guineapigfury

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.

I've done electrical construction work and it's fairly involved. You've got to hire skilled dudes if you don't want them electrocuting themselves and they don't come cheap. Putting new stuff in is actually faster than tearing old stuff out and replacing it. I'm horrified at how Big Blue wastes money, but there's a pretty good chance they're getting this one right.

Multiple PT test failures. Consider gaining weight to keep things plausible. 4 Fails could be accomplished in 9 months if you take the full 90 days between retakes. There's no separation pay if you go that route.

The 11U numbers are misleading if you're considering overall RPA pilot retention. The majority of 11X pilots in the RPA communities are still 11M/B/F. Only those who recatted to 11U are going to show up in the RPA take-rate.

The DNP affects promotion, not retention. On your friend's second look, the Wing CC will indicate to the board whether or not he should be considered for retention. I believe the magic words are "fully qualified" and "not fully qualified".

Parking, credit cards? That's nice. How about a military discount on a flamethrower. Just email the good folks at XM42.com. Legal in 48 states.

I'm guessing different pots of money, plus contractors don't add to your TriCare and PCS bills. If you offer them a competitive salary, you'll reduce your turnover and therefore training costs.

In their eyes this is likely a feature and not a bug.

I have never met a single officer who went to ROTC or OTS who wished they'd gone to USAFA. I've met plenty of USAFA grads who regret not having a normal college experience.

This dude catfished himself via online homosexual harrassment and then alerts OSI? Is that what I just read? Where do we find these guys?

Sorry about the delay, heres the info from myPay.

Here's my anecdata from the last year in my current squadron: 4 evaluators and 9 instructors dropped their papers. There are plenty more lined up to follow them out the door as soon as ADSCs or enlistments are up. The 6 dudes in my Squadron going to MEBs are all pretty damn good as well, so that doesn't help. I've seen a handful of top notch dudes take the money, but for each one that does it seems like three punch and two break. I hope it's going better elsewhere.

I'll have a look at the W2 schedule on myPay tommorrow and post an update.