BuddhaSixFour

Right now, most initial quals do not come from Rucker.

So you posted it online for the world to see in order to not stir the pot? The "Dear Boss"-style letter should be left to those with experience, credibility, and literary talent. Probably not your buddy.

I'm trying to guess their rationale. Starting with the most friendly option and ending with the most cynical: Great job, team! Glad you're sticking around. Here's your money early. Keep up the great work. Maybe if we give people more opportunities to accept (i.e. a longer window), more of them will. If we can get people to commit earlier, that will help out with force management over the next few years. If sequestration continues, it will be harder to come up with the money in FY '15, so let's move some of that bill to FY '14. That way we can still pay the remainder that accept in FY '15. If sequestration continues, it will be impossible to come up with money in FY '15, so let's lock-in as many pilots as we can while we can. We're going to need to raise the bonus to meet retention goals, but why pay everyone more? The "I was going to stick around anyways" crowd will bite off early on the current, lower rate. That way, when we raise the bonus next year, we know we're actually targeting the "if the bonus is good enough" crowd, thereby meeting our numbers while saving money. My bet is a combination of #2, #3, and #4. Only #6 would really be a trick.

There are limits -- the law and policies issued by higher ranking commanders. Dumb as it may seem, if it's neither illegal nor in violation of directives, then yes, they can do what they want. Should they? That's a different question.

The problem is that we only talk about **individual** integrity when we say "Integrity First." However, **institutional** integrity is more than just the sum of individual integrities. It's institutional integrity that we lack because we don't treat it as it's own objective. Gen Welsh means what he says, and the next CSAF may well mean what he says if he decides to change it back. Neither would be violating their personal integrity, but the next CSAF would be violating the Air Force's institutional integrity. If we're going to build institutional integrity, commanders and staffs (read AFPC) need to realize that sometimes they're going to need to help other people keep their promises, even when it means doing something they might not have otherwise done. That can be a new commander keeping the word of the previous one, a senior commander standing by the decisions of a subordinate commander, or simply throttling back on change for changes sake. We need to make that an articulated goal if we're going to stop making liars out of honest leaders and build more faith in Big Blue.

Having instructed early stage guys from all three sources, it doesn't matter. Tilt rotors are tilt rotors. Addressing the relative strengths and weaknesses from each pipeline (and they all have systemic strengths **and** weaknesses) amounts to a few hours of focused instruction. The individual matters far more than their prior experience.

But those 200 extra steps represent at least 80 ACSC and AWC papers creating such a rats nest of pseudo-academic citation loops that everyone involved is clearly a better leader for having participated in the process. Remember, wars are won through a detailed understanding of the AU Style Guide... That and a cursory understanding of Clausewitz.

Lots of good stuff. I'll add: - A SQ/CC cannot lead from your office. Remind the Wing/CC you can't lead from his. - If you request anything non-trivial after 1400 and ask for it before 1000 the next day, you just tasked a CGO to stay until 8 PM to do it. It took him until 1530 to find out about it, and he'll need to have it in someone's inbox by 0800 for it to clear the wickets to get back to you. If necessary, do it. Just be cognizant. - If you have a civilian Deputy CC, be skeptical of them. They might be a source of continuity, but they are a tremendous source of inertia. Unless you convince him otherwise, the day you leave, your favorite project is dead in the water. - You have far more power to make things worse than to make them better. Work hard to improve things, but focus on the low-hanging fruit first. Minor process improvements that make day-to-day life better are more actionable and over time have a bigger impact than your grandiose vision. - We know what we're doing. If there's something we don't get, explain it to us... Then trust us to once again know what we're doing. - Know what you know and what you don't know. If you've never flown an MDS under your command, don't pretend to understand it. If you've never served in a crew position under your command, don't pretend to understand it. Bring your experience to the table, but respect the experiences of the people around you.

Not likely. You could do the work in four months, but you'll have delays getting signed up for each applied course. It's about two weeks after you finish a CBT course before you can start the applied. My bet is you could get about 2/3s done with about two-months to go once you got home.

1) The key to being a great combat pilot is to believe in your own infallibility while retaining the ability to learn from mistakes*. 2) Seek to practice knowledgable aggression. Aggression without knowledge is recklessness. Knowledge without aggression is passivity**. Lacking both is pure weakness.*** <cynicism> * - Which was the key to running a dictatorial regime in "1984". Compartmentalization... Doublespeak... Same difference. ** - But it does qualify you to prattle on about Air Power doctrine in the ACSC correspondence course materials. *** - ORM is a good tool, but it should be used to build knowledge. Too many people let it become an excuse to lose their aggression. It should make you smarter and more aware so you can push harder, not turn you into a p***y. </cynicism> Edit: Spelling.

Liquid, if you are who I think you are, I'm buying you a beer for that one next time we cross paths. If you're not who I think you are, someone is going to get a free beer. Its worth the risk.

I've had this discussion with people in person, and I've realized that there is a massive fighter/bomber squadron echo chamber going on where everyone agrees that all of this is some sort of travesty witch hunt against tradition and culture. Just realize that to much of the rest of the Air Force (Liquid, 17D_Guy), just about anyone you'll ever work with in a joint environment, and the entirety of the outside world, you look like stupid frat boys at best. Maybe this is all misguided emphasis, and maybe this is important enough to you that you don't care, but you should be 100% aware of that before continuing.

I want to see a system where 3's require no comment. 2 or 4 requires a justifying comment from the rater. 1 or 5 requires a comment from the senior rater. Add in Noonin's normalization process, and I think you have a tough to game system. It would need to address the "stellar unit" where you do actually have a cluster of top performers where a rater really should be giving a lot of 4's and 5's. You do that by not just looking at the rater's average (though that would weight the heaviest), but also the senior rater, wing, and MAJCOM averages. Call it 40% rater, 30% senior rater, 20% wing and 10% MAJCOM for a starting guess. If you really want to get fancy, you compare a rater's feedback to the future performance of the ratee. Raters with a good track-record for their judgement could get extra weight. Rater's who give 5's to guys who later flame out get dinged.

Lots of people get it. They're just Captains. There isn't a single person, anywhere in the Air Force at all, over the rank of O-4 who could be described as having "grown up" in the age of the personal computer, and you don't get a solid group of them until you go down to O-3. The ages and year groups just don't work out. That isn't to say there aren't some tech-savvy early adopters O-5 or above, but in my experience, not many. Senior leadership might recognize the importance of this whole internet thing, and, to their credit, work hard to figure it out, but that doesn't mean they get it just yet. We'll get there, but we're still a decade and a half out from having the first O-7 born post-1980.

We need to give up the metaphor of a "form", as though in the modern digital era character counts and "two-pages" mean anything. We use acronyms and incomprehensible language for two reasons: 1) Once upon a time someone had to write performance reports on a typewriter. 2) When you force bad communication, it becomes really easy to hide bullshit. Those are both really bad reasons to recreate OPRs in some wonky document viewer program rather than using the flexibility electronic records should provide. Not sure what a bullet means? Click the expand button to see a plain english description. Not sure about an acronym? Mouse over. Had a kick ass year? Write 20 bullets. No so much? Put down a good 5. One line not enough? Add an explanatory paragraph. PRF time? Click your best 10, then let your boss revise the list, on up to your senior rater. You're a board member and you want to see an officer's strats? Click "Show Strats". Want to see if a senior rater is speeding? View all of their submitted strats for this year group. Tired of printing out records for promotion boards? Here's an iPad. All of that becomes easy if we just get away from the idea that OPRs are a sheet of paper and instead think of them as information. For my next rant, TAFs, METARs, and NOTAMs written as though we were still paying to send them via teletype...

We could make this a more productive conversation, just not without going into specific capabilities, which is a terrible idea on BODN. If you want to discuss this in another forum, I'd be happy to get the pertinent information from you and actually figure out what we could have done, could presently do, or will be able to do in the near future for any example you want to throw out. Better yet, hand me a stack of PMRs and I'll actually figure out how we stack up over a large sample. Yes, that will show us doing fewer, so it would take figuring out how to quantify what you guys didn't do that we could have done... that's a trickier task seeing as how its looking for events that didn't happen. It could probably be done, though. Someone with a medical degree and access that neither of us is going to get could even figure out differences in medical outcomes based on time differences (including a penalty for a CV-22 pass where another asset then has to spin up), on-board medical capabilities, etc. Hell, you could even look at instances where we would have had to hoist based on terrain where a -60 could have landed but the individual could not physically have done it. In fact, if anyone from Big Blue is reading, any argument about moving rescue into AFSOC, using CV-22s for some of the PR mission set, or even laying out requirements for a new rescue platform are going to be really incomplete discussions without someone doing that exact homework. If we're going to be making billion dollar decisions, what's a few weeks of a science project?

I think it's that we're the only ones that see through the "had to change it to PR to dodge the fact SOF does most of the real CSAR" stuff that they put out to hide the fact that their real mission set, CASEVAC, as flown by Army Dust-off, has already been found. I'll grant it has some amazing capabilities that go right next to some pretty big...oh yeah... sorry...forgot that you were reading this at helicopter speeds and are still stuck on "fact". I'll wait. But it is, friendly community ball busting.

Yeah. Its sort of the modern incarnation of the 30+ year Rescue-SOF debate. I think it started with some sort of debate about who owned a pig.

Edit: On second hand, not worth the effort to argue.

I had a long debate about this once with a school select friend who has mediocre hands. I came into it arguing you need good piloting skills to lead in the ops world. He, obviously, felt you didn't. I think we settled in the right place... I don't think you need stellar hands. You do need competent hands with stellar judgement, experience, and knowledge. Without those, how is a leader/commander supposed to make decisions regarding flying? How are they going to judge risk versus reward? How are they going to identify and set standards of performance or develop reasonable squadron flying policies? If you can do those things well, along with the other thousand things leadership entails, your hands just need to be good enough to not undermine your credibility. When I had a commander fail to meet that criteria, I didn't directly care that he was a bad stick. I did care that he made bad decisions and created meaningless restrictions based on his own fears, shortcomings, and misunderstandings of the aircraft.

"You have the time" isn't defending the institution, its simply stating that you can if its important to you. That's just it. Its not a rule at all. There are far too many exceptions to call it a rule. Acting like it is just convinces a lot of guys to not even bother trying. Awesome. That's how I think it should work. Unfortunately, its a rare opportunity. Make the best of it. Enjoy it.

It's all about trade-offs. If its worth it to someone, they can do it. I've seen it plenty of times ranging from Aero to Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from good schools. Between crew rest, whatever weekends you get, CTO, post-mission crew rest, that 30 days of leave you get a year, and the occasional ETIC, you can get a a hell of a lot done. It might be a giant pain in the ass and a whole lot less time drinking, but anyone who says it can't be done is flat out lying or lacks time management skills. However, the #1 thing I can say if someone is really worried about it is to put off popping out the kiddies for a few years. You'll love them just as much when you're 30 and when you're 26. Kids change everything, but they are a choice in and of themselves. If its not worth it to you, great. That's your choice and its valid. Either pass on the AAD or get your diploma-mill degree. But it is a choice. Its perfectly possible to get a good AAD, you just have to accept the trade offs.

Short version -- Yes, guys have come from AMC. The community is still growing, so your timing would be pretty good. I'm super, super cereal.

The CV-22 community has neither the resources, the time, the inclination, or the demeanor to play stepping stone for you. Its a serious airplane flown by serious people. Go elsewhere.

Wait... let me get this straight. Do you guys honestly think this whole thing is being driven by one complaint that spun out of control? If so, you should be concerned about popping for a urinalysis tomorrow because you're f***ing high. (Except Rainman. I dunno. Maybe you moved to Washington.) The Air Force is on track for 700 *reported* cases of sexual assault and you guys are trying to pass it off as being one woman who couldn't fit in and has a problem with fighter pilots? That's pretty dense.