jazzdude

Why? It's their freedom to eat what they want. Why would you want the government to regulate that, but do nothing for COVID? It's the same line of reasoning...

More likely, big cuts to active duty to match commitments (and years of do more with less is going to make that more painful), while expanding the reserves (not guard, unless it's to buy off support of a senator or congressman). That, or we find an excuse to fight elsewhere...

I want to lead off with that I don't necessarily find your solution bad, but it's worth digging deeper in your solution to get after assumptions. What are your thoughts on anti-vaxxers? On one hand, it's their right to deny receiving any vaccinations or put anything in their body they do not want there. It's their choice. The flip side is that if they get a preventable disease, a $10 vaccine costs turns into thousands of dollars of hospital bills. Pretty clear cut argument can be made for "play stupid games, win stupid prizes, pay for it yourself." Or worse, they get sick, and in turn infect someone who could not take the vaccine, maybe they were allergic to an ingredient or have another condition that medically prevents them from receiving that vaccine. Who pays there? Our decisions and acceptance of risk don't occur in a vacuum, and have impacts on others. This get exacerbated in dense population centers. On the age front, what duty does society/government have to old people that presumably have paid into the system? Should they be cared for because they've contributed, or should the level of medical care decrease at a certain point to make it available to a younger person (who may not have contributed as much in taxes etc) Again, not saying you're wrong, but it's an interesting topic to discuss

Throw in likely budget pressures with an administrator change and response to the pandemic, it's going to get interesting. Plus the AF likes to pay for new toys by cutting personnel costs. If the pandemic is still going strong next summer, I have a feeling that VSP is going to turn into RIF, and it'll be 2014 all over again... May the odds ever be in your favor

There's growing evidence that while COVID spreads via respiratory system, that it may be a vascular disease. So it's not just the flu or a serious cold. And an otherwise healthy/fit person may not know they have another underlying condition until they get sick. https://vascularnews.com/new-study-shows-covid-19-causes-blood-vessel-damage/ https://khn.org/news/clots-strokes-and-rashes-is-covid-a-disease-of-the-blood-vessels/

I think the issue with libertarianism is it's predicated on shared values and the understanding that you can do what you want as long as it doesn't harm/impact me. This creates a motion that there should be as little government or regulations as possible. But the only way to do that is if there are shared values and norms that take the place of those regulations, most likely as unwritten rules and culture. Problem is, with a diverse society coming from different backgrounds and experiences, those norms and values don't like up, creating conflict. I guess my stab at answering your question (though I wouldn't consider myself a libertarian) would be it depends on the person. You could appeal to their sense of compassion for those that are suffering. Or civic duty to help fellow countrymen. Or a scientific argument. It just depends on the individual, and what they really value (and not just what they say they value), and the message has to appeal to their values. There's an element of theater with masks, in my opinion, but it's not without value. The example of masks in a restaurant. Wearing a mask to enter probably helps protect the host/hostess welcoming everyone, but not much for everyone else in the restaurant. Putting on a mask when you leave the table to use the restroom or leave doesn't really protect anyone-that potentially dirty air is already circulating, but probably not at the rate to pull out the dirty air and replace it with fresh air to really protect you in the restaurant. So the 1-2 min of masking to get to the restroom probably didn't reduce your exposure, so in that sense it's theater. But it also creates/reinforces a social norm of wearing a mask when you can (like when you're not eating or drinking). This habit would carry over to other public interactions, such as shopping in general or public transportation. So while it doesn't really do anything for you in the restaurant per se, it reinforces the habit so people are willing to wear a mask in other places where it may actually reduce exposure.

The dumb thing about all this is it just boils down to "1) if you're sick, stay home until you're completely (and not just mostly) better." And since there's the complication of being contagious with COVID before the onset of symptoms, "2) if you were in close contact with someone who was sick, stay home for a bit a to see if you get symptoms. If you get symptoms, stay home and contact your doctor." But for a whole host of social and economic reasons, that doesn't happen, especially in the US. We could probably be a lot more open right now if people just followed the two rules I led with, even without masks or social distancing. But we as a society can't (won't?) stay home if we're sick, which puts us where we are now. Right or wrong, people are going to work when they probably shouldn't to get that paycheck, and since healthcare is largely tied to employment here. So there's a strong incentive to go to work sick, and maybe take tylenol to knock down any fever and some cough syrup to suppress coughing. Or some people just don't care because it doesn't affect them since their symptoms are mild, so they see it as a non issue. Which is great and all until they interact with someone who is high risk (like a grocery worker or a waiter/waitress who can't stay home to avoid illness despite being high risk, due to bills or lack of sick leave). Still doesn't really affect the original person who was sick, but could be devastating to a stranger that has to interact with them and can't avoid the interaction. As military flyers, especially as pilots, we benefit from having access to decent healthcare, as well as pretty rigorous medical screening early on that identifies underlying conditions, so our peer group is relatively low risk, outside maybe a spouse or kid with health issues. I guess what I'm getting at is there are people/neighbors/fellow Americans that due to circumstance, can't choose to just avoid the whole COVID thing and hunker down (or have a choice to accept risk or not), and have to go in to work and interact with the public. Do we have a responsibility to protect those people? Or does it just suck to be them, and say they're in our thoughts and prayers? I think at least some semblance of a social safety net (such as unemployment benefits, better sick leave policies/regulations, or access to at least emergency healthcare) is needed, and is similar to an ejection seat; should be a last resort, don't ever want to use it, but glad to know it's there if you need it, and hope that the system is maintained in the event it's needed. What percent of sorties require the use of the seat? Fractions of a percent? Cool, we can defer mx due to parts availability... Hopefully we didn't defer other actions or have outside factors (wx, threats) that drive up the likelihood of needing to use that seat.

Thought I saw somewhere that rated retention didn't improve despite the pandemic...

Pretty sure this is driven by business decisions. Hospitals don't want to be way overstaffed, or purchase (expensive) equipment they won't use. This goes for for-profit and non-profit hospitals. So they forecast out demand, and staff and purchase equipment according to the capability they plan to provide. It doesn't make business sense to operate an ICU at only 10-20% capacity routinely. Who pays for the extra staff and unused equipment sitting on a shelf? To do that, you'd have to either pass on the costs to subsidize the unused ICU capacity elsewhere, like routine appointments/procedures, get subsidized from outside the hospital (local/state/federal taxes?), or charge crazy amounts for emergency care based on demand at time of service (insurance companies probably would negotiate an upper limit here, but if you're uninsured, sucks to be you). Operating at 80-ish% probably gives you a reasonable buffer to absorb spikes in demand while getting a good return on the investment on staff and equipment, and allow for vacations, training, etc. It's like a line flying squadron, if the squadron was manned exactly for the mission demand (100% utilization of crews for missions), you wouldn't have time for leave or upgrades; you need slack in the taskings to take care of your people (leave, dnif, etc) and organization (upgrades, training/development, schools). But when hospitals have a spike that keeps going upward (like a pandemic), they start having to surge, and potentially offload patients to other hospitals that have excess capacity. Flattening the curve was to help keep the demand for beds below the number of beds available (locally or regionally), especially for a virus that had a lot of unknowns with it while meeting routine demands, and given a long lead time to increase capacity (medical staff, equipment, physical space). Though those routine demands may change given COVID mitigations (for example, I'm guessing there have been less car accidents requiring ICU care since lockdowns and telework have gone into effect, freeing up some capacity at hospitals to deal with COVID). We're also probably better now at triaging COVID patients and meeting their needs as well. All this leads to a moving picture on demand and capacity, but with a long tail to significantly increase capacity if needed. Hospitals can surge (do more with less... sound familiar?), but who knows for how long. They are accepting more risk (more patients per provider/nurse than typical, longer days, having COVID positive but asymptomatic healthcare workers continue working until they physically can't). Just like the AF and the pilot shortage, there's been a shortage of doctors and nurses, and both have a long lead time to add to the workforce, and their management probably isn't much better than ours. So it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

I would recommend focusing efforts not on the contractor advice, but on addressing your commander not performing the duties he's required to (offering continuation without regard to ADSC/bonus/whatever). That's the root cause of your problem. The contractor angle probably wouldn't solve your issue-the Wg/CC still owns the decision/action regardless of the advise given to them. The strats and job pushes don't come from the contractor, the Wg/CC is putting their name/signature on those, so it's unlikely that the COR will find anything that changes your situation, and that just burns time that you don't have to resolve the issue

Unfortunately it gets murky... it depends on what the contractor was hired to do, as they may have been hired specifically to provide advise to a military/civilian decision maker. Ultimately, those decisions are owned by either an officer or civilian equivalent in the appropriate position (I know I'm staying the obvious, sorry). However, they may have contractor support hired on for advisory and assistance services, where they essentially work as action officers for tasks which feeds into the decision making process. So they do have influence similar to any other action officer (that's what they are contacted to do), but they don't own any decision. So I don't think you'll find anything saying that contractors can't influence decisions; the AF (and DoD) routinely does contract out for A&AS to help in decision making routinely including things such as budget/acquisitions/strategy. A good boss could overcome bad contractor support/advice, but a bad boss is going to be a bad boss regardless of the contractor support they have (though a bad boss with bad contractor advice is going to be even worse). Unfortunately it seems you're in the latter position, so I guess it's off to the IG.

You cannot have a contractor as your rater or additional rater. Must be an officer or civilian of equal or higher grade to you. Here's the reference: AFI 36-2406 OFFICER AND ENLISTED EVALUATIONS SYSTEMS

Determining requirements is not acquisition's role... It's the role of A5/8. Not to say acquisitions can't be improved, but they don't steer the ship and set the vision for capability, they play a supporting role in attaining the vision/plan set forth by A5/8.

Sounds easy, but everyone's got their own way of doing things (my way isthe best way...) and things they think they absolutely need, when maybe they don't in reality. It's essentially building a military internet of things for weapon systems. If you could get all stakeholders on board on how to package info and transmit it, the technical engineering from there should be fairly straightforward. Then you run into problem 2- who pays for the upgrades to individual platforms, both hardware and software, in a timely manner? There are people (at least in the air force) wanting to move this way, but it's hard to get funding because networks are intangible (especially compared to getting a shiny new jet or improved weapon). You have to cut a capabilities elsewhere to fund the effort, as well as to get everyone that needs to be on the net on the net, otherwise there's no point in investing in the network in the first place.

This is the challenge. Network protocols and the underlying standards and infrastructure isn't sexy or really all that tangible to most, making it hard to justify/defend funding for it. It also doesn't really fit how we budget for programs, as it's something that goes across multiple platforms. Each vendor/contractor/program office pushed their own solution, and you end up with: https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/standards.png Which is why F-22s can't talk to F-35s can't talk to Gen 4 aircraft.

That's literally the whole point of the bonus, entice aviators to commit to staying in so they'd be available to fill staffs and non flying duties. It's also the point of flying gates and flight pay, to ensure the AF gets a good return on it's investment in your aviation career while allowing you to fill non-flying needs of the air force. Good on you for not discussing your bonus status.

He's holding your future career hostage to solve his perceived problems about you being in his wing. The PCA/ assignment/deployment caveat as their prereq to giving you the continuation notice points directly to this: "I want you out of my wing ASAP, and if I can't do that, I'd rather kick you out of the AF despite what is in the best interest of the AF (i.e. continuation)" The Wg/CC does not offer you continuation, the promotion/continuation board does. All he can do is non-concur and recommend your removal from the AF. But as your senior rater, it falls on him to notify you of the board's decision to continue you and offer you continuation on behalf of the AF. Which is why your NAF/CC was probably pissed off at your Wg/CC and the process is starting to move again. Tread lightly at your meeting, and I'd recommend not signing anything at that meeting, and taking any offers home with you so you can review it before signing (and so you can have the IG review it if you think you're getting an unfair or improper deal), which is completely within your right to do. Document your interactions (when/who you spoke to in the Wg/CC's office). Reach out to the retired officer with the NAF connection for advice. Sounds like they were already willing to help. Nuclear option would be to reach out to the NAF/CC, skipping the Wg/CC. Sounds crazy, but what are they going to do to you, so long as you do it in a respectful manner? Not promote you? Try to kick you out (sounds like your Wg/CC is kinda doing that already)? Can't give you a crap deployment either if you don't accept continuation first- you'll have a separation date mandated by law that overrides a deployment tasking. Watch your timelines though, and realize we're headed for holiday season which means staffing slows down.

Sometimes those informal networks can resolve issues quickly! Pay it forward, if you know someone is having issues they can't resolve and you think you can help or have a connection that can help, offer it up. The NAF/CC makes sure the Wg/CC is doing their job, so that call will not be a pleasant one as "taking care of airmen" is one of the CSAF's priories and the Wg/CC failed at that on what should've been a routine personnel action his office (and not a subordinate one) was directly reasonable for. Don't go in with an "I told you so" attitude- they can still make your life difficult in the short term, same with your next assignment. Worth asking where to go career wise from him/her (though obviously they don't have a grasp on the whole continued thing) just to have something to discuss during that meeting. Consider knocking out that PME-there's a lot of BS in there, but there is also some good stuff in there. It'll improve your chances APZ if that's what you want. Otherwise, it's a pretty clear signal that you don't care about being promoted. Though if you're good with not promoting and don't want to do it, great. Which dovetails into the advice I got from my GP/CC when I got passed over: you don't have to play the game anymore. In a sense, you have more freedom to pursue what interests you in your career if you stay in. You don't have to check the normal career boxes of you don't want to continue advancing. Take advantage of that, and continue to improve your corner of the AF. As a pilot, you've got a highly marketable/valuable skill that is sought after-there are opportunities outside the AF as well (this was at the leasing edge of the airline hiring wave, though right now airlines probably aren't an option for a couple years at least). The AF wants you to stay, especially since we're sorry on pilots, but you need to do what's right for you and your family. I ended up getting picked up for O-4 on my 1 APZ (though someone that board got picked up at something like 5 or 6APZ...), mainly because of the support from my Sq/CC pushing the Wg/CC to right what he saw was a mistake by the AF. I was fortunate to also get opportunities that got my career more less back on track (luck and timing). But those opportunities presented themselves because I put myself out there pursuing jobs I thought were interesting/rewarding Best of luck to you!

Next stop is to get on the Wg/CC’s calendar to discuss. Barring that, it's off to the IG. If your plan is to separate, knock out TAPS ASAP to get your ducks in a row for your exit. If you plan to stay in, you need to ensure that continuation is accepted by you and filled appropriately so the AF doesn't fix the glitch and stop paying you in six months because you didn't accept continuation. And remember, declining continuation takes precedence over any ADSC (though you could lose the GI Bill benefit transfer if you didn't complete the associated ADSC). My WAG is your leadership doesn't realize this, and thinks no action needs to be taken on continuation until your ADSC expires.

Rated or not shouldn't matter. You should've been officially notified of your non selection NLT the public release by your commander, and it's why they get the results ahead of public release. Just because the board continues you does not mean you have to accept continuation, and that drives a timeline for separation (I think it's 6 months after public release). Not sure how the 5 year promotion window changes things though, it may push out all those timelines and affect how/when continuation is offered

Absolutely disagree with you on this point. Discrimination can also be the result of unconscious decisions or decisions with an unintentionally effect that disproportionately affect a particular group. The fact that there unconscious or unintended decisions happen does not necessarily mean someone is a "bad" person; it's part of being human. Relationships and society is messy, and no one is perfect, and so many things go in to hire we make decisions, whether we are aware of it out not. But when an issue is identified/recognized, and a conscious decision to not address the issue is made, then yes, it means those with the information and power to make a change are in the wrong. And remember, doing nothing is also a choice. And in the face of unclear or imcomplete information, maybe we should exhibit a bias for action-no different than how we'd attack a tactical combat problem when faced with unclear or imcomplete info about the battlespace. On the note of not recognizing personal biases and assumptions over data on the issue... But I'll give you the benefit of doubt. Here's a quote from the stars and stripes article that highlights an important second part to this discussion: Minorities were more likely to be accused than white members, but we're convicted at the same rate as white members. In other words, innocent minorites were more likely to be accused of wrongdoing than their white counterparts. And even when they are cleared of wrongdoing, going through court martial has negative effects on your career. That's the problem. So what do we do about it? And again, doing nothing is a conscious choice, as is ignoring the problem.

Maybe@stuckindayton could weigh in, but I don't think under height waivers were very common until recently (primarily to enable more women to be eligible to be pilots). So there was no real reattack COA for them. And if you joined to fly, and get told "no" due to something about yourself you can't change (or for whatever reason at all for that matter), chances are you'll min run any commitment incurred and punch. We don't really do exit surveys, so it's just an assumption. Agree on the other two points. However, standards/requirements should be revaluated regularly (could be a every few or more years, whatever makes sense for that standard), and the facts and assumptions included in those standards need to be revaluated regularly as well. Not just for diversity stuff specifically, but in general as a best practice to ensure we are best prepared to defend our country.

Education was used as an analogy to get away from preconceived arguments about race/sex and how that might affect career outcomes, and to use an example that most of us here have direct experience with to have a relatable discussion about a standard that was considered unfair by many in ops. Want specific areas for race/sex? Here's some for starters. - Just posted about anthro standards and how it effects women. - Posted earlier about how requiring photos in hiring applications (for jobs that accelerate a career) can lead to biased selection, based on the army's experiment examining what happens if you remove photos in a selection process and how that affects minorites (it improves outcomes for minorities when there was no photo-arguably more focused on abilities and performance when photos were excluded). - Mentorship. How many times have people here complained about "like promoting like?" If senior leaders have a personal bias for/against a particular group that shouldn't be considered (like race or sex), it tilts the outcomes for that group. It doesn't have to be anything sinister either, just a small, maybe unconscious, bias towards spending time with one demographic vs another. (They aren't necessarily bad people for having unintentional biases, we're all human and have them. But recognizing it's a thing can help you guard against it for the health/fairness of the overall system) And making O-6+, you typically will need a senior sponsor to watch your career and pull you up. - Military justice. https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/06/10/air-force-launches-review-racial-disparities-punishments-opportunities.html https://www.stripes.com/news/air-force/air-force-fails-to-deal-with-racial-disparities-in-military-justice-report-says-1.631314 Those articles show that minority males tend to investigated more than white members of either sex. It does point out convictions are roughly equal, so the end outcome would appear to be fair (minorities no convicted at a higher rate than average). But on the other hand, when someone is accused, generally their career comes to a halt- they lose training spots, removed from primary duty, potential isolated from the unit/friends. Even if they are cleared if wrongdoing in court martial, that's still several months missing from their performance report, and their commander could still write a weak report (that's not referral) on them if they don't agree with the court martial outcome (absence of a strat, leaving out a push, weak language, etc) or delay/remove other future opportunities such as training or upgrades. More minority men have to deal with that than the overall average. Many of these issue are hard to see as individuals, which makes it easy to say there are no issues because we don't see them. And I don't fault anyone for saying that they haven't seen anything on their day to day. That's great. But as information is aggregated up for our organization as a whole, there's a trend that shows that it's worth investigating and getting after a root cause fix (posted a link from DoD earlier showing minorities in the AF promote at a lower rate as rank increases as compared to the majority). These are all issues that DoD is investigating/addressing in its recent diversity campaign.

Large portions of women do not meet the old height/antho standards that haven't been updated since something like the the 50s. Jets were built around what the 5-95 percentile male heights way back when the standard was established. We've since allowed women to fly military aircraft, and then combat aircraft, but never updated the height standards for aircraft. And the distribution of heights for women average shorter than men. So a good portion of women are ineligible to be air force pilots solely because of their height and because no one updated the standard until this year. Its an unintentionally incomplete standard that was never updated because no one really saw a problem, until more women raised the concern. Updating the standard (happening this year) will allow future aircraft to be designed and built around what a majority of our population would be able to operate (to include guys as well, as we've gotten taller as a population), and increase the eligible recruiting pool for pilots (so we can get the best, and not just the best of those that are tall enough). This is not than just a pilot job issue for women- traditionally the air force has favored pilots in the promotion system, especially in the senior ranks. The filter at the very front of the system (anthro standards to start UPT), makes it more challenging for women to promote to senior ranks. It's not sexism in the sense that many of us think of (and I like to believe that most of that overt sexism has been stamped out), but it's an issue that creates a barrier for an otherwise qualified woman to advance in their military career.

That is the point. A system that encourages one outcome (in the example, further education) can have negative unintended impacts elsewhere. In the degree example, an individual can change to adapt to the system. This becomes a bigger problem when the decision is something an individual cannot control (race, sex). The goal is to remove any biases in the system that may hinder (or give extra advantage to) any particular group, do that it truly is about an individual's abilities, and their race/sex doesn't influence their outcome.