hindsight2020

But that's the thing, your squadron mates are BLUFFING. As a Reservist I can piss into the wind and hit 10 AD dudes who swear up and down they could make soooo much more money the second they punch out. But they do their bean checking like good altar boys every year and every year there they are staying put. Under the economic conditions of 2009, none of them are going to move an inch, I'd buy stock in that bet if I could. As to airline employment compensation returning, it's not conjecturing, it's historical trending. It's going to continue to go down the tubes...Now, it doesn't mean the majority couldn't learn to tolerate the job so long as you could pay the bills somewhat, but it won't be ever again the obvious win win choice under which many AF pilots long before punched for. If you think cabotage, open skies, ab initio, career regionals, and eventually the hobby pilot crowd is NOT the future and logical conclusion to the so called "cyclical" nature of the airline business, I got a bridge in Brooklyn I'd like to lease you. Like I said before, this guy's clearly pissing in your cheerios [he's arguing for your paycut], but he's not doing it JUST because you're a pilot, which is a pilot way to feel among shoe clerks actually... If you think of it, you've just got a taste of what is like to be an airline pilot when it comes to having to deflect, defend and protect yourself from the constant waves of impending economic realities set on eroding your purchasing power. The only difference is that government workers, military pilots in particular, are just not accustomed to the idea of being vulnerable to tracking backwards in pay and benefits ['I can make soo much more money outside' chest-thumping diatribes aside], after all that's one of the central personal economic rationales behind public service, flag waving aside..... And no I do not subscribe to the idea that the average military pilot is guaranteed by virtue of a mean educational level and some abstract valuation of social skills, the ability, and more importantly, the entitlement, of an above average income outside the military. If anything, among my own experience as a reservist that there's a whole lot of real smart individuals working military and civilian jobs consecutively, currently incapable of attaining the mythical "big time" income all your AD brotha's yap all day they could attain the second they separate...There's a lot of chaff in [the AD folks] that school of thinking IMO.

Well I agree the guy missed the outcome of taking out the ACP because he tied it primarily to the airline job comparison, when in reality is has a lot more to do with people's historical expectation of said bump in pay, but I'll fart in this church and say that in so far as the airline-military opportunity cost is concerned, from the perspective of an AFRC pilot this guy shacked the airline analysis so hard it's not even funny. I'll go ahead and disclaim I'm no airline cheerleader, and this article makes scathingly accurate portrayals of the evolution of the airline business. To suggest that because he didn't include the dead cat bounce the airline hiring had circa 2005-07 he's not accurately portraying the airline job opportunity cost is really to miss the point of the article which is highlighting the overall slope of the earnings and benefits of airline jobs on the whole, which is not good. People need to stop dismissing the abortion of a system airline seniority and the race to the bottom is, the system is cyclical but the mean is not trending up, it's trending DOWN! Adjusted for inflation airline pilots have and will continue to see erosion in earnings and benefits, and that will never return to previous levels. The inelasticity of civilian and military pilots alike to fly "because of the love of it" will continue to ensure that management can get away with such tactics. The airline business, from the perspective that has been historically portrayed, is DEAD and the analysis of this fact on the article is dead on. As a young trougher I also take exception to being lumped under the same category as the aforementioned senior pilots, furloughees or not, as if to infer we have equal access to the same earnings and seniority protections. The reality is that we do not, by virtue of timing they share a much larger buffer than a candidate in my demographic who would otherwise begin an airline career today or in a couple of years. See I got an excel spreadsheet too but mine is nice and grounded in reality, for it takes into account job stability criteria. According to my little excel spreadsheet to compare a 20 year stint in the AF with any tenure at a 121 operator (expat job contentions are not considered in my analysis) is outright disingenuous as the expectation of consecutive employment in the military is equivalent to that of a crooked post office worker (ie. solid as concrete) whereas airline pilots, particularly the younger in seniority, have a probability of consecutive employment similar to oh say..... an ice cream cone vendor in Siberia. To even make the effort of extrapolating an airline income pattern for 20 years is so unrealistic it's comical. Bottom line, you can't juxtapose the two, the airline option is statistically incapable of treading water against the amortization of a government job. If analysis of gaps in employment were somehow averaged and quantified into y'alls "excel" dreams, you'd see you're still better off financially doing 20 in the AF even without the ACP versus taking an airline job (if you could get one worth holding onto anyways). As to the expat opportunities, gimme a break. Yeah some people might go for the 10K tax free in sandy (but hide your bible) dubai, but to suggest that the majority of military pilots, considering their family make-up and tendencies, are more inclined than less inclined to go after such jobs, is just inaccurate. So we disagree on that front. Is it a viable employment option? Yes. Is it statistically relevant to the point and discussion under which points were made in said article? Hell no. Look, I fly with a bunch of the aforementioned senior AFRC dudes and the reality is that these folks recognize they are lucky to even have their jobs and those who retained employment post sept 11 are just quietly minding their business while the junior guys commiserate about the death of the dream. Heck, I know more people on said mil leave with NO intentions of going back to that job than guys chumping at the bit to sit right seat in your garden variety ERJ. I even know first year folks at continental who said "f00k this" and went on to seek civilian employment in federal agencies, and would take a full-time job at the unit in a heartbeat. So from where I sit, everybody with more than one mouth to feed, regardless of the kind of wings they wear on their bag, and who would be in the demographic of being affected by the dissolution of ACP were it to happen tomorrow, is balking at the idea of spotty employment at a 121 outfit. The guy in the article got that right, kicked it right between the nads. Therefore the bellyaching on this thread about ACP going away has more to do with anybody's bellyaching towards getting a paycut (airline pilots especially included), than it has to do with the supposed misfire this guy committed by writing the article. ACP goes away tomorrow and a whole lot of people would punch, but it wouldn't be to take an airline job, which is circular in reasoning, because if that's no longer true then would they punch en masse? Of course not, they'd stay and do the job till 20 and get the pension, pension they wouldn't get at the airline, and we already debunked the myth of working an airline job for more than a decade at a time for the 401K/TSP cheerleader types in the room. So hate the dweeb cause he's arguing for your paycut, not because you think his analysis towards airline employment is flawed, cause he shacked that.

You're correct, the bone isn't nuke anymore...lucky f$cks...of course they're broke as hell and sold their soul to the devil to be in country and nobody who's young gets to fly worth a d$ck (even worse than the buff), so it all evens out in the end. And yes the buff will continue to do its posturing with pacaf regardless of mighty 8 tucking under SAC deux. The additional squadron in minot and the AFRC taking the schoolhouse is all part of the plan to substantiate the "smooth" transition to doing more with less....and of course it is an abortion that will rear its ugly head in about 1.5 fiscal years. As to buff centcom taskings to the desert...yeah I'll believe that when it actually happens *puts foot in mouth with foolish confidence*

It's uglier than that. They got us (AFRC) slated to pick up the buff schoolhouse mission on the CHEAP, since they won't cough up the full time jobs (yet..haha ), which is standard for ACC; give the Raptor guys a bl$wjob but cry bloody murder if a buff needs a new brake assembly from the last time we dragged a 12 foot torch down taxiway Alpha 'cause our anti-skid relays were built no sh%t in '62..... mother f%ckers, dang it I digress.... So they'll bleed the 11th to man up the leadership up in minot and min run the conventional thing between posturing in guam and praying to holy Joseph and doggiestyle Mary AFCENT doesn't whine they need us to suck sand at peter puffin deid, which in my biased uneducated opinion is not gonna happen for a slew of reasons that have nothing to do with wide enough real estate down there. So yeah the buffs will remain mighty eight property under SAC part deux and everybody will get asked to it for king and country while we watch cool videos of raptors and light greys pushing it up on the money it would cost to make every Cadillac at barkatraz terminal RNAV GPS legal, RVSM and SELCAL cape, you know like your garden variety C-172 .... and I won't even address on this forum the PRP shennanigans they got in store for the AFRC/AD associations.. brother the plot of Dr. Strangelove got nothing on this sh%t.....10 months ago everybody wanted to stay in the community to avoid ALO/Pred now they're giving up their first born for a U-28 TDY with option to punch, you can't make this stuff up ....merry Xmas btw

Bingo. That leading edge is a disaster for transonic flight. The concept is very much an extension of vortex generation applications. Great in theory for extending the usable AOA range, but rather limited in its ability to optimize, or even make possible, supersonic flight. Wave drag issues and a highly dynamic set of mach critical sections on a leading edge of that shape is counter-productive for a dedicated fighter. I can see the utility for marine applications where sonar considerations lend themselves to organic architecture, rather than internal moving parts, to affect a shape, but for flight, not even a halfway decent choice. Of course the 20,000 man hours some underpaid dupe spent running CFD code on that leading edge could could keep our whole economy employed for a month lol. Essentially, a delta wing could do the job better, it's cheaper, was discovered I think a day after the caveman sparked fire, and even looks sexier (FWIW). This reminds me of those 32-word title masters dissertations I had to endure about the regurgitation of the millionth decimal place optimization, and I could always come up with two carbon epoxy boards and a ruler in one hand and a fist on my other hand to punch myself in the face during said defense to pretend to my advisor I cared about my job (I didn't), and make a planform to achieve 95% their desired result in the time it took them to pitch the profs the idea in the first place. Then again that's kinda why I gave up on trying to get a soon-to-be-offshored Lockmart job and followed my lazy heart to my true calling, become a government pilot *grabs some cheddar cheese while dos gringos plays in the background* Oh that's intellectual property above and my billing rate is $3,547.34/post. Here to help

Enid, OK almost cost me my relationship. The number one reason I opted to pursue the Reserve component was the inherent hardship for a working spouse to develop his/her career. In my case after 6 months of living in Oklahoma my significant other decided to bolt back home. I do not subscribe to the validity of long distance relationships and like clockwork it took a toll on the relationship. Someone above spoke about commutes and having weekend arrangements to see each other. well, that's not for everybody and not my definition of being married to somebody. I think outside careers where one is not expected to be the primary income provider (teaching) or highly in demand, relatively high portability medical professions (nursing...and even that's a stretch if you want to get into management), I'd say the stay at home types is the only kind set up for success to the PCS shuffle and the base locales. I know there's plenty of "exceptions" out there but in general that's the way things are. In our case, my fiance is taking a paycut due to the location, but since I'm a reservist there's an implied homestead, so that makes her happy. If that was also not the case, forget it, it'd be a deal breaker. I think a lot of people with working spouses outside nursing and teaching feel the same way we do and would have the same tribulations we would if I was AD. Honestly, if u want a safe bet, marry a nurse, teacher, or somebody who does not intend on making a subtantial income contribution to the household via his/her employment field. Outside that, it's a ticking bomb.

See that's great, but that's textbook min running the unit. I recognize there is a difference in what's expected of booms, but for pilots, forget it, that schedule leaves ya way behind the power curve, not to mention that would only work if you don't commute. If one were to commute then there are the idiosyncracies of getting travel paid, you won't get the unit to pay your travel costs for a double-TP every other week, not gonna happen. You'll get airfare sponsored for annual tour chunks if you get creative, but the aforementioned schedule will not work for a commuter, it won't break even (a young guy won't). Most people lump a chunk of TPs on the ends of UTA weekend or lump said TPs with a set of man days (x-country trips and such) so the unit will cover their travel, but what happens in both scenarios is that they are burning the periods but physically aren't in the squadron more than 6 times a year, so you're rusty half the year and dead on half the beans anyways, not to mention that's a stretch of days that may spill into the week; good luck selling your 9-5 job you're gonna work a 3-day week this week cause your guard trip spills into Monday... unless you like to drive like a bat out of hell on Sunday just after an 7 hour sortie where you were basically dusting off from being dead for a month. Don't get me started on actually getting your employer to sign off on your annual tour chunk (if you're gonna burn it all at once) without never hearing the end of it...they can't do sh%t to ya legally but it sure is a pain in the @ss and in the world I grew up in someone's gonna shortchange ya at work long term for it and good luck proving it. It may be physically possible, and workable for some AFSCs, but sure is not economically solvent at all from where I sit. Of course, I will disclaim that I enjoy this kind of flying more than what I could potentially be doing in town in any capacity, and since enough mandays are available I'm hard pressed to invest time in any proposition that would minimize my participation at the squadron or would make me commute at all. To each their own of course I just think short of airline gigs and real estate (the only cases of folks I know who have 9-5s and have enough flex in their schedules to make worth their whiles) there's not much wiggle room for a healthy participation at the unit without incurring in break even or loss scenarios in time and money...and the Guard/Reserves was about QOL right? otherwise gimme my BAH and tricare and we can all be overworked and underested but you can call me good on the 1st and the 15th.....

9-5 a challenge it can be alright. I turned down a college teaching position for the bum lifestlye because the numbers didn't add up. Do not underestimate the full cost of commuting, many people do. In my case at the end of the day I had to either live in the small town said employer was located or commute from my unit city. The commute cost for the latter option was such that after tax income I would make more as a bum AND not have to drive 2 hours roundtrip every single day on top of that. The assumption that one can fully supplement income with the drills is also flawed. There is no real 50/50 in the guard/civi job combo. People end up leaning against one and min running the other. The only way to give true max effort to get 50/50 is to work all days of the month, good luck with that. Most of the 9-5ers in my unit are top heavy dudes, who generally min run the squadron cause even a weekend at the unit is crazy easy money (for them) and therefore worthwhile the commute expense and time, and probably don't need the extra dough as much as a 1lt does. As a young guy myself, forget it, you'd have to min run the unit. With the exception of airline gigs, most civi jobs (not to include DOD contractor jobs) want you there 9-5 which means you'll never get a day sortie during the week and won't be able to partake in the good deals or otherwise truly supplement your income without incurring into the whole "i havent sat down in my home couch on the afternoon in 21 days" scenario. As to regionals, to each their own, but screw first year pay, I have a dude in my unit that's long gone from 1st year pay and that guy hasn't still worked a trip in years he's leaning so hard on the bum thing, rather than working those supposedly "OK" post-year one regional scales. So in my opinion, as a young guy, it's a great harship managing a civilian ground job in town while attempting to have a semblance of useful participation at the unit, adding a commute of any kind to that mix is outright masoquism. Those who do like the aforementioned mix either don't like being home and/or don't have or care to have a family and time to spend outside work and travel to work, or are so rank heavy that the hassle of making it into town for those odd end UTAs and TPs is cost effective and worthwhile.

Big thing is that 3rd class medical priviledges on all medical certificate classes are now valid for 60 months (under 40y.o) as opposed to previously 36 months. My interpretation is that if your medical expired under the old reg before the new reg was published, you're SOL, you won't be able to re-claim it as now valid. If you have a current one by the date of publising, your existing medical now benefits from the new periods. It's only 70-80 bucks for an AME visit man....but hey, they came out with this sport pilot neato thingy, they let you buzz around with a valid US driver's license, no lie. Well actually, they do only if you don't have a record of being denied an FAA medical certificate in the past. So the guy with quadruple bypass surgery who just decided to become a pilot cause he might die tomorrow can fly around a sport plane because he's never applied (and therefore been rejected) for a medical. While they guy who lost their medical can't become a sport pilot with their valid drivers license cause essentially "the FAA already knows about you". Crazy but I digress....

SQ/CC here vouches for all flyers; since we can at any point be asked to fill the schedule to go hack the mission (what a concept...) it's bag wear here all the way. Guard/Reserve biotches woot woot! F$ck, I love my union job. AFR...stickin' to the (career)Man since '48.

I don't know what the big deal is about CFI equivalency. Honestly, flight training in a military environment is very different than operating in civilian, mostly VFR environment with piston engine equipment. The only argument that I recognize as reasonable is, once again, the cost of taking a written test versus going through the cost of CFI certificate(s), which in this brave new world can get quite expensive. Furthermore, nobody really has their civi CFI as a backup plan to exiting the Air Force and not having an airline option pan out, seriously. Even if one were to try an pursue a position at an established 141 school or a university program, the paycut would still be substantial and few would pursue it. I think it's another example of "uh, uh, free sh$t yeeeeiii" without recognizing the full reality of what it actually takes to be in a safe position to act as a flight instructor. I think it's a bad idea personally, when your student has more time in make and model than the instructor. I don't care how much space shuttle PIC you got, you have no business giving primary to a kid on a 172 when you consider yourself "spun up and good to go" by virtue of a FAA databank test a 3rd grader cold pass by closing their eyes and x-mas tree'ing the thing. I see it all the time with tailwheel checkouts, all sorts of types with turbine types squireling, porpoising, bouncing down the runway on a cub or citabria..I'm telling ya, it's just different and like everything takes a little spool up time. Spool up time for a civilian CFI should be at a minimum going thru the certificate training, which for any outfit worth their salt will require at least 10 hours of dual given with the candidate on the right seat, and both left seat and right seat time for commercial manuever proficiency. That would of course make it worthwhile to those who wish to use their rating, and sufficiently deter the the mil competency "uh free sh%t and credentials, lets go rent a Seneca and crash" crowd.

I don't think it matters. You can take advantage of his CA address and do your car registration thru the state of CA. Or you can continue to renew your tags and registration in the new state as you move. I think it would probably be more convenient to get the car registered in CA and as you move through states you don't have to deal with the car registration hassles for new states, to include excise tax waiver forms for every new state etc. In essence y'all are taking advantage of hubby's HOR and keeping everything CA. Regarding driver's licenses, again it doesn't matter. Keep your license as it is, or change it to CA using your husband's HOR address if you want, again it's more of a convenience factor than burden of proof for state tax purposes. I have my car registered in state A where we live, have a license from state B and my HOR state is state C; for AD there is no residency jeopardy attached to having licenses and car registrations in states other than the service member's HOR. Now, for the civilian spouse if you are employed in state X, you will obviously pay taxes on income earned on that state (if they have state tax). But as it pertains to licenses and car registrations, it's a mere matter of convenience for the civi spouse, so proceed as it suits ya. Good luck.

This was an all-AD crew.

The seats are independent systems, there's no setting to fire in conjunction with any other. Individual stations have to fire their own seat to eject.

'2' As an engineer in my formative education I know where you are coming from. I understand the concept of constraints within design and accept where the B-2 falls within that spectrum of consideration, but I consider the oportunity cost of a whole expensive a$$ UFO as a little high for the luxury of a fancy-schmancy pitot static system interface, presumably for the benefit of low observability contentions. If you got to babysit that epoxy-wonder THAT much so it doesn't in effect come unglued on you, it does eat into the capabilities expected of said airframe; again constraints within design, but also constratins operationally, and this current state of affairs doesn't make the B-2 as mean and lean as was advertised when it comes to battle and environmental realities, which mind you have been here since the Trench war. This is not an issue of FLCS and lack of pilot override, this is an extreme case of queertrons taking the pilot out of the equation, and thats BS. Slapping a pitot tube and a mechanical AOA vane (the irony...) would have inhibited said accident from ever becoming reality. I'm conjecturing as to the impact on RCS that move would have, but I'm willing to bet it's not greater than or equal to the cost of producing and employing the whole airplane. In the end this is part of the growing pains the AF is and will continue to endure when it comes to the maintenance of composite-based aircraft, which the Air Force is still at an apprentice level (and unfortunately fails to recognize it, if for its own sake). Similar issues will arise with the F-22 and 35, mark my words. I'm confident they'll get a handle on the sensor issue, but the solution will be 'throw more glue and cure time at it', which is rather unimpressive. This is where I think the AF could do a better job moving forward. Then again I'm just a biased Buff driver, my airspeed indicator goes out all the time and I just look out the front window: "wings still level, yep, no buffeting, yep, VVI, yep, hey e-dub hold the fajitas till we get the fuel flows to fly this thing...", granted a pair of ragheads holding rabbit ears in a hill in Afghanistan can see me doing touch and go's in Louisiana but I digress. TC

The academic differences might not be as relevant as the financial differences, as it pertains to the lowly individual member. In my opinion the AFRC has a better pot of money and pay structure (title 10 all the way) than your garden variety ANG unit. From my anectodal experience, between friends in the Guard, and those we have absorbed from BRAC'ed Guard units, I've come to the conclusion that everything else being equal (big assumption) you have a better opportunity to make money and less chance of consolidation at a AFRC unit than a ANG unit. So that's my take on ANG vs. AFRC, mileage may vary as always. Of course I'm not even including the historically (way way in my experience) faster timeline for the AFRC to push you through training compared to the NGB, which everybody agrees it's like pulling teeth with the ANG. That said, location and airframe preferences will temper any individual preference towards either organization. My point is that when I looked at differences, these issues were the ones I considered relevant and I'm glad I'm AFRC today. Good luck.

True, but composite materials and construction pose a different set of problems for maintenance, requires a lot of baby-sitting, and it is in relative infancy within the context of military employment. Only time will tell how these airframes will fare long-term, as the new generation of F-22/35 type airplanes begin replacing your metal alloy garden variety airframes. From my experience studying aircraft structure life issues, IMO the AF underestimates and ultimately downplays the operating reality of composite material-based airframes, and that will become evident in a decade. Adding the AF's trend of being 90 degrees off-phase in anything (personnel, retention, cyber you name it) it's not too much of a warm fuzzy as to how they'll deal with the paradigm shift of composites, not from an engineering point of view, but from an application angle (i.e MX group hyper-cycled Amn snuffy issues).

man, I hate to say it, but sounds like enlisting in the AF was the worst thing you could've done to become an AF pilot. Holy crap. Not to monday morning quarterback or anything, but why couldn't you have just gone to college, get the degree and applied to OTS? Heck, even Guard/Reserve; it just seems silly, since we've all had speeding tickets of at least that number in any ten year period, and it was NEVER an issue when applying from the outside. That situation, if you're describing it accurately, is just dumb brother, separate and give the Guard a go, AD sucks anyways (I kid I kid..not). Besides, PRP sucks, my hat's off to the poor bastards on it.

"One weekend a month, two weeks a year" song ...Your two weeks a year is that AT period I was talking about and they are AD days (meaning they include BAH and BAS fractions). Most sorties take two AFTPs or UTAs, four hour periods each, so yes about 4 flights a month would be 8 periods of pay a month (4 UTAs and 4 FTPs a month) which is min guarantee evenly spread over 12 months. And yes, mandays are active duty days, and those extra flights you say you'll pick up a week most likely come in the form of a manday pay-wise. You have to understand that flights per month is not necessarily a good descriptor of pay in the Guard/Reserve. You have to start thinking of it in terms of pay periods to fully grasp how to maximize pay. It is for the most part a part-time job, and the pay reflects that reality. You either have the choice of being a true traditional and do your min plus certain trips here and there you want to jump into, or you can be a bum/trougher and maximize your pay by trying to work as many days as possible at the unit with the cost of not having/being able to hold a civilian job. Sometimes the unit doesn't have that many man days a week to provide you to make it possible for you to bum, or you have fellow bums and people in your relative seniority at the unit bidding for the same man day pot to make the split too thin for you to pursue it. Or it can be plentiful, it all depends on the unit and their current funding situation. So yeah 2 man days a week is alright money for a part-timer who has his/her schedule shacked (good luck for the commuter types) but not quite enough if you're going to make it your primary (and in the case of flying Guard jobs in general, sometimes the only possible job, schedule wise) source of income. The figures I posted before are ballparks, BAH rates will be more specific depending on location of course, and your dependent status. In addition to man days there are also sets of orders out there where people are basically AD for a period of time. Much like the seasoning orders one is likely to be put on right as you hit the unit. Then there are 1 week or 2 week trips to wherever in support of excercise whatever where you get a chunk of active duty days right there by partaking in that. There are also non-flying duties at the squadron one may get man days for, and that was part of the reason I mentioned using pay periods as a gauge for pay and not flights, because you can get paid by taking advantage of non-flying duties sometimes; it may not paint you well (as a bum at least) if all you show your face at the squadron for is for a flying trip, although for many traditionals that's their bread and butter and that's ok too unit-dependent. So the moral of the story is that there are ten ways to skin that cat, but yeah 30K by working 2 additional man days a week on top of guarantee ain't going to set you up on easy street, you'll most likely need a full-time civilian job. Getting one more day a week and snagging sets of orders, TDY types etc is a more realistic goal if you want to survive on just a Guard job. Good luck

Guarantee for a traditional guard/reservist is 48 UTA periods, 48 AFTP and 14(15 for Guard) periods of AT. For a O-1 min running it that comes out to about 12K. You won't fly 8-10 times a month by flying the min guarantee. You'll need man days or full-up orders to fly more. Mandays are worth more than AFTPs and UTA (drill) periods (the latter two are worth the same as you said) because they include the fraction of BAH (type II if orders less than 30 days...i.e. most revolving week to week man days) and BAS per period. So I don't know how many man days you'll get in order to fly 8-10 times a month but you won't be a 2LT for very long . By the time you get done with all training and get back to the unit you'll have less than six months left before you pin on 1LT. Add to that the possibility of being put on seasoning orders anywhere between 3 months to a year you'll be well into 1LT pay by the time you hit part-time status. But for your general info, 2 man days a week plus min guarantee for a 1LT is 28K, 3 man days a week ~36K, 4 man days a week ~43K, location dependent of course. Good luck.

Can't believe you're debating this as a young guy. Having troughing as the only source of income in town (my situation) you'd be crazy not to take the ART job. I'd give my left one to be in your position. The trough can dry up in an instant. Now what are you gonna do as a low time guy? Go back to engineering (my degree as well)? Hell no!.... Brother, take that ART and don't look back. I'm in your situation but a little behind the timeline. I moved to my unit city specifically because I didn't have enough time for a major airline (screw the regionals) job and I'm not interested in commuting. The trough is going to put food on my table until I can snag an ART job and as sh$tty as depending on a variable income job with no backup employment is, I'd take the potential of a future ART position over any airline job, nevermind one I have to commute to AND sit reserve for. Of course I value my time at home and don't consider 12 days of work straight where I'm home every night even remotely as bas as commuting a single week, and the ART pay satisfies my family expectations. Congratulations on the ART offer.

Which is kinda foul for a FAIP. On the Buff side a FAIP (who completes his assignment) goes straight to ACIQ. Yep, no gear bitch for you on curtain #2 bob. Sweeeeeet! Other than that, what afnav said. For a place where people find solace in deployment stability Buff land ain't happy camp lately (has it ever?) with the shifting going on. Plenty of unused sunblock north of, and hysterical fiancés south of the mason-dixon line. As to the co overmanning issue, it is a fact on the buff, and tami and other morale "vectors" are doing their part to worsen the situation. I would say the bone situation yields a similar effect; whether the lack of resources comes from MX axing or it is true co overmanning, you're not getting love as a co on the Bone period.. I've yet to see anybody argue the manning of IP/experienced ACs on either bomber is adequate and guess what, that affects your upgrade and flying negatively as a co on the bone a little more, since it doesn't have the "clown car" feature. Not that riding in a clown car is my version of flying but I digress. Standard red headed stepchild treatment. If I were a UPT stud today and I had to hedge my bets I'd say the best deal out there is getting FAIPed. Surest way of getting to fly for six years straight and gain AC/IP status = options in the process. IMO. see ya!

That's because he'll be going thru T-38 IP qual and flying bueno no-threat X/C all that time on the AF dime. Personally I wouldn't care if he won't see the B-2 in two years, he'll fly 2x as much as your avg bone/buff bob and in that time won't be gear-b$tching it, time-splitting with other overmanned-UAV-slatted co's in the flying can either. Then as a parting away present he gets to fly something that actually stands a snowballs' chance in hell of making it in double-digit airspace. I'd say it's a pretty decent gig for a bomber dude. Knob Noster ain't all that, KC is alright, but beats the alternative in my book. That or he just got a sweet casual period lol

Great in theory (and if single) , but that scent wears off in time, ask some people who've done it ad naseaum, particularly in this political environment. It ain't Normandy... Bomber deployments in general are fairly benign. Tropical destination boring circles above japanese tourists and you technically never left the United States. A ride there on CAL would have been more comfortable than on a 57 year old aluminum bucket seat that's for sure. gty pretty much nailed it in the head (holy STS batman) about the bomber comparison.

haha, wait till they get introduced to PRP, Minot, seat swaps with helmet/parachutes, and avionics that make you feel like flying around in RAM... Seriously though it's the best thing that could happen to the community; however if I were a graduating T-1 bubba today they'd be no way in hell I'd go ACC with a 10ft pole, if I had any expectation of actually flying in the AF past a tour. We'll see how quickly that catches on over at the tone side. My uninformed guess says once people become informed (several classes out), bombers will be nowhere near the top of most studs dream sheets.