brabus

We used a pocket saw once, the rest of the time the SERE guy chopped wood because god forbid anyone use an axe without 69 hours of axe safety training. SERE is not hard, and is actually pretty fun if you're an outdoors type. Really no need to bring anything other than what they tell you to bring.

What blows my mind from the outsider perspective is bros at one base getting hired 13 step 5 + bonus and bros at another base getting hired at step 1 "no chance in hell!" on the bonus. They're the same qualification/experience level of dude (one base does the superior qual thing, the other doesn't/rarely does), but with significant pay differences in the SAME system (AFRC, so not a state thing). No wonder all my friends in the second group are madly looking for a way out of ART and into airlines, etc.

Good point - that's the way it seems, but I agree, he can't possibly be so ineffective at changing the organization he leads. Organizational change is a monumental undertaking, but he has to be able to make changes beyond the things I mentioned. Those were nice and I'm glad he made them, but, still not the sweeping changes that a shattered organization like the AF needs.

Figured this comment would come - copy, we have cancerous senior leadership (O-6 to about O-8). This group is hugely to blame for a large portion of the pain we all suffer. I'm going to venture a guess and say the CSAF doesn't have the time/capacity to go hand hold/kick every O-6 in the balls for not following his verbal/written commands explicitly. The real problem is these middle management clowns will continue the same bullshit until it's expressly not allowed in AFI. Too bad it takes years to re-write/approve large sweeping AFI changes. You can argue the CSAF should have prioritized those AFI changes higher, but I understand he most likely had bigger fish to fry and at the same time put too much trust in his senior leadership to actually lead.

No blues mondays, friday shirts, callsigns on nametags, shitcan masters required for Maj, don't do school corres AND inres, etc. I agree nothing monumental, but at least he reversed a lot of the bullshit skelator 2 gave us. The more sad part is he had to spend so much time undoing crap like that all while being drowned in bullshit forced on him by congress. Don't hold the chief down with "highest priority!" items like SAPR (as one example) and let him focus on what we actually exist for. I can't cast stones at the man, but I can cast countless at the "leadership" above him.

Free to take leave IAW whatever AFI governs it. You're not in a formal course yet, and you'll be relatively useless as a casual LT, thus easy to let go on leave. Only caveat I remember from those days was wether they would let you take leave you hadn't accrued yet - e.g. you go into a negative leave balance, but you'll make it back during UPT. I think it was SQ/CC approval required. That may also have been a Squadron/base specific thing - I wouldn't count on something like that, but doesn't hurt to ask if you find yourself in that situation.

It amazes me in this era of manning crisis (in the ARC), they still are hiring dudes at 13 step 1 and giving no bonus. So every dude in that position who comes off AD is making less money than when they left, or at least is continuing to work 60 hrs a week to match their AD pay check. From the outsider perspective, seems the ARC side needs to stop relying on "great deal, you get to fly forever and avoid pointless staff, 365s, etc" and realize despite those intangible benefits, dudes are not going to keep up the ART gig when there are countless opportunities that pay significantly more, offer same/more time at home with the family, and oh by the way they can still get their "I fly military aircraft" rocks off a few days a month as a TR. Hire everybody at a Step 5/6 and auto 25-50% retention bonus, then I think a ton more dudes will 1) Desire an ART 2) Stay and not look hard for other means of income.

Would you be able to engrave a patch on the bottle opener? At least from the F-35 picture, it looks like you might be able to get a slightly larger than a bottle cap size patch on there; maybe the opener would have to be slightly bigger? In your opinion, would the bottle opener have to be obnoxiously large in order to be both functional and have an engraved patch? Awesome looking stuff by the way!

Know a few bros who have done this type of thing, but renting. I see a lot of potential disasters happening if you go the purchase route, and that's IF you can somehow manage a 2-3 way mortgage. Rent a mansion, don't buy.

Sean - I know multiple dudes who have used the 6 month extension. A DE cannot say no when you show them the SFAR; and if they still refuse, find another DE. I would not worry one bit about it.

What Muscle said is what happened to my buddy. 50% manned/he's mission critical, so SR said don't send because of that. AFPC: "Sounds good, here's his rip for school." Here's an idea, what if we weren't obsessed with useless PME, or at the min just did it all via distant learning. This BS we call an "education" is certainly doable via distant learning at the 100% rate. In res is a jobs program for AU. The only caveat is MAYBE the small opportunities like sending a guy to a civilian school. He gets a great education, BUT much of the time I still question how useful that masters is to the AF/that officer during their AF career. The friends I have going to those opportunities are guys who will do just as well in their continued career without the additional masters.

Have a buddy who was a select, said "don't send me to school" on the form whatever, all CC's concurred for ops requirements...got school on 1st look. All he wanted was to not leave on his 1st look and have another year - completely reasonable. Fast forward and the AF has lost another great dude from a 7 day opt. Good job AF, you're doing a great job managing people, keep it up.

One thing I and a few other bros have noticed (we're not the first, I'm sure) is when given an opportunity to talk relatively frankly with a GO about the AF/why dudes hate it and want to get out, they flat out refuse to believe the AF is different than when they were CGOs/FGOs. Even when presented with facts and emotionless arguments, they clearly maintain the memory of what it was like for them as a Lt/Capt/Maj and how it has to be the same now; everyone younger than them are just a bunch of pussies, don't have "the big picture," etc. I'm all for a backhand of reality to whiners, but you can't ride the "you're being a pussy" train because you're presented with facts that don't support your side of the story. This whole issue might see better traction if senior leadership started believing it's CGOs/FGOs on the state of the AF instead of being the incredibly out of touch old guy who refused to open his eyes after 1995.

With you 100% on that. But in reality, we'll never be so limited on capability that we can't keep going to 3rd world shitholes, so I'm not so sure limiting our capability against larger threats would overall have the effect you and I want. I hate to say it, but I think the only real way to stop going everywhere is to get our shit pushed in (and I mean for real). Congress/the public doesn't give a shit about what has happened the past 15 years, but they would care when a draft starts, we're losing 20 aircraft per day, etc.

You can even forget about 10-15 yrs, right now I can think of 3 separate places where we're a sneeze away from a total shit storm and everyone not in a 5th gen aircraft starts riding the silk at Vietnam+ rates (or we avoid that by full up quitting, packing our shit up and going home as soon as it starts). Am I saying it's going to happen, not at all, but only people with their craniums in the sand think shit like that is "far away" and not something we need to worry about until 10-15 yrs from now. That is reality now, it get far worse years from now. I'm with you that in the end it probably doesn't happen, but we'd be the dumbest assholes in history if it did happen and we got caught with our pants down. If I and another guy are pointing guns at each other's faces right now, I say that's a problem to worry about now, not in a few years because I'm kind of sure maybe sort of that the other guy isn't going to pull the trigger. I'm not taking that bet.

It's an easy game: give people some semblance of family life ability and don't waste their time on bullshit taskers, deployments, stuff that has absolutely zero to do with their job, etc. Keep doing that shit and 95% of the "golden children" will keep punching. A few incentives go a long way, but the AF has apparently zero capability to pull its cranium out of its ass and see that.

Our Wg/CC said the "new idea" is to have more candidates go and less selects. Maybe they finally realized selects are bailing at a high rate and they shouldn't put so many of their eggs in the "this guy's going to be a 4 star!" basket. We'll see if it holds true, but sounds like candidates are in better shape than previously.

There's no room for logic here Lawman, this is the government we're talking about.

6th gen reqs address your concern - so really you want the 6th gen fighter to replace the F-35. That plan already exists, except you and I will be drinking whisky in the retirement home before that thing is FOC. Don't lean so far forward as to sell current/near future technology short - we have some good stuff, but in the end handcuff ourselves due to budget and bureaucracy issues. Frustrating, but that's what we get when career politicians run the country.

Sounds like you're leaning towards ROTC/OTS. Pros and cons to everything, but any of those will get you to commissioning...means to an end. OTS fluctuates a lot in terms of how many people they'll take; the academy or ROTC will give you a higher chance, though going through 4 years of college with zero BS and only having to slug out 12 weeks (or however long OTS is) would be preferred, but also much riskier as you hope there's an OTS slot for you in 4-5 years. If you want to avoid 4 years of BMT as you put it, do ROTC and don't look back. I'm very glad I went that route, but I also have a lot of great friends who went the Academy route...we all ended up in the same place, except one side put up with significantly less BS and had significantly more freedom to live a normal lifestyle. The education is excellent either way.

I'm not sure where the disconnect is, but what you're arguing for is an F-35, an "LO strike platform and missile truck" as you call it. The reason 4th gen will be around until 2045 is because we don't have enough money to afford an AF full of only 5th gen - there'd only be F-22 and F-35 if we had all the money in the world/had made significantly better decisions when it came to acquisitions and program management. F-22 and F-35 are complimentary, we just simply can't afford enough of them.

It absolutely would not be more capable unless we're talking about a complete redesign (software and hardware) that would make the F-35 program look like "best seen to date." A more capable 5th/6th gen A/G fighter is currently called F-X and will probably not see the light of day until the 2030s and probably won't be useful until mid to late 2040s...unless we learn from our acquisitions/program mistakes, but who honestly thinks that'll happen?

You just described the F-35. This debate is useless. Lets scream for more F-22s because we absolutely need them in the A/A realm, not because we have a misguided idea that somehow a FB-22 would be better than an F-35.

This shouldn't be surprising, but the Raptor is not an A/G fighter; it's what we all think - an A/A fighter with a few cool A/G capes, but not nearly enough to really execute AI, AO, CAS, etc. It's quite ridiculous to think producing 500 more Raptors solves our "A/G gaps." I'm absolutely a huge supporter of producing more if it was doable, but I want it for what it's built for, not for a delirious dream that it is anything but an A/A fighter with a few niche capes to help out on the A/G side.

I asked Memphis when I was there and they said no problem (whether you're overseas for deployment or stationed). I think the only catch is you have a limited time to get it done once back in the US (6 months is what I remember, but not 100% sure on that).