NKAWTG

Report is out. Way better than I expected. 1% better take rate than last year. 11F went up to 44% and 11M down to 38%. Messaging up front is rather doom and gloom with the overall pilot inventory decreasing over the next five years.

This would explain the roughly 20 person increase in no IDE DPs. Had to be a very specific case of a 3rd look IDE select currently at school. Were the narrative only PRFs treated as a DP? I'm not a bright shiny type, so very little exposure to that side of the sausage making. Irregardless, no IDE puts you into a tight spot to get a DP without something really out of normal, like a TPS grad they wouldn't release to school.

Did the math, and the no IDE crowd's case is stronger than I thought. 44% last year vs 14% over the past 5 years. DP matter, so the odds are good if you can snag one. And they haven't upped the BTZ numbers. They stay in the 120 to 130 range per year.

The navigator (and FE) career fields have been modernized out of the Air Force. The C-141 navs were out of job in the transition to C-17s, the KC-135 navs eliminated with the Pacer Craig mod, and now the C-130H navs are unemployed with the J models. The nav trend is exactly where you should it expect it. Where did those rated billets go? I'm assuming RPAs, or just vanished into thin air. Once those old school now GS navs at staff retire, where does the next generation come from? Pilots have way more options than eternal staff as an officer turned GS. The entire enterprise has trouble competing in the talent marketplace of today.

If the Corona rumors are true about removing strats and going with top, middle bottom pushes, this will fix the feedback problem. Dude had no idea he was in the bottom 15% of his year group until the board told him he was. Getting an early bottom rating on a Lt or Capt OPR will let you know where you stand, and make appropriate life choices about getting out or going guard or reserves if you want to continue to serve.

365 to 120 days out. I'd err closer to 365 to minimize 1 year deployment buffoonery. The MyPers approval took about 3 weeks, so don't believe the timelines on the website.

This shouldn't change much in the manner of the rack and stack, but will definitely make the system more transparent. People with early top ratings will continue to get them in order to have competitive records. Late bloomers will be disillusioned because no matter what they do, they will never move out of middle rankings. Without placating but meaningless strats, like #1/69 IPs, you can make informed decisions on if you should stay active duty, or go guard/reserves where they value different things. The beauty of the current system is that your OPR doesn't have to say if your just outside the strat cutoff, or at the bottom the barrel. The AF uses that ambiguity to keep people taking crap jobs in order to advance. Once you know where you stand, you can make more informed choices for you and your family.

KPAM 101724Z AUTO 08042G111KT 1/8SM R14/0600V2200FT +RA FG SQ M 25/25 A2725 RMK AO2 RAB1658 SLP231 CHINO RWY32

Take rates will always be a lagging indicator of the retention policies. Probably by about 6 to 8 years. Welsh's retention policies still have more influence that the current administration's does. Money is just one factor, and not the most important one. Although if they moved the decimal point, I'd entertain the conversation.

So what is the benefit for the pilot? They won't send you to staff? Unless its Stan/Eval. No 365s, unless they are flying. No queep, but get that MICT checklist done. We'll guarantee you 5 years at Minot or Cannon. How can they get this so wrong. Smart people so disconnected from reality who can't imagine a career path different than their own.

The med clinic is just as understaffed/deployed as the rest of us. So now they are pushing more patients off base than before. The companies that under bid the Tricare contract are seeing higher than expected costs. To compensate, they are using standard tactics of narrowing the network, denying care and refusing to pay. Wonder how it will play in the media, but all the bad press for the VA hasn't changed it for the better.

Curious how splitting the 365s will effect who goes. Before it was the short tour return dates, and you knew that if stuck around past 18 years you were hot for one. Now I imagine the MAJCOMs will share them out to the bases based on magic formula and the wing kings get to pick who goes. They did that before, but now it will be in far greater numbers. If you're FGO and not part of the leadership plan at a base, you know your purpose in life.

The air advisor deployment was a 365, so the 220 is most likely the CSAF guidance to make it a 180, plus some training TDYs prior to. I would imagine every 365 minus the command billets are going that route now. So the 180 rules are a fair amount different. It's assigned to a base or wing, and the local leadership gets to decide who goes. The normal short tour return date rules don't apply. You're now in between a rock and a hard place. Like everyone's said, let the CC know that you'll punch if told to go. He can make you follow through, and give it to someone else. Or he can let you stay, and give it to someone else. So the CC gets to decide if he wants to lose two or more FGOs or just one. I doubt you'll be popular with the base leadership in either case. As an aside, last dude I talked to who did the air advisor gig said they retired four Lt Cols before they replaced him.

I don't have enough alcohol to do a buzz word drinking game here. "virtual reality, mixed reality, automated instruction capabilities" "matrixed organization" "production through integration" Can't they just say retention is a lost cause with the current economy, so we're going to produce our way out of the shortfall. We'll cut training to meet our quotas, cross our fingers and hope for the best.

The MAF would get by OK without patches, but I'd rather have a tanker guy planning tanker stuff than having the fighter patch doing it. It's just that AMC values queep above everything else, and they take the most capable bodies, and toss them at whatever the senior leaders view as important. Hence, the patch turning into an OPR/PRF monkey at the wing.

Not really viable for KC-135/C-17. That FTU is at one of most remote stateside bases and pilots tend to 7 day op or leave at first opportunity if assigned there.

Not just the weak swimmers heading there. If you were a T-38 MAF guy, you were heading back to UPT with few exceptions. Couple that with the MAF taking most of the T-6 slots, and you have a huge experience gap developing in the MAF. It's not just our commanders who are low time and lack credibility, but the middle of the career junior Majors are rarely IPs now, since they got picked off for a UPT or drone second assignment. These children of the sequester are now the front line instructors of the shortened UPT product. May you fly in interesting times.

There is a fairly easy solution to this all. Go 10 years or so without Captain's PRFs, RIFs, VSP, TERA, and non continuing Majors. All of us who remember those days will be out of the service, and you'll not have us imparting that kind of wisdom to the new Lt's.

Are they streamlining, or did they run out of HPO type 11F O-6s?

https://warontherocks.com/2018/05/a-call-for-senior-officer-reform-in-the-air-force-an-insiders-perspective/ Another article highlighting the open secret of how we choose our senior leaders. And suggesting the only fix is for the people who benefited from the system to believe the system itself is the problem. Or we can just vote with our feet, like most of us are doing.

Not quite accurate. They are fixing the retention problem by increasing production. This "crisis" will have to be grown out of, instead of trying to convince those with a foot out the door to stay. The current crop of 10+ year officers has lost faith in the Air Force and are not going to be tempted by money or promised QoL fixes. We witnessed masters degree requirements become masked then unmasked, PT test failures treated like DUIs, Majors not offered continuation, pilots denied VSP and palace chase only to be RIF'd. The promises of "this time, it's different" ring hollow. But the QoL stuff matters more than ever. Class of 2018 is going to remember that senior pilot who spent his last year of service making Power Points in Afghanistan. Trying 6 computers to find one that leaveweb works on, or having the mission manager email the flight plan to your cell phone because none of the damn printers work. I expect these things to get better, because we are throwing money and people at them. If it doesn't work, you'll see that in the retention rates 10 years from now. Though the cynic in me see the increase in production as a way to enable the "run out the clock" strategy as someone else so eloquently put. Fingers will spend his entire term fixing the problems of his predecessors. Will his successor move us forward, or be another McPeak or Schwartz. Will the surge classes of 2018, 19 and 20 see RIF, VSP, and TERA again as airline hiring wanes. It feels like we're in the one step forward phase right before we take two steps back.

The ADSC is the sticking point for me. Why sign up for 9+ more years when I know that non vols me to Minot, Cannon or Altus. You can homestead, but only at the bases we choose. Like it has been mentioned, the devil is in the details, but location, location, and location are top three most important features of the assignment system, and this plan gives you a crap shoot when it comes to basing.

No clue what mission essential actually means. Do we recall folks from SOS and upgrade at the FTU? Do contract maintainers show up Monday to preflight aircraft?

Thing is, the bullets we spend so much time writing matter very little. The strat, (or lack there of) job/staff level push and school push are what count. Omitting them can't be overcome by well written bullets, or even being good your job.

The pool of candidates for flight training is as large as its ever been. If you want to increase it, just lower the ADSC back to 6 or 8 years. As everyone is foot stomping, the problem is a training pipeline capacity issue. And a retention issue on the back end. Changing the entry requirements won't allow you to train any more. Also what happens 10 years from now when the airline hiring wave has crested and these huge year groups that were pushed through stay because opportunity on the outside has dried up. It's not like we just had a 10 year stop loss to RIF/VSP cycle.