Although this is (or used to be) a military/AF/Guard/Reserve forum... I actually agree with your overall point. We have been, as a professional all volunteer force, a jobs program of sorts. It’s how the marketing has been since the mid 80’s, ‘look what we can do for you, now sign here.’ While this was especially true for enlisted skill sets, there’s very few places that you can get the flying education you get in the armed services and all without the onerous debt of a puppy mill or private education. The same was true with our medical corps and to some extent JAGs. Ok, so that all being said, many of us in ARC, and AFRC tankers in general chose a lifestyle that fit our career goals and most importantly our family’s needs. The concern I see is the same really in every poorly run institution or company. Ill defined goals/mission and (at best) Poor sycophantic leadership. This doesn’t mean that the military in itself is ‘bad’ or that we don’t have a ‘good’ mission. It also doesn’t exclude the odd CC that has awesome tactical prowess and is a great leader. But the vast majority of our “management team” is not there because they are the best and brightest, and I’ve rarely seen a spine among any of them. I’ve nothing against career ARTs, as they are needed for the efficacy in ARC. The issue is when career ARTs - with ZERO experience in having another career (whether the airline pilot, corporate/contract pilots in small flight departments, or oil and gas engineers, electricians, farmers and/or various small business owners), the career ART has the stranglehold of policy on something they can never hope to grasp. They have refused to tell their masters “no.” We can’t do it. The 4 star looks at the 3 star and asks ‘can you do more with less?’ and the ART 3 star says ‘much more, and with even less!’ That’s a criminal lack in leadership when you let your logistics fall behind your mission. That’s killed more militaries than almost anything else. There’s really only two ways to solve the issues at hand - reduce the mission, or tell the executive/congress the mission cannot be done with what we have. Plus up Active Duty and return ARC to a surge force and ready reserve ONLY in times of strategic need. For us in the trenches, as hard as it is to do sometimes, we just need to be able to say ‘no’ as well. This is still an all volunteer force, and my feet are walking. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
