Promotion and PRF Information

[pawnman]

Dude, I'm in the same boat, but really do you think #enemy killed, etc, really tells the board whether you are able to command at the next level? Lt-mid-level captain, those are good bullets. Above that, you need to demonstrate that you can coordinate the killing of a-holes. And believe me, as a dude with 10 AMs, I really wish they would carry me on the promotion board, but being a "leader" these days requires more than just putting bombs on target. I say that half-sarcastically, but at the same time, you know most of your bros have the same exact stats, so if you were in charge, how would you choose your promotion rates/leaders? Honest question...

This was off the OPR, not the PRF. Although it does depress me that carrying out the primary mission of our branch is considered "lesser" than planning parties, getting DG at SOS, or watching over airmen botching travel vouchers.

Edited February 7, 2015 by pawnman

[Danny Noonin]

This was off the OPR, not the PRF. Although it does depress me that carrying out the primary mission of our branch is considered "lesser" than planning parties, getting DG at SOS, or watching over airmen botching travel vouchers.

You're missing the point. # of bombs dropped, pounds of gas given, pallets of rubber dog shit delivered is great stuff....but it isn't generally unique in this day and age. It tells me more about what you did than it does about how well you did it. It is also all stuff that can and is done primarily by captains.

So what is it about people that shows how well they can do as a major or lt col? Those ranks should be increasingly about being in charge of teams, projects, issues, etc. not just as recognition that you were assigned and completed tactical missions as a captain. Plenty of clowns have the same statistics.

I don't know where all this party planning crap comes from with you guys, as I've never seen that shit on an OPR (except maybe a lieutenant) and never put it on a PRF. But success leading teams and projects is relevant to the question at hand--is this guy capable of leading at the next rank. If a guy has never done any of that, then how would we know? I think we've all seen dudes who were awesome pilots and bros grow up to be shitty bosses. Showing experience and success with smaller scale leadership tasks at least indicates something about potential for success with medium to larger scale leadership tasks. And I'm not talking about leading a crew or formation. That's a totally different ballgame and tough if not impossible to convey on paper anyway.

Air Medal-type data generally tells a board little about your true potential, other than that you have a foundation of combat experience that is very critical toward developing an officer, but again it's generally not unique and therefore doesn't set you apart. So ideally an OPR or PRF will highlight combat experience and achievements to make a point, but if that's all you got, then you probably haven't made a convincing case that you can successfully lead teams, think and act strategically, etc. Because either you haven't done it, or you chose not to include it because it was "lesser" or not important. If you just load up on combat stats, then you are essentially beating a dead horse. Deployed a lot. Was in combat a lot. Got it. Good stuff, but point made. What else?

That's why good OPR and PRF writers try to include the "lesser" stuff. It shows breadth and depth. It helps tell the story of why you'll be a good major, lt col, or col rather than just a glorified captain.

Edited February 7, 2015 by Danny Noonin

[Warrior]

Words.

This guy knows what he's talking about.

[Karl Hungus]

Words

All good points. I'd argue that we try to identify our future leaders way too early, which results in the "leading teams and projects" arms race we see.

How many opportunities has Pawnman, as a 12B (I think), had to lead teams and projects as compared to a security forces 2Lt, a finance Capt, and a contracting 1Lt? Is that a bad thing? How long was his FTU? How long was theirs? How many deployments has he been on? How many have they?

I haven't heard a valid argument for why we don't separate career field management by AFSCs, other than the AF is lazy and we're all "officers first", or something.

Successful organizations provide the incentives (financial and QOL) necessary to retain talent to eventually assume leadership positions. Is active duty AF doing that? Based on how many "bright and shiny pennies" (read: IDE selects) I've seen who are turning down IDE and separating for greener pastures, I have my doubts.

[Danny Noonin]

All good points. I'd argue that we try to identify our future leaders way too early, which results in the "leading teams and projects" arms race we see.

I agree for the most part. I think we put people on the express train to colonel too early (IDE list). But I still think it matters to develop leaders and the associated skills for the O-4 and O-5 level. You learn by doing. Otherwise, just keep being a captain for the rest of your life.

[Danny Noonin]

How many opportunities has Pawnman, as a 12B (I think), had to lead teams and projects as compared to a security forces 2Lt, a finance Capt, and a contracting 1Lt? Is that a bad thing? How long was his FTU? How long was theirs? How many deployments has he been on? How many have they?

Are cops, finance and contracting dudes getting promoted at some ridiculously high rate? Nope. Is Pawnman qualified (or would he want) to go be a security forces, finance or contracting squadron commander? Probably not. So I guess I don't get your point.

Gumshoes aren't out stealing promotion opportunities away from rated guys, despite what many think. Just look at the promotion stats. We need some of them to get promoted too and we don't exactly have a glut of them at the O-5 level. And as for your deployment rate comment, If you haven't heard, cops are among the most deployed career fields out there, and they don't always go to an island or the west coast of the gulf when they do. But they are sometimes going out into Afghan villages and wearing body armor. So should they get promoted at higher rates because of that? You know what career field deploys at a 1:1 right now? Not bomber guys. FSS officers. Yeah, that surprised the shit out of me too, but there aren't that many of them and they do glamorous work like casualty affairs. So should they get extra credit for deploying at a higher rate than 12Bs in your mind? I would say no. Because deployment rate, in and of itself, is an irrelevant statistic to use and tells me absolutely nothing about your quality and potential. Be careful what you wish for if you think stuff like that should be the discriminator.

Edited February 7, 2015 by Danny Noonin

[daynightindicator]

Danny and Karl, I agree with nearly all of your points but I would point out a few areas where I disagree or have other thoughts. I'm short on time so this might be a little disjointed.

- B-1s are actually on a 1:1 right now (first sq just got back from theirs). This is temporary and partially due to some intra-community logistics, but the bottom line is a good portion of the B-1 ops crews either have done or will do a 1:1 within the next year or so. I do understand your basic point that other career fields have a higher tempo.

- This will sound very egotistical, but I do think that most rated dudes could transition easily to most non-rated fields and perform well. The same can't be said in reverse. After all, we don't send Finance B-Course washouts to UPT, but we do it the other way around. That right there says something about the difficulty level of the career fields. I'm not shitting on non-rated officers here - we all know some fantastic leaders outside of the ops world - but to say that a pilot/nav would not be "qualified" to go lead a SFS or FSS is, IMHO, not true.

- Why don't we have a career field for execs? Either make it an AFSC or hire a GS civ. The outside world has executive and personal assistants, so why not let people who WANT to do that job do it? A friend of mine finished her duty in the AF (4 year ROTC commitment, non-rated) as an OG exec. She loved it. She was good at it. Why not just offer people the opportunity to do it as a real job and stop taking dudes who would be better used flying and training others to fly?

- Although it might be difficult to explain or document flight/mission lead duties, we need to do a better job of capturing that performance. Being a mission commander at Red Flag, or especially in a real-world op, IS leadership. When done well it demonstrates exceptional decision-making abilities and highlights other characteristics we want to develop in our future leaders. That type of thing should absolutely be OPR/PRF material and should be right up there with leading a section, shop, or support squadron.

Gotta run but I'll write more later. This is a good discussion.

Edited due to double post.

Edited February 7, 2015 by daynightindicator

[Karl Hungus]

Are cops, finance and contracting dudes getting promoted at some ridiculously high rate? Nope. Is Pawnman qualified (or would he want) to go be a security forces, finance or contracting squadron commander? Probably not. So I guess I don't get your point.

Gumshoes aren't out stealing promotion opportunities away from rated guys, despite what many think. We need some of them to get promoted too and we don't exactly have a glut of them at the O-5 level. And as for your deployment rate comment, If you haven't heard, cops are among the most deployed career fields out there, and they don't always go to Diego or Guam or the west coast of the gulf when they do. But they are sometimes going out into Afghan villages and wearing body armor. So should they get promoted at higher rates because of that? You know what career field deploys at a 1:1 right now? Not bomber guys. FSS officers. Yeah, that surprised the shit out of me too. So should they get extra credit for deploying at a higher rate than 12Bs in your mind? No. Because deployment rate, in and of itself, is an irrelevant statistic to use. Be careful what you wish for if you think stuff like that should be the discriminator.

I never said one AFSC was "stealing" promotion opportunities away from another. I never said that deployments should be used to determine promotion. I said that the fact that we treat all AFSCs as equal, and compare them to each other for promotion, is ridiculous, and we need to let each AFSC determine what matters on their own. Having to sanitize your OPRs because some O-6 from another career field might not understand them, or because they don't translate well when you compare yourself to a polar opposite career field, is dumb. It's dumb for the security forces guy who doesn't have bullets about dropping bombs when he's got a 1:1 dwell time to some shithole in Afghanistan. It's dumb for the PA chick who doesn't even have the chance to deploy, but has been interfacing with O-10s since she was a 2Lt. And it's dumb for the 11F who wasn't fully mission qualified until he was almost an O-3.

Again... if one particular community, such as security forces, values deployments, then let them use that as a discriminator for promotion... within their community. You're not promoting a security forces O-3 to take over a flying squadron as an O-4. Just like you're not promoting a 12B O-3 to take over a security forces squadron as an O-4... and if we are, we're already fucked.

If there aren't enough security forces O-5s, then change what matters for promotion within the security forces community- or throw more money at them. Everyone has a price.

Career captains? Perhaps that's a good thing. But you'll have to provide them an increased QOL or pay to keep them. Good luck.

[ThreeHoler]

- Why don't we have a career field for execs? Either make it an AFSC or hire a GS civ. The outside world has executive and personal assistants, so why not let people who WANT to do that job do it? A friend of mine finished her duty in the AF (4 year ROTC commitment, non-rated) as an OG exec. She loved it. She was good at it. Why not just offer people the opportunity to do it as a real job and stop taking dudes who would be better used flying and training others to fly?

We used to do this. Squadrons and above had non-rated execs. Guess what? The CC still had a "flying exec" pool who worked right next to the non-rated exec.

Nothing new under the sun.

[17D_guy]

- Why don't we have a career field for execs? Either make it an AFSC or hire a GS civ. The outside world has executive and personal assistants, so why not let people who WANT to do that job do it? A friend of mine finished her duty in the AF (4 year ROTC commitment, non-rated) as an OG exec. She loved it. She was good at it. Why not just offer people the opportunity to do it as a real job and stop taking dudes who would be better used flying and training others to fly?

Probably going to get burned for this but...

All the senior officers that I've talked to about their exec time, usually me mockingly, have valued it highly in learning about the way things are at a higher level. It built perspective and a greater understanding for them when going forth. If you don't want to be an exec, I get it. I don't. But, and granted this depends on the O's you're exec'ing for, the time spent with a senior leader can be a very good teaching/learning opportunity. I got to spend some time with USAFE/CC and his exec and/or aide de camp on trips. He would often ask them for their opinions on topics and ways ahead. They talked a lot.

That's another way to think about it as well. Some senior O6 on up w/ a hopefully fresh from the line Capt filling him in on what life's like in the Sq's. If it's a good senior O then that's a two way street of information and experience and can be invaluable.

[Gravedigger]

Some good points being made here. I fully support separating promotions by career field. It really wouldn't be difficult for the Air Force to allocate school/promotion slots to AFSCs based on current and projected manning. Then, you could have MLR-type boards for each AFSC. Bring the senior O-6/O-7 types together for a few days and have them provide their selection list to HAF. As mentioned before, this would allow each community to promote based on what they value and OPRs could actually be written to capture career-field specific achievement. In the developmental engineer world, acquisitions classes and AADs would be discriminators; things that are (should be) irrelevant to flyers. Instructor/evaluator/upgrades don't even really exist outside of ops, but are very important in demonstrating ability and potential. I think it needs to be by AFSC, because even within ops, the Air Force operates in three distinct domains that really don't align at all. Space ops is as different from air ops as it is naval or land ops. Same with cyber, SOF, etc. The Navy construct wouldn't work because of how diverse our ops community is.

Edited February 8, 2015 by Gravedigger

[Guest ThatGuy]

People are being notified about their promotions today. That's the word through the grapevine.

[WeatherManC130]

People are being notified about their promotions today. That's the word through the grapevine.

Friends already posting on Facebook.

[ThreeHoler]

Official release is tomorrow. Notifications today...but no one should be posting on FB yet.

[Guest ThatGuy]

I was selected. Got the call from my CC awhile ago! Thanks for all the advice guys.

Edited February 10, 2015 by slick999

[NUKE]

What is the average percentage of school selects for the majors board? Nominally 20%?

[matmacwc]

Go to the ANG if you want to be the fly the line officer type. I mean this in a good way, we need you.

[nrodgsxr]

What is the average percentage of school selects for the majors board? Nominally 20%?

Yes

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[pcola]

My squad had a dude get picked up APZ with a P. Great dude and definitely deserving, but I didn't think that was even possible. Perhaps looking at the earliest ramifications of the VSP flood gates?

[nrodgsxr]

My squad had a dude get picked up APZ with a P. Great dude and definitely deserving, but I didn't think that was even possible. Perhaps looking at the earliest ramifications of the VSP flood gates?

Did he do something amazing on his last OPR?

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Lord Ratner]

All the senior officers that I've talked to about their exec time, usually me mockingly, have valued it highly in learning about the way things are at a higher level. It built perspective and a greater understanding for them when going forth.

I don't disagree with that at all. However, I wonder if that added perspective is more valuable than leadership experience gained through running an organization (section, flight, detachment, etc) with a varied set of subordinates. From my perspective (which is limited), many of our "broadening" opportunities are different shades of administrative work, not so much leadership exercises.

As someone who does not naturally possess a leadership intuition, I don't think the pilots get nearly enough experience, especially considering they run most levels of the AF.

[Jughead]

Official release is tomorrow. Notifications today...but no one should be posting on FB yet.

How quaint.

[pawnman]

Probably going to get burned for this but...

All the senior officers that I've talked to about their exec time, usually me mockingly, have valued it highly in learning about the way things are at a higher level. It built perspective and a greater understanding for them when going forth. If you don't want to be an exec, I get it. I don't. But, and granted this depends on the O's you're exec'ing for, the time spent with a senior leader can be a very good teaching/learning opportunity. I got to spend some time with USAFE/CC and his exec and/or aide de camp on trips. He would often ask them for their opinions on topics and ways ahead. They talked a lot.

That's another way to think about it as well. Some senior O6 on up w/ a hopefully fresh from the line Capt filling him in on what life's like in the Sq's. If it's a good senior O then that's a two way street of information and experience and can be invaluable.

And even if it isn't a good leader, at least that captain now has a senior officer shepherding their career.

Guess we should take those aide-de-camp AFPC robot emails more seriously.

[Guest ThatGuy]

So ..... AF portal is down right now at the exact hour the list is supposed to be released. Yeah, I need you guys to come in early today. We expect the system to crash because of the sheer volume of people trying to check the promotion list.

Edited February 10, 2015 by slick999

[StrokerAce]

If this were results for SNCO, you couldn't make it to the AF Portal welcome screen without clicking past the splash page. Us lowly Colonel and Major selects can't even access the public release. Saying something isn't it?