afnav

One of my best friends in ROTC received a pilot slot and retained it through the dark years of 90-91. She had a bad physio experience at LATR, and had serious misgivings about flying. Her father was a highly-decorated THUD driver, which I'm sure encouraged her to try to go through with it. She decided in the last semester to give the slot back, and they sent her to be a human factors engineer. The AF didn't hold it against her at all. She made the best call for everyone. For the sake of those who tried to get a flying slot, and those of us who by some miracle fell into one and succeeded, please don't waste an opportunity for someone else to earn their wings.

That reg has been superseded. It is not the latest guidance. We had two 365 Lt Cols assigned to tents for two weeks in July.

I can tell you that it has happened since 1990 when I was an NCO. Back then, you did what the officer told you to do, and only questioned the altitude you were required to reach when you jumped. All that is gone now. I'd say some of it started when the COS-who-cannot-be-named was put in charge. When the top officer is a buffoon, the enlisted ranks will automatically assume that all officers are idiots. It has become progressively worse (see comments above) over the years to the point the SNCOs have taken over the service. Are they the backbone? Absolutely. Are they in charge? At their level, yes. The last CMSAF thought he was the COS, too. He was not popular with the rank-and-file NCOs, either, but the AF promoted his clones over the guys that didn't get the 'big head'. If the officers are too weak to make the big, tough decisions, the SNCOs will take it from them. The perceived separation between the two is already slipping, as a lot of them have advanced degrees now. If the officer screws up or doesn't make a decision, it paves the way for the end of the officer corps as we knew it. A case in point at the Deid came up a few months ago. 365s and PCS guys are required to vacate their rooms when their replacements arrived, instead of putting the new guys in tents or rooming with someone in CC. It didn't matter if the old guy had to sit in a tent for a month waiting for a ride home. The policy was a Word document that had never been signed (or probably seen) by an officer. It was just 'done'. If NCOs are creating policy that has been carried out, but has never been seen by an officer, than the leadership has surrendered its authority to the lower ranks. I have a feeling that this is how a lot of the shitbaggery at places like the Deid got started.

I would like permission to frame that.

Actually, in the leper colony (C7), I'd say that 60-70% of the place is made up of warrants and SNCOs. They have such a sense of entitlement that they took over one of the dayrooms and put a cipher lock on it to keep out the O riffraff. I know what you mean about the dark areas in CC. The Friday night I showed up and couldn't sleep, I took a walk around in my ABUs. There were batches of NCOs in packs waiting to hammer people for something. I was walking between buildings in the dark and they would converge on me, thinking I was doing something wrong. They would scatter like roaches when they saw my oakleaves. ######ing cowards. I'm at a complete loss to fathom what they are trying to get out of this crap. Just because the army is stupid enough to require saluting in gym shorts does not mean we must follow suit. If they want to fix something at deployed locations, figure out why people keep killing themselves on deployments or when they get back from deployments.

This is why I now walk through the middle of the ######ing desert at the Deid to avoid everyone. Why not? They already treat combat zones as if we are at ROTC field training, so we might as well look like it, too.

Not an expert on the subject, but I've heard bad things about the MC-12 downrange, especially about capes shortfalls. I'd be wary of an MWS that may have a short lifespan.

PT tests in a combat zone. IEDs go off within shouting distance of the base. They get rocket attacks on a regular basis. I surrender, guys. The AF has gone off the deep end for good. Good luck to the rest of you sticking around.

That was the term one of our Brits used for the 'let everyone in the world know our plan except the air component' philosophy that pervades Kabul. We had to read about the new strategy off the New York Times. They don't coordinate shit with us. Another thing is he is actively pissing off every Coalition partner. We heard about a fistfight between some dumbass grunt picking a fight with a German in the chow hall at HQ after the Kunduz strike. He jumps on camera blaming the Germans before the investigation had even begun. The insulting tone he takes with ISAF is not helpful. Someone needs to realize he's not a one-man show.

I'll be the first to say that the Deid is fairly relaxed for a remote - if it was a remote for everyone. There are only a handful of PCS billets here. Significance? 15 days at home vs. 30. Big deal? Go overseas for a year and get back with me. As far as the Deid being around for awhile, see the history of PSAB. They thought that place was going to be around a long time, too. For the lag time to train personnel to do their jobs at the Deid, there is a solution. Send the right people with the right skill sets. They sent us a two-striper to fill a senior NCO billet. Needless to say, he sucked, and was sent off to watch TCNs. I got to do all of his admin taskings, in addition to my job. This is not an isolated problem here. It is very common. Again, the BPC isn't bad, especially compared to the wonderful, IDF-magnet tent city that McCrystalization is building for everyone at KIA. My issue with the Deid is the drive to make it suck as much as possible. See the other two Deid threads for details. It isn't the minor ass pain the rules inflict. It's because they really don't need to make it suck. They want to make it suck. Back to volunteering to return, if you really need the job, go for it. It does have an indirect effect on those of us still in, and it is rarely positive. After you sign the paper, don't be surprised if they break their word and send you to a shithole.

If anyone is enough of a fool to volunteer for this program, I have a chair waiting for you at the Deid. You're an idiot if you think they are going to let you fly when they have a crap-ton of 365s to fill in shitty locations. The powers-that-be want to convert the vast majority of billets at certain units from AEF rotational billets to 365s and PCS positions for 'continuity'. What they are too stupid to realize is that for every 365 billet that is filled, three or four guys get out or retire. They are perpetuating the manning problem in their drive to turn places like the Deid into CONUS-like bases. The senior NCOs are even spitting out insanity about making it an accompanied location in a few years. I would be inclined to say they are lying, but every dumbshit idea they have come up with has proven to be true (tucking in PT shirts, saluting in PTs, kicking out 365-ers to tents for weeks when their replacements show up, etc.). If you're qualified to be eligible for this program, you can get a good job on the outside.

What I think is worse in this discussion is that an Air Force base was named after a genuine hero, and then the name was changed after the base was transferred to the Navy. Carswell AFB in my home town was named after Maj Horace Carswell, a Fort Worth native and TCU grad, who received the Medal of Honor for actions in the South China Sea in 1944. When the base was BRAC'd and closed in 1994, it was renamed Joint Reserve Base Fort Worth, yet it retained the term 'Carswell Field' in small letters. They exhumed Maj Carswell's remains, which had been on the base for years, and buried him in a cemetery in town. There are Military Sealift Command ships named for Air Force Medal of Honor recipients, so why did they have to drop Carswell from the name?

I don't want to bring the thread down any further, but saluting in PT gear is making a comeback. On the other hand, I saw a guy last night wearing an orange traffic vest with flashing red LEDs. It rocked.

I heard some CC-ites complaining about people getting to live in BPC. Stay here for a year, ######ers, and you can live in BPC. BTW, the Ramadan mandatory fasting program turned out to be smoke and mirrors. It was probably meant for local eyes and not non-Muslims.

They called the CAOC a weapon system so that FRED wouldn't have the worst MC rate anymore. Thin client sucks balls.

Running to my plane, pulling missile pins, and waiting for the word to start the carts.

Under the previous regime of 'make no mistake', you had to be an O5 or E9 to have alcohol in your rooms in the BPC (365 only). The new guy has expanded it to E7 and above (basically all residents). It was ######ing hilarious that some fast-burner O5s were trusted to have alcohol in their rooms when they were four or five years younger than me as an O4.

Back on topic from the epic threadjack, The new WG/CC is an enigma. He releases the Ramadan fiasco memo, and then opens up alcohol-in-rooms policy to everyone over E-7 in BPC. Of course, just about anyone is an improvement over "...make no mistake...".

I was in a meeting last night when an Army major brought this memo up. He was ridiculed by the Air Force JAG sitting in the room for bringing up "trivial information". Know your enemy...

Not being a CC guy, I can only assume that people are going in the hole on laundry, and running out of clothes. All they have left are sweatpants while they wait for their shorts to get back from the cleaners. I think I'd rather just wear my uniform, but that's just me. It would help if they put out the fallen warrior notices more than five minutes in advance and not keep changing the times. Granted, it depends on an airplane arrival time. For some of us, it takes getting on two different bus lines to get to the flightline.

Seriously, talk to your assignment team. They have a list of jobs that they are tasked to assign. If NORAD is not on the list for your plane, they might be able to make a drug deal with another team.

Here's what we have at the Deid: Desert 5 Desert Chiefs Desert Diamonds Top IV CGOC Top 3 Top 2 3/4 Top Dick Etc. I'm sure all the above are dilligently working on new reflective belt and four-to-a-room billeting policies as we speak.

I know that in the bomber community, when SAC stood down, ACC took great pride in throwing as much of their regulations and procedures in the shredder as possible. They tried to screw up missiles, too, but they escaped before they could be permanently crippled. ACC doesn't understand nukes, and will never understand nukes. Why? Because they don't want to understand it. There are too many people in influential positions that don't understand the mission, the hardware, the people, and the procedures. True, the mission has changed. Wouldn't it be easier to let the people that are the experts change it to conform to current policy instead of giving it to amateurs? The Schlesinger Report got it right.

For the guys that have pulled crew, this is a throwback to the SAC days. Missileers killed their own. Of course, it was easy in the pre-space days when 75% of the career field left or got out after their initial crew tour. It was a rare thing to finish your crew tour without paperwork. This whole thing reeks of Kehler. He loves to kill people. People fall asleep on alert, just like they fall asleep in the cockpit. I have woken up in the bunk, peered out, and seen my partner with their eyes closed. Was it a big deal? Probably not, since when the phone rang, alarm 1 went off, or a weapon system or SACDIN print popped out, they took care of it. That was the ILCS days, and I've never been in a REACT capsule, so I have no idea of the difference in capsule sounds or noise. Back then, as long as you were a light sleeper (which fit everyone I knew back then) everything would be okay. Whoever scheduled a crew in the field for five days should be shot. If manning is that bad, leadership should have stepped up. I don't know all of the details, but on the surface, it sounds pretty ######ed up.