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O-8 loses command for using clout to help son


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Lt. Poulin ended up with the 919th Special Operations Wing, which flies MC-130Es. He now serves in a traditional reserve role as a pilot trainee with the 711th Special Operations Squadron

Is the 711 SOS an FTU?

If not, how is he a "trainee"? Do they mean that he is not CMR, or hasn't completed MQT?

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I was not in his class, but he was two classes ahead of me at CBM.

There were rumors about him all throughout UPT, to include that the Viper unit dropped him after T-6's. He was then "picked up" by a reserve buff unit, got dropped by them then ended up in MC's.

I cant say I ever heard anything about the guy personally, but there was plenty of talk flying around about his general father.

~NH

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UFB.

The anonymous tip, to the hot line in the office of the Defense Department inspector general, came in early June 2008, just after Lt. Poulin finished his T-6 training. The Pentagon passed along the call to the Air Force inspector general.

Win one for the IG.

Lt. Poulin is not qualified to track to T-38s regardless of his ultimate aircraft of assignment, a colonel at AETC wrote in an e-mail. T-38s require a score in the upper half of the class. Lt. Poulin was 24 of 24 in his class with an overall score that is so exceptionally low even among those tracking to T-1s.

Ouch. I bet this Colonel is real popular among the T-1 crowd.

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I can't believe he just showed up to the T-38 side and was like, "Yeah? So what? I'd rather fly the 38," and somehow, above pressure or not, that actually happened.

It didn't. He graduated from T-1s.

I flew with his class but not him. Sucks that his Dad was pulling all these back-door shenenigans. If he hadn't, his f-ing MASS score wouldn't have been published in the f-ing AF Times.

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Wow! A senior officer used his influence to give a son/daughter an unfair advantage?! Say it isn't so!

In the 5 minutes it took to read the article I thought of no less than 4 instances where I have seen a flag officer "influence" the course of a relative's future....

In no particular order: reverse a service academy expulsion for cheating, influence a UPT assignment (x2), influence selection for UPT.

I can probably think of about a half-dozen more that were relayed to me by others. I guess they were serious when they said "We need to run this place like a business"!

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Wow! A senior officer used his influence to give a son/daughter an unfair advantage?! Say it isn't so!

In the 5 minutes it took to read the article I thought of no less than 4 instances where I have seen a flag officer "influence" the course of a relative's future....

In no particular order: reverse a service academy expulsion for cheating, influence a UPT assignment (x2), influence selection for UPT.

I can probably think of about a half-dozen more that were relayed to me by others. I guess they were serious when they said "We need to run this place like a business"!

I thought the same thing when I read the article: "Really? This is news?" I know of more than one guy that avoided TAMI21, a guy that got a DUI on base and wasn't even grounded, the list goes on...

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Could be worse. We had a reserve student in my flight at Laughlin back in the 70s who was really, really bad. We tried like hell to get him washed out but couldn't. Then we tried like hell to get him into a big airplane where he could "season" in the right seat, but couldn't do that either. It turned out his father was the wing commander of the reserve wing that flew A-37s in the mid-west someplace and he wanted his son to fly "fighters" like he did. His father got to watch him stall an A-37 in the final turn and buy the farm off the end of the runway. Really sad.

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Just wow. I was in the son's original OTS class. His poor performance in UPT doesn't shock me, but I am curious as to the process of him (temporarily) failing out of OTS. Smalls0912 or anyone else there, did he just fail the Ad Brief and thus exceed his limit of busts (I don't remember how the OI read exactly), or were there other issues that led to his attempted removal? He seemed like a really decent guy and I don't enjoy seeing his name dragged through the mud, but apparently he wasn't above reproach in this matter either.

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Wow! A senior officer used his influence to give a son/daughter an unfair advantage?! Say it isn't so!

In the 5 minutes it took to read the article I thought of no less than 4 instances where I have seen a flag officer "influence" the course of a relative's future....

In no particular order: reverse a service academy expulsion for cheating, influence a UPT assignment (x2), influence selection for UPT.

I can probably think of about a half-dozen more that were relayed to me by others. I guess they were serious when they said "We need to run this place like a business"!

we had a 3 stars son in my squadron at the zoo. He was up for to be booted out, our AOC called the 3 star and the 3 star said do what you have to do.....and he got the boot.

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...did he just fail the Ad Brief and thus exceed his limit of busts (I don't remember how the OI read exactly), or were there other issues that led to his attempted removal?

As I remember he washed back to my upper class, and thats where he failed the advocacy brief. If I remember correctly, once you got washed back, one failure could be grounds for your dismissal, so when he failed, that triggered the evaluation that led to the decision to remove him from training. He hung around in limbo for a while after the decision was made (a couple weeks) and was finally put into my class. His story was that he fought the dismissal on the grounds that the grading for the advocacy briefing was subjective and after he gave the same brief to another evaluator, they decided to pass him.

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As I remember he washed back to my upper class, and thats where he failed the advocacy brief. If I remember correctly, once you got washed back, one failure could be grounds for your dismissal, so when he failed, that triggered the evaluation that led to the decision to remove him from training. He hung around in limbo for a while after the decision was made (a couple weeks) and was finally put into my class. His story was that he fought the dismissal on the grounds that the grading for the advocacy briefing was subjective and after he gave the same brief to another evaluator, they decided to pass him.

Heh. Advo brief. Like almost everything at OTS, it's really not very hard. It's just a matter of finding/making enough time to practice it a few times in order to keep it on topic for the prerequisite 6-9 minutes.

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This stuff happens all the time. Solo stud fails to break out for us (a formation of tweets) my IP was livid, who the hell is that, they are hooking this ride. We get on the ground a find out the offender is the daughter of a four star. She came into apologize and my IP went from outright rage to pure ass kissery. Believe she's flying mudhens now not sure.

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This stuff happens all the time. Solo stud fails to break out for us (a formation of tweets) my IP was livid, who the hell is that, they are hooking this ride. We get on the ground a find out the offender is the daughter of a four star. She came into apologize and my IP went from outright rage to pure ass kissery. Believe she's flying mudhens now not sure.

Initials JW, circa 2006?

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