guineapigfury

If you're being discriminated against because of your religious beliefs, consider a quick chat with both the Chaplain and MEO. I remember from week 1 of OTS that "the Air Force's default response to questions of religious accomodation is 'yes'". Or you can fudge the truth to achieve the correct result. Pick up the pills from the pharmacy, flush them down the toilet and tell the flight doc the next day "the pills didn't affect me". That would be a true statement, and you can get on with your life.

My guess is probably not on catching them. Identity theft is hard to prosecute unless you catch someone redhanded. I'd like to see the punishment raised from a short stay in prison to hanging, preferably publicly.

I had a similar experience. Someone got my debit card info while I was in CA, probably from a card skimmer at a gas station. In the 2 days it took me to drive back to SD, they spent $3000. I called USAA, went line by line through the transactions and had the money back within 48 hours.

I have the misfortune of flying MQ-9s; nothing mentioned in this article is going to improve my life. 13 months until I can separate.

If a dude is dumb enough to lie about something as easily verifiable as graduating college, he's going to get caught at some point. That said, you may not know what you think you know. Unless you have his transcripts in hand I'd recommend letting nature take its course.

240 pilots and SOs apiece would certainly help alot, but thats damn near half of Hollomans output for this year. Guard and Reserve guys are already on long term orders and we're still shorthanded. I see lots of contractor gigs available for the foreseeable future. What terrifies me is that we'll see a modest manning improvement in 2017, think everything is returning to glidepath and increase CAPs to 70 just before the 18Xer exodus commences in the fall of 2018.

Cutting the SOs won't help pilot manning. Having one guy fly the jet and operate the sensor and laser works in fighters because that guy has fighter pilot talent and more importantly fighter pilot motivation. Based on my four years in MQ-9s, my blunt assessment is that we lack the talent to pull this off. With the pitiful amount of training RPA crews get it's borderline miraculous some of these guys can stay in their airspace. Your average 18Xer shows up to his operational unit with something approximating the number of hours the rest of us got in phase 2 of upt. Dudes were getting 10 hours of training in MQT and then were on their own. Was anyone here ready to lead a combat mission where they employed and guided in munitions danger close with mountainous terrain the day after finishing T-6s or Tweets? That's what this plan is. Also, you don't get a cockpit to look out of for SA, your radio sucks, there's civilians everywhere, and you're doing NBO.

Glad it all worked out for you!

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I communicated that poorly. I was trying to get across that by upgrading a SO to an enlisted pilot, we'd have to put them through Holloman and MQT twice, burning half a manyear that could be more efficiently spent flying the line. I also left out FTAC, Aircrew Fundamentals, and URT from that timeline, which is an additional several months in total. So a 6 year SO/Pilot enlistment gets us something like 3.5-4 years of useful flying at the price of sending someone through the FTU twice. There also an FNG for twice as long since the crew positions are so different. Also, we now have to train replacement SOs more frequently. I think thats a bad deal for the Air Force.

Im looking at a 6 year enlistment split up as 5 months FTU /1 month of MQT / 2.5 years of ops / 5 months FTU / 1 month of MQT / 2.5 years of ops. I left out leave, ALS and such.

Sensor manning is nearly as bad as pilot manning; we'd be cannibalizing the right seat to fill the left. If any SOs want to make the jump, it will be only for the purpose of picking up the skill and departing for greener pastures. So now we're taking cats on a 6 year enlistment and sending them through the FTU twice, all to get 30ish months of pilot time out of them with an expected reenlistment rate in the single digits. That sounds just stupid enough for Big Blue to select it as the way forward.

It will take just as long to put an enlisted pilot through URT and IQT as it will a commissioned one, assuming we're talking 18X. If we're comparing BMT to OTS, the length is effectively the same. Medical screening would be the same for both. I'm not sure where you see a time savings, unless you're counting 4 years of ROTC or USAFA. In any event, we're not manned for a surge of enlisted pilots to come through the FTU. Holloman gets lots of new IP/ISO bodies, but they're barely enough to keep up with the outflow of separations.

This. We can't keep pilots for O-4 money + a $225k bonus, I cannot understand how we expect to keep them for E-4 money. If we had any sense, we'd hand over the bulk of the RPA enterprise to contractors and keep a skeleton crew of designated hitters to take the shots.

Can a guy ever be sure regardless of what his record is? Every year there is that one guy with a DP who doesn't make it.

I know a MQ-9 guy who was passed over for Major for the second time this year and he was offered continuation. No negative indicators AFAIK.

I hit the 10 year mark in a few months. I'd gladly spend the next 10 years deployed flying the exact same sortie every day if it got me out of MQ-9s. Can't wait to turn this bonus down!

We are currently trending very young for many of our new arrivals. Lots of 1Lts and A1Cs. Some of that is they can't 7 day opt, some of it is that younguns are all this community has to send. On the plus side the popcorn tends to stay fresh. The diificulties at Holloman are similar to the difficulties elsewhere in RPAland minus shiftwork. Crappy location, tedious and unrewarding work, hard to get leave approved, better money and QOL on the outside. Imagine Altus without grass and the median operational experience of your IPs is 3 years with no IP experience prior to arriving. The silver lining is that lots of dudes are pushing to the Guard and contracting, often staying at this base. However, those dudes are often just holding at the fix waiting for a better opportunity to present itself. We don't have trouble finding people, we have trouble keeping them. Assignments here follow normal assignment rules, so 3-4 years for those who don't separate or PC/PF. I'm not advocating stop-loss, but I expect it.

I'm doubtful we'll solve the RPA manning problem in the next 5 years. The FTU continues to hemhorrhage IPs since noone wants to go back to Ops, at least on AD. We've plussed up some at Holloman, but nothing like the doubling (or more) that is needed to produce the desired amount of crews in a sustainable manner. Further, large numbers of 18Xers start to hit the end of their ADSCs in 2018. The plural of anecdote is not data, but I know zero guys who are planning to stay unless they're late rate or prior E. My prediction is the wheels come off in the fall of 2018 and we'll have a Stop Loss by the spring of 2019.

Not on the abdominal circumference, thats the only difficult part.

What are you googling to find this? Why??!!

I'd turn in that ID card to your shredder rather than drive 4 hours round trip to turn it in.

Calling casual Lts "crew chiefs" because they're helping out with some relatively basic flightline tasks is profoundly disrespectful to some of the hardest working people in the Air Force.

I'm not defending the original construction. However, if it's cheaper to rebuild than repair, the correct decision is to rebuild.