What's wrong with the Air Force?

[busdriver]

I actually really like the idea of the sabbatical program.  LIkewise, being able to leave active duty and move the the reserve and back again.

I think the biggest thing is killing the golden path, early or on-time, up or out system.  

Then again, O-6 pay is shit compared to what a comparable job pays working for Lockheed

[Ram]

The funny thing about making a competent leader with 15+ years of experience is that it takes 15+ years.

[Clark Griswold]

I'm glad that someone is interested in change that is sorely needed (pension reform, the end of "up or out", fighting the idea of only one ideal career path, ease of movement between active & reserve status, etc...) but I don't think this (direct lateral entry at O-6 level) could happen except in some limited career fields (some cyber, medical, legal, maybe some intel, etc..) but in terms of operations (kinetic but also direct support to kinetic capability missions) I think that is a disaster waiting to happen.  

It has an odor of desperation to it, not a strong one but I can smell it.  Our institutional culture is sick and therefore we have to call in true outsiders, insert them directly into senior rank structure and hope that somehow their talent is universal and that will fix it, just seems like naive hope and that is not a COA.

The real solution is to "fix the glitch" and that glitch is a huge swath of officers and senior NCOs that have little operational experience / perspective / concern but high administrative focus & authority.  I realize that there are lots of other parts of the AF that are not operations and they are important, important that they support and not hinder operations.  One way they hinder operations is by growing excessive amounts of leadership in their fields which will give them an outsized influence in the policy and strategy of the AF as an institution.  

[disgruntledemployee]

6 hours ago, Clark Griswold said:

The real solution is to "fix the glitch" and that glitch is a huge swath of officers and senior NCOs that have little operational experience / perspective / concern but high administrative focus & authority.  I realize that there are lots of other parts of the AF that are not operations and they are important, important that they support and not hinder operations.  One way they hinder operations is by growing excessive amounts of leadership in their fields which will give them an outsized influence in the policy and strategy of the AF as an institution.  

For some institutional change, perhaps start with AFIs.  Cut/chop/eliminate.  Some have plenty of useful guidelines like an MEL, some are used as ammo against one another.  For example, the uniform AFI can change to, "Wear a uniform.  Here are the ones we have."  Take away the shoe ammo.

Lower the waiver level of all AFIs after they've been chopped of the stupidness.  Why the fuck a multi-star general is listed as the waiver level of so much stupid shit is well beyond me. Again, removing shoe ammo.

That's all for now.

Out

[Clark Griswold]

14 hours ago, disgruntledemployee said:

For some institutional change, perhaps start with AFIs.  Cut/chop/eliminate.  Some have plenty of useful guidelines like an MEL, some are used as ammo against one another.  For example, the uniform AFI can change to, "Wear a uniform.  Here are the ones we have."  Take away the shoe ammo.

Lower the waiver level of all AFIs after they've been chopped of the stupidness.  Why the fuck a multi-star general is listed as the waiver level of so much stupid shit is well beyond me. Again, removing shoe ammo.

That's all for now.

Out

Not a bad place to start.  Cut, clarify and simplify to prevent the Shoe Clerk game of obscure rule making / quoting when they find it convenient to prevent the use of common sense.

 

[pawnman]

On 6/20/2016 at 7:31 AM, disgruntledemployee said:

For some institutional change, perhaps start with AFIs.  Cut/chop/eliminate.  Some have plenty of useful guidelines like an MEL, some are used as ammo against one another.  For example, the uniform AFI can change to, "Wear a uniform.  Here are the ones we have."  Take away the shoe ammo.

Lower the waiver level of all AFIs after they've been chopped of the stupidness.  Why the fuck a multi-star general is listed as the waiver level of so much stupid shit is well beyond me. Again, removing shoe ammo.

That's all for now.

Out

When Gen Creech took over what was TACC at the time, he directed his staff to scrap at least half of the AFIs.  He believed the AFIs were stifling innovation and creative problem-solving.  Whenever one of his staff would protest, Gen Creech would tell them that he had faith in the judgement of his subordinate commanders.

See, I did learn something useful from the online ACSC.

[17D_guy]

I've been thinking hard about this one.  Every way I look at it, I don't see how having civilians cross in at the O6 or higher-level is going to translate to meaningful change for Cyber.  

I've got Cyber O6's that I know now agitating for meaningful changes: real mission assurance, real network advancements, etc.  They can't get it done and they've been in the system the whole time!  What's some civilian with no history, contacts and context going to bring?  Dear Lord.. if he/she starts on staff without ever having supported an operational mission... the hate we get now will only be magnified because the leader only isn't in touch... they've NEVER been in touch.

We aren't like civilian companies where we can dump one vendor for another.  We're beholden to DISA for services.  We're beholden to our MAJCOM/NAF for mission requirements.  We're beholden to AFSPC/24AF for "cyber mission requirements."  Finally we're beholden to the IMSC for... something.

Couple the serious mission challenges to the promotion and "up-or-out" and you're going to demoralize the cyber force.  We've already got enough problems with not having a career cyber person in cyber leadership.  Now you're going to shift some of these few O6 slots to civilians coming in?  How exactly am I supposed to believe there's any credibility at all with AF Cyber Leadership if this happens?  It's already difficult enough as it is and I've been told very good things about the folks in charge.

Finally I don't know many "cyber leadership" civilians who could do well on our PT systems.

Hire civilians as non-line tech advisers, increase the industry internship opportunities, allow more sabbaticals, develop/promote Technical MS programs (AFIT doesn't count), provide mid-level (vs high-level) cyber leadership/operations training (less demanding CNODP/Cyber WIC) and get some damn career cyber leadership visible to the force.

 

I will note none of these even start to address the problem with current GS-civilians who are retired O's and SNCO's who refuse to do anything meaningful to move Cyber into the current decade.  For them the AF hasn't changed since the day it retired, and by God it'll be the same when they retire again in 10/20/30 years.

[SurelySerious]

Hire civilians as non-line tech advisers, increase the industry internship opportunities, allow more sabbaticals, develop/promote Technical MS programs (AFIT doesn't count), provide mid-level (vs high-level) cyber leadership/operations training (less demanding CNODP/Cyber WIC) and get some damn career cyber leadership visible to the force.

 

I will note none of these even start to address the problem with current GS-civilians who are retired O's and SNCO's who refuse to do anything meaningful to move Cyber into the current decade.  For them the AF hasn't changed since the day it retired, and by God it'll be the same when they retire again in 10/20/30 years.

This sounds like an actual actionable plan, when coupled with shedding the dead weight you mentioned.

[17D_guy]

17 hours ago, SurelySerious said:

This sounds like an actual actionable plan, when coupled with shedding the dead weight you mentioned.

Thanks.  I do need to add that the tech-advisor thing will have to be closely structured and monitored.  As in -

no previous federal service at or above a certain level
2 year max stint before a "cooling off" period
ensure no single company/org is sourcing a lot of individuals
easily fire-able, moveable, and easy for an individual to quit

I think the last one would be mitigated by the fact that there's no career to ruin.  You tell the thanks for their service, they get on social media about why they were unjustly terminated, etc.  Congress is going to listen if you let a former VP of Facebook go for a stupid reason.
 

Otherwise it'll be the same thing as when those Generals were coming back as "leadership consultants" while allegedly hawking their contractor gig merchandise.  How much money do those fuckers need.....

[Clark Griswold]

On ‎6‎/‎22‎/‎2016 at 8:23 PM, 17D_guy said:

Thanks.  I do need to add that the tech-advisor thing will have to be closely structured and monitored.  As in -

no previous federal service at or above a certain level
2 year max stint before a "cooling off" period
ensure no single company/org is sourcing a lot of individuals
easily fire-able, moveable, and easy for an individual to quit

I think the last one would be mitigated by the fact that there's no career to ruin.  You tell the thanks for their service, they get on social media about why they were unjustly terminated, etc.  Congress is going to listen if you let a former VP of Facebook go for a stupid reason.
 

Otherwise it'll be the same thing as when those Generals were coming back as "leadership consultants" while allegedly hawking their contractor gig merchandise.  How much money do those fuckers need.....

Sidebar:

Question for a Cyber guy, has it been thought about or discussed in the Cyber community to develop proprietary software (OS) and/or hardware for the AF, military or government agencies that is custom built to be the most secure it could possibly be?  We build our own aircraft, why not for all or some requirements (Secret, TS, etc..) have a proprietary system only possessed by US government institutions to limit vulnerability by keeping it's details as tightly kept as can be? 

Just a random question but our computer systems are pretty much constantly under attack by hackers from governments and non-government actors, then why not invest X billions for a system as secure as it can technically be rather than just a computer(s) / OS we get out of a GSA catalog?

[BuddhaSixFour]

Silicon Valley and Redmond are very good at what they do and have already spent uncounted billions on the problem over many years. I don't see a magic check to Lockheed or any other player suddenly showing the pros what's up. The best they would do would be a system that was secure by virtue of the fact it was worthless and didn't do anything so there was nothing on it of value. Imagine trying to use Governet Explorer on you govOS computer to look up a how-to for GoverPoint. 

I'm sure lots of work goes into focusing on really important things that are limited in scope (key infrastructure, communications, etc). But a general purpose compute stack? I vote no. 

[17D_guy]

14 hours ago, Clark Griswold said:

Sidebar:

Question for a Cyber guy, has it been thought about or discussed in the Cyber community to develop proprietary software (OS) and/or hardware for the AF, military or government agencies that is custom built to be the most secure it could possibly be?  We build our own aircraft, why not for all or some requirements (Secret, TS, etc..) have a proprietary system only possessed by US government institutions to limit vulnerability by keeping it's details as tightly kept as can be? 

Just a random question but our computer systems are pretty much constantly under attack by hackers from governments and non-government actors, then why not invest X billions for a system as secure as it can technically be rather than just a computer(s) / OS we get out of a GSA catalog?

 

Lots of ways to address this question.  But the short answer is: sure it's been discussed, but as BuddaSixFour has pointed out, highly skilled technical organizations have spent trillions of dollars developing software and it's still buggy.  The gov't and/or one of it's contractors isn't going to do better.  There's always a new hack that people can't plan for.

And that's a good thing.  This cyber stuff moves too fast for development the USAF way.  Look at the problems w/ the F35 software and that's a very specific set of design parameters.  Now imagine that for everyone's different set of desktop boxes and the USAF/DoD directing the fix.  We'd lose a few GDPs worth of cash w/ nothing to show.

Also, there's already products out there that provide serious security (ex. SE Linux) w/ NSA contributions.  On our 2 normal networks Win7/10 is fine.  Properly administrated they're fantastic operating systems.  Are they currently properly administrated, no.  Is that my cyber-bro's fault, partially.

But, at the end of the day all this tech stuff is cool.. but it's the bag-o-meat sitting at the keyboard that's going to screw it up.  We all hate the stupid LARPing CBT we have to do annually, but it's at least made people ask me if something was stupid.

 

[Clark Griswold]

21 hours ago, BuddhaSixFour said:

Silicon Valley and Redmond are very good at what they do and have already spent uncounted billions on the problem over many years. I don't see a magic check to Lockheed or any other player suddenly showing the pros what's up. The best they would do would be a system that was secure by virtue of the fact it was worthless and didn't do anything so there was nothing on it of value. Imagine trying to use Governet Explorer on you govOS computer to look up a how-to for GoverPoint. 

I'm sure lots of work goes into focusing on really important things that are limited in scope (key infrastructure, communications, etc). But a general purpose compute stack? I vote no. 

Good points.

9 hours ago, 17D_guy said:

 

Lots of ways to address this question.  But the short answer is: sure it's been discussed, but as BuddaSixFour has pointed out, highly skilled technical organizations have spent trillions of dollars developing software and it's still buggy.  The gov't and/or one of it's contractors isn't going to do better.  There's always a new hack that people can't plan for.

And that's a good thing.  This cyber stuff moves too fast for development the USAF way.  Look at the problems w/ the F35 software and that's a very specific set of design parameters.  Now imagine that for everyone's different set of desktop boxes and the USAF/DoD directing the fix.  We'd lose a few GDPs worth of cash w/ nothing to show.

Also, there's already products out there that provide serious security (ex. SE Linux) w/ NSA contributions.  On our 2 normal networks Win7/10 is fine.  Properly administrated they're fantastic operating systems.  Are they currently properly administrated, no.  Is that my cyber-bro's fault, partially.

But, at the end of the day all this tech stuff is cool.. but it's the bag-o-meat sitting at the keyboard that's going to screw it up.  We all hate the stupid LARPing CBT we have to do annually, but it's at least made people ask me if something was stupid.

 

Knowledge increased and thanks for your take.

But just because as a "bag of meat" you don't like the fact I chat with hot Russians just looking to send me $20 million from a Nigerian prince while simultaneously needing to verify my credit card information on a website with .ru at the end of the URL all on my gov computer, don't think I will fall for some phishing scam...

 

 

 

 

[JarheadBoom]

On ‎6‎/‎25‎/‎2016 at 8:49 PM, 17D_guy said:

There's always a new hack that people can't plan for.

Slightly off-topic (but not by much) - I wonder how many people noticed that there were six separate links to six separate incidents in that sentence...

[yatalpan]

On June 25, 2016 at 0:49 PM, 17D_guy said:

 

Lots of ways to address this question.  But the short answer is: sure it's been discussed, but as BuddaSixFour has pointed out, highly skilled technical organizations have spent trillions of dollars developing software and it's still buggy.  The gov't and/or one of it's contractors isn't going to do better...

This cyber stuff moves too fast for development the USAF way.  Look at the problems w/ the F35 software and that's a very specific set of design parameters.  Now imagine that for everyone's different set of desktop boxes and the USAF/DoD directing the fix.  We'd lose a few GDPs worth of cash w/ nothing to show.

 

We did this in medical with the electronic health record called AHLTA and it's widely despised.  The AF Surgeon General stated it was the John Deer tractor on the information super highway.  It has cost in excess of 4 billion and due to the way we have to program money to fix and update we can't keep up.  This was a DoD platform and it's now getting dumped (online since 2006ish) for a commercially contracted platform.

[matmacwc]

What is wrong? This....

https://www.wltx.com/mb/news/crime/shaw-air-force-colonel-charged-with-child-pornography/275993006

 

not even sure this is the right place to post, Shaw bubbas, words?

[Ram]

Holy shit, man. That sure explains the "loss of confidence" firing in February.

Innocent until proven guilty, of course.

[guineapigfury]

[mcbush]

"The Air Force is preparing to cut some of the extra duties active airmen are responsible for, said Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James during a July 26 speech in Washington.

The move is an attempt to unburden airmen and make their positions more desirable as the Air Force continues to struggle with staffing problems."

Air Force to Cut Extra Duties for Airmen

Is it possible that Chang and friends are seeing enough red on the spreadsheets that they're finally willing to listen?

[dream big]

5 hours ago, mcbush said:

"The Air Force is preparing to cut some of the extra duties active airmen are responsible for, said Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James during a July 26 speech in Washington.

The move is an attempt to unburden airmen and make their positions more desirable as the Air Force continues to struggle with staffing problems."

Air Force to Cut Extra Duties for Airmen

Is it possible that Chang and friends are seeing enough red on the spreadsheets that they're finally willing to listen?

We are already seeing this at the squadron level.  Our DO asked each shop to rank order our additional duties.  They are going to rack and stack them and just make a cut off, below which additional duties will no longer be done and the commander will accept the risk.

There is absolutely zero reason for a young LT/wingman/copilot to be worried about equipment manager, building custodian, records custodian, whatever bullshit additional duty in place of being the best aviator they can be.  That's LRS/CE/FSS/etc's job.  Mission first.

[billy pilgrim]

I hope so.  Can we please kill MICT while we're at it?

[BFM this]

We are already seeing this at the squadron level.  Our DO asked each shop to rank order our additional duties.  They are going to rack and stack them and just make a cut off, below which additional duties will no longer be done and the commander will accept the risk.

There is absolutely zero reason for a young LT/wingman/copilot to be worried about equipment manager, building custodian, records custodian, whatever bullshit additional duty in place of being the best aviator they can be.  That's LRS/CE/FSS/etc's job.  Mission first.

There's still a lot of commanders out there with the anachronistic mindset that no matter how under-resourced, everything will get done.

Ok, but you're paying the cost out of somewhere, even if you refuse to acknowledge or quantify that cost. Typically it's on the backs of Airmen (creative leave policies, long days, the list goes on). But hey, MY SQ/GP/WG got everything done, that's what really matters.

[Sprkt69]

36 minutes ago, BFM this said:

There's still a lot of commanders out there with the anachronistic mindset that no matter how under-resourced, everything will get done.

Ok, but you're paying the cost out of somewhere, even if you refuse to acknowledge or quantify that cost. Typically it's on the backs of Airmen (creative leave policies, long days, the list goes on). But hey, MY SQ/GP/WG got everything done, that's what really matters.

I have not seen any CC's that were looking to be somebody care if they drove the squadron into the ground, as long as they look good to their rater.

[Learjetter]

Everything old is new again. We went thru this "list your additional duties so we can kill them" drill at least twice since the early 90s. I don't want to be a killjoy, and it's SECAF championing this, this time...BUT:

1) many addl duties are mandated by law (records custodian, voting officer, golden flow guy/gal, etc)

2) some we do because we operators need to do it because no one else understands our programs well enough, or because we want our young guys learning those things (pubs officer, selo, training flight, tactics squab, etc)

3) we did this before...shifted addl duties to the squadron civilians where we could...ISYN, I typed an appointment letter assigning 22 (22!) Addl duties to one civ.

Good luck. I hope it takes this time...and Congress gives the AF relief from the mandatory non mission value added duties.

LJ

[HU&W]

1.  Bring back the orderly room AFSC.  And it needs to be an AFSC, not an additional duty for some other afsc.

2.  Train the folks in that AFSC on the basics of ALL common unit additional duties and admin support.  Ops addl duties like stan eval, weapons, etc would obviously stay with the guys doing it.  Same with mx specific addl duties, along with other squadrons where it relates to the primary duty.

3.  Staff EVERY unit with a 3-6 person orderly room.

4.  Profit.