pawnman

We thought the same thing about General Welsh. I'm starting to think there is not one we can pick to do this job that won't get raked over the coals by congress and ignored by his wing commanders (see - volunteerism as a factor for commander's recommendation on EPRs, master's degrees still tracked by WG/CCs for promotion to major).

Early days at ENJJPT, prior to getting his AETC patch and nametag for the squadron he was assigned to?

"The grass isn't always greener"...your rated manning numbers seem to tell a different story.

My previous DO got a 365 to Kabul, with about 2 weeks to report. I wonder how many people 7-day opted prior to him getting the assignment? He was a SAASS grad, BTW. At least he got a SQ/CC slot out of the deal.

How about if we separate rated promotion boards from non-rated, similar to the way medical and JAG boards are separate from the rest of the AF?

We use the students.

Ian "Bane" Helms

Never been to Guam, so I'm not sure what the infrastructure looks like. The Deid has been converted for certain positions...I know a guy who took the CAT director gig out there. Two-year accompanied tour, but he gets to live downtown in the walled compound with townhomes instead of in the mold-infested trailers or BPC rooms.

Bunch of FAIPs passed over...remind me again, what's the AFSC we're so short-manned in CSAF keeps telling Congress we have a problem?

Last crew took it.

Probably, assuming you can make that work with the budget, your kid's school schedule, and you're actually on the island when they show up and not doing a 20 hour training mission to deter some Asian dictator.

They were. Global Strike is now sending us all over the world on all kinds of exercises that don't count as deployments. And the 9th did six months deployed, six months home, six months deployed not long ago...and it destroyed the people and the aircraft. We spend over a year getting back to decent fleet health following that. I'm not looking forward to parking B-1s at Guam to do training missions for six months at a time. If I'm going to be away from home for six months, then let me kill some bad guys.

So, about that 12x bonus...

Because GC really, really needs you to finish UPT and make the excel sheet look a little better for rated manning.

Well, you'll be satisfied and rewarded for a little while. Obviously not long-term, or we wouldn't have this pilot retention problem...

I'm now at the point where, when asked for advice about joining the Air Force, my first response is "don't".

I can't wait to see senior leaders explain why we are stop-lossing pilots less than two years after we paid a bunch of them to get out voluntarily.

It's not Obama...we've done this to ourselves.

The Air Force should probably be asking themselves why people hate the job so much, when so many look at it as desirable, that pilots won't even stay for $250,000 extra.

It's remarkable how flexible most religions are on that point, while remaining rigid on things like pre-marital sex, alcohol, and apparently, Ambien use.

Yes, but after that, all the USAFA grad line numbers for the same year are in class-rank order. DG is the first of his/her USAFA class to promote, and so on.

II was very surprised to learn they don't do flight control checks before every takeoff.

Oh, this isn't even the worst of AFPC's idiocy. They RIF'd three current, qualified instructor WSOs, two of which were spun up in the latest upgrade (block 16), one of which was an evaluator in OGV. In return, because our 12B manning was so short, they sent a guy from the Pentagon...who didn't want to come back to Dyess, and who hadn't flown the aircraft in a decade (various Prowler slots and staff tours), and who had to be put through the B-course (didn't even qualify for TXC because he'd been out so long). Non-mission lead, non-instructor, and he basically hasn't flown since his check ride...thanks, AFPC for all your help! At least two of our RIF'd IWSOs found their way into the reserve unit.

One of ours wasn't even a flight lead, and came to us from an AETC tour. So, the FTU had to put him through TXC, then FLUG, then FIC. Meanwhile, we barely have enough sorties to keep flying the students, but we have to burn them to train our newest "instructor".

The B-1 FTU has received 2 non-instructor pilots as permanent party in the last year.