LiquidSky

Well the NDAA has been signed with the service obligation ammendment so it seems like the point is moot.

Even our same airframe same squadron couples barely see each other. They're often high fiving as one gets back from a mission and the other hits the road. Rated + non-rated seems to be the best.

ADO? Sounds like a job above my paygrade.

A comittment which 9 years ago was signed with the up or out rules in place. Why does one side get unilaterally modify that contract after the fact? Shitty pilots? No. Salty and ROAD CGO life? You bet. If I'm locked in with 0 chance of promotion, 0 incentives, and get paid the same regardless there's a lot of queep that's someone else problem. What are you going to do, not promote me? It's on equal stupidity as the 15% E1-E4 pay bump. E5s are going to make $100/month more than E4s. A whole lot of responsibility for $1200/yr. Lots of E5s are going to start asking why bother?

I can't imagine how little work you're going to get out of a late to rate passed over Captain who's got 7 years left with no chance of promotion. From the "JOINT EXPLANATORY STATEMENT TO ACCOMPANY THE SERVICEMEMBER QUALITY OF LIFE IMPROVEMENT AND NATIONAL DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION ACT FOR FISCAL YEAR 2025" Seems the house simply accepted the Senate's version during discussions.

Majors boards were moved to Jan25. I assume it will stay there so 17YG would meet the Jan26 board.

Shit news for someone that wrote a letter to the board just a few weeks ago. Guess I fuked myself.

Nothing compared to that $75M hard landing.

Does anyone have experience with writing a letter to their first board? Trying to get out asap for family reasons after the AF decided to send me from one terrible assignment to a second even worse one. My most recent OPB was a top 1/3 squadron strat and I had better wing strats early on in my career. I'm wondering if a letter is enough to get passed over on board #1 or if I'm SOL because I was a decently good O on paper until now.

Biggest issue is you'll have to get quotes and the whole contract Shennagins with finance if it's over 10k (maybe 25?). And they normally want that shit 2 months ago for end of FY purchases. I think pretty much anything is fair game as long as you can justify it as functional. I've seen done: Watches, coolers/lunchboxes, sunglasses, nice to have uniform items (better boots, undershirts, OCPs), knives, headlamps, hammocks, sleeping bags, morale shirts, massage chairs, travel bags (rolling and duffel), cold weather gear, sq bar renovations, sq facility renovations, software subscriptions, and more I'm sure I'm forgetting.

Tried to reach y'all last week flying across Africa to show new Copilots the service but couldn't get through to anyone. Unfortunately with the propagation of civil data links across the fleet a csat phone call is typically easier. No idea who is getting the bill for it 🤣

That's assuming a non-working spouse or a spouse within a certain scope of employment. I know more than a few dudes/dudettes who've spent years apart from their family because they got told go to minot, dyess, Vance, overseas, unaccompanied, etc. The military is the one job you can't walk away from when they tell you to go someplace undesirable to you. And your family will make sacrifices in some way be it quality time, career, extended family, etc.

Sheppard doesn't even have T-1s last I checked. They do a "special" T-6 syllabus and then all track 38s. Normally all their drops are fighter/bombers. A heavy is non-standard.

20-25 days out of the month I loathe every second of my job. The other 5-10 days I'm sitting in the cockpit either flying to some place you've never heard of and am expected to just make it work or in a low level formation at the end of which I'm getting off a bunch of dudes cursing up a storm as we're stop to stop eating up leads wake like it's your favorite cousin. Those are the days I love my job. Flying is a drug and we're all a bunch of addicts.

Is this comment still accurate for the 89th and the typical missions of the various airframes? Also can anyone speak to the application/interview process and how competitive is it actually? We get the pdsms and I know a few dudes that didn't get call backs, but there's certainly mystery around the numbers on total applied vs interviewed vs selected.