Sprkt69

I totally agree. Just like the medical officers, make rated officers a different promotion board than the rest of the LAF. That may see minor improvements for aircrew, but it's still like putting a bandaid over severed legs.

There are plenty of pretend pilots that love to do that stuff too.

I have not seen any CC's that were looking to be somebody care if they drove the squadron into the ground, as long as they look good to their rater.

Finally got around to listening to Dr Farley. Anyone else have the takeaway that he is a condescending douche? I mean, he is the type of PhD that would be recruited for McNamara's Whiz Kids. Just, astonishingly condescending with no real check from reality.

Read that email, very saddening. Just wanted us to produce more students at a lower quality to have the CAF upgrade them to our standard. Other brilliant ideas went along the lines of doing away with IFF and sending UPT grads directly to FTU. I believe the golf clap would be appropriate about now...

Or just buy the same house and make your mortgage the max BAH for your area. Refinance when you PCS but charge max BAH for the next renter's rank or sell as required.

How do you keep a bunch of aircrew? Send them to the Guard/Reserves

That should be mandatory reading for upper management, not that they would listen much

Especially in an EA environment with weather

He probably had his Sq/CC, OG, Wing/CC, Command Chief and Jag review his tapes and reassign him to a desk job accordingly. But they probably noticed that he had all of his career containers checked off, so they promoted him.

So hanging out in the Dustbowl?

This times 100

So either way they are still trying to stick it to the service member...sounds about right.

We can take it easy knowing that he is an Air War College grad with real air control operations experience sometime in the late 90s. Clearly he is the best of the best.

So much win with this comment

The greatest part are all the desktop warriors coming (sts) out of the woodworks saying those a-hole fighter pilots will no longer be needed because some ABM guy got out sim'd by the sim.

It's not always about kinetics. Actually having intimate familiarity with your AO and knowing the people who operate there actually counts for something. Despite what the PowerPoint warriors claim to be true on the AF side of the Puzzle Palace, ISR is the vast majority of the mission sets for COIN, not CAS. I can't even begin to fathom the number of times I was ordered to log CAS for all of my air requests, even when it was not warranted. Or breaking up a single air request so that we could have a greater number of requests for the same amount of coverage to make sure, and I wish I were kidding, the PowerPoint slides were greened up. The best way for the AF to advocate its existence with the Army during COIN operations is the LAAR and pushing the crews forward to operate with a specific Army unit. But this kind of operations mean something Big Blue would completely abhor. That being decentralized planning and execution. You would actually have to empower a pilot to go forth and conquer within the set bounds. Crazy talk I know, especially in this day and age of micromanagement. Sure, downed aircrews become a big deal, no one will argue that. There are definitely some inherent risk associated with aviation. So losing an aircraft is going to happen regardless. However, if flown properly, the risks will not be as high as the Army rotorywing assets. So are you going to tell them their risks are too high, and that they should go ahead and park their assets? The AF is doing a great job breaking its own aircraft, burning out its people and spending way too much overall. Why else would there be a push for the transition to the laser rocket? Because it is a lot more cost effective than a GBU-54 dropped by a Strike Eagle with a lot less collateral damage. Hell, just look at the success and cost of the recent OV-10 deployment the Afghanistan. Now there is a time and place for a real kick down the door fighter armed with multiple 500/2000#s of hate, like when thing get bad. Therefore the LAAR would be your armed FAC-A, working in concert with JTACs, and be a local pilot with some real knowledge of what is going on/where people are. Now you have someone that can advocate the service while gaining intimate knowledge of a specific AO to aid the local unit in kinetic and mainly non kinetic operations. Fly-Fight-Win or some such thing. This is COIN, so let's fight it that way.

Your best bet is to make a list of all the Reserve/ANG fighter units out there and start contacting them. See what manning requirements they have and figure out how you can help them. Also, find out when they are having a drill weekend and plan to go visit. There is a lot more to it, but this will get you started.

Those who love to power chug the blue koolaid will often comment that in an austere fiscal environment, the services will go vector toward their core competencies. This does not not include COIN for the AF as it reeks of Army operations. One, and just one B-1 deployment could have purchased suitable off the shelf COIN aircraft for the inventory. I have heard the amazing questions from the mental juggernauts in the O-8+ ranks asking who would want to fly such machines with such high risk. Or even taking the stance that the AF should not be involved in Afghanistan or Iraq as that is not our mission. Why must we relearn past lessons learned, especially when those in power were raised by the guys who last fought a COIN with specialized aircraft?

Yes, and it makes those renting their places jack up their cost according to your rank.

Second hand information confirms leadership asking everyone to recat. The guy I asked refused to recat, then punched out for the Guard to fly fighters again.

Didn't you hear? The RPA job is intrinsically rewarding work! And according to a spreadsheet, the crews have an amazing QoL because they don't deploy as much.

Don't fool yourself, those running the AF are doing a far better job hurting the future of the AF than anyone could from this forum. Maybe you should start with helping correct the course in which this sinking ship has been traveling. There is a reason for the manning/asset problems for which we are currently engaged with, and it starts with the decision making from upper management. The AF could have lead turned this issue a decade ago. The data was there, you and the rest of upper management just decided to ignore it all.

So they would rather QOL suffer instead of hiring people to do the qweep, sounds about right

Your best bet is to go Guard or Reserve if what you want to do is fly without many of the hassles of AD. It's what I would have done if I had the chance to do it all over again in today's current AF environment. As the other guys have said, there are some redeeming values of being an AF pilot, but be ready for "Needs of the Air Force" and "It's all about timing"