors of this scheme really wanted federal spies to be able to spy on anyone at will, but that is where we are today. Through secret courts whose judges cannot keep records of their own decisions and secret permissions by select committees of Congress whose members cannot tell their constituents or other members of Congress what they have learned in secret, FISA has morphed so as to authorize spying down a slippery slope of targets, from foreign agents to all foreigners to anyone who communicates with foreigners to anyone capable of communicating with them. The surveillance state regime today permits America’s 60,000 military and civilian domestic spies to access in real time all the landline and mobile telephone calls and all the desktop and mobile device keystrokes and all the digital data created and used by anyone in the United States. The targets today are not just ordinary Americans; they are justices on the Supreme Court, military brass in the Pentagon, agents in the FBI, local police in cities and towns, and the man in the Oval Office. The British system that arguably impelled our secession in 1776 is now here on steroids. Enter the outsider as president. Donald Trump has condemned the spying and leaking, as he is a victim of it. While he was president-elect, the spies told him they knew of his alleged misbehaviors -- vehemently denied -- in a Moscow hotel room. Last week, his White House staff was shaken by what the spies did with what they learned from a former Trump aide. Trump’s former national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, himself a former military spy, spoke to the Russian ambassador to the United States in December via telephone in Trump Tower. It was a benign conversation. He knew it was being monitored, as he is a former monitor of such communications. But he mistakenly thought that those who were monitoring him were patriots as he is. They were not. They violated federal law by revealing in part what Flynn had said, and they did so in a manner to embarrass and infuriate Trump. Why would they do this? Perhaps because they feared Flynn's being in the White House, since he knows the power and depth of the deep state. Perhaps to send a message to Trump because he once compared American spies to Nazis. Perhaps because they believe that their judgment of the foreign dangers America faces is superior to the president’s. Perhaps because they hate and fear the outsider in the White House. The chickens have come home to roost. In our misguided efforts to keep the country safe, we have neglected to keep it free. We have enabled a deep state to become powerful enough to control a powerful president. We have placed so much data and so much power in the hands of unelected, unaccountable, opaque spies that they can use it as they see fit -- even to the point of committing federal felonies. Now some have boasted that they can manipulate and thus control the president of the United States by selectively revealing and concealing what they know about anyone, including the president himself. This is a perilous state of affairs, brought about by the maniacal passion for surveillance spawned under George W. Bush and perfected under Barack Obama -- all with utter indifference to the widespread constitutional violations and permanent destruction of personal liberties. This is not the government the Framers gave us. But it is one far more dangerous to human freedom than the one from which they seceded in 1776. Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel.

Ha, that's because the USAF and military as a whole wastes so much damn money on non-essentials, they need to prioritize better. I'm deployed and just in awe of how much it must be costing the taxpayer to deploy airmen to do jobs that shouldn't even exist at home base, let alone deployed locations. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network Forums

In the airlines and other civilian jobs... Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network Forums

Bear in mind everyone, this is the same Air Force that dogmatically preaches the core values to us. Then they try and manipulate government regulations in a deliberate attempt to screw over veterans' ability to land jobs after they serve for 10+ years. Integrity first though, right Big Blue? Also, isn't "take care of your people" like the first thing that all AF leadership courses teach? Or is Maslow's hierarchy of needs? This BS shows me my need to get the hell out before the AF invents new ways to screw people over. Where are the leaders?

Back to the main theme of the thread, you are getting distracted, and that plays to their hand. Bottomline, Fingers listened to the problems (like Boomer before him), and decided it was easier to go around the identified problems and ask Congress to take action to make every pilot less marketable. A big GIANT FU to those that serve. I will not address the issues that make you want to leave, I will simply ignore your complaints and take external actions that will make it harder for you to find a job on the outside. Anyone else want to vomit at the hypocrisy? It was the same thing from a former MAJCOM/CC, a guy I used to respect, who said "they will stay out of patriotism and if they don't we will just make more" Good luck with that one...of course he was a Nav.

There's probably never been a better time to try to get a pilot slot with a less than stellar GPA. Make them tell you no by applying to every opportunity you can. Keep studying and get that PPL and if they say no, try again. I lost count of the number of times I was told no before I finally got a pilot slot. I was rocking a 2.8 GPA. Don't give up.

So I guess I'm the only one who finds it hilarious (in a self-depricating way) that immediately after an applicant visit weekend the squadron makes a post looking for additional applicants (seemingly because they didn't like us). Obviously that's not the reality of the situation because the other 8 guys are great dudes who are going to be extremely competitive, but I made a joke. I'll keep my day job and hopefully you all can forgive my faux pas. I'm sorry. My flying is better than my joke making, I swear.

I laugh quite a bit every time I hear AF "pilot shortage". There is no shortage of pilots wanting to fly planes in the AF. There's a shortage of the AF placing those pilots in jobs that allow them to be pilots, and to teach other pilots. There's plenty of bag wearers sitting at group level positions, in staff jobs, at IDE, etc staring at a computer screen. I've flown less than 200 hours a year the last 3 years as an experienced MWS instructor because the AF values keeping the self fellating bureaucratic process running more that it values flight experience. Senior Capts and junior majors are begging to be 'allowed' to get back to teaching the young pilots, only to be told that they're more valued behind a desk. No thanks, see ya, welcome aboard Delta 4962, non stop to Chicago.

F-22 1. Expect to deploy either to the desert or to the Pacific for 6 months at a time once every 1.5-2 years (home for 1-1.5 years between deployments). While in garrison, expect 2 x RED FLAG-Nellis/Alaska that take one month away from home each. Also expect 1 x COMBAT ARCHER trip and 1 x COMBAT HAMMER trip in there for 2-3 weeks each. In between all of that, expect 4 or so night surges for 4-6 weeks that will throw home life off, a few one-week CONUS simulator trips, and upgrade surges when none of that other stuff is going on. The community is minimally manned due to poor TFI mix calculations, causing the various shops (training, stab/eval, UDM, etc.) to be one man deep. You're busy. 2. Family stability is all about expectation management (this is true of every military family): if your family expects you to be home for dinner most nights, they have bad expectations and will be frustrated. If they expect you to work 14 hours a day and a couple hours on Saturday or Sunday, they will be pleasantly surprised about 2-3 times a week. 3. Community morale depends on the year group: all of the young guys absolutely LOVE life! It's the most dominant fighter jet in the world and you're getting to fly it every day. Throw on top of that, just about every bro in the community was top notch to get in, so they are awesome selfless individuals who will stay several hours late multiple nights in a row if needed to help a bro out. The oldest guys are usually the SQ/CC or SQ/DO; every now and then there is a Lt Col ADO who stuck around. They all love to be there because they chose to stay plus all of the stuff mentioned about the young guys applies to these guys (even leadership will stay to help out). I would be willing to bet that some of the best leaders in the USAF are in the F-22 SQ/CC seats. I've never once had even an average one. The guys who've been in the USAF for 6-10 years are a mixed bag. They've always been the best at everything they've ever done...until they got into the F-22. The ones who go to WIC, typically love life until after their first WO job when they get burnt out and punch to the Guard/Reserve (VERY few stay longer). Those on leadership tracks still love life. The ones who didn't get either are often cynical and looking to get out ASAP. 4. It's the Raptor. It'll continue to get upgraded and be the USAF's top A/A fighter. 5. There isn't a single bad location: Anchorage, AK; Yorktown, VA; Honolulu, HI; Panama City Beach, FL; and Las Vegas, NV. Expect to go Ops-to-Ops indefinitely unless you go to IDE. That's about the only way you reach escape velocity from the community, but you'll go right back after school/staff. Very very few go on 365s, and none are getting picked up for 180s anymore now that Schwartz' ridiculous "all-in" mentality has been purged (I digress). I have absolutely loved my time in the Raptor.

STUPID QUESTION ALERT: I just wanted to some of the guys who have been interviewed/hired for the ANG/AFRC... Have you ever submitted an application package that was less than ideal? I have had my eyes on a squadron that isn't necessarily close to where I work (about a day's drive), but it is in my home state and just seems like a good fit for me. Here are the following issues: 1. My PCSM is below the minimum for my flight hours (34). When I contacted them about it, they told me they look at the 201+ column, and to submit my application anyways. 2. I only have a class II, and not a class I medical (yet). I have amazing eyesight, and have been told that the class I thing isn't a huge consideration as long as the reason for not having the class I is the fact that you aren't physically qualified. 3. I probably will only have 1 (maybe 2) letters of recommendation. Although strong, the unit allows a maximum of 3, and I don't want them to think I'm not taking them seriously if I don't max everything out. I don't want to ruin any future chances with the squadron if they see my package and think, "Man, this guy just submitted garbage to us", especially since they're a squadron I could see myself applying to multiple times.

On the day that Former President Obama announced retaliation measures against Russia for their interference in the 2016 election, Flynn called the Russian ambassador to the US several times. In recounting the content of these conversations, he told VP Pence and other senior officials that he did not discuss sanctions. Come to find out, those conversations were monitored by US intelligence, and it was made known that in fact the topic of sanctions was in fact discussed. The President (but apparently not the VP in particular) was aware of these inconsistencies in Flynn's story re: the calls for several weeks, but when stories broke that Flynn had essentially lied to the VP (and possibly also the FBI), he resigned. Pick your favorite outlet, but here's an example story: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/us/politics/donald-trump-national-security-adviser-michael-flynn.html