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Easier said than done, but the sooner you can adopt a nihilist view of the AF "system," the better. Allow me to wax poetic as an old guy for a minute. I don't mean unprofessionalism towards our craft. I don't mean disrespect for your wingman. I don't even mean insubordination. If you want a masters, great. Get it. If you don't want it, don't get it. The AF might kick you out as a passed over Major at 20 years. Ok. Your check of the month will be $600 less and the gate guard might not salute you quite as crisply when you go to the commissary during retiree hour. Or don't wait around to find out and get out at 12 years. I'd encourage you to go to the ARC, but if you don't want to, don't. If the AF is a lifelong calling for you, great. If it's just a job for your 20s, great. The system doesn't care which camp you're in - it'll be just fine without you and you'll be just fine without it. Your work ethic, intelligence, and expectation of success puts you heads and shoulders above your workplace competition. Unless you go looking for that hot girl Molly, you won't end up homeless on the streets of Portland. If you're panicking about your promotion opportunities with this new bait and switch, I encourage you to go create a LinkedIn account. Seriously. Go look at who's doing ok in the world. Find and follow the people that you think have made it. Masters or not. Promotion or not. You'll be ok.

Or how Biden and company touts climate change as so important, but then he decides to fly to St Croix for vacation the day prior to the omnibus bill ready for his sig, which then necessitates another jet fly the bill down to St Croix so he could sign it there. He and the dems give zero fucks about climate change, they care about consolidating power and control (and money).

Oh, but there is a way to provide direct feedback. I won't post it here, but simply look on The Global for: - Kendall, Frank, SECAF - Miller, Caroline M, Lt Gen. - and maybe your MAJCOM A1. A "feedback form" isn't needed. Simply provide your well-developed, professional thoughts on the matter.

Quick question. Why is it that if a dad chooses not to be in a child’s life he is labeled a dead beat dad but when a woman, who’s the only one who can make the choice, chooses to abort a child she’s glorified under her body her choice? She’s so brave for not bringing a child into this world when she wasn’t “ready.” Can anyone answer that?

This is so damn true. I’ve turned down more airline CA level paying consulting jobs than I ever thought would happen. I know many bros with the same experience. The point is all of you are incredibly valuable to a lot of industries - you simply bring more to the table than your civ counterparts and businesses know it. The mil lies to you and attempts to make you feel as if there’s nothing out there for you on the other side, so you better keep clinging to the gov safety blanket. There is so much out there, I would personally skip the masters and let them non-promote you, then get out at the earliest chance. Do the ARC on the side to keep scratching the mil itch while you have it.

I knew her, albeit briefly, when she was an O-6. Never met a more toxic, spoiled and entitled leader. This news about a masters should come as no surprise. Also, the grass really is greener on the other side. GET OUT NOW!

Anyone who is surprised or feels betrayed by this development hasn’t been paying attention. Sorry gents, as soon as they rolled out the “masking” umpty years ago there were plenty of old heads who said not to trust that things wouldn’t change once again. The USAF is fickle. It’s not a shock. Do your school. Or don’t. It’ll work out either way. The USAF payed for FOUR - count’em - 4x masters degrees for me. I (still) only need one, and even that is arguable. YMMV. Chuck

Could they have rolled this out gradually, with a year or two notice? Of course they could have. But no. Happy new year, get fucked, policy effective in 3 days.

“We’re not telling you you have to get one…but we’ll know if you don’t and hold it against your accordingly” Also effective 1 Jan 23…fuck literally everybody in the YGs coming up for boards soon

Masked when I was a LT, unmasked as a captain, then remasked as a major, then retired last spring, now unmasked again.

covid and climate change are power grabs of enormous scale

I know a couple guys that are sticking around because it’s right for them and their families, but I decided a while ago I need to do something else. 18 months to go on the ole UPT ADSC… I find it amusing in a twisted way to have seen the return of AADs. I got my ATP back in ‘16 hoping there’d be another VSP—too bad THAT program didn’t come back!

That statement will be hilarious when your post is over four hours old 🤣

yeah you shouldn't consider it the career totally sucks i wish i was still on AD getting treated well

To the SWA meltdown, we all get our turn in the barrel...this week was SWA's turn. I hope they're back on their feet soon. Yes, at DAL, you could walk off the plane and be met by a "company representative," and handed a trip that starts the next day. The main ways out of the trip are to be sick, have child care issues or not be rested. Now if something like that happened to me, I'd probably be sick to my stomach lol. That said, that hasn't happened in the near decade I've been here, not even during some pretty epic meltdowns. To your last point. This year, I averaged 8-9 days worked and 3 nights away per month while averaging ~100 hours/month of pay. I recently went on activation orders and now I'm working twice as much, while making 50% of what I was making (I'm a 21 year O-5)...that's some smeared glitter lol.

I really wish there was an "exit feedback form" we could fill out to let our "leadership" know some of the reasons why we are leaving. It would be cheaper and more accurate than all the RAND studies, IMO. Not that anyone would care...but at the very least it would be cathartic and it could be something our civilian elected officials could use to hold the senior military officers accountable for mismanaging their personnel so badly.

I have nothing productive to say. I've just checked this board 3-19 times a day with no update. Nothing more frustrating than knowing someone knows if you've made pilot. But before you find out the AF needs to have 10 other people look at it...not make any changes and slowly sign something. Legit 30 days of nothingness!

That may not be the intent, but that will be the outcome. Again.

What the actual Fuck. This is maybe the dumbest thing the AF could've done retention wise right now. Every careerist sack of shit O-5/6 is gonna rack & stack their guys based on this shit, SECAF guidance mentioned above aside. We're already in a personnel shortage WRT instructors and evaluators (at least in my corner of the AF) cause the majority of the FGOs are gone. The 1st time someone doesn't get promoted (or thinks they didn't? based on a lack of an AAD it's just gonna make things worse. Rant off, anyone know if AMU/Toro/ERAU has stock available to buy?

Lol. Ok dude. The tax credit didn't cover the costs of my solar panels chap. My money did. I'm not even sure I applied the tax credit as it was several years ago. It's awesome that you built your own system. What state do you live in BTW? Is it CA or somewhere else? As much as people know about CA, I assume you all live here. Lol As for the poor, I don't want them to suffer anymore than they already do. CA/Power companies fucked them when it comes to paying for power. Not me. Why not just give the power to the poor people for free? If that's what this is all about. They can have my excess power. I don't care. I'll buy one less Costco sized bag of Honey Bunches of Oats a month to make up for my financial loss. I agree, the current CA solar program does not benefit the poor. It has always sucked to be poor. If you're in CA, you can fight to get the poor solar panels too. You can even use your intricate knowledge of solar panels to help build them. Edit: Except, this isn't about helping the poor. It's about keeping the money flowing to the power companies. They don't care about the poor either. Looks like Kevin was doing OK. https://wallmine.com/people/32560/kevin-m-payne Also his replacement Steven https://www1.salary.com/Steven-D-Powell-Salary-Bonus-Stock-Options-for-EDISON-INTERNATIONAL.html#:~:text=Executive Compensation&text=Of this total %24481%2C513 was,for the 2021 fiscal year.

Russia rolling out the big missiles...big inflatable missiles.

That's awesome, more folks should do that. I'm under a coop in the TVA also. They decided to inflict a blackout when it was 3 degrees outside. Luckily I have a wood fireplace and a pretty aggressive emergency propane heater. I woke up the morning of the blackout - my house hadn't started to get cold, but that was an eye opener. I repositioned the propane heater so I could get to it faster next time because going out onto the deck to get firewood when you first wake up and its 3 degrees...sucks.

Look up the term "paper abortion." Basically advocating for the right of a father to give up all parental rights to a child as well as responsibilities if the mother decides to have the child.

Queen Karen!

I'll see that and raise you a policy that was enacted and BACK DATED by multiple months. When they took the 3 for 1's from alert, they didn't just throw down with "as of today," they back dated it by multiple months. This meant that we had a part-timer who had already worked and was expecting 21 days of pay...he got 8. Guess how much help we got from part timers after that... Anyway, back on subject, what is this, the 3rd or 4th time they've done this shit in the last 15 years? Like they said above, fire up a linkedIn account and you'll be surprised at that options you'll have.

That's PhD level stuff right there.

So which technical degrees specifically are they rewarding? I know the memo said not to get one just to check a box but without more details that's what it looks like to me. Does ACSC count as a masters for these purposes or will you need a masters just to apply for ACSC in correspondence to then be able to apply for ACSC in residence to then have a chance at planning the Christmas party?

What’s old is new again. Seems like bad faith to drop the policy the week after Christmas and make it effective on 1 Jan. Definitely shows how the AF really feels.

guys seriously screw these elitist military political "leaders" get out they don't care about you, the country, or the constitution

FIFY.

I might've missed something at the beginning of the solar power conversation. I'm not in CA, don't know anything about their regulations. Solar power here is a thing. I don't know of anyone who sells it back - they are configured to be completely off grid. Most people I know that have installed solar are still plugged into the electrical coop, but they don't use it. And its not required. Same with wells. I pay my monthly $20 minimum payment to retain access to city water, but my well provides 100% of my water. And I'm not required to retain access to city water.

It's the universe where input costs and secondary effects are factored into overall cost. The oft quoted $.03 is nonsense. It ignores bad weather, damage maintenance, and, most critically, the costs associated with the rest of the grid. When you move to solar you drastically change the pricing dynamics of fossil fuel/nuke power production which is necessary in any system due to the inherent failings of solar and wind. Power plants are most efficient when running at full tilt 24 hours per day. Power demand doesn't work like that, however the use of solar takes somewhat regular and predictable demand curves and shakes them. Nice hot sunny day in the summer? Great, solar shines, and the power plants can spin down. But those same plants still have to be able to reach full grid coverage if a summer storm rolls in. Or similarly with a winter storm. So the irony here is that solar increases the cost of fossil fuel and nuclear power production, then brags about the cost difference. It is a 100% fact that on a cost basis alone, solar does not compete. Do you really think we would still need government subsidies to promote solar if it was cheaper? That's a lack of surface level analysis. Because of the lack of battery technology, which is nowhere close to ready for grid-level coverage, solar and wind do not reduce the need for baseload power. You still need full grid coverage from fossil/nuke for those times the sun is gone and the wind is calm. So you are adding to the infrastructure costs, leaving only the fuel reduction as the cost-savings offered from solar. That savings is far lower than the cost of solar manufacturing and infrastructure. To repeat, the less you use a power plant, the more expensive it becomes on a /KWh basis. Without the ability to store ~ 1 month of energy from a battery array (not happening anytime soon), you must maintain your non-solar/wind power generation capacity. I know this is par for the course, because you are generally the most self righteous person here (which says a lot if you can out-righteous me), but you're ability to straw man is almost as impressive as your ability to be consistently wrong. Thanks to Russia we now have all the evidence we needed that the wind/solar movement was bullshit. And no, you can't compose a scenario where this war isn't a factor. This is the problem with liberal ideology in general. It works great in a hypothetical world, it collapses in reality. Germany, the icon of solar and wind installations, has been importing wood from the US to burn in their power plants. Wood is one of the worst fuels imaginable, yet because their zeal for killing fossil/nuke power was unstoppable, they ended up using fucking wood(!), while having to fire up some coal plants too. So much for carbon emissions. Of course the EU quietly revises their climate guidance to declare nuclear power is now suddenly "green," because they see the failure of their wind and solar strategy agitating their populace. And the UK was paying people's power bills because they went up 500-1000%. Neat. How did we get there? The promise of solar and wind convinced these countries they could rely on countries like Russia to provide them with cheap fossil fuels for the "transition period" where they shut down the nasty fossil fuel and nuke plants. No need to invest in new power plants or fossil fuel exploration, wind and solar to the rescue. Wind and solar are nothing but feel good nonsense. Ambrosia to the academics and virtue signalers, but impractical for wide-scale use. Solar/Wind + Batteries are great for purpose built systems that require off-grid or grid-failure resiliency, but that does not describe the average use-case. And anyone who has built a system like that without government subsidies knows how much more expensive it is than just plugging into the grid.

Nope. Here’s another: What’s the difference between Covid & SWA? Covid is airborne.

Absolutely, AMC’s culture has really changed recently, largely thanks to Mini. Young cats are in the vault more than ever and excited about planning and executing challenging profiles and exercises. Thank god because INDOPACOM presents a logistical challenge like no other, EUCOM would be no cake walk either. There are still your AMC careerists and your toxic old hats who scoff at anything more challenging than SKE VIS PRO..but I’m really impressed and optimistic with the way the community is headed.

What he said,,,C-17 101

I didn’t appreciate BTF life until I was teaching at the WIC and we had set up a big exercise with the Ellsworth Bones and Sioux Falls Vipers. Went there on a Monday to do some briefings and then before the first mission they got a BTF tasking to go to the Black Sea. To their credit, they filled that tasking and produced 3 jets for each vul (2 flew). I was seriously impressed with that effort from the entirety of the Ellsworth team.

The way I see it, we are exactly 2 weeks away from being able to say "any day now"

Dave Ramsey should use that as a tag line. “Whether you’re trying to blow up the World Trade Center* or chopping your wife up in a wood chipper, pay in cash!” *https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammed_A._Salameh

That’s why you gotta have a cover story man! Especially in Canada, FAWG could be Fuckin’ A Wayne Gretzky for his hockey prowess, Find a Way to Gander for his overland navigation skills (bonus points if from Newfoundland), Freely Acquires Wayward Geese for his work on the Canadian Geese migration, or even Fries Always With Gravy for his poutine obsession. Come on Canucks!

Phrasing.

Confirmed, official release today, takes effect 1 Jan 23.

RUMINT that SECAF has announced through AFPC that AADs are going to be unmasked for 0-4 and O-5 promotion boards starting CY23…anyone else heard similar?