sweet I'm SOF

Cap-10, I was not there when that base commander made that decision. But do you really think that your explanation of why the commander made that decision is correct? A base commander has an awful lot of things on his or her plate. Making decisions out of spite is usually not a factor. That's my opinion, I cannot prove that. I'll cede to you that the Qatars are far more liberal than anyone else - on the beaches it is anything goes...that is likely because the Brits have been operating out of there for quite some time. Do we want to wear Tivas at Qatar? Of course we do. Does it break the mission if we are in PTs? No. It is asspain, but there was a reason...maybe it has nothing to do with Qatar. Maybe I'm gullible and press the "I believe" button too much, but sometimes those decision makers have their reasons. I have to be honest with you...one person literally showing their ass in that AOR is a huge deal. It goes against a lot of principles. If Tivas digressed into short shorts, digressed into an ass cheek hanging out, digressed into the Qatari gov't issuing a complaint to the embassy....now you can see where that base commander is coming from by putting folks into PTs.

To pick on you some more, what exactly would your briefing consist of? You say that you do not care what Yummypants wears. If that is the case, how are you going to brief her/him on how to stay within the bounds of reason? And then give you your three drinks and leave you alone? How long have you been doing this again? This is a problem.

Your post seems incoherent to me as well. You typed that you want to drink your three beers and be left alone. If you are drinking your three beers and want to be left alone, you are probably not worried about what your Airmen are doing. What would your "briefing" to your Airmen consist of exactly? What you are missing, is that officers who are detached because they are god's gift and rated and such, and therefore are entitled to sit back and be left alone, is that your Airmen need your top cover. From my perspective, as I typed before, you are the problem. You are concerned with numero uno. I'll get more top cover and unass your Airmen from the queep more effective than you every time. I understand the reason for the queep, therefore, I know when to adjust the rheostat on taking liberties with dress and appearence and so on and so forth. I've seen your act, not impressed. And when you qualify this with "i've been doing this for a long time," you may or may not believe this - I've seen a lot of people in this service do something wrong for a long time.

Do you know who is "crunching the numbers" at AFPC? It is your functional for your AFSC. I think there might be about 10% truth in your post. I'm being liberal. As far as the importance of the training report, you are missing the point. The majority of folks did not have a missing training report and were promoted. We are picking on this one circumstance of a missing training report. There are thousands of other circumstances. You know how the board looks at a missing training report, when the vast majority of promotion candidates are not missing training reports. Well, maybe you don't - it is not good. And it is not good for the rest of your career - which is why your wing commander harps on you to pay attention to your records. As it turns out, the members of the board have probably had one or two folks in a squadron or group that they were commanding in the past that did not have their records squared away. Better than nine times out of ten, those individuals did not have a lot of other things squared away. And so the board members are sitting there with a going in mindset of what they have experienced in the past. That does not bode well for someone who's records are not correct. So, you can either tell someone on the internet who is telling you that they were not promoted because they were missing a training report that it is not their fault and they need to go through several processes in order to right the ship, which will likely not have any effect on the outcome, or you can give them the perspective of the decision makers. It's the internet, so anything is correct I guess. I prefer to take the opportunity to explain to the broader audience what I believe the organization is looking for. I realize that this makes me the devil, but appeals and waivers and inquiries and so on and so forth take up a lot of time. We are busy right now executing the mission. Do us "idiots" a favor and make sure that your flight commanders and NCOICs know the importance of an individual's records being correct.

I have to ask, why would you remain in an organization that you feel that way about? That seems to me like an act of desperation or lunacy. I can only make one of two assumptions, well, three if you count the lunacy piece. 1. You have a lot of commitment left, in which case you are kind of stuck with the organization for a while - but that means that you are young and are complaining about things that you have no idea about except what you pick up on the internet and the LPA...no foul. 2. You had a chance to escape the madhouse, and instead of going in the direction that is right for you and yours, you elected to stay in and complain in an attempt to make everyone share in your misery...foul. Same as the above post. Why would you be part of that organization?

What I was saying, is that the host nation gets a vote if you are in their country. As does leadership if you are in their Air Force. You claim that you have been doing this for some years now. Your post does not reflect that you have been. So if your Airman is doing something that offends the host nation or leadership (I'll leave the caustic religious inference out) what are you going to do about it? You're the veteran, you've been doing this for years. You want your three beers and to be left alone? That is not leadership. It appears that you have no idea what is going on in your AO aside from your tactical ops. We need more from leaders.

That's actually a pretty good jab...mid to high-level manager or an academy cadet. For our guy that is seeking advice to appeal, I did not want to come right out and say this, but it is extremely unlikely that a missing training report was the cog that broke down the machine that was going to get him or her promoted. A lot of folks were promoted. Some weren't. In my experience, for the ones that weren't, it was the right call. They all had extenuating circumstances if you were to ask them or give them a forum in which they could air their grievances. There are exceptions. Maybe this guy or gal is one of them, but as someone earlier in another thread accurately accused me of: I am grumpy and cynical. I do think that all of the advice given was good. You guys and gals on here do a much better job than myself of giving everyone every benefit of the doubt. If the guy was in my unit, I would investigate, because it is the right thing to do. But I do have predilections based on experience. I hope this guy or gal proves that it was an oversight and gets picked up. My intended audience extended beyond him or her.

What does "troll" mean on here exactly? If you don't agree or cannot understand it is a troll comment? I am not interested in that garbage.

Sounds like scooter is part of the problem. He even has one-off metrics. What do we do about SrA Yummybritches? If your answer is "nothing," fair enough. If your answer is something else, you are a problem on this board. Would you enforce some kind of uniform standard or would you let anything go? I'd seriously like to read your answer.

Cgjohnst, you are not going to like this, but I do not understand your argument. You were selected or non-selected based on merit. If you did not get picked up, you did not make the cut. I understand it is a bit draconian, but that's the military. I get waivers thrown at me all the time. I seldom approve them. Unless it is a compelling hardship issue, the standards are the standards. I had to meet them. I expect everyone else to meet them. You can say that times are different, but if I were in your shoes, if I were in these "different" times and I was passed over, I would march on. No appeals, no waivers.

We might know each other, but not from Bagram. I was gone before the first A-10 landed there. I was there when the first C-17 landed, it had a VIP on it, and they landed during daylight hours. Although there were far more violent objectives during that period from late Sep to mid Dec, Bagram was one of the roughest to stomach early on. Everything that happened there the first few days just stayed that way for a few weeks. That was not a good experience for the senses.

Not sure what Bagram looked like before the war. But I'd be remiss to a lot of good men if I didn't point out that there was a time that they were working out of Bagram before the first C-17 or A-10 landed. Bagram was a challenge for a number of reasons during this period. But they got it under control. And then came the C-17s, and A-10s, and the chiefs...

Let me add a different perspective than what has been offered. And you are not going to like this. Instead of "I'd get paperwork saying the dog was something else," "Make the paperwork look good," "If it isn't documented they can't say anything," why don't you make an effort to remain within the AFI's intent. The intent of the AFI is to keep people's dogs from harming people. There was a purpose behind generating that AFI, and as hard as it is for you to believe, it was built on precedence, much like the notes, warnings, and cautions in a tech order. The intent is bigger than your dog. There is more than one person in the USAF who would like to wear their hair differently than the AFI allows. There is a purpose behind that AFI, it is bigger than the individual. More often than not, if you are "lawyering" an AFI, you are going down the wrong road. If your dog is pushing the boundaries of the AFI, that's probably your problem, not your neighbors who are "the kind of people who drink the Kool-Aid and would actually give a shit about what kind of dog you have because of the Regs are alot more likely to live on-base," and certainly not the USAF's problem.

All of the data is on the AFPC website. If you would like me to walk you through the numbers, let me know. That's not me being a smartass, that's me offering to show you the logic of why we cannot afford to let people stay in for 20 years as an E-5.

Here is a reason: A large part of the institution's manning forecast and planning is based on average promotion rates. There is no piece of that formula that accounts for a 20 yr E5. The one-off is not going to skew the plan, but if a policy was instituted to thwart 20 yr E5s, there was probably a trend that was threatening the average. I think that in most AFSCs, someone exceeding even the recently adjusted high year tenure policy is probably not helping your unit. I hear the argument often that they bring a ton of technical experience to the table. They probably do. But someone who is making rank on time or faster than average would probably be about on par, and their talents often extend beyond technical expertise. To a squadron commander, that is important. To a MAJCOM commander, that is very significant. To the institution, that is worth basing force structure decisions upon. Your argument seems to be based on the individual's choice, vice the institution's requirements. Since we have resource constraints, I do not believe it is valid as far as the uniform is concerned. I think an answer to your argument is civilian technicians. You stated that "I don't think there is anything wrong with letting someone decide whether or not they are ready to promote, within reason." The "within reason," as it turns out, is the high year tenure rule.

This one is pretty easy. If someone outranks you, stand up at parade rest if you are indoors. If you are outdoors, salute. There was a lot of laundry thrown on the table in the above discussions. Irrelevant. A 2 Lt out ranks a CMSgt. A Capt out ranks a 1 Lt. We need to get the easy stuff right. There is no context - if you are in a flying squadron, or an FSS - the principal is what we need to focus on. A salute isn't bigger than customs and courtesy, let's not lose focus.

There is a degree of irony here. Everyone who is proclaiming that they would have saved the day with a CCP...what's to stop you from being the shooter in the theater? Not advocating gun control, but that is a difficult question to answer. This is an academic argument, if you come at me with you would never do such a thing, I'll skim past that. Focus on the logic of tolerating a CCP policy vice gun control. I'm interested in hearing your thoughts. If a citizen legally purchased arms, and discharged them in a public forum...and you take that person down, with legally purchased arms...are we not on a merry go round?

I'll take the hit on the overly compliant attitude perception. But at some point you have to lead. A sometimes ugly part of that is understanding the environment, and adapting accordingly. As long as they put humans in leadership positions, we are all subject to the subjectiveness. Edit: I am challenged with several things, including how to make my response to a previous post look correct on here. I placed nsplayer's comments in italics.

At the end of the day, Gen Welch's problem is binary. Either he makes the service component better, or he makes it worse. The odds are stacked against him, there are a lot of disgruntled airmen on his plate. None of this is his fault - he has a decade of ops tempo stacked on top of mandatory cuts. He might turn this around and make it the best we've ever seen. I think a lot of folks have unrealistic expectations. Let's see how this goes.

CGOs, The queep is never going to go away. And it is no different in the civilian world. But it is a wash. In the civilian world, if you are in a section that steadily excels in productivity, guess what...your boss is going to focus on other things as a discriminator, such as how many picnics you were at, how many times you volunteered to host the holiday party, etc. I think a hazard in thought is that we focus on those organizations that do not meet that criteria. They are out there, but they are not large corporations, and in the big picture, they are exceptions. As an example, an enterprise in Destin, Florida does not have a dress code. They do not have professional education requirements. But if you work there, you will never have the opportunity to make it to the top level, those details have been worked out long before you were hired. The example I'm referring to is AJ's bar and grill. There are not very many Air Force officers that are knocking down the door to work at AJ's. There are literally thousands of other examples. The Air Force is different than AJ's. You have an opportunity to move up, and the criteria is spelled out succinctly. If you choose to scoff at the requirements, I would ask that you take another look at the landscape. SOS in correspondence isn't asking that much. ACSC in correspondence isn't the end of the world. Another way to look at this, is to consider what you have, vice what you could have. If, in your opinion, what you could have is more than what you have or more than what you think you will have if you "play the game," then you should probably consider getting out. When ranking my officers, the number one discriminator is how they performed downrange. We deploy often, so I have to temper that with other factors. Yes, the "queep" plays a factor. But to the officer that I counseled today, who has never deployed, he was at the bottom of the rank, even though he was a champion of the queep. As a CGO, you're going in argument is that you are tacfully sound. As a stock brocker, you're going in argument is that you are turning a profit (productivity). Going back to the 4th sentence above, it goes beyond that if the expectation is that everyone is productive. I'm trying to shoot you straight...the rest of the queep matters to the institution. If it doesn't matter to you, fair enough. But don't be cajoled into a life-changing COA by those that don't understand how the institution works. The queep is an asspain, but that asspain isn't going away. I expect officers to do better than to grumble about the requirements of the institution. If you are in my unit, you had better be the best in the world at the tactical level, that is baseline. If one of those raises my interest because they supported a Red Cross event or some other non j.o.b. function, that is a discriminator to me. I consider PME as a baseline. I'm respectfully interested in where you think I'm going wrong here.

I feel compelled to throw in some worthless coins here. Context: I palace chased when I was enlisted. Turned down the SERB, turned down testing for SSgt, burned every bridge. I never once contemplated the pros and cons of showing my cards. Everyone that outranked me, which was everyone, admonished me for being foolish. I showed every card. I PC'd into the ANG. While in the ANG I applied for and was accepted to ROTC. Again, everyone that outranked me told me that I was a fool, and that if I stayed in the ANG I could be a MSgt in record time. I showed my cards, and was discharged out of the ANG into ROTC. A few years later, when I was a Captain, I was disenchanted with the institution. I did not try to work any 7 day opt scenarios, I put my separation papers on the DO's desk. And I told him why I wanted to leave. I decided to stay in after a few discussions with the sq, grp, and wg commanders. I got an assignment shortly after, which brightened my outlook. There are questions that remain:Should I have stayed in the ANG? Should I have voted with my feet as a Captain? I am comfortable leaving those unanswered, because once I made a decision, I showed all of the cards. I was honest with everyone, including myself. If the AF said "get out" when I was a SrA or a Captain, I would have marched on without looking back. I think it is important that you to come to grips with what you want to do. If you can honestly do that, you'll be fine. If you resort to playing 7 day opt games and RIF games, passed over twice games, etc.; that smacks of you being a chickenshit who doesn't know how to commit to a decision, and/or someone who is trying to milk the institution for every nickel they can. Either way - can you blame the institution for handing you a less than desirable outcome? Be upfront. Don't hold your cards. Do what you are going to do, hopefully your priorities to yourself and your family if you have one can hold a candle to the institution. As always, I am a divergent one, so let the spears fly.

I remember realizing that this organization existed on the base I think when I was a senior captain. I cannot really explain why it took me that long to comprehend that it existed. I haven't really thought about it since, until this thread. Looking at that link, it appears pretty rough - on the verge of unbelievable. I've never been to a meeting, so maybe my initial flinch is a bit harsh. Reminds me of Arnold Air Society. At the risk of sounding even more naive and disregarding the self-identifying one-off transgressions that have been admitted thusfar on this forum, do aircrew partake in this organization?