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As an Air Force aviator, I enjoy the heritage of my service and that includes being a bag wearer. Thanks for your input; and have fun shitting in the woods in your OCP’s

Glue... Marines eat Crayons. We ate glue. And we don’t have any trouble telling who “the air force guys” are. Cmon guys it’s not like we can’t all pick each other out in a group with at least 3/5 accuracy. Hell I can about figure it out just by what watch when everybody is just wearing different colors of the same slack/polo combo. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Well thank you for your service soldier

So in summary, the USAF is CRITICALLY short of pilots and we are going to institute a flying only career path. HOWEVER, if you are a major who has completed all your squares but did not get the shinny penny DP (because why would they waste it on a fly only guy or girl), then your chance of promotion to Lt Col is only 41%. Choose wisely my friends.

Once I found out that it’s never the first or last circle I got much better at that test.

It’s based on the senior rater, not squadron. Most senior raters are Wing Commanders, sometimes Group Commanders. At MAJCOM level they are usually the respective A1/2/3 directors. 75 is normal for O-4 (before the 100% era) and 50-55 for O-5. Senior raters get DPs based on how many ITZ they have. If the result is say 2.5, the SR gets 2, and the .5 goes back to the MLR and they add all the .5s together from around the MAJCOM to determine how many ML DPs there are. Then they have a knife fight to award those DPs. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The best advice I ever received on AD was from a SQ/CC who is a great dude, pilot, and officer...he was also a HPO on the rocket ship, and he got there without wearing a single knee pad or being anyone's bitch boy. He is the type of person who the AF should promote to senior leadership, so they got it right at least once. That all said, here he sat as a HPO SQ/CC with a "bright" future (and he has gone on to do great things), telling me I hit a fork in the road at my UPT commitment. He painted his career path so far, then what it could be in the guard. He then unequivocally told me I should without a doubt get off the train at that stop and not be "trapped" into said track like he was. Best decision I ever made, and I'm thankful every day he gave me that talk early enough that I hadn't made any decisions yet that may have hurt my ARC options. Bottom line, when a dude like that is saying these things, you're only hurting yourself by not listening...and this was 5 years ago, things have mostly gone downhill since.

For all the Tyndall folks displaced/deployed. NOAA posted some sat imagery of the affected areas. https://storms.ngs.noaa.gov/

Truth.

For those of you who didn’t make the cut, I would call AFPC immediately and talk to the promotions counsellor (believe her name is Autumn Foley). If you see or find a mistake in your record, you can submit a request to meet a supplemental board. It’s worth a shot. As one who didn’t make the grade, it’s a shitty feeling, but not the end of your career. If you choose to stay in, find the job that’s best for you and your family. And realistically, unless you can earn a APZ DP, your not getting promoted. It’s an imperfect, brutal system.

This will explain.

You sound very angry towards people In bags or who want bags. To address some of your salty points, I don’t need it to validate myself in life, but thanks for your unsolicited concern. I got plenty of things besides a piece of green clothing for that. I just prefer it for its functionality, comfort, and appearance compared to the alternative. I started in a bag in the army, then A2CUs (BDU version, ACU version, and OCP version before I got out a few years ago). OCPs worked well with all our army crap. Still preferred the bag though. But as an Air Force guy now, I don’t care about army kit, or army policies, or army anything, and most of my Air Force bro’s don’t either. Maybe the helo guys do but I haven’t talked to many of them. I have no use for a 2 piece now. Fortunately I don’t see bags going away from the ejection seat community so this doesn’t really affect me. But you can keep your 2 piece since it suits your retarded army base policies and it’s easier for you to take a shit and go to the field and play army and all that fun stuff. But all my army bro’s would love to go back to a bag. And no, your point saying the only ones who want a 1 piece are guys who haven’t worn both is patently false. I, and all the dudes I went through army flight school with in bags, much prefer that to a 2 piece for everyday wear. If OCP A2CUs work for AMC or helo bro’s here, cool...whatever makes the mission happen and makes life easier for people. OCPs as a non flyer duty uniform look 69x better than ABUs. I welcome that change and don’t care about looking like the army in that regard. As stated, there’s a reason the Air Force left the army, and a reason many army guys still leave (try to leave) the army for the air guard/res. Of all the dudes who have hit me up on here asking with transition help, I’d say half have mentioned the thought of wearing a bag again as a positive thing, and wish the army would go back to that. The view on flight suits by the army, both in their wear and associated rules, some of which you mentioned, is a microcosm of the shit culture you guys have to deal with. Glad I’m out. Enjoy. ✌

As a G-suit wearer, I don’t care about your 2-piece. The Air Force left the Army for a reason.

You realize having worn both uniforms and realizing the only people who we are “looking cool for” are each other and 14 year olds I don’t want nor need the bag to somehow validate myself in life right? Again, the only people in the Army who want or actively cry about people wanting to go back to a 1 piece simply don’t know how good they have it right now with a 2. The people in the Air Force that are going to this uniform kicking and screaming “oh god we look like the Army now” might want to look at pictures pre digital camo stupid.... when we all looked “like the Army” in utilities except for the Marines who rolled their sleeves wrong and wore their little pointy hat. 2 piece is better. It’s just as fire proof, it’s way easier to take a top off in the heat than roll sleeves or god forbid wear them wrapped at the waist, and it works with gear far more comfortable than what we wear/wore with leg straps (can’t speak to G suits and don’t care as a helicopter guy). And I’d pay real money to get the DCU patterns cut back with the current camo OCP. Fix that and it’s perfect, especially when worn with the combat shirt. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

After Hurricane Andrew devastated Homestead they moved two F-16 squadrons to Moody and one to Luke. That was tied to a decision to close the active duty portion of the base. The 482FW and 93 FS remained but the base is 1/3 of what it used to be...actually sad to see what it is today. They kept the commissary and BX open for a while, then combined them into one, then closed altogether. Again sad for all the retirees that live down there.

Thank you FourFans! It was a pleasure to get to get to know you and your family and meet you in person at the closing! Lisa did all the heavy lifting. The paperwork sucks...no getting around that, but once it's in we do try to make it as easy as possible. Glad we were able accomplish that for you! Happy to help you anytime in the future. To our future clients, Marty gave me a team to handle our AF loans and I look forward to helping you guys. I'll be your POC with my goal to make sure each of you gets a great rate and service with no breakdown in comms. Nothing is perfect, but at a minimum we sure will give you better service than AFPC or the MPF (don't want to set the bar too high). Jon jk@mythl.com Cell: 850-377-1114

Burying the airplanes for survival is an extensive part of the base defense plan.

Completely inaccurate article. We signed this contract 3 years ago in fall of 2015. These were basic provisions in that contract and have nothing to do with the holiday season or any other industry dynamics. There are two "bonus" payments that really have nothing to do with "keeping pilots from retiring". One is the $40K if a pilot gives 1 year advance notice of his retirement. If he has 23 years of service or more, it doesn't matter if he goes this year, next year or anytime after that - same $40K. As long as he gives 12 months notice. So, not much going on there to "keep pilots from retiring". The other ($110,000 bonus) was a genius move by the company. Again, nothing to do with keeping pilots around longer. It was all about incentivizing maximum work and min sick leave usage over the last 2 years a pilot works here. Prior to this contract, pilot approaching retirement would make judicious use of their sick leave over the last couple of years which typically involved draining their maxed out sink leave bank (about 9-10 months worth of pay). With 6 weeks of vacation on top of that, they could usually take 6-7 months off each year with full pay during their last two years. Of course, they can still do this. But, they do so knowing they are turning their nose up at what could amount to another $110K on top of the rest of their pay. Not everyone values their time off that much. However, there are some strings attached - if they want the full $110K bonus, they need to work a full schedule for their last 48 months (i.e. earn at least $740,000 over that same 48 month period - which is pretty busy). None of that income can be from sick leave and their sick bank must essentially be full when they retire. If either of those two criteria are not met, the bonus is reduced accordingly. Again - both of these bonuses really have nothing to do with keeping pilots from retiring. Most guys are staying until the bitter end now anyway. But, if a guy has been here 25 years, he can get both of these bonuses in their entirety if he chooses to retire at age 60. Or, he can stick around another year or two, three, four or five. No change to the bonus - no real incentive to stay longer other than the pay he will receive for working those extra years. Just another poorly researched and written article.

Looking cool >>>> comfort Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

They all like schiesse porn. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

Not satire. If you’re left leaning how are you not embarrassed where the radical left is taking the democrat party?

Here's the point I'm trying to make. It doesn't matter who is sitting next to me in the jet or who is on my wing, I just want them to be well trained and proficient in the mission. Diversity doesn't matter there-I don't care as long as they can hack the mission. However, as a service, we should care about diversity because it helps expose cultural assumptions and blind spots, which can affect both retention and recruiting. Maybe people don't show up to the recruiters office because they just don't understand the military, or have misconceptions about military service. Or that there are many ways to serve as well as paths to service. I didn't find out about ROTC until my academy interviewer mentioned that as another path to become an officer and a pilot, and that was as an Army brat. Many civilians I've met are surprised that I'm a military pilot, since I wear glasses, as they thought you could only be a pilot with uncorrected 20/20 vision. It's also increasingly likely that prior have never met anybody in the military, and have no frame of reference for what it means to serve outside of what they see on the news or in media. So why not reach out to those people? If we are only bringing in one group of people within our recruiting pool, they WILL change the culture of our military, as they will bring with them cultural norms and biases with them. It'll be a slow change, but it will change. The environment people serve in is absolutely relevant to recruiting, and retention. It feeds into those conceptions about what military service is like. This also goes beyond just diversity. What I was getting at with my OPR comment is that they don't matter: if you aren't on the HPO list, you're probably not going to get very far, no matter what you do or how good you are. If you are on the list, well, just don't do anything to embarrass your sponsor. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

If we are going for efficiency, there might be some ideas in what you are sarcastically saying. I think the USAF spends a ton of time and money doing things the way it was done 40 years ago because we fear change. I know this happens in UPT because I was a student when the first T-6’s came on line. “Can you believe we are training in single engine props!” Said the old T-37 mafia. “There are gonna be pilots who never fly a jet in their career!” I was one of the last IFF classes to drop bombs off the AT-38. “Can you believe these new students won’t crank mils manually and have a HUD in the T-38C doing all the work...what a bunch of SNAPs.” At FTU we were all going to get lost and be lazy because we had EGI instead of a drifting INS and nobody knew how to do a delta update and our standby reticle bombing was horrible. One step away from communism. In my ops squadron wingman were going to kill themselves if we let them use their targeting pod the same time as FL. I was a T-38 IP when the magical fix to fix went away....all the students were going to wash out of follow-on courses because of that one. Back to the CAF....gotta print out maps like we did 20 yrs ago, can’t trust those new avionics with satellite imagery built in. HMCS and datalink was making us all soft. If we had unlimited resources, teach SFO’s to your hearts content. We don’t so we have to prioritize. You can’t cut it all because we need talent discriminators but once a kid tracks...well a heavy pilot probably doesn’t need a acro and a fighter guy doesn’t need as much crew communication work. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

BFM is a waste too, when is the last time anyone even got a gun kill...

The stupid color vision test is not helping either.