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buy a car and drive it to upt you knucklehead. i would have rode a freakin donkey across the usa to get to upt. millennials.

I agree. Strong opinions are the benchmark of a solid future USAF pilot. Be sure to keep a stiff upper lip and don’t be afraid to share your opinions at UPT. Your IP’s will recognize this and reward you above your peers. Stay strong!

I book airfare all the time not through DTS. Also, it is in violation of the JTR to not reimburse your personal card...though you could avoid the issue with your RA by using your GTC to self procure airfare. Clearly you have a good reason for doing so. And in the end, the catchall in the JTR is they CANNOT "punish" you via non-reimbursement. Finance MUST reimburse you - the JTR essentially says they could tattle on you to your SQ/CC, at which point your SQ/CC could "counsel" you, but doubtful even a shitty CC will do much more than hit delete on finance Amn's email.

Yeah there Cochise, I was actually born in California and lived there until I commissioned into the AF. I didn’t say BART, I said mass transit, which I used a good deal growing up because I didn’t have a car until I went into the AF. Maybe you should Google mass transit to see all that it encompasses other than BART.

Shouldn't that tell the powers that be just how deep the organizational rot has gone? When CSAF and SECAF pull all the WING/CC's in a room and say "Knock it off" and it continues, that is not "Stovepiped thinking", that is a completely broken organization. USAF needs real LEADERSHIP...stand up in front of the room with a baseball bat and knock some sense into these pencil pushing duncewagons. Fire the first couple that don't listen...get back to being WARRIORS. I get it, we need a system to manage people, but when the system becomes more powerful than our ability to grow leaders and project combat power...something is seriously fucking wrong.

Not unlikely but the cure for that is to officially end golden boy / favored son programs / positions (exec and other such suckling jobs) and have the first 6 years or so of everyone’s careers be direct duties performance appraisal with leadership potential only judged around the 8 year point. O-3 and below should be / is focused on operational proficiency / tactical leadership. That has a strong rated view to it as other non rated officers primary function is leadership from the get go but that again leads to separate ratings / promotions for rated and non rated to address that.

What will we do without you?

Except for that it kind of does man. You get what hopefully is your dream job and you can’t be bothered to spend 3-4 days on the road to go make it happen? College graduate, sure. Adult and Officer? Questionable. Grow up dude. Also, nickel’s worth of free advice. Probably not the best move to ask folks in this line of work, who traverse the country and the world every 3 or so years, about how you don’t have the desire to take a little road trip. I mean really. Also, what was your plan for after UPT and/or every time you move for the rest of your life?

i see we've drastically lowered our standards already.

An oldie, but a goodie...

Ya know, back in the day, if a self-important, un-self-aware nugget showed up to UPT, opened his mouth, and this tripe spilled out of it, he would have had (in person) the exact type of no-nonsense attitude adjustment the dignified members of BaseOps have attempted to give him here. Let's hope that the bro-level IPs at CBM show him the same courtesy our IPs showed us when we were ignorant dumbasses that didn't know a f'in' thing about a f'in' thing but walked around as if we did.

nah bro, plenty of public transport in Columbus. I wouldn’t worry about it until you get there. Plenty of options right at the airport.

It's when you're not one of the chosen, but you haven't realized that the only winning move is not to play.

You wouldn't have a JTR source for that would you? At my current shithole assignment, we were actually threatened by our GS-15 DTS AO that we would not be reimbursed for regular official travel if we didn't ask him ahead of time, via lengthy email with full details of the trip (even if a DTS auth was submitted/approved), if we had his blessing for the trip. Given the substantial amount of free time I have with this job, I've started to entertain myself by passive aggressively challenging him on all things related to travel funding.

Yep, new suck getting spread around to the ANG now. They are calling them "small group deployments" - my wife's CE squadron got a bunch for FY18. Nothing for Ops or Mx yet - just give it time.

DBAP

F-106 - Project Six Shooter. Skip to the 4:00 mark for the air target tests there and around the 5:30 mark for the shootdown of a MACE drone.

Ugh

That was painful.

In the interests of being kind and considerate to my wife who will go to my movies, I took her and my home from college daughter to see The Greatest Showman. Fully expected to get an Elton John/Vegas Cirque du Soliel/Disneyesque type flick and I wasn't disappointed. As the Mrs was a former Tops In Blue performer (I'm not kidding and no, that wasn't a good use of O-3 pay, but it was also well before we met) and my daughter is a professional dancer (ballet, not the pole), the song/dance thing was for them; I can endure. What I didn't expect, and really hated, was the relentless social justice message. Not just an obligatory insertion of the "we're all equal despite being freaks" scene, but from nearly start to finish. If anyone else has the misfortune to see this film, I'd argue you can update your various Green Dot training/CBTs. At least the movie got a happy ending. Looks like all I'm getting is a Jamison's and water...

Yep, dudes in reality about your 6 year point you should be able to take stock of your future in the USAF by what type of strats/push you are getting/have gotten. It pains me to see dudes not realistic with their lack of push at that point and still think they have HPO potential. I see people volunteer for some truly sh-t jobs/deployments/TDY’s thinking it’s the boost they need but in reality they are working twice as hard for half the results. I’ve seen a few buck the trend and get on the HPO track late but the personal cost was enormous. This is my experience looking back over 15 years and seeing how peers and subordinates ended up in the long run vs indicators early on.

Thing is, the bullets we spend so much time writing matter very little. The strat, (or lack there of) job/staff level push and school push are what count. Omitting them can't be overcome by well written bullets, or even being good your job.

No, and I can assure you we've all contemplated the consequences...

You can still get the govt rate when you call the airline directly though.CTO is a complete scam.

FYI for your RA JFTR paragraph 040502 specifically states that not using your GTC can't be used as a reason to deny reimbursement. That being said it's still better to go through CTO if you can to get the govt contract fare - that way if your TDY changes etc. you aren't stuck with a non refundable ticket.

The system has built yes men incapable of saying no. If CSAF wants his free thinking approach embraced, he should fire commanders disobeying his orders. Until he does so, his words are as cheap as his predecessors actions. Incentivization is an obvious concept unfortunately lost on our over educated managerial class.

Did you include a bottle with your letter to the board?

I wish we would all get back on topic and reassure Duck that he will in fact be a twice passed over Capt.

Hail Bernie, full of grace. Our commune is with thee. Blessed art thou among comrades, and blessed is the fruit of thy planned economy, communism. Holy marxism, Mother of Lennin, pray for us Capitalists, now and at the hour of our victory. Amen.

Well that makes 2. 1) Agreed. I also should have listed current members, recently retired would be a better descriptor of who out of the retiree community we would be looking for. Not recently retired would still be definitely welcome but the recent experience and outlook on the modern AF is being sought specifically. 3) Agreed. Reaching out to Kane of "Bleeding Talent" I think should be seriously considered. I have never attended a course at AU but are there any instructors there who would join or help a serious public argument for reform? 3) The could work. I think there would be several stand out examples that we could frame the distilled ideas around. Like, Capt X was an outstanding officer / aircrew member / etc... but left as his career and personal goals could not be aligned because of this <idea> and identified by our detailed survey of officers & NCOs... The sale would be in providing evidence that agreeing to updating policy x to something else will improve retention, save money, increase morale, increase operational effectiveness, etc... and then how to do it. Basically, the reformers have to do all the work, present a plan(s), argue incessantly to the machine for change. I am thinking AF specific but this might need to be an all branches movement as some of the updates would be statutorily enacted (elimination of up or out for example). Would that be an unmanageable movement or strength in numbers?

Concur. For this to take hold and move forward, I don't know if the retirees pre mid-90's would believe how it has gotten or maybe they would, just don't know as I don't have a lot of contact with retirees from that time. What I am thinking of is a core group of retired officers and senior enlisted members coming together (virtually or IRL) and contributing what they think the "problem" is and then distilling that into a coherent message. When we start to discuss this as current and former members, our experiences and perspectives tend to get us to focus on the specific problems in our operational / support communities. For my two cents, we have to find the motifs running thru all those vignettes and opinions to come up with the overall updates required for the AF in this era. I say updates rather than fixes as I believe the AF is not absolutely fundamentally broken, just needs a major update to work effectively in the modern operational world, the current economy and culture and to fully realize the changes the latest revolutions in tech and evolutions in warfare have brought. Approaching the powers that be with the idea of updates I think extends a more palatable idea for change as we're really talking about convincing politicians, senior civilian officials and AF officers that what they have spent their careers in service to is not fundamentally bad but needs major update. My hope is that if we assemble a large enough chorus for reform, it will be loud enough that it can not be ignored.

If you are going to insult me, can you let me know what I said that was so terrible?

I find this whole discussion interesting. My initial question was regarding the logistics of getting to Columbus AFB without a car and the need for even having a car. Instead of getting advice (for the most part) I seemed to be attacked for asking the question and for thinking that I could buy a car later on . My manhood seems to be in question because I rather fly than drive which in itself is ironic seems I am going to UPT to be a pilot and not a driver. I get the impression from many that the harder I make the trip for myself , the better officer I will be. And if not a better officer at least a better adult. I have commented that I could buy a crappy car while at UPT and be financially responsible and wait until I leave Columbus to buy a long term car. It has also been recommended that I get the 25000 loan from USAA and indulge in a car while putting myself in debt. That being preferable to a 3000 or so car that won’t put me debt which I can sell when I leave Columbus. I am not even saying that my ideas are correct but I was asking if it made sense . Of course these questions resulted in someone commenting that standards have lowered and that I as a Millenial are too lazy to drive cross country . For those who gave me a smart answer, I now realize that I will need to arrive with a car. It will be too difficult not to have one. My thought was to travel light and when l leave UPT I won’t have tons of crap to take with me . What happens later after 3 years will be taken care of differently . Thanks for all the great advice. (Sarcasm for those who don’t get it ) I now see that it is better not to ask questions because it seems to bother some people’s sensibility of what are acceptable questions .

No, I am only long winded when writing on social media. I kind of enjoy wrtiting excruciating long responses that gives lots of details. It is my respose to how most people write on social media where you almost have to read their minds in order out figure out what they mean. I also know it annoy most people because of their short attention span especially as memes are all they can handle. I know to deal with people so that isnt an issue but I figured if most of you are going to be sarcastic or even insutling, I may as play my own game even if I only appreciate it. As for whinning, well sure I thought this would be place one could ask as serious question and be given a serioius answer. Sarcasm is fine as long as you are given an answer. Giving me sarcasm for the sake of it seems childish, but then again I am need to grow up as someone mentioned before. Old age and dementia must be a serious problem on this forum as I have repeatly said I would get a car, so I am not the guy who will need a ride. What I did ask is if I could get away with buying a cheap car after I arrived which as I have found is not only un realistic and not workable but insulting to most of you. Which is ironic since I am supposed to be whinny bitch

I would assume you have never been to California. Outside of San Francisco, there is no mass transit in California. My plan was to buy some little crappy car for UPT and buy something good once I graduate. I appreciate the advice, but that still leaves the issue of how I get to Columbus AFB without car