pawnman

There was no way we could have possibly seen this coming. I know at least 5 people in my year group (05) who have gotten out between the board results and now. Several right after pinning on major. I also knew a guy trying to execute Duck's plan of getting passed over to push up his separation timeline. I don't know if the two are correlated, but he didn't get promoted and his Palace Chase got approved.

I guess we'll have to wait and see if Gen Goldfein does anything to fix the squadrons. Step one would be manning.

I, too, have often wondered about the "I gave him a job as my exec to help him get a school slot" logic. Isn't the WG/CC the one drafting the strats? If you think the guy is deserving, you can give him a better strat than your own exec. If you want to push the guy to school, you can push him to school. You don't have to make him your bitch for a year in order to take care of the dude.

It's going to be fun if they stick to the planned timeline. Ram a guy through the B-course, put him in a squadron, and a year later make him an instructor. For reference, our normal upgrade timeline is a year to AC, and at least another 6 months to flight lead, then instructor. But the plan is to make them an instructor within a year of graduating the B-course in the new jet, but they'll never actually instruct anyone - they'll be leaving for whatever school they're selected for.

And while we're at it, let's stop requireing a W pre-fix to be a wing exec. Is this common in other communities? Over half the wing execs I've known have been patches. I'm sure that it's a great use of all the tactical knowledge they gain at weapon school to correct OPR/EPRs and comb through awards and decorations...

I would love to shed my equipment manager job. It's already taken more of my life than I would care to admit, and we haven't even added or DRMO'd any equipment during my tenure.

Holding my breath for that 12B bonus, since we're now critically manned. Any day now...

It's an Air Force program. Has been for about 5 years now.

That really doesn't do much to increase our through-put at the FTU, but I'll float the idea...

We're having a similar debate with AFGSC A3 about our own production numbers. "We can't give you any additional instructors, jets, simulators, or flight hours...how many additional students can you produce a year?"

Much better to just have a fighter pilot crisis than to train folks who want to be there, and who already have knowledge of how the Air Force works, and who have some kind of airmanship already built. Certainly it's a bridge to far to train someone who has been flying for years...you have to have brand-new LTs with less than a hundred hours or nothing, right?

I know several people that are still flying, but were told that they were not eligible because they had too much active federal service time when their UPT commitment came up, including enlisted time. Somehow, they manage to do the job alongside their brethren who got the bonus because they started UPT right after graduating college. Someone else already brought up the point that enlisted troops have shifting re-enlistment bonuses every year, but somehow folks in the same AFSC do the same job with the same training without too much issue. I'm not sure why anyone thinks people would suddenly stop doing their jobs if the bonus went to $60K instead of $25K. I'm also not sure why you'd think these guys don't have the same training or experience. Sure, the late-to-rate officers went to UPT later than many...but they are also rarely tapped for FAIP, ALO, or UPT instructors. By the time the UPT commitment is up, most of them have as much, if not more, experience in the aircraft as the guys who commissioned and went straight to UPT. Maybe other communities don't take care of these guys, but they were usually priorities to upgrade if they weren't dumbasses so they could meet the promotion boards as instructors. tl;dr - there are plenty of circumstances that make people ineligible for the current pilot bonus. I don't see how changing the numbers will cause vast amounts of people who signed on for the $25K bonus to suddenly find a way to quit.

Not the same aviation commitment? Pretty sure it's 10 years, no matter what you did prior.

If it makes you feel better, the B-1 guys also experienced a continuing pattern of support agency failures for every deployment. Then I got to Dyess and saw what a shit-show deploying really could be.

What's the current incentive to perform if someone trained the same as you is getting $25K more a year for the same signed commitment? There are plenty of folks not eligible for the current bonuses because they were late-to-rate, or prior enlisted, or missed gate months when they were on an ALO or staff tour. I'm not sure I see why the $60K would be that much different.

I'm in the B-1. OPSTEMPO wasn't too oppressive when I was in an ops squadron...6 months deployed, a year at home. I'm still waiting to see what it will be like under Global Strike. There's a lot of options on the table regarding 3 month deployments, deploying one squadron to two geographically separated areas, rainbowing squadrons in various theaters, etc...so honestly, no one actually knows what the OPSTEMPO will look like for the next year or so. At home, the work load is significant, but not crushing. I've been at the schoolhouse for a while, and honestly the biggest adjustment is the constant thrash that the schedule becomes when you're dealing with student lines instead of normal continuation training lines. But still, it's rare to stay much past 1800 if you're not on the night shift, and working weekends is very rare for most of us. The family life is relatively stable. There are only two bases with B-1s, so there isn't much PCSing in the early part of your career (unless you draw the ALO or UPT card). Because the community is so small, you'll quickly find people that you knew at your last assignment when you go to your next one. Almost half the people I'm at the schoolhouse with are people I deployed with from Ellsworth. The B-1 is currently undergoing the largest upgrade since the fleet was introduced. We're replacing all the green-screen CRTs with full-color LCD displays, we're opening a lot of the software to the pilots (who used to have to just trust the WSOs that things were set correctly), we're finally on Link-16, and we got some really nice upgrades to the targeting capabilities. I see the B-1 as being in service for at least the next 20 years or so, depending on how long it will take to get the B-21 online and what capabilities it eventually brings to the table. Community morale is actually pretty high in the B-1 from what I've seen, although like every other platform we are hemorraging our fair share of pilots. Finally, if you go to the B-1, you want to go to Ellsworth. You'll end up back at Dyess eventually, but Ellsworth is a hidden gem tucked away in the Black Hills. There's something new to see or do almost every weekend, and the winters aren't as brutal as people like to pretend.

The background check should determine that you are "eligible". Once you are eligible, then you have to have a need to know to gain access to whatever classified you're working with. It shouldn't be "inactive"...you just aren't currently "read in" to whatever program you need.

Requal in your previous platform would make them more useful than "Now that you've seen a B-1/B-52/B-2, go to school and staff for four years". Instructor requal will be a huge challenge if for these guys.

In that case, the empire had no CAS at all. The TIEs were all involved in trying to stop the transports.

Hoth wasn't high-threat, the rebels were the ones with all the surface-to-air (space?) weapons in that battle. And most of the snow-speeder portion of that battle would fall into the interdiction category...no friendly coordination, no 9-lines, the walkers far enough from rebel lines that the speeder pilots didn't have to de-conflict.

"Based on the size of the property"...so not even based on mortgage statements or rental agreements, but just an arbitrary price based on the DoD's assessment?

And yet we have people who can't get Lasik because the boss won't approve the 6 month DNIF.

Sure. But I just meant firing them, not killing them.

So why do the Viper students not live on base? Why does the JTR win when it comes to billeting but PCS vs TDY rules lose even though these guys are clearly there for more than 179 days?