FLEA

The ROK actually commissioned a study just a few years ago on East Germany and as a model for reunification and found that the model was incompatible with the situation on the peninsula. I wish I still had the study, it was circulating the staff there while I was at Osan. The economic disparity was something like 5X greater than east to west germany and nK doesn't have the geography or resources East Germany had. There's also the quiet truth that many, maybe a majority of sK's don't want reunification anymore. Those family ties are dieing as people age off and sK has been so successful without nK they are nationally asking themselves what the importance of reunification is anymore. They will certainly live better lifestyles without it. This isn't something they openly talk about but I'd you have a few close friends on the ROK and go out drinking they might open up.

They're non starters in so much as the AF doesn't have the authority to increase bonuses, congress has to do that. Also, reading your post above, the AF cannot remove the two passed over exit option. That is also congress. Up or out is written into law via the DOPMA. Regarding B.), A burnt out dude isn't going to staff. He will stay a line IP until his term ends. All this does is make it so more shiny pennies can go to staff. Either way, it doesn't really matter. Even if you did get that person to staff he isn't going to do crap and unlike a line squadron on staff, no one is actually tracking your accountability. You're just rated on your accomplishments. Staff is a really important position. You have strategic level impacts there. Putting talent there that is just trapped into it until they can fill out a term is just going to brain rot the force. I mean, you can go this route.... but you're just building a talent pool that's going to lose wars due to incompetence. I could totally see the AF not thinking about that though, so whatever I guess.

I don't think any discussion of increasing the initial ADSC is worth merit. At some point its becoming predatory. Do you really want a dude at the 11-13 year point flying planes who is only showing up to work each day because he feels like he is under obligation of the law to not go to jail. At least at 10 years you still feel like you have a few exit options. Honestly, I think the AF needs to rethink pilot ADSC's all together. I bet you raise retention by shortening the ADSC. Shorten it to 6 years, pay the bonus out in 3 year increments based on accepting another PCS and reduce the amount of the bonus so over a full career it pays the same but each year individually pays less. You need to string people a long. Once you lock them in for 10-13 years, if they become jaded and feel like they can't escape, even once, they wont risk being put in that situation again. My career is awesome right now. Having the time of my life. (except for COVID) But I was burned ONE time 5 years ago, and stuck with shitty circumstances. Nothing in the world is going to convince me to risk that happening again.

WTF did the flight doc tell you to suck up any of that? I would have told him to shove it and write me a waste only profile. I mean, good for you for doing it, but how much more damage did you risk doing to your back, especially on situps, because, from what it sounds like, they didn't buy that you had the pain you said you did.

I've actually been preaching this for years. However the "fit to fight" slogan was a misguided marketing campaign that misled thousands of officers to think it was a measure of athleticism to the point that it's nearly dogma at this point. It's not going to go to a sensible direction anytime soon. Anyway the science behind the PT test wasn't cosmic. They can estimate how high your VO2 max is based off age, gender and how far you can run in 12:00 (based off the Cooper study). The extrapolate the 12:00 run to a 1.5 minute run and guess you 12:00 pace. A seperate study correlated VO2max with extended risk heart disease. Since heart disease is the #1 health problem is advanced aged adults, it costs the DoD the most to treat. The PT test is mainly about minimizing tricare and VA benefits which consume an enormous portion of our DoD budget, that would be better spent on weapon systems for national defense. Or so the bob's say.

The problem is you are suggesting a test of athleticism and the program doesn't care about that. It only cares about long term cardiovascular risks. Or so the guy who wrote it says.

It's all probabilities man, but generally, yes it's a risk estimate according to the studies that were used to build the PFA. I'll explain this a bit more but your VO2Max is heavily correlated to your 12:00 pace via the Cooper Study which was a study of 1000 males and 1000 females from the US army on the 1980s. I was attempting to explain the phenomenon of why you have people who don't need to train to do extraordinarily well at the PT test. I do not train. I rarely train. If I do it's only for a max of 4 minutes, which some study I read out there said was sufficient to challenge an adaptation to your VO2MAX. (Running 4 minutes at max pace without stopping) I run the low 10s nearly consistently though and my fitbit estimates my VO2 without hardly any training is in the low 50s which is higher than average.

Dude thats no small feat. I'm impressed! Yeah the reality is, even with a genetically low VO2MAX you still have a genetically increased risk for heart disease. So there isn't a lot of empathy from the AF for people who are born at a disadvantage, however we may feel about that. I guess the good news is, if you are genetically predisposed heart disease, annually working to keep your run time down will ward that off for several years.

How many of those are real twitter accounts?

Probably just poor genetics then. Unless you have a history of smoking or something. 6 ft 175 is a very healthy weight though.

Your VO2 MAX is usually an amalgamation of three factors. The largest one is unfortunately one you can't change, genetics. The other two, training and body composition, seem to be able to swing your VO2 Max anywhere from 15-20 points. My personal experience is that weight loss makes the bigger difference between those two. My run time would melt from a 12:30 to a 10:00 by just dropping 25# in my 30's. Never did any cardio training to lose the weight. Only lifted weights and fasted. So I think this phenomena is largely explained by people who have the right mesh of genetics and a healthy body weight. Because since I've been at 165#, I too can just show up to a PT test and run in the low 10's consistently with zero training.

Still pretty bad when the reputation among your peers after your dead is "mixed reviews." I'm certainly gracious for his accomplishments but being a decent human being is a far more important threshold to meet in life.

But really, how will the AF decide who to make the next shiny new penny if they don't know who planned the holiday party?

The AF has a huge problem with dogma. We culturally engrain our own to continue turning the wheel without the merit of asking why we are turning it. I've seen this so many times in my career, sometimes to the strategic embarrassment of the United States. It's the same reason commanders still look at master's degrees and ACSC for school looks, and other bullshit. On a slightly different note, I think vaccine participation just got significantly higher. At least with 49% of the population! https://www.google.com/amp/s/nypost.com/2020/12/05/covid-19-could-cause-erectile-dysfunction-doc-says/amp/

In not a Trump fan. In fact I'm actually excited about something's Biden might bring. But I disdain our hipocripocrasy in society. It 1.) Serves to further divide our country and 2.) Doesn't hold our officials accountable by redirecting blame on the opposite party. All politicians lie. Trump was actually extraordinarily honest to the extent that he actually promoted policy that he campaigned on, something we don't usually see from politicians. Biden came from an administration that lied constantly about some extraordinarily important things. Using your own doctor, how the war in Iraq/Syria was going, the extent to which the US used drone strikes as a foreign policy tool, etc... Well all have a duty to try and wake up to our bias.

No. There isn't. Literally hundreds of things Trump said we're clearly not meant to be taken literally but the Media flared on them. If you can recognize there is no difference in this remark and hundreds of Trump's, you are either a.) Not being honest or b.) Incapable of seeing past your bias. In either case you need to do some self reflection.

Didn't NY Times say they were going to be just as scrutinizing on Biden? Oh I'm sure they'll scrutinize the next quirky thing Joe says.

So where is the hypocrisy? Just Republicans? Or both? It's definitely both.

He's coaching a narrative. This is about broad power manipulation. All of the last 3 Presidents began their first term with narratives that denigrated their legitimacy. Obama had birthers, Trump had Russia conspiracy theorist, and now Biden will have vote manipulation. This is the new washington power play to keep your ideaology offensive even when you aren't in power.

Can Kelly explain then all those pilots that go out as Captains? Cause I'm not seeing them? We sure as hell didn't RIF any during sequestration (they were too young then). So the only way he could have come to this position is to conclude that the AF never produced enough pilots.....

https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/12/02/after-hitting-record-retention-numbers-air-force-may-push-some-troops-toward-reserves.html "Regarding pilots, Kelly said the service is "happily manned" and almost overmanned in field-grade officers, or O-4s to O-6s, but undermanned in the ranks of second lieutenant through captain. That "has a lot to do with our ability to actually produce and deliver more pilots," he said." WTF?

13:23:10 is the time stamp on the official live feed if you want something more reputable to view than OAN.

I dont think thats true. You just have to figure out how that crop wants to be developed. No, they probably don't want crap like ACSC because that shit is designed for people going to command or work on a staff. However, they may appreciate a year long internship with the FAA/NTSB, cross training to a different weapons platform, late turn options to WIC/TPS, etc... But I think there is a crop of people who really want to see the AF become like the airlines in the sense that you make six figures doing nothing but just showing up to work, getting the mission packet, and coming home 8 hours later. Thats never going to happen in a military organization that needs people to constantly be thinking about how to be more lethal. That requires people who want to challenge their capabilities routinely. Those people will always be happier separating and the AF needs to be overt about that with those individuals.

All good points. I think what I was getting at is you need to continue to build the skill set and on a fly only track you can target breadth over depth. Maybe put these guys into cross flow programs where they can bring one platforms insight to another, get them into the AETC wickets deciding how to build better pilots, WIC for sure, but you need WIC guys on staff as well so that's tricky. Test is another good place that expereince pays dividends at the tactical level. Perhaps rebrand the idea behind evaluators to be a position reserved for these folks and stop making a Captain with 1 year of IP expereince the highest flight qual in the AF. (Ive always felt Evaluator is a job better performed by Majors/Lt Cold with that big picture perspective) I guess the frustration for me is, when I hit my late 30s, my career should be rocket shipping to my max earnings potential. In the AF though, we do that at Capt to Major and then after Major if you are not on the command track you basically shallow out to retirement. It makes the appeal of staying in so much less.

One issue is on paper there is no difference between an O-5 line IP and an O-3 line IP. There is nothing to credentialize any value added by an IP with an additional 5-6 years of experience. Really there is a good case for a non flying track but the AF needs to look at several angles on it, not just making non promotable O-4s who still deploy and take staff jobs. 1.) How do you continue to develop and broaden a line IP who is no longer promotable? What will you do to make him more lethal, more valuable to the AF? 2.) How do you compensate people on a fly only track to be competitive with the airlines, while recognizing they are never going to advance beyond technical/tactical experts in the AF. 3.) How many pilots do you REALLY need on a fly only track? 1-3 of these types per a squadron is probably the max neccessary. So really there needs to be 3 career tracks at hitting FGO. A fly only track, a command track, but then also a staff track that continues to develop you as an officer and puts you in a position to protect the fly only track types from non flying gigs. How do you incentivize that though? The key problem in all of this is unless you are on the command track the AF has no means to continue developing you. So you flatten out and lose appeal.