Good deals---only for shoes?

[Springer]

Look up the "Hollow force" of the Carter years. If you think we are doing more with less now, the late 70's would water your eyes. The AF was drawing down from Vietnam and had no incentive to keep/take care of people. They also were not paying to maintain jets. As a dependant, I saw it when we lost my friends dad and my scout leader in separate class A accidents.

As was stated previously, these are not "new" problems. Just re-packaged in ABUs and reflective belts.

I was stationed at Bergstrom during those trying years. The ops scheduling board bleed red with all the MND's. My Recce wing suffered two Class A accidents resulting in the newly acquired Wing/CC being fired. Including the FAC wing across the street, Bergstrom had the highest DOS rate in the AF...me included.

[zmoney]

Actually it was Gen Ron Keys;

Dear Boss,

Well, I quit. I’ve finally run out of drive or devotion or rationalizations or whatever...

CH,

I'm really glad you posted this. It is actually frightening how closely this reflects the current state of ops, at least at my base.

I'll be reading Sierra Hotel on my flight as well.

Thanks again!

[GearMonkey]

I agree. Thanks for posting the letter.

While it was a great read I find it fairly depressing in the end. Clearly nothing has changed. Keys saw the problems back in his O-3 days yet despite making it almost all the way to the top he was unable to fix any of it. If one of the chosen ones can't make things better it is unlikely we'll even see things fixed.

Almost all my fattie friends have stories of the AMC Commander telling them at GRACC that most of the changes they and he would like to see are above his pay grade. When a 4-star isn't high enough in the organization to help fix things we're surely doomed.

Someone pass me my reflective belt.

Edited December 29, 2009 by GearMonkey

[BFM this]

Oh, no doubt!! I was referring specifically to the *phrase*, "Do more with less," not the underlying assumptions/problems. I'd thought that was a new-speak coined in the early 90s, not dating to the late 70s.

I'd be willing to bet Billy Mitchell used that phrase during his CM.

[FalconXtreme]

I wish I had some useful advice to impart, but I don't. All I can do is empathize with your plight, and remind you that almost any one of those shoes would give up all those good deals to do what we do on a daily basis.

SHACK

[Who?]

If you want to get out of the cockpit so bad, and pursue a RAS/PAS pgm, then do the following:

1. Do the best at your j-o-b

2. get your SOS and masters knocked out

3. let your cc know your intentions

4. fight for consistently high strats on your opr's

5. get picked up as an IDE select on your o-4 board

6. apply to the ras/pas for IDE ASCS pgm

7. go to school

I'm currently in the RAS pipeline and really enjoying it, so I'll try to add some info to the above for anyone interested. The checklist is good advice, particularly #1 -- even if you hate whatever job you're assigned, the CC is probably going to push for a hard worker to get what he wants rather than someone who always talks about getting a different or special job assignment and neglects his current duty. As for time in service, you should be in the 7-10 year range to be eligible for RAS, 9-11 year range for PAS.

It's true that fewer flyers are being released to non-rated duties, but as a previous poster mentioned, the CAF/MAF have "bills to pay" to SAF/IA for RAS/PAS selection. I know of several different types of pilots (and a couple of navs) who are in or have recently finished training. Also, the program is not meant to take you out of the cockpit forever - you are supposed to alternate between regional affairs assignments and your primary AFSC for the rest of your career. That has yet to be tested since the program is young, but it's the plan.

I would add a step - take the DLAB, the test that is meant to measure your innate ability to learn languages. You can schedule it with your base testing office, the same people who give enlisted promotion tests and language proficiency exams (DLPTs). I've never attended a RAS selection board, but would think this would be one discriminating factor for those choosing candidates - PAS, not so much, since it doesn't require a language. Remember that if you don't get the score you'd like, you can retake the test after 6 months. If you still can't raise your score, you might want to concentrate on the PAS path over the RAS one. You'd need at the very least a 95 or so, something in the 120+ range is a strong point on your side I'd say.

I didn't have a master's already (step #2 above), so can't say whether that's a particularly strong qualifier for selection. You would get one from your coursework in the RAS/PAS training program, though. I'm also not sure that you'd need to be a school select already to get in. It would probably help, but selection for Naval Postgraduate School as IDE is a different process than being selected for RAS/PAS. After starting training, you would apply on the next development board to have your NPS (or NPS/DLI) coursework count as IDE in residence. However, you'd still need to complete ACSC in correspondence. My advice would be to knock that correspondence course out as soon as you're able if you're selected for these programs.

The "hoops you'd need to jump through" are really not that different from the steps you'd need to complete to get picked up for any opportunity outside of the average path in your field. Make sure to fill out the appropriate section of your ADP ("special selection opportunities" or whatever it's called now) when you discuss it with your CC (#3 above). Unless there are a lot of behind-the-scenes mechanisms I'm not aware of, the technical "application process" was essentially filling out that ADP section and getting CC concurrence. The rest was just building a strong record in general and having an interest in international affairs. Good luck and PM me if you have questions.

[Seriously]

It was Gen Keys as reported by the USAF historian inSierra Hotel, see page 190.

He became General Keys because General Creech (TAC/CC), listened. Look where they moved him right after he wrote the letter in the summer of 1981...they wanted his input and he made a difference.

Thanks for the link to Sierra Hotel. I read it over two days nearly non-stop. Great read.

[Gravedigger]

Hey Who?, on those DLAB scores, are those adjusted or raw? I have two different scores on my results and I'm trying to gauge them.

[Who?]

Hey Who?, on those DLAB scores, are those adjusted or raw? I have two different scores on my results and I'm trying to gauge them.

The raw score is the actual number of questions you got right on the test, but that number doesn't mean much in the whole scheme of things. Some questions are weighted, so your adjusted (or standard) score will probably be higher depending on which ones you got right. That will be the score used to qualify you in the 4 different categories of languages for DLI. A 95 would qualify you for the easier languages (Cat I) like French and Spanish, but you'd need a minimum of 110 for Cat IV languages like Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic.

[Gravedigger]

The raw score is the actual number of questions you got right on the test, but that number doesn't mean much in the whole scheme of things. Some questions are weighted, so your adjusted (or standard) score will probably be higher depending on which ones you got right. That will be the score used to qualify you in the 4 different categories of languages for DLI. A 95 would qualify you for the easier languages (Cat I) like French and Spanish, but you'd need a minimum of 110 for Cat IV languages like Chinese, Japanese, Korean and Arabic.

Sweet, thanks for the clarification!