pawnman

That sound awful. Our crew rest ends when we set foot in the squadron for the mission brief followed by the step brief. That is, according to our interpretation of the AFI, "performing official duties" and therefore not "time away from official duties".

Part of the problem is commanders conditioned to take the word of GS-6s just because they work at the MAJCOM. 8th AF/CC and AFGSC/CC were very clear last time they were here trying to sort out the rated officer retention problem: the only person who can tell a commander no is a higher level commander. Not a GS-6, not a functional at the MAJCOM. The only person who can tell your WG/CC that they can't give you a DNP is the NAF or MAJCOM commander.

Green Dot has only cost me about two hours of my time so far. Finance has cost me far more in time, frustration, and actual dollars.

I waited almost a year, and my board was pushed back a year because the groups ahead of me were waiting two years. I suspect the boards moving forward are a result of so many pilots bailing once the ADSC is up, which is right around the time they'd be pinning on major with the current timelines.

If the rated officers were split from non-rated officers, it wouldn't take long to establish quotas for each. We've already split medical/dental/JAG from Line of the Air Force. This has the added bonus, as LookieRookie pointed out, that rated officers would score rated officer records instead of MSG/MDG/MXG colonels who can't spell CAOC or JDAM.

-2 I don't want to compel anyone to divulge more than they want/are legally allowed to...but the airline thread is ripe with tactics, techniques, and procedures to get picked up by any number of companies. I'd love to see more actionable information that those of us pondering and exit (and without the ol' airline gig to fall back on) could use to find something else in corporate America.

Which part? The assumption that it would help, or the assumption that MSG officers are outperforming rated officers on promotion boards? Because you only need to look at the promotion statistics to verify the second one. If rated bubbas were only competing against other rated bubbas, you wouldn't have to worry about competing with the SFS commander or the CE DO on the promotion boards. For whatever reason, our promotion boards just see "Led hundreds of people" and drool, but see "led xx combat missions, employed YY weapons" and yawn. They are entirely different skills, and both require judgement, discipline, and training...but at the end of the day, you're comparing apples to zebras on the promotion board, and the rated officers are the ones drawing the short end of the stick.

To be honest, I don't think we really need a fly-only track and a leadership track. We just need to stop punishing people who end up flying the line on promotion boards. At a time when we can't fill cockpits, we're still not promoting the very guys we need to fill the cockpits - the senior, grey beard IP/EP (or, in my case, IW/EW) who has deployed multiple times, worked in safety, worked in stan/eval, etc. These are THE experts that the commanders lean on for flying knowledge, and they're essentially being told they are less valuable due to not going to staff...even though we're also telling them they can't go to staff because there aren't enough people to fill the cockpits. I get that the shiniest pennies will go to school followed by staff...but that's only your top 10-20%. What should be of far greater concern, to both us on the line and the Air Force as a whole, is what do you do with the other 80-90%?

And yet, I was told I couldn't go to a staff that was begging for B-1 guys because of the RSAP and that our manning was too bad at the base to let anyone but the school selects PCS to a staff job.

If people are jumping between tracks, what's the point of having the tracks? "While most people I know are not completely dreading 6 month deployments, its the future of 2-3 of those on top of a year long that has them voting with their feet. You can't be in a constant state of war for so long and expect people to be gun ho supporting of the fight any longer." Bingo. I don't mind a six-month deployment, with a squadron, to actively fly and fight the war. I really have zero motivation to spend a year in Afghanistan trying to teach goat-herders about the strategic uses of airpower.

Self-inflicted wound by your unit. I've been a UDM before...you only have to be current the day you set foot in the AOR. The only exception is Information Assurance, because the forward location will yank your network access if that one expires.

Interesting, considering I've had peers told "you've done too many deployments, you need to find a job outside the ops squadron if you want to get promoted".

SEALs are highly trained. That doesn't mean they're interchangeable with pilots.

But do we need to financially incentivize then to stay? WSOs are bailing from my community at an even greater rate than pilots. Usually at the same point as well...about 10 years. Turns out, there are plenty of jobs on the outside with someone who has aviation experience, an electronic warfare background, and a security clearance.

We do a similar job to the BUFF EWO and the F-15E WSO in the B-1. We run the radar and the Sniper pod, lase the GBU-54s into the movers, talk to the JTACs, and running the jamming/chaff/flare/decoy systems. A bigger picture thought is this, though...think about all those staff jobs and deployments that require a rated officer. As you draw down 12X out of the Air Force, it necessarily means more 11X have to fill those staff billets/deployments/taskers. Just food for thought.

No. 4. 1,2,3...4. Only one at Dyess.

12Bs, continue to fuck off. The bonus they did release this year included exactly 4! people in my airframe.

Sounds nice, but we're already being told you're not competitive for promotion unless you have "breadth" and "do something other than flying". Look at your WG/CC and OG/CC...they probably have a half-dozen PCSes in the last ten years. You can stay where you are if you want to just fly the line as a major. Of course, this problem will run headlong into the RSAP problem, and you'll quickly have a drought of O-5s when we can't send ANYONE to staff because EVERY squadron is critically manned...no word on that solution.

The answer to that one is that we suck at writing OPRs and developing our people. No word on when we'll start valuing leadership in the cockpit vs leadership from a desk.

We did it to ourselves by telling anyone who would listen that it wasn't about the money.

We just hosted that meeting with Gen Rand here at Dyess. Unfortunately (fortunately?) I was flying and didn't get to attend. I'm looking forward to hearing what the results were. Same thing: meeting with commanders, CGOs, and FGOs separately.

This is interesting to me...was the CSO promotion rate that bad in previous years for CSOs, or did AFGSC just perform exceptionally badly. In my community, the rate to Lt Col was 47% for 12B. Across all AFGSC, it was about 60%~ish. Well below the 86% rate across the entire Air Force that was advertised by AFPC for previous years.

I thought the same thing the day we learned about AF budgeting. We were all talking about what a BS process was, and only one guy in the class saw the value: "Look, now we know how it works. Until you know how the system works, you can't bend the system to your will."

Telling that rated promotion rates continue to decline in the midst of a rated Manning shortage.

Seems to square with the last promotion board. We had a rated officer with a DP passed over for LtCol in the last board. One of the reasons given in his AFPC feedback was a lack of FGO awards.