jazzdude

That's about it. Crap happens, glad you have been fortunate enough to dodge it. Probably hurt having a long casual LT period (not by choice, ~1 year) followed by training with the Navy (last choice on my dream sheet, ~15 months because of how the AF prioritized classing up for training, so I sat casual again for several months), followed by a UPT contractor strike. So bad timing all around early in my career, and essentially 1 Lt opr short of what I should've had. Flew the line, 2x flying deployments + 1x non flying deployment, C-17 IP, airdrop AC, UPT IP. Played the "if I deserve an award, my supervisor should take care of me" game, so only had 1 quarterly award. Only real strat was from the OG as a top 20%-ish flt/cc on my top opr for the board. Nothing spectacular, but not bottom of the bucket. PME done, Masters degree done, no UIF or PFT failures. No missed end of tour decorations, no referral OPRs, no NJP/LOR/LOA. The only thing the promotion counselor had for feedback was not enough awards. So yeah, crap happens, better lucky than good, timing is everything, etc

Cool. That's what they told me, and I got passed over for major in my first look (95% promotion rate). No negative indicators, SOS in res complete, flt/cc, etc, just not a lot of real strats or awards, but nothing that would've pointed to bottom 5%. All my leadership up through the wing were as surprised as I was when I didn't make it. Best part was that on the same board, a dude that was a FP (needed supervision to fly, failed to check out as an IP in MQT) in the T-6 that was getting sent back to his previous unit made it. Picked up second look with a DP though So yeah, glad you've been lucky, some of us aren't.

You don't "have" to go to staff. If someone wants to just fly, go for it. But there's a price to pay for that choice-it'll be a lot harder to make O-5. That's not wrong or unfair, it's just the nature of the business, and the mid-level captains should be made aware of the rules of the game so they can make informed career decisions. Even when I was in college working on my PPL, my CFI (who had just retired from the AF and was an AF pilot that didn't command) mentioned that if all you wanted to do was fly, be prepared to retire as a major, but if you could could suck it up and do a staff assignment, O-5 becomes realistic (but not guaranteed). And that was 16 years ago when I had that talk. But it seems to check, the couple guys I knew in my career so far that just flew their entire careers retired as majors. Same goes for ACSC- if all you care about is flying your jet and staying in the wing, then yeah, ACSC does nothing for you and is a complete waste of time. But it is a requirement for O-5. Not saying you should do it as soon as you have a line number to major, but if you've had your 3 looks at school and didn't get picked up, maybe you should consider doing ACSC-DL. Then again, if you just want to fly and are okay with retiring as a major, then cool, don't do it. Just don't be surprised you didn't make O-5. Something about the more things change, the more they stay the same... I will say that the myvector assignment process is (hopefully) a step in the right direction. I was going to just stay flying because going to Scott to do AMC staff or TACC is something I have no interest in. But I was able to find a few staff jobs that sound interesting in locations I'd like to be in, with some of them being flying staff billets. Sent from my SM-T700 using Tapatalk

It's the staff. Or attending any number of the requirements boards they hold throughout the year. The problem with many good aviators dodging staff assignments to continue flying is that you then don't have good aviators doing the staff work, which means crappy guidance, and poor planning for the future, and the vicious cycle continues.

Got it, so status quo. So long as they have a functioning economy and hate America, this'll never end and they will continue to export violence.

Or it could strengthen their resolve, unify factions against a common enemy, and create a surge of patriotism/nationalism, making Iran a bigger problem, even if we smash all their toys. We're unlikely to occupy them, and I don't really see any surrounding countries itching to invade them, so the regime just has to wait us out, similar to Vietnam. Sent from my SM-T700 using Tapatalk

Sounds like many other career fields-so how do we retain the good ones? A major acquisitions program is likely a once in a career (if not your whole career) program, so how do you train someone up for that? Or you lose continuity as people in the team PCS in/out. There's plenty of jobs for rated people in the acquisitions world, if you think it sucks, then do something to make it better instead of just throwing spears. Sent from my SM-T700 using Tapatalk

Just do it all in the sim :)

Or maybe because airliners don't have other aircraft in close formation on them

That's the problem-it's an logistics enterprise issue, not an airlift issue. You can solve the airlift issue relatively easily (it'll take work, but it's solvable). This only solves the tactical problem. The real (operational) problem is how to move and stage people/units/equipment/fuel/etc for airlift/movement.

If that's the case, my gut says we're manned about right. Pretty much every unit I've been in limits leave to 10%. Throw in schools/TDYs and individual deployments, and a unit that can do the same with less (at least on paper) when everyone is home now really can't do their mission without degradation in reality given all the other things that pull people away from home station. Or I guess you can assume no one takes leave, and investing in your people through sending them to school/trainings/upgrades/etc isn't important. That's not too say we can't trim the fat; but the AF needs to take a hard look at where it places people. Having just enough people to do the job means there isn't enough people to always be fully mission capable. And this is where many of the additional duties come from, jobs that were cut and duties folded into someone else's job. ETA:. Oh and we tried cutting a large portion of the force in the great RIF of 2014-that didn't work out so well, and we're still digging out of that hole

So they added a LM checklist step in the Before Landing Checklist right after Landing Gear - "DOWN" (PM). I think the expanded says something to the effect of "ensure the checklist is run." So yeah...

Here's a small portion of my army aviation experience coordinating with an aviation TF: -Yes, you have to get dip clearances to cross a country's border -Yes, you have to comply with the FCG lead time -No, your dip clearance takes as long as everyone else's -No, there is no deconfliction altitude here-you need to be on the ATO given the environment you are flying in -Who the hell flies through charted prohibited and restricted areas without permission? -No, you won't get a C-17 CHOP'd to your operation. Tell us what you need to move and when you need it to move, and multiple units can share airlift so everyone's mission is supported. While army aviation may be tactically great (I'll defer to Lawman on this since I have no firsthand experience), institutionally they don't really understand (or maybe just don't care about) the bigger air picture or how to really think about air assets at the operational level. It's all just flying trucks in their eyes. Hell, based on what I've seen they don't like to share anything with other units. It would take a major culture change within the army for them to appropriately employ light attack aircraft and share the airspace with the rest of the joint aircraft. "How do you spell 'joint?' A-R-M-Y..."

The Army doesn't understand they aren't the only game in town, and does not understand that they have to coordinate with the rest of the air assets. Basically they treat their aircraft are flying trucks or flying artillery.

Not a bad idea Pretty much everything for the C-17 currency wise is in the sim. I've been out for a little bit, but I think all that's required for a copilot to get in the jet is 1-2 tactical sorties per semi. ACs add maybe 2-4 extra AR sorties per semi. Airdrop quality doesn't really increase the amount of training sorties either- 1 extra sortie per semi is all you need, 2 if you're JPADS qualified. And it can count as your airland tactical sortie as well...

Deployed finance was a bit confused when I asked, but eventually figured it out. It seems to be tied to CZTE being processed, which then allows you to go above, but like you said only for traditional. I had timed my contributions to stay below 19k until a month into my deployment, and contributed above 19k after ctze started

The sim is fine for learning procedural tasks, but it's not the same as being in the jet. More MWS sim time is not the answer, at least for the C-17. Need more quality training time in the jet, but that means reducing mission taskings so guys are home to train, and more locals so you don't have 5 dudes all trying to get recurrent on 4.0 local instead of focusing on tactical proficiency. Even if you moved money to find more sim time, there are a limited number of sims, and there's not a lot of excess capacity for more training. So that means mil construction for more sim buildings and buying more simulators, which again, really just teach procedural tasks. Not saying the T-1 track needs to stay as is, but I'd bet there would be better payoff for the airlift community trading for more time in T-6s learning visual navigation and building air sense in general. Pretty sure that 1x C-17 sim session (3 hours) would buy you 6x 1.5 sorties in the T-6. Also don't need to have both the T-1 and T-38 tracks graduate at the same time. No matter how rigorous MAF wants the T-1 track to be, the fact of the matter is that big AF will always see the T-1 track as being limited/lesser than their T-38 track counterparts, who will be universally assignable (subject to AFPC's whims). But if all you think C-17s do are strat missions, then yeah, just do transition phase in T-1s and graduate, cancel all locals and do it all in the sim, just like the airlines. Hell, just direct hire guys of the street with a FAA commercial Pilot certificate; it'd be a lot cheaper and fix the rated manning numbers really quick. And while we're at it, do the same for the fighters, cancel locals and do more sims; they'll just be cruising at 30k dropping GPS JDAMs in a permissive environment.

Why? Taking leave in conjunction with official travel shouldn't be a problem, just need to make sure the accounting/expensing is done right. Don't receive per diem for leave days, pay for your rental car on leave days, and pay any additional cost on airfare incurred by the delayed return. Easy.

Some good things: -Single engine work in the jet (this isn't trained to in the C-17, where it's only in the sim) -introduction to TOLD considerations -Off station mission planning -Low level flying -Large aircraft formation (cell procedures) -intro to air refueling procedures and rendezvous When I went through T-1s I felt like half the nav phase was a waste in T-1s: why do I have to do a million ILS approaches when they are the same in pretty much every aircraft? There are a lot of UPT tasks that don't directly translate to an MWS, but build a good foundation. -No one really is going to fix to fix anywhere, but to be able to orient yourself quickly to a bullseye is an important skill that uses the same underlying concept as the fix to fix. I don't know how many times I've seen someone receive a threat call on a training sortie, and by the time the third pilot has plotted the threat on their chart they realize they are right on top of or just flew over the threat. -Don't need to throw out dynamic retasking to the studs, half the time they are hanging onto the tail off the jet anyways. Instead, emphasizing things like fuel awareness, obtaining information prior to you destination, plotting routes on the chart, chart reading, all play a role in execution a changing airlift mission in an MWS. I've been part of a virtual flag n the C-17 where flight lead (Lead IP) was scared to go out of our planned for corridor despite potential threats because they didn't know how to calculate an MSA on the fly (charted MEF plus 500 or 1000). -Visual navigation. So much exists in our MWS to help navigate that clock-map-ground is not emphasized and pilots become reliant on the magenta line. Which is all great until you want to operate in a GPS denied environment. Even the stuff we take for granted in mission planning, like what makes a good visual turn point and how to identify funneling features. So lots to lay the foundation for in UPT.

Recently received my first bonus check while deployed, and that is how it paid out. That being said, being deployed raises your annual TSP contribution limit to $55K, so I directed a good portion of my bonus payment to my traditional TSP.

Maybe it's the last time we had a coherent strategy in combat ops appropriate to the relevant theaters?

If you miss your annual contact lens program appointment, optometry yes flight med who removes you from the program. If you never miss an appointment, it's all transparent to you. But when the original paperwork goes missing after you PCSA... You get to relearn the process... I guess I've been fortunate to have all of my squadron find contacts for me.

The contact lens program is run by flight med, who's the gatekeeper. Optometry does the legwork though.

That's why he's asking. They will enroll a stud in the program only if they are already wearing an approved lens, they won't do a fitting for new lenses. So if you want to wear contacts during UPT, you've got to get the lenses before on your own dime.

Fixed it for you. Sent from my SM-T700 using Tapatalk