BFM this

Go UPT. If you decide that you want to try RPA at some point, believe me, you'll have to little more than a Bewitched wiggle of your nose and you'll wake up in a dumpster in southern NV. Even in the reserves. Going from AFRC RPA to manned?...seen it happen, but it's really rare, and only with prior rated.

Somewhere in this thread is a suggestion of something that starts with an "F" and rhymes with broad.

Managed to get a non-A, since I had my family and a dog in tow. Beyond that, the managers at the apartment complex should be able to let you know who's doing corporate furnishings. Yeah, on base rate won't cover it, you'll have to supplement out of your BAH. Still worth it, IMO. But the on base accommodations are far from the worst in the AF.

...here we go again

Disregard: reading comprehension fail on me.

Your best source of information is the EFMP office at the location, and if able, get in contact with the SGH at the facility to discuss your case. Also, tricare standard is worth some serious consideration.

Even when HMN gets up to its projected capacity, those folks will average a healthy amount of casual. But HMN won't be the bottleneck--Pueblo/RND won't be able to get that number through in anywhere near a reasonable timeframe. That's a year of 18x at least. ...who's dumb idea was this? (Assuming it's more than just a rumor)

Who's laughing? This is my 47th week on day shift and I'm still not sleeping right.

Droids gave me cancer.https://www.bbc.com/news/health-33569161

Adding another parallel anecdote to help illustrate the culture hurdle: In a former life I flew on Marine KC-130s. Our flight engineers, aside from ensuring that the landing gear was lowered, were also taxi qual'd. No shit: depending on the field that we were broken at, they would do all of the usual coord with ground and tower, and do high power engine runs (on the active, if that's all that was available). Ok, so with that story, let's hear from our AF Herk brethren: would the AF taxi qual a FE? ETA: Lawman, I agree with you. Enlisted could operate these things just fine, alongside O's, yet still within their managerial lanes. Boundaries would likely be required regarding mission sets, weapons employment, etc., but I still think it would be worthwhile. Change is often resisted because as soon as you allow change, someone is tacitly admitting that the old paradigm was wrong. Case in point: for years I didn't think that I could fly Mil because of the 20/20 eyesight requirement. ...until it changed to 20/70, then it was game-on. But that begs the questions: what was the reasoning behind the legacy requirement, and how much talent flowed under the bridge through the years because of it?

VMFA-112 in Ft Worth? Great location, and they always seemed like a good bunch.

Accounting for the speed of the treadmill

Takeaways: "This whole 18x concept is brand new--just stared last fiscal quarter, hasn't had time to mature, uhhh, rabble rabble rabble..." "Thou shalt not speak ill of the boss's sacred cow" "Seriously guys, even if you have experience in the field, if it's not along party lines, can it."

Jumped the shark

Then one day, a cyber guy will be in charge, signalling the end of the Space Mafia reign.

That sounds really convenient. Good thing too, because that prediction of a flying car in every garage from, what, 50 years ago(?) worked out real well. Keep shuckin that snake oil, Mr. CEO.

On second thought, definitely get married. Show them who's boss.

Don't need to be a qualified IP before you step to HMN. I know this because some of the folks my sq sent to HMN were not in the IPUG que before they left... While I empathize with the conundrum, this is wholly the AF's doing. This is the second time in less than a decade that the AF has had to gut the line units to plus up the FTU, so that they can then ramp up output. But that was just an accident, and it only happened twice... Hopefully, in addition to doubling down on bad ideas, the AF takes this opportunity to ramp up some meaningful 18X production. That's the long term fix--rated presence among a core field of 18X'ers. There will never be enough 11's to fill the need, especially with the wave of the future going to less #'s of gold plated airframes on the ramp. But with more 18X'ers, there should be more that percolate to the top (WIC, school, etc.)--enough to at some point allow the weak swimmers to be culled from the herd [*gasp* adhering to actual standards?].

Maybe if the Air Force walked the talk. There is already a mechanism in place to provide a steady flow of rated talent: the ALFA tour construct. How about getting guys after their first tour, and getting them back to their jet? Better yet, how about getting some of the folks already in the field a chance to get back. I'm under no delusions here: I led a charmed existence as an 11F--that's the only reason that I'm not sitting in NM and I have a manned Form-8. My comments were about repeating bad ideas: UPT direct tops that list. Yes, this is productive, but this will incur a short term cost to the units as they shoulder the spike in the FTU bill. How about planning further out, so we're not repeating past mistakes?

Not sure if I'm following your question, but it's kind of like your company commander turning to you and saying: "Buck up, Soldier. It will work this time, I'm sure of it!" ...oh, and he's telling you that while you're getting off the boat at Gallipoli.

Words fail me. UPT direct was a worse idea than the "one way door" mantra peddled when I got my assignment. The AF's inability to turn the simplest of Lessons Learned into practice is breathtaking.

No, there was a correction for a while. Starting around 2013, unless you recatted or went to WIC, you got an assignment out of RPAs as an 11F. But like everyone else, I see big AF about to ignore its recent lessons learned.

My grandad used to say "the world needs ditch-diggers too". In this case, the world needs seat-meat for transit and ISR orbit management, too. MCC's know who they need to pay attention to more than others.

There were several initiatives outlined in those "RPA talking points" that had me scratching my head. If you noticed, it also said they were exploring the idea of UPT direct… Again. Learning is hard.

If I were a bettin man, I'd speculate there's a WIC paper about exactly that.