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God in heaven vertigo, that sounds shitty. Way to take one for the team...whoever that CC is should choke himself. If I'm ever an inspector some day far in the future I'd write someone up for ordering stupid shit like that. However... THIS will be the first thing I try when I get home. I think that would make about the best sex tape ever What do you think, bandoleer style for some extra flair? Around my forehead like the karate kid?

Oh my dear lord...muscle2002, that link was amazing. We all deserve the full text here (with the best lines bolded for your reading pleasure) How's the koolaid tasting these days Chief? Seriously...at a certain rank to they force you to write this kind of crap?

I can say that AFSOC has treated me well so far. Good dudes, herbie is nice, freaking fun and challenging mission, already stamping new countries on my passport less than a year after getting wings. The actual flying is probably not as fun as mudhens (ymmv), but other than that no complaints so far. You'd be lucky with either so just work hard and put both at the top of your wish list. Feel free to update this thread on happenings at P-cola since it's a whole new ballgame. Good luck & PM if you want to ask more specifics.

I shit you not my dad had that exact phone way back in the day. I remember thinking it was so cool...

I'm glad some of my points weren't completely lost. Improvement of good times is the goal. I can see why you would say that. The problem is most likely that I'm not a big drinker or partier, I won't be spending too much time in the sq in the near future, and frankly my give-a-shit level to go out and personally spearhead this is relatively low despite my posts on here seeking ideas on how to improve. If by entitlement you mean I wish these good traditions already existed well the call me guilty. The LTs as a whole have been trying to work on improvements for our bar, getting a popcorn machine, beer light, glass tabletops and more chairs and etc. to make some of these events even physically possible. I guess it's just stay the course and expect modest gains. Over and out because my said give-a-shit level has dropped to 0 for the time being. Thanks to those who provided useful advice.

Had to save this thread from page 2!

Hey man, thanks for the advice. Glad the more experienced dudes are always around to lend a brother a hand. Should have stuck to my gut and STFU on this thread but lesson learned. Enjoy my mom, she's been in the ground for about 5 years so just about right for you (oh snap...or was that just more fighter pilot humor... ) Sounds good...looks like I'm buying.

Exactly...brute force has been tried before and failed. With a Lt. Col. at the helm because he was a former fighter dude and wanted to see some of that tradition relived. I'm looking for "outside the container" ideas here but it may or may not be a pipe dream.

This is part of the problem. Beer light times don't work so well when that's the start of your flight duty day. This is also the problem. Attempting to take the best of the old traditions without looking like a shoe-poser that's singing fighter pilot songs in a non-fighter pilot bar. Reread the part about camaraderie not being the problem. There about 1.5 million hours to hang out with the guys on deployments/TDYs/etc. And good times are had. I'm trying to bring that kind of stuff home, but the problems are logistical (lots of night flying, the bar can't possibly hold even 1/3 of the squadron at a time) and in people's heads (i.e. it's not expected that anyone stay, dudes wanna spend family time, some dudes have literally never met each other after more than 1 year in the sq because of rapid growth and/or opposite deployment cycles, the boss isn't exactly out there leading a roll call to make it mandatory, etc.) Look, telling me to sack up and make it happen is not feasible. Your advice is missing my point and not very helpful; I didn't post here to listen to advice I could have come up with on my own. I'm done with this thread in terms of posting...not an issue worth fighting for.

You're assuming there's such a thing as a roll call in the first place. If there was some kind of official, periodic event where everyone hung out, that's different than just hanging around the bar on Friday because you want to. Mandatory fun is had and I have attended. Plus I'm pretty sure we've got the whole hanging out with the guys things down after the 6-9 deployments/TDYs/exercises everyone's done so it's not an issue of morale or not being one of the boys. My point was that I was unsure how the old-time traditions of the fighter squadron bar would translate to my current squadron considering the way things are now. Wait, I don't remember reading that in the job description. I thought my job as an LT was to listen, learn the ropes, study tactics and systems, take care of the squadron (i.e. trash, moping, stocking the bar, etc.), and hack the mish as hard as possible. That's what my flt/cc briefed anyways. I can honestly and truthfully say it is not my job to start traditions from scratch and it is not my job to encourage people to hang out at the squadron after work and drink. If those things are going to occur, it's gonna be the SQ leadership's job to ...lead... us to that end. I guess what I'm trying to say is that it's easy to call blasphemy on not having RCs or roof stomps or beer lights etc. when you have all those things, everyone in your squadron expects these things, and you accept them as part of AF dogma. When none of those assumptions are true however, it's harder to see how you can integrate the AF traditions without requiring a massive shift in mindset that goes beyond the powers of a lowly LT. I'm not posting here to say I'm against the traditional fighter bar setup, I'm more saying that parts of that tradition are freaking great (passing on wartime knowledge, camaraderie, informal leadership, etc.) and I want to figure out how to bring that to my squadron. At the same time though I'm saying mandatory fines, hazing people, starting fights, expecting people to stay for hours extra after work and etc. will not fly with me and I'm betting won't fly with the rest of the guys who are getting ridden hard by the J.O.B. And about saying "fighter-type traditions;"not trying to stir the pot here, just stating the fact that we are not a fighter/bomber squadron and 99% of the people here, including me, are cool with that. Suggestions welcome.

I guess I have mixed views on the squadron bar as a young guy who didn't have the benefit of witnessing the traditions of old. First off let me say that my squadron has a decent bar (looking to improve as well), the keggerator is always operational, and beers are allowed throughout the squadron pretty much any afternoon (especially Fridays). Hell, my FTU debriefs even came with a few beers so I was pretty impressed with that. On one hand the idea of the bar as a place to hang out with the guys (and the few gals), pass on wisdom, and generally relax is great. I wish more informal mentoring, war-story telling, and etc. went on because I think it would help stem the tide of Big Blue's shoeish influence. One of the reasons we're trying to improve our setup is our current bar doesn't have a lot of table space and it's hard for people to actually hang out there versus in flight rooms, vault, or elsewhere in the squadron. On the other hand, a much as you almost need to make things mandatory these days to get folks to show up, if I'm a grown man with a wife and kids, there is no reason I should have to stay at work longer than necessary for the sake of hanging out. And I'm not going to pay some arbitrary amount for every week missed if I paid my landing fees in full; F that in the a$$. It's a tough call because if you don't have mandatory fun sometimes there's no fun at all, but the whole "do more with less" mentality applies to time as well and after a long day at work sometimes I'm not that interested in anything other than going home. Throw on that my general lack of appreciation for what I see as some of the more fighter-type traditions (bar fights, excessive hazing, etc.) and I don't honestly know what the right solution is. Anyways, just some thoughts. Long live the squadron bar as the best alternative to the flaccid O Club but I guess count me out for some of the "mandatory" stuff because fighting for freedom means in part I'm free to spend time with the fam when the work is through.

It's wasn't quite your question but the outlook for AFSOC navs/ewos/csos/whatever is good as well. Not any plan to get rid of them anytime in the future and we get to employ some pretty sweet weapons and aircraft. Good luck going for WSO but don't lost that excitement if you don't get picked.

Sir, Not meant as a personal attack. There are many support folks that work very hard, no doubt. The deployed organic support and MX personal from my squadron I'm working with right now are some of the best in the AF and they work more hours than I do to make sure we are prepared to take off for any mission at any time. On the other hand, I have for my argument example A: I'm not currently at Balad where this picture was taken, nor do I know the story behind it (i.e. exercises impacting normal hours, etc. etc.) On the other hand, how is it even within the realm of acceptable for a customer service center that all troops rely on to be open for 10.5 out of 168 hours in a week. That's 6.25% of the time. 6.25%?? I'm not a finance guy and I don't how how they run their shop, but if your primary job is to process base customer's financial transactions and help them ensure they get paid correctly (because it's every service member's responsibility to ensure...etc), how can you only be open 6.25% of the time?!? It is easily possible that, I don't know, customers work in their own shops or are flying sorties during each and every single one of those 10.5 hours and then where does that leave them? My thought in bringing up the ops mindset vs. the support mindset was not to set off a flame war or stir the pot of rivalry. There are plenty of support troops who bend over backwards to get the mission done and support the base (not just ops people, but MSG troops supporting MX, Med, other MSG, etc.). In my limited time in the ops world I have yet to see an example of when we failed to get the mission done one way or another, weather, MX status, manning issues be damned. Yes, I can get my finance question answered tomorrow but we can also drop ordnance on that cave tomorrow too. It's just a mindset that IMHO needs to change, and I know there are about 6.9 million pieces of anecdotal evidence running around out there that confirm that this phenomenon of support not actually supporting anyone is not limited to the example I provided. Finally, I don't actually blame the support shops as much as I blame the leaders, who are overwhelmingly bag-wearers. Why they don't get it together enough to man a critical customer support shop so they can stay open more than a few hours as week I don't understand. Why they're not out there, with the troops, experiencing these problems and using the power of their birds and stars to fix things, I don't understand. Last time we had a general officer come through our squadron the place looked immaculate, everyone was working in their shops, planes were taking off, and we were running on all cylinders, and this was 6pm in the evening at home station. Why more generals don't happen to visit these deployed support shops to spark similar reaction, again, I don't understand.

Cannot respond to claims that they are required indooors, but... I think the point here with the sign is that they were turning people away if they did not have a belt if they showed up at night (correct?) If this were a safety issue to the core, you would let those people eat, and make them stay in the safe area until a buddy brings them a spare or provide them one to use on the walk back to wherever they came from. But if you turn them away, you just sent a person away from a well-lit indoor area out walking through the potentially dangerous Deid environment when you knew they didn't have a belt. That is not the correct decision from a strictly safety standpoint. If that person got run over on their way from the chow hall back to their tent to retrieve their belt, how would that look when, with a different policy, they could have stayed, eaten, and had a buddy bring them an extra belt or borrowed a loner one from the chow hall itself? It's these types of what if's that make the safety argument illogical. This is all besides the point that many areas of the Deid between living quarters and the chow hall are well lit (I defer to someone who's been there on this one but this is what people have written in the past), and the fact that we're all adults, in a deployed location, many of whom bear arms and execute missions to kill the enemy but cannot be trusted to walk down the street without being hit by a slow moving vehicle. To me, from a crew dog perspective, the loss of readiness caused by denying tired and hungry troops timely access to food is not worth the CYA of avoiding a car-on-pedestrian incident. These policies reflect the overall loss of mission focus and that's what so many articles on this topic miss...it about the belts but it's not really all about the belts. If mission support starts supporting the base population with as much effort and excellence as operations put into each and every sortie that supports the war, I would wear my belt with pride when the safety situation warrants such action. In the meantime I will do as told begrudgingly.

Great advice...the wifey just discovered these as well and I can confirm that they were cheaper and arrived overseas in a timely manner.

Sir, If the rules made sense and everyone was on board, then they would be much easier to enforce. As an officer, I will enforce the rules as written, but I'm sure not gonna go out of my way to bust someone's balls for a rules that makes no sense (i.e. belts in well-lit areas away from cars). In terms of the rules being easier to enforce when there's a universal, one-size-fits-all-on-base policy, that is frankly a problem for the leadership and not for the troops. If such a policy makes things easier for the leadership but harder for the troops, that's back-asswards. The troops are rising up against this policy because of the epic fail in logic and reason and because it truly detracts from morale; no one will give a crap about free internet or new facilities or any of those other things when they believe their leadership is out to get them over a policy that should be about #25 in importance. Now I've never been to the Deid so I can't argue specifics, but it seems to me, from an outsider's view, that the harder the push is from the top to enforce this policy, the more resentment will build up with Airmen and CGOs. Getting everyone on board with a policy that makes sense is the only way to solve the problem, and for that to happen you either need a very charismatic leader with proven results that can enforce whatever he wants b/c his men respect him (i.e. Patton w/ his uniform policy), or you need a policy that actually makes sense and that can be enforced by any Gen. Joe Blow out there.

Epic win for Carlos Mencia. Great post man.

This is the wrong approach. If "the resistance" takes up the angle of safety (i.e. it's not necessary to wear a belt in order to go about your day without getting hit by a car) we will lose. Belts do make you safer in a dark environment, even if it's the kindergarten, CYA kind of safe. Most of the press has focused on the safety aspect and they're missing the point. We have to get this focused on the leadership and priorities aspect. The problem isn't wearing the belt per se, it's the fact that it's the "One Belt to Rule Them All" and takes priority over feeding troops, giving customs and courtesies, or launching sorties. That is the problem...I don't really care if I have to wear my belt on the flightline, I care that I will get jacked up and prevented from flying if I don't have one.

Anyone have the reg for this? Seems pretty dumb. Also the news article seems to confuse "anywhere on the right arm" and "visible in uniform." If there was a prohibition of tattoos anywhere on the saluting arm there would be a ton of people DQ'd. Losing 15 recruits a week...that seems sensible...

A BJ...plain and simple. Out.

Apparently there have been plenty of volunteers but I don't know any personally.

Go to command day and ask the people that brief you. Anyone who knows anything in detail will not tell you here.

I'm posting from my phone so I don't have the graphic, but /facepalm/. Do some more reading.