pawnman

So, will I now expect USAF fire inspectors to look over my house before I can get BAH?

"That' doesn't matter"...until it's time to pick your flight lead for night one, or deciding who is leading your Red Flag push, or otherwise executing your most challenging sorties. It's not about the strat...it's about being able to recognize that performance in others.

There's a lot to be said for your leadership to understand the challenges, stresses, and limitations of your job. How does a commander know who is the #1 IP if he doesn't have enough knowledge in the jet to tell good instruction from bad instruction? How does a SQ/CC or OG/CC make sound decisions regarding things like waivers, or exercises, or sortie turn patterns if they haven't been subjected to any of them for over a decade?

Not all of them. I've had senior leaders who were quite possibly the worst aviators I've ever met, and i instruct at the FTU.

I concur. If you ever want to get the unfiltered feedback of your front line folks, an anonymous and retribution-free site like Reddit is the place to do it. Sure, there will be some bad answers and a lot of jokes...but how many of us lament that our senior leadership doesn't understand our problems? At least this SQ/CC is attempting to understand what the junior guys int he squadron actually want, rather than what the SNCOs and other officers have told them to say when the new SQ/CC comes in.

Two-dimensional space at 60 MPH is a lot easier to navigate than three-dimensional space at 400 KTS.

I'd get into that car. I'm not sure I trust planes that much yet. A computer-driven car will never be subject to human error.

I do. It's called competition. If I can cut my prices by 25% for the same amount of profit per customer, then I will get more customers relative to the competition.

Oh, I'm not saying it's impossible for anyone. I'm saying that statistically, if fewer minorities have a college degree, that will translate to fewer minorities being officers. And with fewer minorities being officers, fewer will be pilots. The only "minority" (51% of the population) demographic this doesn't apply to is women, who go to college and graduate at a higher rate than men in the US. So there should be plenty of women who are eligible to join as officers and pilots...but they don't. Then the question becomes "why not?"

The difference is that a pilot requires a degree to get started in the military. So if you're a young kid from a poor background looking for cheap job training, pilot may not be in the cards.

This will become a larger issue as the rated manning shortage hits more and more units. ROTC is a highly desirable assignment for a lot of guys, but very low priority for AFPC with the current rated staffing issues.

I thought the 365 list was exactly this - based solely on short-tour return date, which starts with the date you entered the service until you get a short tour. And it moves forward one day for every day you spend deployed. Is that not how 365s are decided?

Yes, but it's a little different when it's senior leaders who fly 1-2 times a month with a seeing-eye IP and a junior guy that has spent 6 years getting CMR in one aircraft and now has to start from scratch.

This thread is filling me with hope. My STRD is 2014.

I did 3 6-month deployments on that schedule, and it really wasn't too bad. But the 179s I'm talking about are the random ones where you're deployed away from your unit, in a non-flying job, for 6 months. I wouldn't want to deploy for a whole year every three years, that's for damned sure. At least with the 6-month deployments, I either got to enjoy summer vacation with the kid or I was home for Christmas. A 365 pretty much ensures you miss both. I think a lot fewer people would bail due to the prospect of a 6 month deployment late in the career. Plenty already have bailed over the prospect of a 365.

True, but I feel like a 6-month is a lot easier on my family than a 365.

I also have two short tours and 8 years to go. We'll see if my luck holds out. At least my return date is in this decade, so that should help.

He can come down to Dyess. I'll show him around a bomber squadron, you show him around the AMC squadron. We can talk to the dozens of pilots who have active airline applications and are just counting the days until they can separate. I can also show him that WSOs are a more scarce commodity than pilots in both the ops squadron and the FTU.

"Much more money offered this year"...you mean the $35K vs $25K? After there were discussions of $60K? Because that's not "much more money" in the face of what the airlines are paying. And Delta won't send you to Afghanistan for a year to not fly planes.

I don't know about AFPC not non-voling people. I've seen several get 365 notifications, while the WG/CC and OG/CC were in the dark about it. Hell, just watched someone draw a 6-month to Iraq that bypassed the entire chain...went from AFGSC directly to the person being tasked.

You need your best to be target practice for the Taliban? That's going to solve your pilot retention problem. I predict you'll lose at least 5 people from just your wing when you non-vol them for this 4-year program. As for rewarding them on the backside...how? It's a four-year program. If we buy the premise that you're currently a commander, then you'll be long gone by the time these guys are back to their communities. It'll be some other staffer who has never heard of these guys making the decisions, and as we've seen in this thread, non-traditional career paths are not a good way to achieve traditional success.

Those Afghan generals are very particular about how the goat is prepared.

Agreed. Like I've said before, we've got 2 O-6 selects who are retiring well before their promotion dates, both 11B, both great leaders and IPs. And in the other shortage we often neglect, we have a MX officer who was selected for O-6 who has also opted to retire instead.

I'm only asking that, if the entire goal of the program was transitioning people from the military to the civilian sector through college, we've pretty much fulfilled that goal, no?

So, now that everyone has to get a degree to progress, and all the officers need a Master's, how does the GI Bill assist the transition back into society? Should we have cut the GI Bill for people with marketable skills, like pilots?