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True. My bet is they put all of them in a single consolidated CSS to maximize efficiency and unity of effort. They'll probably locate the consolidated CSS in San Antonio.

I don't think the plywood shack I made and lived in for months in Afghanistan met fire code either, but big blue didn't seem to have a problem with it.

So the draft outline for the script for Top Gun 2 has leaked (probably Trump and/or Russians. Same thing, right?): "TOP GUN 2: This Time It's Non-Gender Specific" Having been caught up in the 'Fat Leonard' supply scandal, former Rear Admiral, now Captain Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell is given his final assignment as the Commanding Officer, Naval Fighter Weapons School, Miramar Naval Air Station, California. Having been the number two graduate of his class in 1986, 'Maverick's' has unique insight into what the daring young aviators have to face in flying their high-performance, stomach-churning aerial chargers in modern air combat. SCENE 1: 'Maverick' is shown being given a ticket by the Shore Patrol after he was caught driving his Lexus on the flight line road trying to keep up with an F-18 doing touch-and-goes, exceeding the station's 25 mph speed limit by nearly 8 mph. SCENE 2: 'Maverick' puts the auditorium at ease to welcome the Class of 2017B. The roster includes three women, a two-dude married couple, one undeclared person, and four heterosexual men; one black, one Hispanic, one Asian, one White. "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Top Gun. I am Captain Maverick Mitchell and I want...yes? What is it, lieutenant?" "Sir, you only welcomed the ladies - which is a very patriarchacal thing to do - and the men - which just demonstrates their historic privilege. But you didn't include the zir. I am offended and have uploaded your comments to youtube. I assume I will be receiving an apology from the Department of the Navy and you after the press conference with Gloria Allred?" SCENE 3: Operations Officer Holly 'Diaper' Nowak briefing the class for a mission: "Today, you are scheduled for a 4v4 DACT - Hornets against the 3rd generation contract air. Unfortunately, the MC rate won't support it, so "Snowflake" and "Cis-G" you two will go fly a BFM. The rest of you can knock out some of your CBTs." SCENE 4: Having sweated their way through the CBTs, the 2017B class makes its way over to the Miramar All-Ranks Club where the SARC and Alcohol Prevention offices check their IDs at the door, carefully noting their data, and placing their CAC cards in the file to be retrieved on the way out, after the mandatory breathalyzer and room sweep checking for sexual assault victims. Finally making their way to the near-empty bar, as the Isley Brothers "You've lost that lovin' feelin'" begins to blare from the speakers, the four heterosexual men are accosted by the irate school instructor that looks remarkably like Kelly McGillis. But not the hot, wild-haired Kelly. No this the haggish, yet with an Adam's apple, Kelly who instantly begins to berate them for building the modern world. SCENE 5: Meanwhile, in an unnamed Middle Eastern country, the despot that rules that arid, worthless land gases and kills his citizens. Despite it having absolutely no strategic value to the United States, the President, fully backed by the hawks in Congress dependent upon the defense contractors in their districts, sends a short-manned carrier battle group to the region. Why it's short-manned, especially in pilots, is never questioned. Class 2017B receives its orders to man, er, person-up the carrier's flight department despite not having worked up or being current in carrier operations. Stepping into their F-35Cs, they find out that "this helmet is too heavy." This ejection seat is "too tall." But this all-seeing, all-knowing fighter is "just right." Flying an Alpha strike (not your father's Vietnam Alpha strike of 50 jets), this one has four F-35s and two UCAVs, our class of heroes flies into the double-digit SAM rings where they all synch their Blueteeth to some Starbuck's selected folk-rock tunes and proceed to ISR the hell out of the dirt. They return to the boat, all take the three wire, shut down. And hand in their separation papers since they each got a call from major airline. AND CUT...

I got hired by a fighter unit recently--my dream for as long as I can remember. I visited the unit prior to applying and showed genuine interest in the unit, the area, the current pilots' histories and end goals, etc. I was social, but drank without making an ass out of myself. I'm a happy dude, so drinking and hanging out with people who are very accomplished at something I've cared about being successful at my entire life was awesome. I didn't kiss ass, and I wasn't a dick to the other guys interviewing/rushing. As far as the interview goes, I'm pretty sure I gave some good answers because I got some laughs and some nods, but I think it all came down to showing them who you are and what your approach to getting through pilot training is. They want your answer, so don't try to be someone you're not or someone you think they want. Use good judgment, STFU, and all that stuff you've heard before. Getting the phone call was awesome! Getting hired is by far the greatest accomplishment of my life. I'm incredibly honored that a bunch of awesome guys got together and said "Yeah, we like this guy enough to include him in our inner circle. We think he comes from good stock, we think he can go the distance, and he just fits in with who/what we are." With all that said, I'm still blown away that I have the opportunity to pursue my dream job, but now I've switched my focus to kicking ass during training and getting through the pipeline as quickly as possible so I can be useful to my unit. Anyway, sorry for the long read, but I hope it gives you guys/gals something to look forward to. Stay positive, and feel free to PM me so we don't further derail the thread.

C for effort. I'm just not convinced 0.8 bodies per squadron will do much.

After almost 17 years active, I mostly drink in my house. But still flip flop on the questionnaire from flight medicine on whether I drink or not. I don't drink at any squadron functions. If I drink out with my old lady, her teen comes to pick us up.

Yep, it's identical.

Azimuth, you everyone beer for posting that picture. Good riddance! You might as well have posted a picture of this guy. (DISCLAIMER: If you were in the 41 AS in the 2008-2009 time frame, don't click that link, you already know who it is.) FF

Guys guess what we fixed the problem... in several years... no seriously we mean it... please don't go...

Goldfien is an idiot. And so is the AF if MX, MSG, SF, etc get any of the top 15% of the wing king strats. What is the AF thinking? Break 11x's into their own promotion category. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network Forums

I wonder if upper management realizes that almost any new "policy" they dream up to help retain people will be instantly discounted due to their lack of integrity in past dealings. I think it will probably be close to a decade (only with improved treatment and showing they can actually do what they say) before any of these policies positively affect retention. They require 24 months TOS upon re-deployment and then 36 prior to PCS, sounds like a back door way to get an extra year. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Couple of thoughts on the above: 1. The "minor league" mentality should never get off the ground. Associating "big league" with big threat and "minor league" to permissive is not helpful or correct IMHO. Any platform closely integrating with ground forces and dropping weapons is, to me, big league by definition. Not sure why in the author's construct a new OA-X pilot would be mission qual'd and killing bad guys downrange after 12 months when T-1 track pilots for non-lethal platforms and FAIPs would continue to take longer to produce. Perhaps the author envisions greatly shortening UPT/IQT/MQT for all non-4th gen/5th gen fighter platforms? 2. The author mentions, of a potential OA-X platform, that, "...its small size and off the shelf procurement could leave little room in the airframe to add new capability without removing existing pieces." I will say that for one competitor in particular this couldn't be further from the truth. By design it is modular and has a TON of room for growt in both the airframes capacity to carry new toys as well as the overall mission systems architecture. This is at least somewhat true for all four of the competitors, to an extent that I'm not sure the author correctly acknowledges. 3. Directly chopping an OA-X squadron to an ASOS isn't a great concept IMHO, even as a guy who greatly appreciates the value of building personal relationships with the ground teams you are supporting. The army uses and abuses the air that it "owns," and I still believe the USAF is independent for a reason, even for a ground attack platform. 4. I always lol at the concept that the AF considers something a "niche" capability if it is permissive-only, and the author seems to agree. What % of all combat has been done in a high- or even medium- threat environment since Vietnam? Even there you had plenty of permissive-only-type platforms doing great work. Not that it'll never happen again, but after 30+ years of fighting this way I'd call the need to provide air-to-ground kinetic effects in a permissive environment enough of a trend that we can allow communities and platforms to specialize in that with no shame or "minor league" mentality. Overall good conversations to be had, thanks for sharing Clark. FWIW the upcoming competition is now branded as LAE, light attack experiment.

Maybe I'm just trying to rationalize here but generally, in the RPA world, passed over O-4s become perma line flying IP/EP/Top 3 with generally fewer additional duties. To me it seems pretty close to the professional pilot path a lot of us have been longing for. While I will greatly miss the chance to command my own squadron, I for one look forward to not having to play the Air Force's "you should do X if you eventually want to have a chance at doing Y" games anymore.

And there's that problem that DOPMA creates: if you want to keep people in, you have to promote them. But, militarily speaking, O-5s shouldn't be instructing future IPs...they should be providing their experience on a staff so that everything from personnel policy to logistics to operations don't continue to get screwed up. But, your most experienced fliers are Lt Cols, so you have to use their experience as rated instructors instead of in a staff billet to take advantage of their operational knowledge to make the Air Force better. So, you put some non-rated guy (like me) in there who has no idea how to manage rated manpower, or how to plan an air campaign, and you get what we currently have.

Best of both worlds! A couple of my friends did that and it worked out fine.

Yep that's the site I use. I think it's the only place to get your PCSM. I don't remember entering my initials when I took the test either but maybe I just forgot about it.

The vast majority of rated O-5s not picked up for command are not going to staff. For example, there's a reason why PIT is full of O-5 non-commanders...

My wife changes her mind daily about whether or not she's coming... Lately she's been saying she wants to arrive "halfway" through... So count yourselves lucky.

I wondered that too, but every time I resubmitted with updated hours they were right on "projection" scale.

I've always wondered: Is it exactly identical to the "projected" score you see when you pull your PCSM result?

That's good to know. I want to update my hours to as recent as possible before I submit my packet so I'm glad to hear it's not a drawn out process (like some things seem to be in the military).

I retook it at the beginning of this month and my score was available the next day. They've also updated my score within 1 or 2 days every time I've submitted flight hour updates. The PCSM office is really fast.

Guzowskienator, you get your PCSM score yet? I know you said you took the TBAS a few days ago. I'm interested as to how long it takes to get a score back.

Another idea for OA-X https://warontherocks.com/2017/05/field-of-dreams Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I thought the circus closed down. The AF has made it well known the circus is still alive and well. Support is the clown show and pilots are those rare white tigers living in s#&ty conditions.

Ouch! Well done hanging tough through that!

Come fly with us...we'll even let your drive the car. Tilted Media

C-130s: They are shoved in a hole at wing staff or HHQ staff, their experience and knowledge going to waste, while the only IPs/EPs in the squadron are also Flight Commanders, mission commanders and tasked so heavily with non flying related queep that they maybe actually instruct once or twice a month.

I think the mods should move this to the WTF thread. At least everyone at Boeing has the option to quit, and Rhat can't fire them without cause.

My old boss made it. I'm sure he was really concerned as he was in the middle of Southwest 737 training...

Yet again more evidence promotions should be separated by AFSC types.

For the love of......don't take it!

I'm kind of in the same boat and my spouse will be staying at our current home. I need to try and save as much money as possible so I really don't want to use my whole BAH to live in a dorm... Does anyone have any recent experience on what is allowed or not? My current plan is to buy an RV and find an RV park close to base.

For any reasonably intelligent aviator sitting on the fence this should tell you ALL you need to know. Get. Out. NOW!

Data point: 11M, patch, 11 years in ops squadrons, 1000+ combat hours, clean record, highly effective instructor, NATO staff.....not selected. Any doubts on what the USAF values?

Tom Cruise confirms ‘Top Gun 2’ is happening https://www.google.com/amp/nypost.com/2017/05/23/tom-cruise-confirms-top-gun-2-is-happening/amp/ If it wasn't for Top Gun, Wings on the History Channel, and the Janes Combat Simulations - ATF video game, I would not be here.

Sir/Ma'am, Thank you for your concern. AFI 13-6969 only directs us to look at x, y, and z when determining continuation. The AFI doesn't direct us to look at AFSC when determining continuation, therefore we do not. Given the complex nature of continuation, it would be unrealistic to expect perfection. May I suggest you refer your concerns about the AFI to it's OPR? You can find that information on the cover page of AFI 13-6969. R/S, SrA Shoeclerk McDilligaf

I miss that guy Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Speaking of quitters, I wonder what Rainmans take would be.

Ah, the dreaded 24 wheel landing.

Hell no. Just speaking in general terms that I take care of everyone. This is why the AF is in trouble.

The 15 year retirement for pilots won't happen, for one reason. The shoes would lose their minds. There would be mass whining. The Air Force is committed to treating to valuing us all the same, which is why folks are leaving where they are valued more.

That actually isn't a terrible idea. Its the first time I've said to myself "yeah, I'd consider staying in for that" in a while

Cross posted... I think they should get rid of the bonus at the end of UPT ADSC. Instead they should enact a rule that allows pilots to fully retire after 15 years (basically 3 years after UPT ADSC expires) I'd give 3 more years to get a full retirement. 8 no, but 3 would make people think. Puts a typical dude at age 38 when they get out with a full retirement. Bet the "take rate" doubles... It would at least buy them some time.

Some people in AF are biased as hell. There will always be a cool kids club in the AF. Bros taking care of bros. I take care of everyone, especially the dudes people tend to kick to the curb because they might be strange. Don't beat yourself up when people claiming to be leaders, ultimately failed you.

I wouldn't stipulate only volunteering gets you CGO strats and awards. You are misleading some of the younger guys here. I've seen people who do not volunteer but have received those awards and strats as SOFs. You are are making decisions on the behalf of the OG/CC as a SOF. Does volunteering at a soup kitchen sound better on a package? Or landing all the aircraft in the pattern and clearing the runway for the arrival of an IFE aircraft with the OG/CC on board?

17-11 4 x B-52 WSO 1 x B-52 EWO 2 x RC-135 Nav 4 x RC-135 EWO 1 x AC-130W CSO Cannon 1 x AC-130J CSO (only the second time this has dropped, other was 17-01) 4 x F-15E WSO 1 x B-1 WSO 2 x LC-130 Nav NY Guard 1 x MC-12 CSO OK Guard 1 x HC-130J CSO AK Guard

Hasn't happened in a while and probably won't again for the foreseeable future.