jazzdude

Good thing China didn't do anything like steal OPM data to augment/corroborate anything it can find on social media to do what you mentioned.

Ignoring expense (which isn't really reasonable), what is the goal at the end of UPT? - Universally assignable pilots that can go to any MWS? This only makes sense if there's actually crossflow between jets and commands that don't really require interviews. The downside here is that it can mask "real" experience in good manning numbers as pilots are moved around between communities. Nothing would change for fighters (IFF being the gatekeeper), but could allow more movement between MAF and ACC non-fighter aircraft. - Pilots that are on UPT tracks that emphasize skills in advanced/phase 3 that their gaining communities value (though if money were not a factor, that training could be better done in the MWS)? This reduces the ability to crossflow (early specialization, baseline knowledge is different based on track completed). Another thing to consider: if a stud can't fly great fingertip formation, does that mean they would make a bad heavy pilot? Is fingertip a relevant skill in the fighter community? It's a challenging flying skill, but does it teach skills relevant to how we fight today (and in the future)? So should that skill be taught? Even if money wasn't an problem, time line still would be. Helicopter track is the odd one. Having a track select gives a bigger pool for helos to draw from, and provides a shared experience (T-6) for AF pilots. You may get a class where several studs want helicopters but only 1 gets it, even if they all were good studs. And again, there's probably not going to be crossflow from helos to other fixed won't aircraft (can't cross flow into helos without completing helo conversation training). Navy track system is different. There's a "class" for administrative purposes, but for the track you get is based on what is available the week you completed training. Have a great NSS ("class ranking" comparing you to the last 200ish students to complete), but no jet spot that week? Going to go fly helos, while the guy next week with sightly above average NSS gets the jet that's available that week (sure, there's some gamesmanship that the CC can do to help out the track selection, but sometimes there's not). Then you've got Marines that do a quality spread for where their studs track. Not better or worse than the AF, just different. Plus, the exchange of student pilots wasn't an AF idea, it was a Congress idea.

This. Fear is a great way to consolidate and maintain power.

You're not a bad person, and I'd say your view is a normal one. And to be fair, unless a co-worker did something fairly overt (or had a long pattern of questionable actions), I'd probably do the same as you, as I'm fairly non-confrontational on non-mission stuff and try to give people the benefit of doubt. The hardest part in all this is that your reaction is a normal reaction, yet some of the messaging from some groups is that you're a bad person, which doesn't help the problem because it puts otherwise good people on the defense, even if they would otherwise agree. The challenge is, what does leadership do? If that person with racist views had no subordinates, you could make a case that it doesn't matter. But if there's minorities in the sq that are uncomfortable/hurt by that person's racists views, it can deteriorate trust those minorites have in their sq mates. Maybe that racist coworker later becomes a supervisor, and while they might not do anything that clearly crosses the line, those racial biases can cause other indirect harm. Things like strats, submitting for awards, pushes for upgrades, opportunities (good or bad), etc, all of which can affect someone's career. And unless a minority subordinate is clearly and measurably better, it can be hard to prove that racial bias played a role in lower strats, missed opportunities/pushes, etc. So this creates a problem to our system, as it strives to be a meritocracy. If people aren't being advanced because of something that has nothing to do with their abilities (like race), then the system isn't advancing the best to positions of more responsibility. That's where I'll phase the problem another way: what do you do with a co-worker who can do their job, but is otherwise an ass or difficult/unpleasant to work with?

I don't think it's been forgotten, just approached differently. Instead of massing large quantities of forces, we mass capabilities and effects. Technology can improve capabilities platforms bring to the fight, and increase the effect individual platforms bring. Problem is that it makes each individual platform now is delivering multiple effects and more valuable, so any losses hurt more. So that pushes is into things like stealth to minimize losses. But that technology is expensive to develop/operate/maintain, so too get the most bang for your buck, you roll in more capabilities to justify the high cost, creating a vicious cycle.

But it's not acquisition determining what we need. It's the staffs determining needs and requirements through JCIDS. And those staffs need good majors/lt col as action officers who are much less removed from ops to make recommendations. Have bad AOs (or if they are stretched too thin), and you get poorly thought out COAs. Sure, JCIDS overlaps the acquisitions cycle, and the budget process as well. As frustrating as it can be, a core belief of our government is that Congress has the power of the purse to keep the executive branch in check.

It's the latter, and your example is correct. You can carry that increased amount forward until 30 Sep 23 (in your example, 20 days of use/lose), and then it drops back down to 60 days. https://www.whs.mil/Portals/75/Coronavirus/Special%20Leave%20Accrual.pdf?ver=2020-04-16-171940-100 Couldn't find the memo on the DoD site, goes to a broken link, but doesn't show as rescinded or superseded.

Depends on what you want. If you want something on the cutting edge of technology, there's a lot of risk maturing technologies for production. Requirements creep also doesn't help, especially when it starts to push boundaries on what is capable. Another major problem is software. The more complex it becomes, the longer it takes (and throwing money or extra developers may not make development go faster). Sure, you can go faster with incremental releases, and fix bugs on the fly. This works for many commercial applications, but not so much in safety critical systems. Acquisitions may get a lot of the spears, but many times A5 is just as guilty (or more so) of causing things to drag out.

On one hand, I shave about once a week since I'm on max telework, and have been for about a year. On the other hand, between a non-flying deployment followed by a PCS to staff (and COVID halting my flying requal plan to get as much flying in before going to staff), I haven't touched a jet in a year and a half. Not a great trade, but I took the blood money. Has been interesting to see how the sausage gets made on the staff though.

I think it's typically worded as 100% promotion opportunity, based on them being "fully qualified" (i.e. no legal trouble) for 1LT and Capt.

Ignoring morale, comfort, individual preferences in the name of readiness has helped to kill morale and retention in aviators. But as soon as the AF starts making small changes, people complain about those changes unless they directly benefit from those changes. Pregnancy flightsuits are probably just a comfort/morale/belonging issue. And that's good enough reason in my book to make a change, given that it likely took little time or money to execute. I doubt the AF see this as a big issue, but again it's an easy fix that seems to have people that want it. Sure, a pregnant flyer that doesn't fit in their flightsuit anymore could get a new bigger normal flightsuit, but the AF is still paying for a new uniform that likely won't fit well (pushing them to find a uniform that does). So why not have one available that might fit better at what will likely be the same cost to the government anyways? Why can't they just wear a different maternity uniform? Same reason I wear my leather jacket instead of the lightweight blue jacket when it's cold and I have to wear blues-because I want to and it's an option I have. Even in the flightsuit, I've got several jackets to choose from to suit my personal preference: leather, summer weight nomex, winter weight nomex, fleece, goretex, commercial softshell in green, commercial softshell in OCP. Why not just have one or two approved jackets for the flightsuit? Or should the AF eliminate the leather jacket (not approved for flight, has no readiness impact, but looks cool)? You're still avoiding the fact that other career fields besides pilots also use the flightsuit as well. Regardless of whether you feel they should wear a flightsuit, the AF decided that they should. Also, should RPA pilots wear flightsuits? Seems like they can do their job just fine in regular OCPs. (Not that I'm advocating for that, but it's a morale issue, not a readiness/operational issue). Even as a mobility pilot, the cotton OCPs would probably provide adequate flame protection for much cheaper. It's like when the AF got rid of patches for ABUs-huge outcry because many airmen lost a symbol of their unit affiliation (all while flyers kept their patches so it didn't affect us). All in the name of saving airmen like $20 a year if that on sewing costs (as well as the cost for the patches themselves, but the AF could've gone the army route and made airmen buy their patches vs issuing them). It's a small thing, but helps feed comraderie and a sense of belonging. Same for morale shirts/patches, crew patches, deployment patches, Friday name tags, sq baseball caps, etc. There's a lot of things that are starting to get looked at with a fresh eye now. I'm many ways the regs are stuck in 1947 and how people were expected to look back then. Hair standards have been relaxed to accommodate more hairstyles for other races/ethnicities. Easy kill right there that made life easier for many people for something that has minimal to no impact on readiness. There's also no reason not to allow men to grow facial hair, minus some operational concerns like oxygen mask use or gas masks. But there's no operational or readiness reason to restrict facial hair when you're not flying, besides the AF wanting to portray a certain look, which has no tie to readiness or combat effectiveness. Even when deployed there's no operational reason to have to shave, unless the conditions warrant going to mopp ready and dragging your chem gear around on your hip. Then you can shave before pulling your gear that's probably dryrotting in a conex. Another easy fix was the 1 min it took to update the AFI to allow pushing up flightsuit sleeves-zero readiness reason to do so, purely for comfort. But an easy fix. OBOGS fixes has it's own funding and manning, and support from AFRL for testing. The short answer is mil standard for evaluating OBOGS made some poor assumptions in how to verify system performance with their selection of test points for certification. Which means the AF will potentially have to pay to redesign and retrofit the system. So the AF is also after the big items affecting readiness as well; these small initiatives aren't taking away from that.

It's a small percentage of rated people that are pregnant, but you're right, I don't have the number. But don't forget all the winged enlisted as well (loads, booms, FEs, etc). And the AE folks. And that space/missile crews also can wear the flightsuit. So the population is much bigger than just pilots or aircrew. And yes, that's still a small population, but the AF has the number of pregnant airmen affected or potentially affected by pregnancy, and felt it was a large enough population to take an action. Sure, it's a small number of people who's lives can be improved by a pregnancy flightsuit. But if the life support/uniform development people have time to make an improvement for a subset of the force, for what is likely a small cost/relatively easy development effort, then why not make the improvement? I'd bet measurements for pregnant women exist within DoD since other maternity uniforms exist. So taking that info, applying it to the flightsuit, and testing it out likely was an easy effort. Can pregnant women find a flightsuit that "fits"? Maybe. But remember, flightsuits until very recently were designed/cut for men, and unlike many other clothes, are difficult to tailor to fix a dimension that might be off (namely, getting a flightsuit that's wide enough may leave the leg inseam way too long even with the short size). Here's an interesting video on human factors and designing for the "average" person. The speaker helped with human factors assessments for the AF for years, and touches on many of the (bad) assumptions that are made in designing things for humans. (And no, I didn't hunt for that video, just happened to watch it recently for some coursework I'm doing right now that's relevant to this topic). We all have small issues we'd like the AF to fix, even if it's for a small group of people and doesn't effect every airmen. To me this is just the AF addressing an easy issue to fix to help a small number of (pregnant) airmen. Will this solve retention by itself? Nope. But it helps remove what might be 1 of 1000 small paper cuts. Also related, but for AF maternity uniforms in general. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/09/09/airmans-idea-provide-better-fitting-uniforms-pregnant-troops-may-become-law.html Basically, even though the maternity uniforms exist in the system, doesn't mean they are available though AAFES, and the AF is working to improve that.

I think the underlying question is: is the flightsuit also an office uniform, or is it strictly a functional uniform? If it's strictly a functional uniform, should the flightsuit be worn when performing office duties, regardless of if you're pregnant/DNIF/not scheduled to fly? Also, should aviators on staff be allowed to wear a flightsuit (when not in their fly break, if applicable)? That's the apples to apples comparison, pregnancy is just a subset of that. Also tangentially related, female versions of the flightsuit are also pretty new, was developing those wasted time/money/effort to get uniforms that fit women better? If the flightsuit is also for office duties as an aviator (which it essentially is), should pregnant airmen have to choose a maternity uniform that potentially further highlights their difference in the squadron? Put another way, if everyone in the office is wearing flightsuits, wearing OCPs makes you stick out. Granted, 2-piece flight suits are becoming more common, so they won't stand out as much, at least in the MAF. Plus, I assume pregnancy flightsuits would be issued (just like every other flightsuit), versus having the member go out and buy maternity OCPs out of pocket. Pretty much every flyer I've ever met is pretty against purchasing uniforms unless absolutely necessary (who here has actually bought regular OCPs or ABUs?).

Were you deployed? That ups your contribution limit for the year to around 55k (though dfas stopped my contributions above 19k when I returned home from deployment). Not sure if tax free months also let you go over the 19.5k limit.

I feel like that's starting to say maybe the F-35 isn't what we needed, without actually saying the F-35 isn't what we needed. But we'll keep buying them just the same.

Heard the same, had the same experience with shot 1 of Moderna as well (about 60 days after recovery from COVID). Good for first day (thought I was lucky to have no reaction), but woke up the next day with a sore/swollen arm lasting through day 4, 101 fever and fatigue starting the afternoon of day 2 for about 24 hours. Tylenol helped, but still felt pretty beat down for a couple days, way more so than the flu vaccine.

Completely agree, sims have their place, but it can't replace all flight training. But we have to do a better job at justifying it. Especially when ACMI schedules look suspiciously like AMC strat lift (C-5/C-17) missions.

I mean, toys for the really rich are warbirds or L-39s, maybe even an A-4 (i.e. military trainers or old fighters). It's about having and communicating a real need and shiwing positive benefit. $10-20k per flight hour in a MWS vs $200 per hour in a GA trainer. The bigger (harder) case to be made is not companion aircraft vs MWS, but against the sim. Inevitably, the comparison will be with the airlines who just train in the sim. So we have to sell that their mission is much simpler, and their bar to entry is much higher (1500 hours, though 1000 hours could be argued for R-ATP, where they built that air sense we're after flying much smaller planes, sand where a much smaller portion of time could come from simulators)

Gen Brown is saying the right things, it'll be interesting to see if he can move the AF in that direction. https://www.nationaldefensemagazine.org/articles/2021/2/24/brown-wants-more-data-to-support-cuts-to-legacy-systems Like Clark said, there's going to be a lot of resistance: -Inside the AF (shift in culture and mindset of what we need to value, likely will cause an upheaval in the "social pecking order" within the AF) -In the COCOMs (who will scream about risk to mission when we have to retire legacy systems to get the capability we need for the future; they fear change because it means they have to go rework the oplans) -In Congress (changes to basing affecting constituencies, and just change in general, which becomes a communication challenge to sell the changes needed) Maybe we need to revisit the idea of fighting 2 campaigns in different theaters while we modernize; it takes a large (expensive) force to do that, and means there's very little budget left to modernize.

It's also interesting to look back through history and see how different cultures borrow from other cultures, and how there are some pretty off the wall appropriations that may not be initially apparent. Like tacos al pastor, typically thought of now as a Mexican dish, was borrowed from Lebanese immigrants to Mexico. Stereotypes are the same; can often be good or acceptable, but can be used badly. But eliminating the stereotypes for a certain group in media means applying/assigning other stereotypes to that group, usually from a majority group.

I know we like our events based timelines, but drawing a line in the sand and saying "phase 2 is eligible here, phase 3 there" based on projected rates may help encourage people to get it earlier. Though it sounds like there's generally still long waits to get vaccinated, even within the current phase, for people that want it. This gets compounded with scheduling problems in a complex distribution network (get the shot through doctor, other clinic, walgreens/CVS, employer, etc)

I get the point you're trying to make with your numbers, but you're missing chance of exposure, which reduces that 1/100 or 1/1000 to somewhere lower than that, based on where you go, who you interact with, indoor/outdoor, no mask/mask/respirator, etc. A 1-10% chance of infection puts you in the ballpark of the adverse vaccine effects. Contrast that with exposure to the vaccine; either you get it, or don't. Plus, people are bad with probabilities anyways. (Ref. Lotteries) Having an expert (in this case, the FDA) weigh in helps you make informed decision by analyzing the data and distilling the results into something the average person can understand. You'll still have people that move the goalpost after FDA approval to justify why they still don't want to take it, but that's not a new problem to vaccinations. I'm sure full FDA approval will encourage more people to get the shot. From there, it's how to message to the holdouts to get them to change their minds. What makes this conversation hard is both political sides don't want to acknowledge that different people may hold different values, which changes how they assess and handle risks. So there's a lot of talking past each other, rather than trying to understand their viewpoint and making a case that would appeal to the target audience. This problem gets compounded by the fact that there's still a lot we don't know (percentage of people that have long term side effects from COVID, how long the immunity lasts for a vaccinated person, can a vaccinated person still spread COVID asymptomatically, are there any long term side effects to the vaccine, to name a few) And yes, I was someone in the wait and see camp, unfortunately got COVID over Christmas (not that I had a chance to get vaccinated before), and then elected to get the shot ahead of full FDA authorization after experiencing the "fun" of mild COVID.

You forgot to add that that's in addition to the 1 page of decent, approach, and landing briefings. And the NVG brief if applicable. Though the C-17 mission computer was pretty stupid with how it handled GPS missed approaches (did I cross the MAP yet?!) and GPS approaches you wanted to circle from

Even at ~67% willingness to get the vaccine, the military is doing about the same as the general public of the same age range. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna1257152 https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2021/03/05/growing-share-of-americans-say-they-plan-to-get-a-covid-19-vaccine-or-already-have/ I get why people would want to defer until the vaccine it's fully approved, especially if they are otherwise healthy and have an otherwise stable job and access to decent healthcare (i.e. military). So I don't really hold it against them for wanting more information before injecting something into their body, especially when you can look at your odds for catching and dying from COVID and rationalize waiting.

Every pilot not instructing at UPT is a pilot somewhere more useful (operational unit, FTU, staff) where it may be harder to bring in contract help. Plus, taken with the latest bonus offering, the AF is putting all it's chips in growing it's way out of the retention problem. And the current UPT bases are maxed out. Based on the timing of the RFI, I'd wager the FY22 pilot bonus will look very similar to the FY21 bonus. End strength is capped, so spending money on contractors allows the AF to artificially increase manning without actually increasing manning. So contract out T-1/phase 3 for MAF (or T-6 direct), redirect those T-1 bodies either back to their MWS (relieve ops tempo) or to T-6 (to plus up production). Shift flying from T-6 to more time in IFS to build air sense cheaper. The costs might work out, at least until airline hiring starts up again, then the contractors may have trouble finding enough IPs to meet the contract. Though it might be an interesting post-AF job if you want to fly but not be away from home.