brabus

GPA is awesome, PCSM is great, AFOQT is pretty good...any sports, volunteering, etc? Especially in fighters, most want to see a person who's more than just really good at school, though that part certainly helps your app get a closer look. You're young, so you have plenty of time, which is a great thing. Honestly you'll probably be beat out by guys a few years older who have a more "well rounded" app and maybe a couple years of post-college work experience, but I think that will only hold true for a short while as you mature, get some post-college work experience, etc. Don't be discouraged by this, just expect to not make it on the first try, but keep at it, as I think you have a good shot at getting interviews in the next couple years.

M29s are shit...the block 30 Vipers are better aggressors (capability, safety, reliability, parts availability, etc.) ADAIR needs a major facelift, and it needs to be well beyond our current aggressor fleet or any old Soviet jets sitting around various places in the world.

Each unit is different...matt's is one perspective. The other perspective is visiting gives you and us an opportunity to interact and determine if this is worth going forward on (i.e. official interview). But to Matt's point, this visit should be accompanied by your resume/package (sts), because that absolutely matters and bad enough scores, GPA, etc. can absolutely tank your chances of an interview, no matter how good of a dude you may be in person.

For the next 6-9 years, I don’t think finding a full time position in the ARC will be that hard. When the airlines stop hiring maybe it’ll go back to the old days of having to kill your own mom to get one, but those days are over...for now. At your age, I highly recommend pursuing the ARC...nothing wrong with going fighters in UPT as a guard guy (and I say that as a previous AD guy who didn’t go to ENJJPT and had to compete for 38s and a fighter assignment).

That's how fighters have generally done it since I started flying over 10 years ago. We "spin up" for a deployment X months out, and the rest of the non-spin up/non-deployment time is spent training for the other missions/scenarios.

Agreed that’s a CF, but not the RC of the retention problem. HPOs are leaving in droves as well.

The AF can't incentivize the folks who will command if they stay, that's how fucked they are.

Takes approximately 7-8 years post-bachelors to make a WIC grad, so really it's about the same time to create a patch compared to a MD/surgeon. Probably have spent $20M+ on that guy too by the end of WIC (encompassing his entire flying career thus far). The AF is beyond retarded and will summarily dismiss the recent RAND study because it doesn't support what the AF wants to hear.

Miss that guy. Cheers to you buddy 🍺

Thailand's a hell of a place...

You just used an assuming pronoun, back to green dot training for you.

I hate to admit it, but there's a lot of potential value in robot wingmen. Doesn't mean there's one manned fighter and 50 robots, but if I can take my 4 ship down town with 5 robot wingmen each, well now I only need 4 F-35s to do the work that would have taken 12 F-35s (random numbers to make a point). Still a lot of pitfalls that will have to be overcome by technology, but I think they will...eventually.

Agree with Stitch - starting a local club can be great. In fact, the only con of doing so vs. an AF aero club is you don't have government subsidization, but a non-AF club can win in every other way, from better airplanes to no bullshit red tape. Remember, the best thing the AF does is fuck up something that should be awesome.

Stop talking to this guy, he has no idea what he's talking about.

It probably will take ~10 years to get the hours airlines are looking for if you don't do the regional thing SocialD mentioned. That said, you only have one chance to fly fighters and the rest of your life to fly large aircraft. And that's why I completely disagree with this guy's opinion on what you should fly - lots of fighter pilots in the airlines.

Prioritize your finances to allow for consistent training (at least 2-3 flights per week). Any less of a rate and you’ll spend more time and money over the course of getting your license. Look into student loans specifically for flying if you’re not generating enough money with a side job, internship, etc. I’d say $7-8k should be about right, +/- depending on where you live.

With "standard locality" I'd have to be a step 9 to break even with Maj AGR, even with the 25% bonus. You must be figuring in a hell of a locality pay (which I'm not saying isn't possible, but by definition location dependent). And that doesn't include all the ridiculous asspain that goes along with being a technician that doesn't exist as an AGR. So I'd say you need to be a step 10 to start getting ahead of a Maj AGR...how many O-4s on here who are 13 step 10s? Bottom line, moving to AGR is the right move...the better move is laughing your way to your next fill-in-the-blank airline trip.

Yep. Ha, it’s been draining for quite some time - but this and one other thing pushed me over the edge into sub-zero faith.

At the recent OG council the OGs advocated for max bonus (i.e. $35k for 1 year orders vs. current $15K), A1 concurred on the idea, saying they agreed with the pilot shortage. FM folks were on board. And then A3 says there isn't a pilot shortage and they don't see a need for increasing bonuses to allowed, full amount. Un-fucking-believable...the operations guys (e.g. "us") say there isn't a problem, but even the manpower non-operators are saying there's a problem. Admittedly I generally blamed this stupidity on A1, well turns out it's our own guys backstabbing us. The ironic thing is I said to my OG a few weeks ago how I had lost all faith in the staff to do anything right (referencing another crucial topic)...well, apparently I can lose more than 100% faith.

No application, offered 2-3 CC options, which they didn’t want any of them, so they left AD. WG/CC said take the “last option” or you can retire to one of them, and the same except here’s a shit sandwich 365 to the other (he separated at 18 years). I know this is hard to believe from a CAF perspective (pawnman’s experience is CAF standard), but it certainly happens elsewhere.

I know a couple who were given the choice of command or separate.

I’d ask for a source on that. If you SIE from UPT, that’s one thing, but I’m skeptical you giving up an unsponsored RES slot to pick up an ANG slot prior to starting UPT would be an issue. You could probably even do that while in UPT (though I’m sure it’d be harder/more paperwork required).

School, undesirable attached jobs, undesirable PCSs, higher 365 threat, a command they don’t want, etc. I’m just the messenger, not saying these are my opinions.

It was a mostly tongue in cheek statement. Though I actually know a couple guys who don’t want O-5 (due to the attached strings that currently go with it), but still want to stay AD for a host of reasons. Not for most of us, but to each their own.

So does that mean more Maj line IPs and less of those individuals forced to move on as new O-5s? In a backasswards way, maybe it’ll some what improve retention. Probably not, but this may actually not be as bad as some probably think it is (not that I would ever advocate staying on AD any longer than you absolutely have to).