Chida

I hope your transfer date is end of May. ARPC has been telling people incorrectly they can “retire on a partial year.” This is a gross misunderstanding of the partial year concept. A good year is 50 pts AND 365/366 days in a participating status. If you already had 20 good years yeah sure you can retire anytime you want. But if you’re in your 20th year it has to be at least 20 whole years. Partial years come into play if one has a break in service. In that case 2 partial years (presumably 1 on the front end and 1 on the back end) can combine to make 1 good year. Other than that situation, partial years past 20 good yrs only give you pro-rata membership points, but don’t have any further meaning.

Common misconception. You’ll be O-4 in Retired Reserve. Your high-36 will be calculated from the O-4 level for the 36 months pay charts preceding age 60 or your reduced retired pay age. This will be at the highest longevity (so topping out the O-4 payscale. This a key difference between regular and reserve retirement systems and why it is highly advisable for reservists to get TIG to hold their rank.

Did he know prior? Was he regular AF?

As far as I can see, this will normally only impact reserve officers that are prior-enlisted. If the reserve officer can’t hold the rank at retirement, he gets kicked down to O-3 pay chart. MSD for O-4 is 20, at least it can be, unless continued. But now that I think about it that MSD is only for twice passed over. So the effect would be that a prior enlisted O-4 may have to go beyond 20 to hold O-4.

Quietly inserted into 10 USC 1370 (regular) and 1370a (reserve): TIG requirement for Maj is now 3 years for it to be held. It was 6 months, previously.

Don’t feed the troll…

I did a little research and found the following over the course of my career. Of note, each time it changed per CSAF or SECAF, there it was always heralded as “That’s a great idea!” as if it were something that had never been tried. ?-2004 visible 2005-2008 masked 2008-2014 visible 2015-2022 masked 2023-? Visible

DMartin17: I've observed over the years that there is a certain type of person that will scrutinize your motivations for wanting to be in the AF. In their view, ideological purity is very important ("Attitude is EVERYTHING!"). These types are everywhere in the AF, probably on your interview board, so regardless of your opinions you will need to "deal" with these types. I agree with you (if my read on you is correct) that a candidate's stated motivations shouldn't count for a whole lot. After all, who can really know what's inside someone's head? And shouldn't it be enough that we have people who are willing to serve? To me the whole idea of psychoanalyzing a particular candidate reeks of control-freak mentality. So to sum up: that's the landscape and play the game as well as you can. To answer your question: "Am I in the right headspace if I'm reluctant of the Needs of the Air Force?" No, you're fine. But that's my opinion and others (probably on your interview board) might have another opinion so you should be sensitive to that viewpoint.

Not the point. I was getting my shadow box ready for retirement and I wanted my rack to be correct. I thought maybe the training ribbon criteria had changed. After asking the question here, I found out that around 2011 it changed for USAFA cadets to be given at the end of basic training and not again at commissioning.

Obviously you don’t, so why are you posting? Go elsewhere, seriously.

Not very nice there, SurelySerious. I am merely curious. I can see you’re not, so move along.

Watched the USAFA-USNA game the other day and saw all the AF cadets wearing the AF Training Ribbon. Apparently they are awarded it at the end of basic cadet training now. Back in my day we were awarded it at graduation/commissioning. When did this change? Do they now get an OLC at commissioning?

This is a horrible good idea fairy. It’s just an extension of the sentiment that we’re all equal and that pilots can and should do other people’s jobs and vice versa. I don’t hold with it. Next up: we have a lack of booms, so copilots will now get out of their seat and operate the boom.

TBTF is not a good way IMO to look at a potential employer. Under a bankruptcy re-org, union contracts will be forced to reset, so yes, you’ll still be employed, but it will be for a paycut.

Of course it's company dependent. I thought that went without saying, but maybe not. The commercial flying world is not a monolith. I can only speak from my perspective at this moment in time. My perspective is as a UPS Airlines pilot with 5 years on property and an AFRES liaison to CAP. But for real, here's what I observe: it wouldn't matter if I said you get a half milly and work 5 days/mo. Those who are "on the fence", "not quite sure" would still stay in RegAF. The devil is always in the details, meaning, you gotta do the math! There is no shortcut to doing the math! Glossing over the "details" or thinking that all airlines are more/less the same: No, not at all.

I started realizing a lot of time off with the confluence of a number of factors: 1. Switching my ARC job from Cat A to Cat E. With Cat A I was working 6 days/mo. With Cat E it's more like <1 day/mo on a 12 mo avg. 2. Receiving vacation from my airline. The first year of employment you won't have vacation bc you are earning it. Depending on when you join the company, your 2nd yr will have some vacation, but not a full bag. So your 3rd year you will have a full bag of vacation, whatever that may be. 3. Getting enough seniority to bid a good schedule (not reserve, since the company can extend me by a day or two, depending, once per month). The seniority required is top 75 to 80% of the list, which coincided, approx, with beginning of my 3rd year.

Reserve Sanctuary, 10 USC 12646 link for section of law that describes what I previously posted.

:For apples-apples comparison: Airline+AFRES guy here: My avg days off/mo was ~17, or 209 total days off in the past 12 months. And that's actual days off, meaning at home, no duty, not commuting (I live in base). That number will improve when I retire from AFRES pretty soon here. Compare that to when I was RegAF. The avg days off baseline was ~12 days/mo (includes 30 days' leave, weekends, holidays, and family days), 153 days off total. Then throw in weekend TDYs and deployments and that number goes down considerably.

This Mini worship is reminiscent of Welsh worship. Not directed at anyone in particular.

ARPC is doing extra-legal bs. They put you in the IRR but not with a commission. They refer to this as the parking lot. There is no legal basis for this but they do it anyway. When you get hired by the guard or reserve you will go to a recruiter who will then put your name on the list for people to be approved for reserve commissions, aka the scroll. Then a few months later you will have a reserve commission. It is at this point you can petition the AFBCMR to resolve your break in service, possibly, by extending your RegAF DOS to butt up against the day you received your reserve commission.

Reminds me of the enlisted RPA operators. Left out to dry when a new regime took over…. I envision an “altering the deal” if these guys make it to the line.

They need the weird robotic arm so that it is a drop-in pilot replacement for airplanes that exist now. Then in however many years the 2nd pilot robot can be designed into the aircraft and you won’t have the weird robotic arm anymore.

Lolz… Reminds me of the time I went to Carswell looking for a job and some random Maj who “interviewed” me said, “We’re a pretty elite unit.”

UPS pays for a move in conjunction with a base closure/opening. There may be other situations, but mainly it is unusual, not for new hires, and should not enter one’s calculus.

First thing they put in front of me in 1998 was a MOU for a 10 yr ADSC. Throughout the remainder of my USAFA time it was impressed upon me that ARC was the B team and only for substandards who couldn’t make it. I believe this was an institutional reaction to the pilot shortage of that time. The primary goal (prime directive) of any bureaucracy is self-preservation. Any threat to that will have their full-throated opposition.