Disco_Nav963

Along the lines of what BeerMan was saying, hours counts can be misleading when it comes to ABMs since they can do hard time in CRCs and air defense. In her case, she didn't make it to a flying assignment until year 10 of her career. That lasted for two years and not counting episodic flying at the Weapons School (which for ABMs I believe only happens during ME/WSINT) she didn't have another one until she was an OG/CC. Yet she was absolutely in the ops mainstream of her career field for that first decade... Unlike (to make a negative comparison) Gen Klotz, the first AFGSC/CC, who bounced around different fellowships, advanced degree programs, and exec gigs before he made it to a missile squadron.

Two.

Robinson is/has always been an ABM and has never been Space/Cyber. Most of this discussion is mental masturbation.

I'll let others chime in, but trust me, CRM and rapid accumulation of flight hours are both "things" in the bomber community. I'm a Reserve bomber WSO; feel free to PM me if you want to know about the units at Barksdale. (FYSA: You've got 2 AFRC B-52 squadrons at KBAD, 1 AFRC B-1 squadron at KDYS, an ANG B-2 unit at Whiteman, and rumor has it they may start an AFRC B-1 unit at Ellsworth in the next few years...)

561 JTS?

Say I leave active duty to join AFRC under PALACE FRONT. My HOR & SLR are currently Texas, and I move to Louisiana (from North Dakota) using my JTR relocation entitlement for separating from active duty. While on terminal I close on a house in Louisiana, and then join AFRC the day after my DOS. A few weeks later I go on long term MPA orders. (1) Is my SLR required to change to Louisiana by virtue of the fact I moved there during a break in AD service? (2) Does my HOR change from TX by virtue of the fact that I re-entered AD on MPA orders from a residence in LA? (3) In short, do I gain a LA state income tax liability, either all the time or only for periods when not on orders?

AFGSC is trying to develop the initial leadership cadre for the B-21 by cross-pollinating bomber dudes. What the MAF does would be like taking a dude out of ICBMs, sending him to the B-1 for 4-6 years, and then putting him in command of a B-52 squadron. There are many things wrong with AFGSC... This isn't one of them. (Also, people bitched for years about how there were no career broadening options for bomber dudes besides ALFA tours if you didn't want to go to WIC and didn't want to or couldn't go to TPS. Now there's Vista. Count our blessings.)

Reference the linked thread below. Going forward, please use the search feature to look for existing threads that cover your topic before creating a new one. It's one of the business rules that keeps this forum useful by ensuring good information is consolidated instead of getting lost in a thousand separate threads. To your questions, I'm not an ABM but I used to read maps to people that drove them around (i.e. AWACS nav) before I switched airframes... Stressful yes, but so are all rated jobs. Becoming a good ABM is probably more stressful than some rated jobs because it requires you to learn the technical details of your own platform (AWACS/JSTARS/CRC), the art and science of controlling (e.g. prioritizing comm based on what's happening, the comm plan for your fight, whether datalinks are working, etc), and the TTPs of our CAF fighters (how you do business changes significantly based on the fighters you're controlling, their sensors, their datalinks, and the kinematics of their missiles... and ditto for the bad guys' characteristics). If you take the slot, embrace that stress, take it as a challenge to master the knowledge/skills, and be proud you get paid to do something most people in the Air Force don't have the mental capacity for. Not a lot of civilian careers utilizing their training/skillset? Not to the same degree as pilots... You're not going to go be an ABM for Delta... But lots of former ABMs go into industry jobs (think program and project management or technical writing for Boeing and other contractors that support weapon systems with ABMs), contract instruction (e.g. those that support academic/sim training at Tyndall, Tinker, as well as companies that teach CRM), civil service (AF/DoD civilian), and management jobs in the corporate world that utilize the leadership/management skills all AF officers should theoretically be learning/using. Not to mention, within the Air Force a lot of ABMs wind up working in air defense roles, as Air Liaison Officers (ALOs), and as datalink managers, all of which open other doors. ABMs get deployed a lot? It was true in my day, probably more true now. Everybody in the Air Force deploys a lot. In the rated world, those that don't "deploy" a lot are probably either on the road more than those that do (e.g. AMC bubbas) or wish they could deploy (e.g. RPA drivers). Big picture: Don't say "No" to any rated job. If you want to be a pilot, try to work your way onto the alternate list for pilot/RPA/CSO. Take the best thing you can get out of your commissioning source. Then excel at your assigned job. Then as soon as you are eligible (2 years into your career field), apply for the active duty UFT board (I know several ABMs that became pilots). But I would imagine most people on this forum would agree, any rated job is better than every non-rated job.

Here's a "Leadership at the Deid" worthy story. The SecAF and CSAF were here a few weeks ago, and at one point during their dog and pony show, they asked the rent-a-crowd "Are you getting everything you need here, with the embargo and everything?" And someone from either HNCC, Protocol, or Services (can't remember) straight up lied and said "We're good, we even have fresh milk." My buddy that works in the wing front office just about shit a brick. (Same friend was of course dispatched into town prior to the visit to pick up Diet Cokes for the VIPs since FSS is out of them and Diet Pepsi just ain't the same.)

I can bring you 16 CBUs and 8 JDAM to boot... Got to use those CBU-103s and 104s while they're still street legal.

Looks like 15 volunteers for the 18X pipeline to me.

IIRC it was 24 12Bs overall... Take out two that belong to AFMC, and adjust for the fact that the B-52 community has 133% as many squadrons as B-1s and 150% as many 12Bs per crew, I could easily see there only being 4 bonus-eligible B-1 WSOs.

Not trying to take this off on a whole other tangent, but anyone else feel like this bureaucratic construct we're operating (in both OIR and OFS, albeit under a much tighter leash in OFS) under was a giant counterdoctrinal mindfuck by the land component to take over not only CAS, but interdiction as well? e.g. Back when I was a hardened nuclear warrior who only did "CAS" in imaginationland, I'd hear stuff like "They have CAS on a tight leash out there because can't have CIVCAS and 'no one target will win this war' and dangers of relying on indigenous forces for targeting" etc. And then I get out here and what I see is: (1) deliberate targets developed well outside the 72 hour ATO cycle tasked by the land component via 9-Line as "CAS" with little/no visibility by the CAOC, (2) clearly offensive targets (i.e. interdiction masquerading as CAS) assigned under defensive ROE in order to circumvent CAF TTPs for avoiding CIVCAS, (3) JTACs who want me to ignore what my sensor is telling me and be a BOC machine because some Army 1-star standing over their shoulder staring at an FMV feed (pushed by a contractor whose idea of a far scan is to go WFOV) must have more SA than I do, and (4) occasionally actual CAS. Oh yeah, (5) Laser JDAMs and SDBs for terrain denial. Watching what the Army mentality has done to both our strikers and ISR makes me both more convinced than ever about the foundational need for airpower to be controlled by airmen... and also more SMH than ever at our so-called leaders that over a decade later still haven't learned how to say "No" to terrible ideas from the land component.

Also I'm not personally aware of any B-52 O-6s without combat experience... That would be the exception to the norm for the demographic. Young O-5s that came into the community after 2006, sure. But the few times I've gotten to have indigenous BUFF O-6 leadership (as opposed to the parade of B-2 pilots) it's been dudes that flew Kosovo and OEF and OIF.

Why in the name of all that is holy did they accept Article 15s? The reprimand is probably coming regardless of the outcome given lower standard of proof, why not go to court for your reputation?

Can someone fill me in on what constitutes an unprofessional relationship in a UCMJ sense? An E-7 & an airman they don't supervise counts? If I had bagged a Major from the Med Group when I was a 1LT because maybe I liked cougars at the time, would that have been illegal? Very confused.

Checks. If a rated officer can lead crew comm or AFE troops in the OSS, he can lead maintainers or finance folks. ... Which reminds me, whatever happened to our old inside source, Finance_Guy?

Coincidentally I just saw a PA story about the interesting place one guy on the unsponsored track wound up...

Doesn't this fall under JTR para. 5066, relief from active duty? I would imagine that you're entitled to the cost of transportation to your HOR or PLEAD, whichever is further, and doesn't have to be on your orders because it's a JTR entitlement. Can any Reservists speak to this? I'm curious myself as someone that plans to be a Reservist in a year.

Not my thing, can't claim it, someone else here said it, but bears repeating: AFPC is scheduling if schedulers weren't bros that have to look you in the eye when they fuck you.

Screw active duty and all that, but... Combine a blanket continuation policy with the change to promotion board guidance that has recently allowed people to be picked up for O-4 on their 5th and 8th looks, and the "up or out" system has in a certain sense been waived. That's heavy stuff.

TDY/Deployment. Been there, done that, although it took talking to an O-5 in their chain of command to get the A1Cs at JPPSO to realize that a deployment is a TDY (JFTR only uses the word "TDY") and grant the extension. I hear the AEF Center online has a list of 179s that require your particular skills.

12B bonus? About time. Two years ago I might have even taken it.

Is that what actually happened to said individual or what said individual was afraid would happen before they left? I have no first-hand knowledge of what the BUFF FTU has done with the B-1 Vista dudes... I just suspect that given our lack of depth at RN (WSO-E... whatever...) and the vast differences between the B-1 & B-52 defensive suites we would have put an experienced B-1 WSO in the offense compartment. If we didn't do that, whoever made the decision should be taken out to the UTTR and tied down somewhere on Kitty Cat. I could see the argument that you could make someone an instructor EWO faster than an instructor WSO (fewer hours required)... But damn. The B-1 OSO to B-52 WSO conversion is... "Here are the differences in Sniper mech. Forget what having a radar from the late 20th century was like. You know how to plan JASSM? Cool, here's how to plan MALD and shoot CALCM." The DSO to EWO conversion would be going from a fairly automated system where you're primarily doing ambiguity resolution and making sure it's running the right programs and running the EXCM (I assume) to one where you have a Frankenstein monster of multiple receivers and transmitters built different in different decades, some of which are fairly automated, but others of which require you to watch an oscilloscope and tune in Tokyo with your jammers manually. By the way we don't have an ILST mode on our radar and we don't have Link 16 yet, so AI defense is kind of sporty, and you also have to learn this whole "commit criteria" thought process for SAMs that doesn't exist in the B-1 (or so the EWO we went to the B-1 via Vista tells me).

You've got me there. Rapid City is a hidden gem.