Kikuchiyo

I took the survey. I agree that it felt like there were a lot of questions that had little to nothing to do with attitudes toward fully autonomous commercial operations. I didn't like the Values portion and feel that you may not get any useful data from it. Since it's right at the beginning you may end up with people not completing the whole survey if they find the Values questions too annoying. You might have considered bouncing the survey off a couple of pilots beforehand to validate that you're getting answers to the questions that you're truly addressing in your project. Contrary to the tone of the responses you've received here, not all pilots are dicks. I'm willing to forgive your snarky comment and ignore the original insulting ("revolting") one in the interest of civility and academic pursuit. Good luck with your project.

That would explain why it was my understanding that it was "only" an ARC deal. And the reason there's no reference to it in the AD personnel regs. Thanks for the enlightenment.

"Sanctuary" is a Reserve Component (ARC = AFRC + ANG) thing. The Reserve Component and having a Reserve Commision are NOT one and the same. If an AFI refers to officers in the Reserve Compnent, it means the ARC, and does NOT mean AD officers holding a reserve commision. (edited per Tulsa's correction below) Sanctuary is covered in AFI 36-2131, ADMINISTRATION OF SANCTUARY IN THE AIR RESERVE COMPONENTS. Sanctuary does not apply to AD officers with the excepmtion of those ARC officers recalled to AD under certain specific programs like the Rated Officer Recall of 2009, among others You'd know if you were special enough to have it apply to you. The jist of sanctuary is to protect ARC officers from getting very close to earning a full 20 year retirement and then having their orders terminated in order to prevent them from earning the AD retirement. Remember, an ARC retirement means they do not collect a retirement check till they turn 60(?), but an AD retirement means they collect a check the very next month after retiring. Basically, if an ARC officer is given orders that will take him to a point where he will have earned over 18 years towards an AD retirement, he must be allowed to stay on AD oders until reaching 20. An example from the Rated Recall of 2009: Reservist Major X had just over 16 years towards an AD retirement (from previous AD service plus activations & deployments). He takes 2-year recall orders. Once he hits 18 years towards his AD retirement, the AF cannot terminate his orders, even thouugh they were cut to expire in two years, and must cut him extension orders under the Sanctuary rules out to 20 years. And I think (more research required), that Recut may have it backwards. I'm pretty sure that all officers are given Reserve commisions now, with Regular commisions coming at promotion to Major. I thought it was in the mid- or late-90's that they switched it to all Reserve commisions. I could be wrong about this part, though. //edited to eliminate my error, as pointed out and with reference provided by Tulsa below.

I love this MX mentality. A Mx guy said nearly these exact words to me once, so I asked him if he was in the US Air Force. He looked at me very much confused. I then reminded him that the MEL was in an AFI. If AFI's don't apply to MX, maybe they're not in the Air Force. It's his MEL, too, as much as it is "ours.". He made me show him the AFI and paragraph, then he went away. We canceled, and later I heard it was a MX cancel. And yet, the us-verus-them mentality persists

I've lived in N Chuck, Mt P, and Wet Ashley. Depends on what you want / need in a place. If you have to have the McMansion on 3/4 acre, then Summerville or Mt P. But be prepared for a 1-hour plus commute to the base sometimes depending on traffic. And in Summerville, you're just that much farther from the water and downtown. I've known guys that lived up there that never went downtown or to the beaches in their entire tour. Why be in CHS otherwise? I currently live in West Ashley literally 5 minutes to the Battery and downtown, and even in traffic never more than 20 minutes to the base. My realtor was awesome, and is herself an AF vet and her husband is a retired C-17 pilot now flying for an airline. PM for her name / email.

What is your source for this? At the most recent rated manning conference in DC, AF/A1PP, who is in charge of setting personnel policy, stated that non-continuation would not be used as a force shaping tool in coming boards. The AF is close enough to meeting it's end-strength goals that they only need to use volunteer and incentive programs instead.

Seriously though, talk to your assignments officer. One thing I see during the pilot assignment process is cool billets that end up being hard to fill. For instance NATO has short tours in Italy. Since most guys don't volunteer for a short tour, these billets end up getting filled by non-vols. And really, it's simply cause folks don't know about them. Talk to your AFPC rep and see what's out there.

Think of the MC-12 assignment as similar to an C-21 assignment. It's not a permanent career. If you do it straight out of UPT, you'll likely end up in the Recce community for good, but in a normal Recce MWS (e.g. RC-135, AWACS, J-Stars). Of course, that could change in the intervening 3 years until your next assignment.

Kayla, "You" means "ya'll." If he's deployed, and it's something you can do, go ahead and do it. Enrolling him in EFMP is something that shold be done ASAP regardless of who does it. He's probably on the vulnerable list for a 365 due to time in service and time since last short tour (if any). But once he returns from a regular deployment, he's protected for 1 yr from an Indeterminate TDY (iTDY) aka a 365. AFI 36-2110 Chapter 5. Assignment notifications for the Summer cycle will come out around March for RNTLDs between June and Sep.

Let me specifically address coming to Germany. Toro is right that there's a lot of capacity here at Ramstein. However, I manage all rated officer assignments here. We lose nearly 25% of assignments of rated guys to staff here at Ramstein due to the local facilities being unable or unwilling to handle their EFMP situations. The process is that the assigned base EFMP office determines if they can handle your case. If they can't, they have to check with the other local facilities - in our case Landstuhl (LRMC) Unfortunatey, Ramstein has only a clinic with no specialists, so their answer to the first question is almost always no. Then they ask LRMC, whose answer is usually that they're a little busy treating wounded coming out of downrange, and they don't have capacity for more AF dependents. The only realistic way to get the ruling changed is if your doctor changes the diagnosis or required treatment. Then you start the whole process over again. Lakenheath/Mildenhall, on the other hand, have a huge AF (vice Army) hospital, and they're not a transit point for the wounded. Their EFMP office is more likely to be able to handle special cases.

Line flying jobs are normally not loaded into the PRD. Commanders load vacancies for billets they want filled, but the line units work directly with AFPC to fill line billets. The PRD is there to allow you to tailor your ADP and express interest to your CC and AFPC AO. So the jobs you're seeing are the cats-and-dogs, odd jobs, and staff jobs that are outside of line unit manning. You can search by AFSC, but there's a lot of detail in the text, like what AFSCs are suitable substitutes, and the mandatory (M) and desired (D) quals. You can't search the text. The system is weak, but I don't think there's any money to improve it.

It means to stop using the AEF system and start assigning people full time like you would for a "normal" weapon system. ACC has been given a deadline of Q1 FY13 to transition to a "normal" manning structure for the MC-12. Won't happen by then, but they're on notice from CSAF and the other MAJCOMs that it's time to man their own airframe rather than have everyone else man their airframe for them. They've been using OCO funds to provide the manning, rather than POMing and spending normal manpower $ like any other MWS does. ACC only ever POM'ed for enough permanent party billets to provide a 2.5 crew ratio (plus the FTU.) But they keep saying they need a 5.0 deployed crew ratio, and they had planned to continue to use the AEF manning to make up the difference. The Rated Summit said they have to either fund those extra billets, get the ARC to provide them through an associate-type arrangement, or change their deployed crew ratio down to whatever they're willing or able to fund. Or some other possibility, but stop using AEF manning. It does not (necessarily) mean that just cause you deployed in the MC-12 once, are scheduled to, or have volunteered to do so, that you'll get tagged to non-vol PCS to Beale. There are more guys that have flown the MC-12 than there will be billets at Beale. Although, it might open up the possibility of getting hired into an ARC associate unit if they choose to go that route.

Correction to my previous post. ACC has stated that they will NOT take B-coursers straight to the Aggressors. They will instead start manning some of the billets with guys who went from the B-course straight to Korea. This reduces the number of billets at the Aggressor Sq's that require a fully experienced pilot, opening up some iron to finish absorbing the Korea guys. It's a compromise.

For those wondering about how this will affect them or the timelines to effect these changes. This will not affect the Summer VML. It will not be in place to affect anyone coming thru UPT right now. To put it in perspective, we spent an entire telecom 2 weeks ago discussing what office at HAF or which MAJCOM would be the OPR versus OCR on only about half these items. Staffing these to execution is going to take a while. Then getting POM funding, moving the iron, setting up units, changing manpower documents, etc. These aren't quick fixes. Even the A-10 crew ratios will take a year to execute, cause the affected commands need to find the manpower dollars and rated billets to put at the A-10 units. And only after that's happened can AFPC send people. The thing that could execute most quickly of all them (the speediest turtle is still a turtle) is the UPT grads-to-aggressor initiative. But, even that will require guys to leave those units, and those units to notify AFPC that they're ready to accept UPT grads. So, not the next several drops, anyway.

Danny Noonin - To address your concerns over red air flying as experiencing, perhaps I misspoke to say that "they can learn to fly and fight there (as wingmen most of the assignment anyway) as well as they can in a regular squadron." You're absolutely right, they won't come out as bomb-dropping, NVG, blue-air 2FL's ready to "fight" in a regular squadron. My phrasing could have been better. Think of it more as akin to how the MAF uses C-21's (this is an analogy - not a perfect parallel). They season guys in C-21s where they get a lot of experience, but in a limited portfolio. They understand certain aspects of airlift, crew management, pax handling, etc, but not everything they'll need to be successful MAF fliers. No, they're not immediately ready to command a large crew in a C-17 with AR across the ocean to a multi-ship airdrop. But they're way ahead of a fresh UPT grad. A C-21 guy then becomes a copilot in a C-17, but upgrades significantly more quickly. (For those MAF guys reading this, I'm not going to go into the differences between direct-to-left seat, first pilots, and copilots. Suffice to say, they're not flying as a C-17 AC on their first trip, and it takes some amount of time before they take their OME.) Danny, the intent is similar. Use the iron that's currently not available to absorb. Take these guys into red-air sq's, get them experienced in some, but not all, aspects of flying fighters, and then send them ops-to-ops to bring them up to speed fully. Hope that helps clarify. Agreed. They know they will need to send Mx and other support folks, too. That part is being worked in parallel.