hindsight2020

😬 Seriously OP, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Knock out a solid ADSC, try to fly as much as you can, scoff the qweep. If you're still so inclined, reconsider your interest in making such a transition later down the road. If (likely) the options are not there, go get a higher paying civilian flying job with that mil experience and buy an RV-(n), and put this chapter of life behind ya. At least that was my plan if I couldn't reach escape velocity from the assignment before my RSC expired. There's ways you can mine this situation and pivot a net gain, even if it's not your dream job.You've been given good gouge on the non-standard options on the heavy track upthread already. Consider mulling those alternatives as you move forward. Good luck.

Checks. When I was mulling making a packet for TPS circa 10 years ago, part of the research and timely mentorship from good folks clued me in to the factoid they stovepipe you to your core ID for both entry consideration and follow-on. So I would have eventually been assigned to the MWS I was trying to escape. That was of course a non-starter for me, so I thanked my sponsor for his time and pulled my app.

No worries. Cheers 🍺

I see the issue now, we're talking past each other. It's now clear to me you both consider the term "white Hispanic" oxymoronic. I was trying to highlight to you, perhaps more sarcastically than i should have, that Hispanic is not a race. It is therefore beyond presumptuous to treat the use of white as equivalent to Anglo. You can certainly do that, but as a white Hispanic I'm going to check you on it every time. The KKK quip was tongue in cheek. I agree with you the other poster probably did mean Anglo, and that is a mischaracterization. You are correct there.

Not white, Anglo. Lopez Colon is white.

What in the ku klux klan are you implying? Yes, Colón-López is 1st generation Puerto Rican. Yes, we exist. Not all of us are phenotypically mestizo, hence the white hispanic moniker. Latter which is mostly an Anglo-centering invention anyways. We don't make such distinctions. We're all just Ricans/Boricuas amongst each other (well, except carpet-bagging NYC-born and raised Nuyoricans like AOC, I'll cred-check her all day, she can't gaslight me lol). Don't misunderstand, our culture can be colorist, just like most Caribbean LAMA and South America, but we don't obsess over complexion to the insufferable degree Anglos and CONUS-raised Hispanics do. As to Rambo's comments, I don't think his Hispanic background, nor whatever "white passing" critique some Anglos may want to latch on to, is relevant as to whether they are to be considered contemptible. Douchebags come in all ethnic flavors and colors. Now to quote ol Rodney, can't we all just get along? 😄

yes, YAS is YAS.

Well, that's the FTUs problem to sort out now. Train. Document. Punt. Profit. My AF Core Values. 😄

slight tangent, how do Army aviation commissioned Os not know theirs is a route devoid of flying? Even in an AF centric forum like this, it's readily known you go warrant if your interest is in gaining civilian-career advancing and steady rotor time. WO is a paycut for sure, but even these days it's no hindrance of consequence even for rotor guys to eventually make it to 121 or 91k.

sorry guys, not going into more detail.

PM sent.

Oh it's been noted. I'll leave this PSA on here for those getting ideas from said demographic you highlight: We recently FEB'd an 11F from PIT. Most people in this enterprise know how statistically outlier that is, if they have been doing this longer than a tour. And the reasons for that being the COA have much more to do with outlook and attitude, than any intent on the part of 19th to make an example out of anyone. This is unprecedented, especially given the background. BL, let it be a warning, approaching a formal AETC course like this is either beneath you or not about you, is not going to get you back to "your fighter". A real bum's bet to even think AETC would go for something like that. Yet some fucked around and found out. In the words of Alonzo

You joke. Received today in my inbox.

No need to lament it, the airlines are purpose-built for TR participation, compared to most jobs. I'm not an airline guy (don't want to be, I may try it one day, but not today, lord knows I've stopped making long term plans in this life) for reasons that pertain to me and mine and no one else. But education as some sort of sunk cost golden handcuffs, is just not one of them. For disclosure, the time I spent pursuing my multiple engineering degrees were an objective waste to me (in hindsight, <-which is also 1/3 of my username's origin story btw; I've been in BODN a while now lol). I also erroneously thought I needed to pursue them in order to get where I wanted to. I didn't, and I didn't get to where I was trying to go either; womp womp for me. *despondently flicks cigarette* 😄 But my point to you being, there's plenty of people doing the airline thing as second careers, retirees, 1st career changers, et al, who have tons of unrelated education. It's not something to lament in the least. It's rather commonplace. If anything, it's rational to have a different educational background when the airlines don't love you back, again. I do question/reject the value of an unused decade-old degree with no direct work experience history, but that's neither here nor there. You'll be fine. Focus on solid UPT and FTU performance, and figure out the rest when you have more close-in visibility to the next rock. Cheers.

My experience with USERRA on a non-GS/fed, non-airline basis, wasn't particularly positive. Basically, on the ARC pilot side of things the job was built for airlines. Sure, people make other professions work, but I found it the exception rather than the rule. The reason is that even though you'll never be able to prove it in a court of law, if you're a single point of failure in a private employer office and you incur the above average amount of absence from work required to remain qualified as a military pilot, your promotions and outright employability will suffer compared to peers. The smaller the employment circle, the worse the dynamic gets. In my case, I attempted to pursue a college professorship route, as a non-airline-minded AFRC pilot. The demands of the employer were not compatible with the level of participation required to remain CMR and remain halfway decent at my pilot job. So I had come to a fork on the road, did the math and realized that the college job paid/benefits effing peanuts compares to diving full time into the trougher/de-facto full timer thing. So I decided to dispense with the whole trying to fit the square peg through the round hole and turned down the job offer. In that unit however, we had plenty of non-airline types (mostly the navs). Doctors (one no shit went through med school while a TR, big personal favor on the part of the unit of course, but hey we don't talk about fight club), Lockmart desk engineers (commuter to the unit), even a pastor ffs. And of course, the statistical majority were airline pilots for the obvious reasons. GS folks share similar flex as airline guys, at least as far as the lack of pushback, relative to non-airline private jobs, not saying they don't experience some. Work from home brings a different calculus, but doesn't fundamentally change the allowances of USERRA. Not sure how promotability would be affected vis a vis a traditional job where your physical absence would be noticed. Remember that the traditional TR gig for non-pilots was based on the old "one weekend a month, 2 weeks a year". That's the extent most employers understand the commitment of a Reservist to mean. Pilots are not in that category, so it quickly becomes intractable for small non-redundant-workforce employers, like said college job offer was for me. Personally, I would not get hired prior to UPT. That's gonna sour things from the jump, even if it's legal. I always told myself, would I want to work for someone I have to sue in order to work for them in the first place? To each their own and all that jazz, the juice wasn't worth the squeeze for me when I was faced with the question 14 years ago. Good luck.

If AFRC, HQ AFRC centrally assigns pipeline students without sponsoring units, or those who lose sponsorship due to performance threshold issues. Of course there is conference with both losing and gaining units along with AD training squadron leadership for truth data, but ultimately an MDR is needs of the Air Force Reserve. The AD sq/cc are consulted, but ultimately have no vote on the ADCON unit re-assignment of AFRC or ANG pipeline students. ANG students are also managed by AFRC (340th FTG) while undergoing UPT, but any re-assignment process ultimately falls on the NGB and the willy wonka rabbit hole that is the title 32 world. Not even AFRC, who functionally manages them for the duration of their tenure in AETC, has control of that. Training allocations are paid for by the NGB or AFRC, thence there is no circumstance under which an ARC pipeline student would lose their spot in a T-38 track because there's not enough "slots in a class". AD funding of their training allocations do not cross streams with ARC. AFRC and ANG students are in that regard, not on AD's training timeline.

yup, the self-licking ice cream cone. To say nothing of the antagonism against ARC members who seek to prioritize homesteading in their career choices, as somehow not worthy of carrying the cost of keeping us "uniformed". If I had a quarter for everytime I've heard "if your billet is non-deployed, you shouldn't wear green". Basically the deployable/non-free agent True Scots fallacy of who deserves the benefits of 20 years of military service. Talk about penny wise pounds foolish. Of course *ART has entered the chat* *IMA has entered the chat* *RMP/Cat E has entered the chat*. In fairness, most of the vitriol on that front have come from Army types. An especially caustic organization from a cultural perspective if I may say so, given my limited (largely CONUS) interactions with said types.

The mechanism by which non-ionizing radiation is leading to these cancers continues to be challenged by the status quo establishment. In fairness, this presentation didn't really provide an insight into how said mechanism (alpha-ERD) promotes the cell decay we know as cancer. I think he makes a very compelling argument for how the magnetic field induced by high power RF bleed into the cockpit, messes with your short-term functioning, but that's not what this is about in the end. All we have is correlation (our anecdotal observations as mil pilots, ergo members of a high-incidence demographic). I went down the rabbit hole of cosmic radiation wrt airline pilots, and skin cancers. Those have a lot easier mechanisms to understand and causally point to. The circadian rhythm disruption is another one that the status quo likes to downplay, but even that one is easy to understand in the literature available. The cell-restoring processes associated with sleep on a predictable schedule are straight up robbed of that opportunity on a chronic basis by those who choose to work in shift occupations of the WOCL kind. Add on top of that a propensity for cell mis-repair associated with advanced age independent of exposure (aka airlining/shift-working in your 60s) and this is where the cargo/redeye folks suffer the most, much as they like to downplay circadian swaps (relative to their diurnal loved ones at home, which force the swap effectively) as not statistically significant to their peer group cancer incidence. After all, few people would want to publicly admit their pursuit of [proverbial] 400K/yr might be knowingly killing you early. It is certainly a fascinating topic to continue research on, especially as those with vested interests who absolutely do not want to ever concede there could be a chronic mechanism where non-ionizing radiation sources could be pinpointed as carcinogenic, least of which the VA. The fight continues.

*agnostic has entered the chat* *nihilist has entered the chat* *deist has entered the chat*

The latter.

My father (never-military) once quipped when conversing with me about his geo-bachelor father (retired USA SP5, English-non-proficient, gone 20 years, complicated homesteading circumstances not made easier by my grandmother choosing to remain local, to be fair to the man), that he anecdotally felt he probably had a korean, filipino, or vietnamese half-sibling on this Earth, and he'll never know. Then he went on with the conversation. It was the most nonchalant comment, this is before I entered the military anyways so it didn't particularly resonate. Took me years of my own service, token TDYs over to PACAF, to finally recall that comment and realize once you put it in the proper context of that time (1946-1966 for my grandfather), how it really isn't that much of a stretch. break--break-- As to present day pearl-clutching, I'm of the opinion it's high time for systemic overhaul to frat rules anyhow. Demographics of the military are saturated with female members writ large. For every "undue command influence" so-called scandal about senior officers disparaging the supposed good order and morale of the Service, we all know of the thousands of lasting marriages borne out of fraternization. If it's a matter of pretense for domestic consumption, that's fine by me. I'm no warrior monk nor is it like we didn't go through DADT (spank you today, give you a medal for it tomorrow) for decades as an acceptable COA for the Service's inability to process their own cultural myopia. But the nerve of the service to get chagrinned about any of this. I know I know, not supposed to talk about fight club, but after 17 years I've grown quite insensitive to the warrior monk litmus test virtue signaling. They're gonna run out of bare bone technical/aptitude bar clearing volunteers if they keep it up. The Col Jessup mantra has never rang more true for me. Solicit my indenture, then question the manner in which I provide it. lol. You know, this wouldn't make a terrible prologue to my memoirs for ol' Jr to read in my passing: "Dearest [redacted], here's the story of how your English-illiterate great grandfather retired an SP5, and your father an iron major nobody with 5,000 hours and no staff tours....we did it our way. Chapter 1: *inhales* ". 🤣

but the OP did incur a break in service, no?

Short for cuckold. Either the literal (definition 1) or the sexual fetish (definition 2). Not to be confused with general consensual non-monogamy, partner sharing or open marriages, latter 3 which do not include the element of humiliation (as in definition 2) and concealment (as in definition 1) that cuckolding does. Now, in the recent social use-case in question, I believe it's morphed generally into a catch-all epithet for pointing out attitudes or behavior regarded as gratuitously obsequious or ceding. With the further implication that obsequious postures are effeminate by proxy, in the traditional gender role point of view. Opponents of the insulting party would probably regard the implication by the verbal offense as misogynist by definition. Just describing the water and the vantage point biases that may go into it, don't go shoot the epistemological messenger here. 😄

So I guess we're taking the bonus? Sounds like a toss up at 217 pages, I think we need more deliberation.... you know, like Congress 😄

I don't see the implementation of graduated rates for flight pay (other than longevity) being anything but an unmitigated quagmire, replete with perverse incentives and unsavory second tier effects, to say nothing of the admin clusterfok @SocialD already alluded to. 200-500 taxable dollars hardly seems worth the thought.