Leaderboard

I'm willing to give fingers the benefit of the doubt on the whole attempting to acknowledge the socioeconomic and cultural reasons why the pilot corps is predominantly white, but man the follow-through needs some serious work. It's incredibly condescending to suggest minorities don't pursue pilot work and/or thrive in said training environment because the demographics are white washed. Ask me how I know. Segregation is categorically not the answer. The problem is that the suggestion itself is indicative of the very tone deafness he accuses the Service of having in the first place. The fucking irony. Tweaking standards is nothing new. Actually segregating classes though, that reaches a whole new level of FUBAR, in 2018 no less. What strange times we live in. What blows my skull is that all of it fundamentally stems from not wanting to give 13-year O-4s some measure of QOL control. That level of visceral recalcitrance against ceding even an RCH on the one-sided nature of military indentured servitude is why this won't ever be solved by so-called leadership. They almost rather lose a war than ever catch themselves negotiating with their 'human property'. In a way I understand the civilian trope about military membership being cannon fodder and "it was this or Walmart" economic draftee dynamics, as a collective. With the level of treatment we get out of management when it comes to non-economic retention measures, can we really say civilians have it wrong? Don't get me started on the UCMJ in garrison in a military with 1069% more women than when they wrote the god damn thing. Fact is, only a peer war will rip these derelicts off the helm.

Not quite accurate. They are fixing the retention problem by increasing production. This "crisis" will have to be grown out of, instead of trying to convince those with a foot out the door to stay. The current crop of 10+ year officers has lost faith in the Air Force and are not going to be tempted by money or promised QoL fixes. We witnessed masters degree requirements become masked then unmasked, PT test failures treated like DUIs, Majors not offered continuation, pilots denied VSP and palace chase only to be RIF'd. The promises of "this time, it's different" ring hollow. But the QoL stuff matters more than ever. Class of 2018 is going to remember that senior pilot who spent his last year of service making Power Points in Afghanistan. Trying 6 computers to find one that leaveweb works on, or having the mission manager email the flight plan to your cell phone because none of the damn printers work. I expect these things to get better, because we are throwing money and people at them. If it doesn't work, you'll see that in the retention rates 10 years from now. Though the cynic in me see the increase in production as a way to enable the "run out the clock" strategy as someone else so eloquently put. Fingers will spend his entire term fixing the problems of his predecessors. Will his successor move us forward, or be another McPeak or Schwartz. Will the surge classes of 2018, 19 and 20 see RIF, VSP, and TERA again as airline hiring wanes. It feels like we're in the one step forward phase right before we take two steps back.

Well in Hercs there's someone to get your ATIS.

"grouping minority pilot trainees together at flight school" uhh, what? I thought Truman nixed that idea back in 1948.

I taught your mom all about apotheosis.

I'll take the contractors.

I give it a solid well below slightly above average.

My ANG timeline: Hire - Sep 16 FC1/WP - Jan 17 Enlist - Feb 17 TFOT - Sep 17 UPT - Apr 18 (after a 6-week delay from T-6 ops pause) I think this timeline is pretty typical for ANG. All of my bros who are applying, I tell them to be prepared for the wait. Have a source of income lined up

So... 5th gen F-111F then?

SOP in the acquisition world. Get your foot in the door and watch cost/schedule grow while performance goes down. ATIS

Indeed, and I'm certainly not advocating affirmative action is the solution to the "now" problem. And the whole canard of re-segregating races in training is an absolutely boneheaded and tone deaf utterance from the CSAF. I still can't believe they let such a tired ethnocentric utterance out as an official statement. My only point was to disprove the notion that there's an anti-Anglo conspiracy behind the Air Force's present inelasticity wrt addressing non-economic retention metrics. This is easily illustrated imo, by the fact the USAF has always been this inelastic in addressing QOL metrics for the 12-13 year O-4, along with those without ADSC balances. Particularly in a world that used to be even more white than today mind you. Thence, no conspiracy, just dereliction of duty by our so-called leaders. What I want to avoid is giving credence to the production problem in the first place. I don't subscribe to that. I do not believe in the production problem narrative. I believe there's only a retention problem.

The airline business model is completely different than in previous downturns (then: market share, today: revenue generation). Future downturns will have less severe impact on the airlines, as efficiencies today (and profits) and retirements tomorrow will pad a softer landing (more likely to slow hiring than produce furloughs).

I think you're off target insinuating the retention problem is being purposely fostered in order to de-throne white nativism from white collar pay grades. Take a paper bag, breathe into it, and internalize viewing "American" identity from the prism of that anachronistic 1943 Norman Rockwell portrait may be your formative experience, but no longer represents the experience of the American Street by and large. By mid 21st century, Hispanics (Mexican Americans specifically, which does not equate to all Hispanics mind you) will be the majority of the USA. It is what it is. The sun will rise tomorrow. No need for the swan song. Second, you're conflating issues here. There is NO production problem. Don't buy into that narrative. There's only a retention problem. What should put you at ease that they're not merely trying to run your white ass out of town, is that this retention problem has existed before, when there were even less non-whites in the pilot ranks. Historically, management has always banked on "run the clock offense" in order to solve it. That being, economic hiccups that stop airline hiring have always yielded those loud-mouth military separatees to crawl back to Uncle Sugar's teet when the airlines unapologetically give them the F-word treatment the morning after the economic crash. The problem here is that in 2013, this is no longer the historic case. Specifically, the boomer retirement numbers, plus the post-BK and targeted consolidation of airline capacity (and rocketing load factors) by the remaining airlines has made a one-two punch that promises to last too long for the DOD to be able to effectively rely on 'run the clock offense' in order to solve this iteration of the same retention problem of yesteryear. As a result, they're flailing publicly. Instead of being leaders and having the stones to publicly acknowledge the problems that make the 2013+ exodus different, they coward like the derelicts they are and create the fallacious "production problem" narrative, breaking AETC's back in the process, especially when you consider the absolute zero chance of the T-X being fielded in time to make a difference. That's it man. Two different issues. No conspiracy theories here. You want to focus on the first one? Have at it hoss, but it's got zero to do with the second one. The airlines have had that issue forever too (read late 80s affirmative action hires at US legacies, military females included at the time mind you) so this theory isn't unique to the military. Don't be this guy if you can help it...

So basically like navy UPT? Assigned a class for admin purposes, but practically you were a class of 1 when it came to scheduling? Gotta get rid of formal brief, stand-up EPs would be interesting to get a group for (are the group's based on last event completed?), and formal release wouldn't make sense either. Not to mention that track select and assignments get weird: "You did great, but no 38s this week, sorry, needs of the AF..."

Dibs on the "Puerto-Rican/Italian married to an Asian" flight commander job.

And one of the ideas is to essentially re-segregate minorities into their own classes?? Truly unbelievable.

Joke's on you, parachutes removed for fuel savings...

We received a briefing this morning on this, and I think it did a lot to dispel some of the complaints voiced in this thread. For the last month, an OT&E team has been flying sorties breathing ambient air and undergoing endless medical analysis before and after each flight, NASA has been involved sampling cockpit and mask air quality, and maintenance has been tearing down OBOGS to try and find a source of the issue. Below are some of the highlights from that briefing. 1) Only TCTO compliant aircraft will be flown with OBOGS operational as normal. Breathing cockpit air was not approved by AETC nor recommended by the OT&E team. To answer those who wondered why this was such a big deal when other aircraft fly unpressurized without oxygen, it is an FAA airworthiness certificate issue. Without the OBOGS, the T-6 would not be considered airworthy by the FAA without an amendment. 2) The TCTOs are a "millimeter by millimeter" (their words) inspection of the OBOGS from the engine air inlet all the way to the mask. It replaces parts to make the system as close to factory new as possible. 3) This is not the end. No causal factor was found, but the OT&E unanimously agreed that returning the OBOGS to a factory new state made them comfortable flying the jet. Flying is still volunteer only at PIT. 4) The top six of the T-6 SPO were fired due to mismanagement of the program and a fly-to-fail mentality. The zeolite bed maintenance interval has been aggressively reduced from 4,500 to 700 hours, and the new SPO is re-evaluating other fly-to-fail parts on the T-6 to possibly set replacement intervals. 19 AF is also using this debacle to highlight the ISS and EFIS issues. 5) The future: The team considers this only the beginning and are still trying to drill down to a single cause. From what the briefer said though, the OBOGS on all of the jets inspected were absolutely horrendous (kinked lines, valves stuck in the open position, evidence of water in the lines, general dirt and gunk, etc), and 79% failed the inspection, so there might not be one silver bullet. The incident T-6s are all still impounded, but an Edwards AFB test team will begin inspecting those independently and in parallel so the two teams can compare notes. Honestly, I was pretty impressed with what the team has been doing this last month. There were a lot of really smart people helping with this, to include a NASA test engineer who has made a career out of OBOGS issues. It also received visibility all the way up to the VPOTUS. My biggest misgiving is that they never found a single causal factor, but I am not surprised given the fact that the entire system was basically never inspected since the plane left the factory. I think the 19 AF initially fumbled at the beginning of this grounding a month ago, but since then a lot of good things have happened to make up for it.

I keep finding uses for this...

Welcome to Baseops, random guy who just happens to use his second post to defend AETC.

Yes yes yes, but flying ability aside, does their mere existence help turn manning PowerPoint slides green? Or maybe yellow at least? We need to focus on what's important here.

Eloquent af my friend. THAT is bullet number one for every one of us who couldn’t say WHY in enough different way as we ran for the door. You’re a mind reader.