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Great questions. The answer is no. Every GO sold out, repeated the same supportive tripe in public while privately voicing concern at our trajectory, yet continued up the chain of rank and pay. Imagine if we had leaders who said this: “I resign from active service. I love our country but cannot continue in good conscience to lead our men and women into danger with no clear objective or purpose. Indecisive political policies are irresponsible, and I resign in hopes the ensuing attention will cause this matter to be taken seriously and resolved with urgency.” GOs reading this, and I know they are, will doubtlessly guffaw at the simplistic scenario I present above. However, they lacked the courage to take bold action. Everyone with combat experience knows we don’t have bold/courageous General Officers. We have highly intellectual GOs who can stay up 20 hours a day, run miles each morning and work their staff to death analyzing a multitude of variables… but they aren’t bold and can’t win.. So to the GOs readIng this in fury at my condemnation- I’m certain you think I am ignorant of how futile and ostracizing my proposed COA would be. You’d be embarrassed in front of your peers. It would be awkward and socially uncomfortable. But had you played that card, you’d be a hero today. Instead, congrats on the retired rank but you’re forever attached to the ignominy of how those wars ended. FWIW I practice what I preach and burned every bridge on my way out over an issue to help my young squadron members. It was uncomfortable going from #1 to the trash can, my peers and supervisors despised me at the end and I didn’t have a retirement ceremony over this issue. However, I played every card and logged a major win for the young captains 6 weeks before retiring.

I was a pilot for MOST of my career, the first quarter of my career, I was as a crew chief. I'm still close friends with many of my crew chiefs friends (as we're all still at the same base). Those dudes have a damn good life, and make way more money than they likely would on our local economy (most won't leave due to entrenched family). I specifically mentioned in my post that I'd only recommend it if they joined the ANG. I know some companies (mentioned above), provide some TA, but I'd bet you'd be hard pressed to beat what they offer in the ANG. I can certainly understand why many won't sign up for a 4-year AD stint. I wasn't willing to do that in 2001 because I didn't want to lose out on those college years. To your second point, I couldn't agree more, especially when you're talking Army. My last trip to Bagram circa 2020/21, the Utah Army NG was there with their Apaches. Talking with those guys, I was floored by how much deployed time these dudes had, mostly a year at a time. I seriously can't understand how anyone maintained a family throughout that (lots didn't). If I were a young kid and that was my only exposure to the service, I'd be looking for other options as well. However, the big reason I was able to become a pilot, was because of my time as an enlisted guy. I guess our leaders need to figure out how to leverage the fact that an enlistment has the potential to open up awesome opportunities, if you chose to take them. Goodluck! We are now seeing another giant price we'll pay for playing a 20 fucking year game of whack-a-mole in Afghanistan and Iraq/ME. Did anyone really even understand what we were doing past 2011? I mean, did we ever have a boss that clearly laid out and end state and even a tiny semblance of how we were going to get there?

If only they tested that meticulously for steroids, the sport might have a shred of credibility.. maybe even a fan base numbering in the many dozens

So embarrassing...the guy literally needs to be in assisted living. Don't care what political party the president is from, this is just sad and unacceptable. Cut him loose and come up with someone else for 2024, that's the only decent move for the Dems. If they don't, it just further emphasizes all they care about is power...and yes, I'd feel the exact same way if it was a Republican in the seat.

And when there’s 2 of those guys, and one says, “well I also shot the shit out of things with an Abrahams and banged hot E-strange in the dorms nightly”…bam, you’ve got a decisive winner!

If you pretend this is a Brit forum, then it’d be odd if you weren’t called a cunt!

Ironically, his trolling is just the same mentoring any O-6 or GO would give a young aviator.

If you're not getting injected right now (sts) it's already too late...

@BashiChuni, your previous two posts have been attempts to change the subject. i.e. they are tacit admissions that you've lost the argument. Can you explain for the crowd why Russia would agree to all those treaties and agreements that placed no limit on NATO's expansion and why you argue that in fact it is, provocative, Russia didn't know what they were signing up for at the time, or something to that effect? Or are you just going to continue to rage white?

DOD can't pass an audit to save their lives, now this happy horsesh!t, Lockmart always gets its money though... and they still have the temerity of accusing my dual-vet household of sabotaging their recruitment efforts by steering our kids away from military service. Un.f^kin.real. USAF takes run the clock offense to the Olympic Gold level. 🤷‍♂️

I flew both the Herk and the -135, I enjoyed the Herk mission more. Lots more mission variety. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

I think the meme pages hurt retention far more than recruiting. I doubt very much if high schoolers in droves are following viper driver memes and chuckling at ultra specific FLUG DCA jokes or complaints about morale shirts or FSS walk in hours. What is hurting recruiting far more IMO is the left's constant push to make people ashamed of our country and our history.

What's that bubble-thing on the front do?

And unless you're going straight degree mill that 4500 aint coming close to covering the tuition per credit hour.

Yeah but if I’m hiring folks and a dude walks in wearing a Stetson, spurs, and this playing in the background, he’s getting hired.

If you say so, Neville Chamberlain.

Story time.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/get-another-covid-19-booster-in-the-fall-canada-s-immunization-panel-recommends-1.6475413

Iran, Afghanistan and water. It’s gonna be a problem for them. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Recruiting is down? Astonishing given efforts like this:

So they wait until the 9th month of the FY to roll out the bonus, it's out for like 3 minutes and then they shut'er down....you can't make this shit up. Listen up young punks, this is what your leadership thinks of you, and I'm not just talking leaders in a military uniform. What do I expect them to do? The same shit they expect me to do when they give me a TDY/Mission/task and only give me half the budget to accomplish it...figure it the fuck out!

Is this gay? I don’t know what’s going on anymore. It’s almost time for the universe to send another 8 mile asteroid to give Earth a restart…again.

I'm not sure there's a point in joining during the post-war periods. Obviously if you don't have other options, sure, but I started at the Academy in 03 when military appreciation was sky-high and the budget was booming. By the time I got out in '17 the silliness was outweighing the serve-your-nation pretty significantly. I was thoroughly unimpressed with the O-6+ cadre who seemed to think mentorship was telling you how awesome it was for them as CGOs and how they didn't understand why my generation doesn't want to stay in (without ever seeming to realize pre-9/11 O-club antics were long dead by the time we commissioned). Then of course the obligatory lecture on how you were a bad officer and bad person if you needed more than 3 drinks to have a good time, from the dude with a bottle of scotch in his desk. Unserious leaders in unserious times makes for a pretty frustrating experience. And if things get serious and scary, there will be limitless opportunities to join a freshly funded and focused military with a renewed appreciation for killing enemies and breaking things. So maybe do something else until then. I'm pretty content in my airline job that the military rolled me into, but someone starting off now would get to the airlines with less time and frustration if they just went to one of the pilot factory schools, and they'd have a better seniority number and higher income to pay off the loans. That wasn't an option in '03-'13. In retrospect, being told that all men are rapists and only women lack the capacity to consent to sex after having a beer was a walk in the park compared to the nonsense now. I had fun, but I don't miss it

100%. On an individual job level the Air Force is amazing. Best flying and best camaraderie to be had anywhere. But on an organizational level it's a shitshow.. wrapped in a dumpster fire.. inside a clown show.. all ultimately governed by our broken political system. You know something is deeply fucked organizationally when they decide to cancel bonuses and pause PCSs and the first place people are finding it out is the front page of CNN.

In 2010 my son was excited to join the military and do badass stuff I was doing. By 2023 he is not joining, and instead on a pre-Med scholarship. None of his friends are joining. It's a tragic loss for our nation; he's a state champion athlete and top 2% scholar with no qualifying issues, whose dad was pushing him towards joining. But it's a shit deal to join after we wrecked a generation in IZ/AFG for nothing. Our humiliating exit from wars which defined his youth was decisive. He thinks the government will send you to die and never let you win. He's not wrong.

Apple gave me more tuition assistance, as a part-time technician working a college job, than the USAF ever did. There was also a lot less hoops to jump through to use it.

Right this way Mr. Very Special Relationship...

These are valid opinions and good insight, but not really relevant, right? You're both pilots, and while opinions vary, being an Air Force pilot has to be one of the most sought after job in the military. There is no shortage of folks wanting to fly. When you hear of a "recruiting shortage," it's generally a shortage of high-school grads willing to sign up for a four year enlistment. A high school grad today was born in 2005. Think about all they've seen growing up (Iraq, Afghanistan, etc). More importantly, and as the WSJ article touches on, someone who thinks about enlisting is going to seek out someone they know who's been in the military. Say your Uncle Joe just retired from the Army. What kind of recommendation do you think old Joe is going to give after spending the last 20 years on an endless series of deployments to the Middle East?

The problem is that the benefits don't look as good as companies are upping their own benefits. Target, Starbucks, and Taco Bell all have better tuition assistance than the military, for example. Congress is going to have to recognize that military pay and benefits are not keeping pace, especially for what we ask people to do.

I tell them that if their ultimate goal is to make money, don’t join the military. Go make a pile of money selling insurance or working at initech and updating code. If you want to have a fulfilling life, do something with a purpose beyond making money. That doesn’t have to be the military, but that’s a great option. And the current state and assessment of the trends isn’t some Orwellian proto-gay state despite what a lot of you think. The kids today think differently but I promise you they would make the Greatest Generation proud if they’re called upon. Like Brabus said, every preceding generation thinks the succeeding generation sucks. Where our recruiting is going wrong is they are leaning way too hard into the “woke” crap and not selling the purpose side of the military. And the benefits. 18 year old young men are the same as they’ve always been and the more macho aspects of the military of blowing shit up, operating cool equipment, etc is the ticket. Not cartoons about a female with 2 moms. Not to single that soldier out, but that’s the truth. Same with the Army changing their PT test that was tailored toward more general strength and athleticism. When women were having significant problems with it (but getting better over time), they just scrapped the test and went back to the old one that more women could pass. Stuff like that looks horrible to potential recruits. To me, one of the other major problems with recruiting is the constant stream of cynicism from meme pages and comment sections. Lots of it is funny as hell, but to impressionable recruits seeing all that who don’t have the context, it’s different. That stuff is way more effective at reaching interested recruits than PA would ever dream.

@BashiChuni, it's like you don't listen dude. That, or you're just fact-immune. Your argument rests on this presupposition that "buh we provoked Putin". As laid out for you back in September, this is not the case. But, to humor this argument, even if it was hypothetically true, that does not justify Putin invading an independent third-party nation. Your argument is without merit. How you can literally not see how he has used this meme as a pretext for something he wanted to do anyway is baffling. I have to assume you are being intentionally dense in order to frustrate other posters on this board. "NATO expansion became an excuse post facto..." for Russian militarism and autocracy. "The ability of countries to determine their own foreign policy and their alliances, is written into the UN Charter...written into the 1975 Helsinki act...written into the 1990 charter of Paris for a new Europe...written into the 1997 NATO-Russia founding act...Russia's signature is on every one of those documents. Moscow signed the UN Charter, it signed the Helsinki final act...signed the NATO-Russia founding act that places no limits on NATO expansion..." etc, etc. Russia's signature is on every one of those documents. Russia's signature is on every one of those documents. Russia's signature is on every one of those documents. Get on board dude. You spouting Russian propaganda is not a good look for someone who represents themselves as a military officer.

Again, Russia does not have the right to dominate the lives of 300 million people outside its borders. We "provoked" Russia by letting democratic states align with us instead of Russia? That's like a wife-beater saying his victim provoked him by trying to leave the trailer park.

You should know: General Chang is actually James "Don't Call Me Jimmy" Slife

Got nothing to add, just wanna say that I admire you guys in what is a a sincere, intellectually honest, and thought provoking discussion. So refreshing

Spoiled brats…who earned the benefits promised to them. It’s not unreasonable for there to be some rancor if the deal is changed.

Another example of the frozen middle, in my opinion. The GO’s are pushing ACE, empowering junior Airmen, etc and then young bucks want to run with it, but they get stymied with the aforementioned crap. I hate it and personally have never bought into the narrative that support functions are so inept and only aviators are worth a crap. It’s nature vs. nurture where as young pilots you’re constantly bludgeoned to make decisions, be the HMFIC, meritocracy via performance with assignments, etc. Support O’s are told to follow regulations and not fuck up, all while in a very resource constrained environment. It’s going to produce different outcomes. Ive always been a fan of the Marines TBS. I don’t think the AF needs to go that extreme, but even something cheesy showing how a days frag is filled in a combat environment and how all the various pieces tie together. Get the young Finance O out on the flight line for a day helping the hydro guys in an MC-130 in 100° heat for 12 hours and that’ll help contextualize why pay issues are important. Have the rated guy go around with a CE crew fixing random shit and how they prioritize while under strength in personnel to fix what will help launch those sorties etc. And don’t make it ASBC 2.0

Bus time is bus time! Sent from my iPad using Baseops Network mobile app

Just replace that ‘p’ with and ‘r’ and you’ll figure out what Navy life is like

How does a Wing fail a UEI and the firing is a subordinate and not the Wing CC? BG Select or not, that’s just weird.

Bro if you'd seen what came out of the 3rd floor this week you'd know this overly checks/truer words have never been spoken.

Meanwhile, at AFSOC A1…

A dramatic depiction of the Air Force in literally any deal/program/agreement they put out:

I actually think a football bat is more likely to succeed, with fewer fuckups, than this bonus proposition.

No, too dry and desert like, need a good tropical location. Let’s do Venezuela and set up Died 2.0 but scattered across St. Croix and surrounding islands.

A man won the Miss Netherlands competition.

I sure hope not. That's gonna be a really interesting security investigation.

calling another poster on the site a cunt seems over the line no? doesn't hurt my feelings. if wanting peace makes oneself a cunt then so be it love seeing the keyboard tough guys