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In a perfect world, yes. That's not what's happening. DEI assumes that if you have a certain skin color, then you must have had a disadvantage. Assuming you overcame more barriers because you aren't white is intensely arrogant. Imagining that you know anything about someone based on their skin color or gender has a name: RACISM. So I'm clear: DEI IS INSTITUTIONAL RACISM

Funny -- I had my JAG try to tell me as a Wg/CC that I couldn't have "Christmas" party or or other Christmas stuff. I made him take out his official government calendar read to me what it said on the December 25 box. That made him set his scotch down and slink out of my big fat office.

Any confirmation the Russian pilot said "too close for missiles, switching to fuel" and if in the debrief the other pilot whispered to him "gutsiest move I ever saw Sergey"?

Prozac? Pawnman?

They need to implement a DEI draft for the armed services. Only women, minorities (whites in CA lol) and all of the other marginalized communities will be eligible for selection. How many white American men died in WWII? Can we get some reparations for their sacrifices? Just a bunch of dumb white men. My grandfather flew in WWII, Korea and Vietnam. He took flak to his right leg in WWII over Germany. A foot away and I wouldn't be here. How many of those men didn't make it home? My grandfather lost a lot of buds flying daylight bombing missions in his B-26. It wouldn't surprise me if one day, children get taught that WWII was good because it got rid if so many whites. DEI (dumbasses eating ice cream)

It kind of makes sense Re: Juneteenth, although having both be an Independence Day is weird and confusing. Just using the word Juneteenth makes sense to me and if people don’t know they can learn. I had never heard of that word/concept until I was an adult…southern public school education and all. Lots of foreign holidays are random proper noun words rather than descriptive holidays like most of ours are. If people can understand Halloween they can understand Juneteenth. Emancipation didn’t equal independence, and that’s kind of the whole point of the holiday. Lincoln emancipated all of the American slaves on Jan 1 1863, yet not all were free until Jun 19 1865.

Not sure if any of you have had the “pleasure” of working with or interacting with any of these DEI / EO types but they make MPF and finance look like mission hacking warriors. God help you if you are a white male in today’s military (I’m not).

Dont worry.... they will find a way to manage to take a trip what seems like every weekend to either, LA, NYC, or Las Vegas anyway...

I think most folks on this forum would prefer that DEI go away entirely, and people be hired based upon merit alone. My experience in corporate America has been that DEI preferences focus on very specific groups that do not include veteran status and age.

They can focus on recruiting more minorities/women/trans/midgets, but I want them to only accept the best applicants, regardless of race/sexual orientation. It all needs to be masked. No pictures. Just qualications and an interview wearing a full face mask, using a voice changer and a burka (race/sexual orientation will be hidden and the parties will be safe). They are not going to do that. They will be the liberal Getsapo.

I enjoy this discussion. I also think this is not the place for it. Anonymity of any individual is questionable. Identity of the demographic is pretty certain. There are some quotable quotes here that could be misconstrued (obviously).

Bogidope has a bootcamp thing that brought a bunch of people together in a forum on their website and a whatsapp chat I think. Otherwise I've mostly been talking to people I've met at rushes/visits. Still monitor this thread once in a while but like you said not much going on here...

All valid points. Was just thinking out loud.

Must’ve been one of those UPTski 2.5 VR comrades that got Flankers instead of May’s to Siberia because of diversity, am I right? *high five*

Let me underscore: Employment in the airline industry RIGHT NOW will secure you for a future that is fraught with landmines of uncertainty. Social history says that our 'global society" is headed for pain. I have met the dude who was #2999 of 3000 at UPS Airlines...for SEVEN YEARS. (I can't remember the exact numbers, but he was literarily #2 from the bottom) And that ended. still SEVEN YEARS of crap schedules, commuting to the base you didn't want as a home so you decided to keep commuting...AND not knowing if you will be the first one cut. FOR SEVEN YEARS........yet he stayed.... ....he hung on. I'm telling you a fact that cannot be disproven: The sooner you get your number, the sooner you furlough-proof yourself. Is it impossible? no. The next couple decades are going to suck bigtime, there is no way around that. But if you are in the best job 'we' can possibly have, at the time, then you are the lottery winner my friend. Seriously dude. Airline pilots will make money, and live a better life (15 days at home BAby!!!) in our lifetime. AI is coming...FAST for us. But not yet. Make hay while the sun shines. You're a pilot, get after it! After 3 years of no more than 15 days a month at work: This is the best part time job I've ever had. The dirty secret: If it was 25 days a month, we'd all be happy so long as we weren't living under communism...

So one thing I recognized in this whole debate is there are really two cultures in hiring in the corporate world. The first one is, you have a role, and a job description, and you are ideally going to fit the person with the highest pedigree of qualification in that role so that they can provide the most value add. The other perspective is you have a role, and a job description. The job description is the minimum bar to complete the job and the job as its described is all thats being asked or needed of the employee for the company to meet strategy. Any candidate who meets the minimum qualification is equally qualified with any other candidate because at the end of the day no matter how amazing they are, they will only be asked to do the job as described. Most all of us, think in both ways at one time or another. We are all cautious of job creep. For example, nearly everyone has been critical of airlines offering perks for things like masters degrees since its well known that for most airline pilots you're never going to be asked to make a quantitative management decision that steers the direction of the company (I know thats not 100% true and there are management pilots but this is a generalization to MOST pilots). That masters degree is then in actuality a 0 value add for that position, its just a recruiting barrier. Similarly, I was reading a post on reddit today about a C-suite executive for a major healthcare firm who wants a lower stress job and is willing to take a pay cut but recruiters won't talk to him. To some extent hiring over qualified people is problematic. For example, can I legitimately hire a former COO of a F500 to be a Project Manager? Thats likely more problems than answers. Sure his management is probably on point but whats going to be their capacity to accept authority and to not try and steer the strategy of their own management. The reason I bring this up though is because I've noticed that people who support large DEI initiatives tend to fall in the second camp more often than the first, and people who are critical of DEI fall in the first camp more than the second. This is just a personal observation, nothing empirical. But the DEI crowd tends to fall back a lot on "if I have 10 candidates, and all are capable to do the job as advertised, why not give the job to the person who has likely had more barriers to get here?" Where as people against DEI would further scrutinize those 10 candidates and say "well yes, but candidate A, D and F have masters degrees, and Candidate G got a 95 on his PT test, so clearly they are more qualified." I dont think either approach is wrong really. Job qualification creep is a real thing, but so is getting value add by hiring employees that have unique qualifications others dont.

What does being inclusive mean to you though? Don't you just hire the most qualified candidate? I think there is very real pressure to give more points to candidates that might not be the MOST qualified in the pool.

It's fucking nuts to think what those dudes and kids went through going through those "tunnels" in the pitch dark with raging currents.

Definitely on my to-do list now. The whole story is quite incredible. I've spent a few trips in Thailand and have always been impressed by the resilience of that culture to come together in difficult measures. The story of the 13 is a really good illustration of how hope and grit personify that nation.

probably mostly due to the fact that it's not true

A great opportunity for someone who wants to step away from flying. https://www.foxnews.com/politics/air-force-diversity-equity-inclusion-hiring-spree-top-job.amp

Valid consideration.

ChatGPT already works well for OPR bullets and I’m sure it’ll be good at the narrative format too! This man is a lifelong Guars Bum and invented time travel, bravo! 😆

“Environmentally unsound” is definitely built for the European audience. Think they’re talking about the fuel dumping or the resultant littering and… littering and… smoking the Reaper?

If ChatGPT can do the job of an exec and pump out PME essays, it follows that AI will eventually take all the #1 strats/DGs and soon the CSAF will be a chat bot. Troubling times we live in...

I remember almost hitting a PTIDS tether on a show of force…wouldn’t that have been a bitch if that’s how my story ended. “So he died fighting valiantly in Afghanistan?” ”No, a balloon took him down” ”….”

Don't worry, youll just have to do a legacy AF707 and a new myEval report just to ensure a report is written on the closeout date. Man, glad I got my DD-214 this year =D

I definitely can. Can you you point to EVEN ONE incident where a white pilot who should have been fired was retained because he claimed "you're firing me because of my race or gender"? Melatonin content and wedding tackle should have absolutely no bearing in the hiring process because gender and race have no discernable impact on the capabilities of a pilot. The moment they are introduced as any form of discriminator, the quality of the force goes down, because they stop hiring for quality and start hiring for diversity. That's how DEI bullshit is diluting the gene pool. That's basic logic. Can you not see that? Following your rules, the NFL and NBA would be better if they hired more white guys and asian girls, and the oil fields would be more productive if they had a quota of weak armed trans-men work the rigs. The logic of DEI is completely false. Removing some barriers to entry makes sense, enforces quotas does not. Also basic logic: it's impossible to prove a negative. Asking someone to do so is violently ignorant. If you make your world view decisions primarily based on "statistics", you're putting yourself at the whim of any tool who knows how to twist numbers to his view. Logic and reason. Use logic and reason. When you stop hiring based on ability to do the job, you get a lower quality product. When you DO hire based on ability, you'll get all the diversity you need as a side-effect. You want a stat? Ok. An airplane was crashed (and yes, one is too many) by a man who should have been fired based on his performance but was retained predominantly because of his race. Show me a stat that proves diversity has IMPROVED the safety of the airlines. (that's a positive by the way...those can be proven)

its simple, the lowering of hiring standards (hours requirements/college degree/etc), massive hiring wave + pressure to expand airline networks devastated by covid has created a lot of strain on the system. add in the early retirements of ATC and senior pilots during COVID...this has created a system where there are thousands of new, inexperienced crew members (no fault of their own we all start somewhere), working in a system where safeguards and margins are thinner than they were in the past. dispatch, below wing, ATC, pilots, ramp control etc....lots of new people in new jobs with rapid expansion. the stress is showing. i double+triple check every runway i cross these days and don't take anything for granted how many new ATP pilots entered the system since 2021? how many pilots have airlines hired? break break i know i'll get shit for this but it doesn't help when every major airline is constantly sending out emails and pats on the back for how many new hires are DEI or women or gay. what does that contribute to the problem? unknown. but it doesn't make it better the trope "diversity makes us stronger" is a farce. it doesn't. skilled pilots/crew members REGARDLESS OF THEIR COLOR, SEX, RELIGION makes us stronger and better. no one is prevented from becoming a pilot because of their background. YES there are areas of society where the barriers to entry were/are higher, but honestly that is life! go out, work hard, train hard, and get it. our society has to move away from DEI metrics. and scrubbing training folders/failures to keep up with the woke narrative is not making the airline industry safer.

These are the same people who think 16-year-olds should be able to vote and 10-year-olds should be able to have life- altering gender surgeries.

I think the General's article raises some interesting possibilities to improve UPT. Better said, I think he is offering some valid ways to improve the transition from UPT to today's modern fighter/attack platforms. However, I think he's forgetting the basic goal of UPT. We still need to produce pilots with strong foundational skills in basic aviation before we start giving them extra "toys" to play with. The problem with making changes to syllabi and training programs in aviation (military or civilian) is the guys making the changes are usually the old guys who were trained one or more "generations" in the past. They always seem to apply their perspective of how challenging it was to adapt to new technology when most of the time, the young guys do fine. What’s actually harder is being able to go backward once someone had become proficient with new tech. I've seen it over and over again. F-15 FTU syllabus changes to include advanced subjects and tactics that had traditionally been left until arrival at the ops units. Old guys are highly skeptical and swear the students will flail because when they had to learn the same stuff 10 years into their careers, their ingrained, semi-hardened brains found it a challenge. Surprise - the students eat the shit up and adapt because they don't know any different and they come out the other end more lethal than their instructors were when they were LTs. Airline X decides to put new hires into the right seats of the latest Boeing or Airbus wide-bodies because 1 - there aren't any more 727 Engineer seats to stick newbies into and 2 - they need to fill the seats. Old guys lose their minds again considering the impossible task of learning the ropes at a major airline while getting through right seat training on the modern marvel that is a 21st century airliner with a glass cockpit and all the bells and whistles. Surprise again - new guys (most anyway) from all kinds of backgrounds deal just fine with all the magic that the old guys stared at like a pig looking at a wristwatch. My point is that new pilots rarely have difficulty adapting to new technology that reduces workload, enhances SA and allows easier human interface. But, once you give them those new toys and train them to use and rely on them from day one, they have no ability to retrograde back to more basic methods. When my airliner computes a descent to hit waypoints at specific speeds and altitudes down track, I do the math and compute my 3:1 descent in my head to make sure the jet's plan is reasonable. It's just a habit developed before I had all the magic. A "child of magenta" probably doesn't have that same habit and may not even have the ability to do it. He's never needed to. So, when Murphy strikes in that scenario or any number of potential problem areas in civilian or military flying, if a pilot has no old school skills and is completely reliant on technology to do his job, he's less capable - period - dot. I laughed when I saw the side by side picture of the T-X and F-35 cockpits. YGBSM. The fact that both cockpits utilize similar displays and automation isn't going to matter on "Stanley's" UPT sorties when he's trying to figure out how to develop contact flying skills, land out of an overhead, not kill his classmate during a rejoin or shoot an approach to mins. I guaran-fucking-tee that his first sortie in an F-35 is not going to be any easier because he had a moving map or some other sensor display in his T-X while he was still earning his wings. Anyone can go from round dial steam gauges that actually required an instrument scan and some mental challenge to maintain positional awareness and overall SA to the latest, greatest glass cockpit. Going back in the other direction is a far different story. UPT needs to produce pilots with solid, basic aviation skills. Skipping over those by handing Stanley a glass cockpit with a moving map, HUD and whatever other toys are available isn't going to do that. I have no doubt he'll do just fine with them, but there's benefit to learning this job from a basic level first. You produce pilots who don't just take the information presented to them as gospel and blindly follow it - but have the ability to understand how to back it up, QC it to ensure it makes sense and flex to another option if it doesn't. I've seen pilots blindly follow steering bars on a flight director into oblivion because that's all they've ever done. Another is unable to transition to a round dial ADI because they're a HUD baby and it's now tits up. I watched a guy in the sim completely pork a way an approach because he chose not to use DME to the field, mis-interpreted his NAV display and lost SA on where he was. A bearing pointer and DME is a beautiful thing if you know how to use them. My point is that the General's concern seems to be how can we introduce more shit to Stanley sooner so he'll be more familiar with the F-35 or F-22 cockpit if and when he finally gets that far. I think students will adapt to those environments just fine when the times comes. There may be an opportunity to help begin their transition later in UPT or during whatever we're going to call the IFF phase. But not at the expense of creating a generation of pilots who start out from day one completely reliant on the most advanced cockpit we can field. Maybe the General needs to take a peek at the existing F-15C or A-10 cockpits. They sure as hell would be about 10 steps backwards for a UPT student who just got winged in an F-X and now has to figure out how to fly round dial steam gauges so he doesn't kill himself on his first ILS to mins. Anyway..... just my old guy two-cents. I still see some value in swinging a weighted bat in the on-deck circle before I'm up.