SFG

Masters: Great so we’re going to kick out people who went the extra mile. Good idea. (better alternative is to have separate tracks... aviation-only vs strategic) School selects: This was a good move in conjunction with new strat rules... would have liked to have seen this in my day. Decline school: Why would you apply in the first place? So we’re only sending folks who get their way now? Perfect. Again... need two tracks. 365s: Need more data, as in, more than a slide with a few numbers saying they’ve decreased, but a slide per 365 that still exists to explain why it still exists and who is vulnerable. The rotating bills is also a great trick because each community can say they only have 5-10 365s to fill each year (you could be next!) oh and btw a few (20-60+?) that rotate between various communities (like roulette?). Helmet art/sleeves: Who wasn’t doing this anyway? Civilians: Not being in the SQs, I’ll accept this, but it sounds like only ACC is getting this... and we wonder why AMC and SOF folks are leaving for the triple six figure paychecks and the 3 weeks off 1 week on plans. We just can’t get enough of our boxes. Until we can think outside of them and handle that the best leaders might not check all of them, any changes we make will be superficial at best. I love our Air Force so I hope we can turn this ship around. “Fingers” crossed for new SECAF to make some sweeping leadership/cultural changes.

Sounding like it will be current IPZ to 4APZ. Will make it harder for passed over people to walk. Sub-cats will definitely change things. My prediction is less broad and more focused sub-cat officers... or more tribal and inbred if you want to see it that way. Two-line PRFs will make it harder for folks with complex or poorly written records to get promoted as it is now the board’s job to read and decipher most of their record and, not that two lines are bad, but the strict rules for how the two lines are to be written does not allow SRs to repeat info already in the OPRs (that may be hidden or needs highlighted). Overall, it will all help force retention, and by force, I mean force...but when they leave the door cracked folks will still escape.

1IPZ or 5IPZ?

It’s not enough money to pay for any Defense Industrial Complex garbage. No, it will just go to another RAND study.

I hear some new AF research project told them that there wasn’t a significant difference in take rates from $20K to $35K... their conclusion is that ->the bonus amount has no effect on take rate<- 😂 We never leveled off. They’re looking at the wrong indicators. We just steadied our decent. They should continue to lower the nose with QOL/QOS initiatives, BUT realize they’re in the region of reverse command. Add more power. I bet you $70K would move the needle, but don’t expect to see any bonus increases. I wouldn’t be surprised to see a decrease after that turd of a third grade report.

If that’s the case then requirements grew by 150, because we were just briefed that we’re an extra hundred short this year (~2100). Statistics. Hah! Depends on what you want to say I guess.

I’d expect late Jan or Feb. They have to have a bunch more meetings, release and clarify some new initiatives, and the CSAF needs to have his annual state of the Air Force spiel first.

How dare you innovate. This would risk having us rate guys based on their performance and not based on their year group or what jobs they did or did not have in the past or whether they were going to a board or not. Be safe out there folks... it's about to get weird!

Yeah, Commanders’ attitudes will need to change along with the change in policy. I wonder what would happen if we hid year-groups from Commanders 😱

Agreed. Context: “spending another 25-100 million $$ per year for the next decade trying a dozen different ways to produce our way out of the problem.” I’m all for innovation, QOL improvements, and attacking this thing from multiple angles. It’s spending wads of money to try to widen the mouth of the pipeline when a fraction of that could double the bonus and stop the bleeding instantly that makes me hurt for the guys and gals on the line doing more and more with less and less. How much longer can we sustain take rates well below the 65% that we require to maintain a healthy force, when we’re way beyond unhealthy? I bet if we retained more seasoned pilots we could increase production at a fraction of the cost of some of these other experiments. I’m not disparaging PTN or UPT 2.5 or whatever... I’m talking about stuff like contract UPT, new UPT bases, diversity outreach etc. Stuff that might be good, but is not the solution we need right this minute and is costing $$$10s of millions of dollars. We have not yet gone to Congress begging and pleading. They must think things are pretty darn good now that we’ve leveled off. The big lie is that we can’t compete on compensation. No, not that improvements should not be happening with or without a crisis, but QOL is where we will never compete.

Wow. I think this will really fork this year’s previously known as IPZ group. Will be more BPZ and APZers if that’s the case, for better or worse.

In related news, word is we lost ground by another hundred pilots this year. 2100 hundred short now? If we “leveled off” at all it was just a hard pull to trade airspeed for altitude and now we’re approaching the stall. But we’ll probably keep spending another 25-100 million $$ per year for the next decade trying a dozen different ways to produce our way out of the problem.

We’re producing our way out of it. Obviously.

Sounded like the latter, that is, when the 06 guy hits IPZ and the 03 guy is “3APZ” they’ll be looked at the same (and the 07 guy will not be meeting any board... or something).

BPZ promotions are going away.

soo... 2-line PRFs and all the associated racking and stacking hustle and bustle for our next groups of 2-BPZ and 1-BPZ folks meeting this next O-5 board or not...

Seems like the AF realized they need to enable career broadening and joint officers who get their experience outside the tribe and this is their solution to keeping them competitive. Fact remains that when people continue to promote below their peers they will still leave for greener pastures even when they have 4 more “IPZ” looks on the way. At some point they need to stop blaming and tinkering with processes and work on values... and not the abstract read-between-the-lines, try to evaluate performance on a piece of paper, and play the strat game crap, but what skills, knowledge, and experience to we need to win wars stuff. We need more bomb droppers? Promote them, and if necessary promote people who could cross train to be them. We need folks with PHDs on China? Promote them. Quit playing games trying to nudge boards to do this or that with fancy career briefs, categories, or SECAF memos. Just hurry up and get the job done. Set floors to AF needs and let’s get back to our jobs, or getting passed over and making 6-figures with a 3 on the front-end.

I have a bud who flew A-10s and after an MEB out of fighters went to fly C-12s overseas... restricted to crew aircraft now. Attache-type. Got some DIA training. Some language training. Sounded like cool stuff. Then, he went back to the real world for another Ops tour... not sure what aircraft.

Here’s one, probably others. I find Google site search works better than the organic search here. I saw this happen once in 2008ish. The impression I got is that it takes a lot of wheeling and dealing, unit support, and probably a SECAF signature. But worth it if you want it.

There are posts in the forum about people who have done this.

Bold prediction: When the GOs return from Corona, this will be the new “way forward.”

Shots fired!

I think it was said that 1400 to produce out, 1200 something for steady state, and we did 1100 or so. Sad to hear that we are gambling on an economic downturn rather than creating flexible and responsive retention initiatives. This has been floating around the squadrons:

Supply and demand. Let it play out.

Yeah well, in theory we are producing more new pilots so it's all good... AF failed to meet its higher production goals this year and actually produced less than the previous standard rate so... Yep. I should add that this failure is despite the dedicated efforts of our folks on the line.