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“RIFed officers who are deployed, but are scheduled to return after Jan. 1, have the option of cutting their deployment short and returning home by Jan. 1, in which case they would separate no later than April 30. Their other option is to complete some or all of their current deployment and return home after Jan. 1, as long as their deployed commander agrees. Those airmen who remain on deployment will have to separate between 30 days and four months of their return date, and must leave no later than Nov. 30, 2015. They also must separate before they complete 18 years of total active federal military service Deployed officers who are RIFed and scheduled to return on or earlier than Jan. 1 will separate no later than April 30, like other RIFed officers.” i remember RIF/VSP. Funny don’t recall hearing about a crisis when big blue was telling pilots to GTFO. Or when generals/wing commanders were telling pilots “if you don’t like it, leave you’re replaceable” or that morale was “pretty darn good” Feels good hearing the machine squeal...couldn’t happen to a better bloated bureaucracy. Know your worth. https://www.airforcetimes.com/education-transition/jobs/2014/11/19/air-force-begins-notifying-rifed-officers/

You’re not the only one trying to get promoted. This place is like 21 Jump Street where Channing Tatum’s character laughs and says “he’s trying, what a nerd!” Do what you gotta do and set yourself up for success. Personal note: There’s no way I’m doing ACSC in correspondence. Or residence either, for that matter.

Found the problem. https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrick-rhatigan-1814b622/

Funny story that wasn't funny at the time. We were flying the mighty whistlin shithouse (AC-130H) out of Guam practicing for the Iran hostage rescue. Our live fire range was basically a big rock sticking up out of the water somewhere near Guam. We were shooting our regular 20mm HEI rounds down at 2500ft. Bomb dump says they have a "shitload" of tracers they need to get rid of and ask if we can shoot it. We said sure, link it up, a mixture of tracer and HEI. So we are over this rock at 2500ft and the pilot lets loose with the first burst of the tweak, immediately followed by "CEASE FIRE, CEASE FIRE!!!!. Tracers were ricocheting back toward the airplane, some of them went past us.

Hit 20 in Feb, ADSC up in Nov, and TAP was done last week. Informed I didn't get a push for school (first look). What a fantastic feeling, good luck the rest of y'all.

Networked data is GREAT provided you have unrestricted access to the full EM spectrum because you’re fighting cavemen. Being able to do this would require the AF to prioritize EW. https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/1816024/air-force-announces-electronic-warfare-electromagnetic-spectrum-superiority-ent/

Wing CC: "Why would you not sign this bonus, you're leaving $35K on the table!" Pilot: "I grossed $35K last month in my other job" Wing CC: "....fuck"

$100k would keep me in, no doubt. I feel like this is just a case of “Oh, the RAND study didn’t tell us what we wanted, so we are just going to pretend like it didn’t happen.” I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again after leaving a UPT base last year, instead of just training 1k pilots to leave in 10 years now we are just training 1.4k pilots to leave.

Are you a recruiter? Sounds like something a recruiter would say.

You would be surprised how much people in the military don't know. When I left my 11R platform filing VFR was like a Pandora's box of mystery to them. They thought it was this way out there wierd thing that needed special preparation and planning. VFR. You know, what every GA pilot does until they get instrument qual'd. The military had it's strengths but each community has their weaknesses as well. At the end of the day the aviation sector is huge and people will specialize in their organizations niche. Hanging out at an FBO and talking to some old timers is a great way to realize how much you haven't seen, even with an Air Force background.

I took the bonus. Life's not bad in my corner of the Air Force. Delta isn't hiring 12Bs, so it's not like I'm giving up a valuable airline career. I can either retire as a major, or as a LtCol. Those are the options based on decisions that I've already made. Therefore, I'd rather get the promotion and the extra pension money. Good for all of you bailing at the earliest opportunity. Good for you if you don't want to do the bullshit online course. I already did it when I got a line number to major, hoping I could get picked up for a joint school or a fellowship. Didn't work, but I also didn't exactly sink a lot of hours into it, and almost no time outside work. The way I see it, it's got more likelihood to impact my promotion chances than anything else I would have been working on in the jobs I had while completing the course online. I knew what the rules were, and I tried to play by them. I don't wish anyone ill-will for wanting to leave, but holy fuck, does it get old looking for career advice and all anyone says is "GTFO, Air Force is a sinking ship, airlines, airlines, airlines". Not exactly actionable data for guys who want to make a career out of it.

I'm not going to fully answer that because this guy might be interviewing at my unit one day and I don't want to hear my answer thrown back at me. However if you think about it logically you'll find two things: 1) All his other scores are great - why the one low one? It's not a little lower, it's a LOT lower. Why is that? 2) Why even have verbal on the test? Maybe because (especially for fighters) you spend your entire career giving and receiving briefs, internalizing that information immediately and formulating a plan for what's going to happen when $h!t hits the fan. Airborne you have to know and comprehend quickly a vast amount of info that is only given verbally. To me it seems obvious why a fighter pilot would need a high verbal score. DG'd at UPT - congrats. If you are on the way to a fighter you'll soon figure out that UPT was bush-league and likely the easiest 12 months of your next 10 years. It gets harder, not easier.

Face it... after introducing Jar Jar Binks, the entire Star Wars brand burned to the ground, never to rise from the ashes.

God, I forgot about this guy. While I was fortunate enough not to have too much interaction with him, the couple I had were bewildering. He stormed into tanker ops one day pissed that he had a showtime prior to 0700. My crew and I just landed after flying a 14 hour sortie only to see this short dude complaining about having to get to ops at 0700. We had no idea who he was until his crew stepped to their intel brief and Rat parked his ass in the Sq/CC's office and closed the door. The ADO filled us in that the short dude complaining about banker's hours was our warrior OG. Fast forward a week later and an FCIF drops saying crews can't wear baseball hats. No shit 6-9 days later I'm doing the walk around and across the ramp is a B-1 crew stepping to fly all wearing baseball hats. Rat is with them to fly real combat with the Bones with a baseball hat on as well. A second hand story I heard was the 340 EARS/CSS troop had to clean his O-6 parking in case the dude showed up to the squadron. Rat would apparently lose his mind if there was any sand on his spotless O-6 sign. Lead from the front gents.

Here’s my Rat saga. One day I landed at the Died while deployed there and they parked us in an unfamiliar location. Because of this it took us a little longer to get into the chocks and shut down, you know, because we all know taxiing into something after a long day makes bad things happen. While we were gathering all the classified...you know, all the stuff you don’t want to lose after a long day because bad shit happens, a dude from the RegAF squadron at my base pops up the chute and says “hey we are sharing a bus, can you guys hurry up?” Yeah, ok, sure. So I walk over to the bus with all my crap and when I hop on I hear a voice say “Are you guys running the dick around checklist up there???” I don’t recognize the face or voice in the darkness, so I laugh it off. I leave the bus to grab more stuff and when I get back on this guy is legit busting balls. I look closer and it’s the EOG/CC, none other than you know who. We drive over to MX and past the Bones. He proceeds to look at the bombers and says “you tanker guys don’t fly combat sorties, THESE guys fly combat sorties!” And then starts telling stories about all his B-1 time. We go into MX. His jet is code 1. Mine is not. His pilots drop off the forms and get on the bus. I have to spend some time in there. I get back onto the bus and he starts in on me once again for being slow. Not even in a joking way, borderline hostile. I don’t even fcuking know this assclown. Never met him before in my life. The whole bus ride was telling us how inferior the mobility aircraft are. Not exactly the way to inspire your wing that has 6 bombers and 69 tankers and herks. No “where are you guys from.” No “thank you for being out here.” Just really hostile belittling. We get to customs. He prances off the bus with only his helmet bag and proceeds to the line. His crew and my crew gather up all the shit and schlep it to customs as he stands there waiting for his AC (who has the flight orders) with an impatient look on his face. Don’t worry Colonel sir, we will get all the bags. So we get into the customs area and there is some sort of kerfuffle happening between customs, the head shiek, some locals and some OGA types so my crew goes as far away from that as possible to wait it out and use the Wi-Fi to text back home. Rat goes and finds some Marines so he can tell them how awesome he is. When it’s our turn to go to Customs he looks over at us and yells across the room “What are you guys doing, playing Dungeons and Dragons over there?” We clear customs and again he strolls through with only his bag, gets on the bus, and then disappears when we get back to Ops. My entire Rat experience was about 45 minutes, but fcuk that guy. Once we all started talking and hearing the stories Bergman illustrated, it all made sense. I’m a pretty easygoing guy willing to give the benefit of the doubt, but he was by far the WORST O-6 I have ever run across in my life.

I’ve known Rat for years. He could honestly give a shit what others thought of him. I know that it probably upsets him that he never climbed into GO status being a HPO throughout his whole career and all. I always laughed at how no community claimed him as “theirs.” The Herk bubbas thought he was a tanker dude, which was impossible since he despised the KC-135 and community. He’s a strat airlift dude (-141/-17) by trade, but they wouldn’t claim him either. Dude was a Captain Sobel who got promoted O-6 status. I will say this, he was a really good pilot flying with him a few times. But the -141 apparently flew like the -135 does, which means a 1979 Lincoln Mark VIII. He was also one of the douches who bounced out of town with his MSM in tow on his way to school when Fairchild failed their ASEV in 2010 while Rat’s old DO, who replaced him as CC, was the scapegoat in that and was relieved of command over it. Thankfully that guy, who’s a great dude, was taken care of by some GO’s later on and made O-6 and was the Vance CV a few years ago.

He was my Sq/CC at Fairchild and Manas. He made a copilot, who just had testicular cancer, talk about it in front of the squadron. He ordered a copilot in from his two weeks time off after a deployment with his family to have a formal promotion ceremony to Captain. It pissed Rat off that the guy was super pissed at him for coming in to have a promotion ceremony. Later on the guy was supposed to assume alpha alert early in the morning. The night prior he felt sorta ill, but thought he’d feel better in the morning. He woke up and felt worse, went to the flight doc and went DNIF. Rhatigan was so mad at him, he gave him an LOC/LOR for dereliction of duty since he thought the guy was trying to get out of alert duty (which was a god send to do, since you were away from the squadron and Rat). The guy is in the Guard now last I heard. I personally flew with Rat on a deployment sortie when he was my deployed Sq/CC. Since we had three pilots on board, I took my copilot back to the boom pod and let him refuel A-10’s and F-16’s all day. I felt bad for him since the cruise out to the AOR meant Rat was GKing him on all of the various Soviet era airfields between Manas and Bagram. If Rat’s reading this, he was pretty good, but I can’t believe your allowed that to happen being the A-Code! Oh yeah, one more story. Guy that was a copilot/AC at Fairchild was in Rat’s squadron. He ended up going to Kadena and getting into some “TDY Shenanigans” while on a typhoon evac that got him an Art 15. He ended up deploying soon after when Rat was the new OG at the Deid. Rat sends out an email about his “vision” and about himself as the new OG. Guy in question responds with “Hey, maybe we should lunch sometime dude.” Why? Who the knows? He tells me the next day his crew shows up and the ADO tells him that his crew is off the schedule and that he has a personal meeting with Rat. So, he goes and see Rat in his office during meeting time and Rat says “Hey, ###, come on in. Haven’t seen you in a long time.” He walks in, not thinking defensively, and sits down and Rat immediately stands him at attention yelling at him about how he’s a Colonel and how dare he use lack of email professionalism, how he had the audacity to ask Rat to write him a character reference to the Wing King at Kadena when he got his Art 15, etc. The switches tones and says “yeah, we should do lunch with me and your crew sometime, just let me know!” Rat was an English major at USAFA and speech writer for the SECAF. We used to have to select 93 ARS/All distrobox, then manually remove his name from a squadron wide email because he “hated spam.” He used to print out emails that people would sent him on various day-to-day issues, order them to his office, and proceed to pull out a red pen and correct their grammar in front of them in the email. He’s Selva’s boy (was his Wing Exec when he was a Wing King). That is most likely the only reason when as far as he did. The people I personally know who he ruined their careers are doing well in the majors. I’m not really surprised that he isn’t flying for the airlines knowing the amount of black lists he’d appear on.

Hell yeah. If you get naked you can shit facing backwards and have a convenient little shelf to hold your snacks.

It's not declaring innocent... But then, even if you're found completely blameless in a court of law, you still wouldn't be declared innocent. You'd be declared "not guilty". Innocent until proven guilty means that innocent is the default. If Trump is not prosecuted and found guilty, he is by definition innocent. It's a bedrock principle of Western law.

Fired 7 commanders. Showed up as a herk wing commander having never flown the herk and said on day 1 he wanted to change our culture to get rid of low level below 1000 feet and limit us to 30 degrees of bank during all phases of flight because any more was unnecessary. Had the squadron that had a c130 crash at Shank show up 30 minutes after everyone else on base for the formal safety brief to talk about their issues, and then made them walk in between the rest of the wing to sit down. None of the people he did this too were on the deployment. After watching the safety brief with cockpit audio, he then released everyone out to welcome the crew on the safety brief back from Afghanistan 30 minutes later. Wanted to Q3 crews for not flying their 100% flap approach speed of 145 knots when they were heavy weight since the book said too, but would also Q3 them for going 146 knots which was a flap over speed. At one point he was a deployed commander at the Died, flew on a B-1 sortie, and would tell everyone afterword about his days in the bone and the bombing missions he had logged. I could easily keep going.

They are focusing on uniforms because that is the only thing they understand

Air Force Experimenting with Two-Piece Flight Suits for Pilots, Aircrew https://www.military.com/daily-news/2019/04/19/air-force-experimenting-two-piece-flight-suits-pilots-aircrew.html We don't need you to experiment with flight suits. Pilots are not telling you to fix our flight suits in order to keep us from walking. Focus on quality of life, pay, housing, and the next adversary. People act like there isn't more important $&#t to focus on then uniforms. When things get tough, switch the uniform. Standard Air Force thinking.

Had there been a U-2 pilot in a chase car saying "Raise your left..." on the radio, these wing strikes could have been avoided.

Exec Summary: The Dragonlady community and it's leadership is fantastic. These LTs are going to have to show up, hold the standard and keep it high without the traditional UPT overwatch. Beale and the 1RS is a tremendous opportunity in an awesome community, there is no doubt about it. I understand the world is a new weird place with innovation officers and VR (of which the 1RS has a really cool set up for teaching the deuce) instead of UPT sorties, so I'm not surprised that they're trying some new things here. Really, they'd be the first to do anything, thats what makes the U2 community so great, it's small enough that their hand-picked guys get to affect change, with leadership that trusts from top to bottom, unequivocally. The tough part for these Lt's is that their job at Beale is to hold the standard in an A Model -38, in a community of professional pilots with thousands of hours, not within the constraints of a highly controlled UPT environment. It will not be easy to do that as an Lt, it wasn't as a Capt. They're going to have to be self reliant, and be ready to hold the line. In terms of staying in the community, having a home grown U2 guy come up through the ranks sounds great for everyone, if the dude doesn't want to stay (and he/she wasn't a total waste) Beale takes care of it's people. Whether it's a sarcastic ass with a mustache, or any number of folks who got hired and couldn't make it through training. They try and get people to where they are going within their sphere of influence. I'm the wrong guy to answer what any of it means career wise, I had plenty of opportunities to check off job titles, and even lead some awesome airmen. I could see a future with some hybrid of this program, kind of a 2+2 type deal. UPT gets it's pound of flesh, the 1RS gets more seasoned guys who have more years to learn about the Deuce and want to commit. If anyone knows these cats and wants to push them my way with questions, feel free. Hail Talons

Shady J has Reserves right? Prolly gotta be established in the Strike world for that gig tho. South Carolina isn’t too far away if u are willing to be close to North Carolina instead of IN North Carolina. As for the firefighter piece, I used to fly jets with a former firefighter, no kidding. On another note, “My father was a fireman....he puts out fires!! My sister Sal....”

What you mean I don't have to make doghouses and a DR course on a sectional to fly VFR? /s

I don’t know why big Air Force has to make this so difficult. Make 2 piece an option for non ejection seat personnel. It’s really that simple. I wouldn’t want to deal with all that bullshit in an ejection seat. My only experience is in the Tweet, and dealing with the shirt twisting around on you under the chute would be maddening. Poopy suit? G-suit? Forget it. I would imagine that would be ridiculous. We don’t make everybody wear a parka every day just because it’s cold in North Dakota. It’s the same damn thing. Mission requirements dictate. It’s f-Ing hot and you are a tanker guy? Wear the two piece. Strapping into a B-1 for a 24 hour mission? Wear the one piece. It’s a beautiful day and you’re going to an airshow? Wear the one piece, throw your squadron tee shirt and your fake name tag on and have a ball.

The only true benefit I’ve seen with the two piece is when I’m in the helo and I have to wear hard and soft body armor with full kit. The ‘combat shirt’ makes that exceedingly more comfortable. Otherwise it’s really not needed.

I hate to get all conspiracist on this, but the article quoted only a female program manager and a female pilot, both of whom are claiming bathroom issues with the bag. This is the PC spear that will be used to kill the bag if we don’t point to real problems like what matmacwc brings up: Along with buttons, baggy pockets, drawstrings, and whatever suspender setup the 2-piece flight suit program office wants to spend millions on. My baseless suspicion is the same as it’s always been: Chiefs and non-flyers are behind this push for no other reason than jealousy and lack of control over pilots.

Good stuff Marc. Read your book cover to cover a few months ago. It helped out a lot and answered a shit ton of questions.

Bro, let Pawnman be happy. Buckets won't help, but a "little" Flex Seal might! You just never know. #Innovation

Give the man a break. Part of the reason the Air Force is sinking is because a lot of the good dudes decide to get out versus putting in the effort to fix anything. With that being said , I am choosing to get out ASAP but don’t bring down the people who play the game to potentially make it to a point where they can make a difference. Just because their path is different from yours doesn’t mean it’s a bad or wrong path. It’s just different. Let’s be honest , if you don’t check the containers right now you’re never going to be in a leadership position to actually change anything worthwhile. Some people are going to have to take the plunge.

They’re pushing for new uniforms.

It's not about the color of the oak leaves. It's about the extra $5k a year in retirement pay.

I love DoD wants to create a system of network-based solutions, yet struggles to maintain any semblance of network security on multiple domains. Does this stuff not make your skin crawl even a little?

Oh sweet baby Jesus. That guy.

You land, debrief, log in to three different computers to find one that works, you do your post mission paperwork, and it's now 2am. Are you gonna drive home?

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I feel like a douchebag because I kind of chuckled at my CC. My boss thinks I will be promoted. She didn't see my final PRF, but asked would I still retire when (not if) promoted. I told her I'm pulling chocks. Not sure if the Wing King or someone at NAF suggested they remove the awards line in my PRF and insert killing more bad guys of an HVI level. Wing King asked me when I would be doing ACSC. I reluctantly shook my head at him. He said it's okay, you can tell me the truth. I told him I'm not doing it. It felt damn good to say it. Like you are walking out on top. With no ACSC, I expected a "P" and that is what I received in my small Wing. I'm the only FGO going up for promotion. If they promote a guy with a clean record, DG, and some #1 CGO/FGO strats, then I want the board to report for mandatory (DDRP) drug testing.

2 This photo sums that up perfectly: An ally flying a new modern tanker, refueling a new modern C2 platform over an AOR supporting combat ops now... while we put 500 million dollar radars in 40+ yr old 707s using old motors, just now getting a very basic flight deck update being refueled by 50+ yr old tankers... On fleet density vs larger fewer platforms... valid point. Keeping it real and trying to minimize risk, replace the E-3 with the E-7. Good enough to support American platforms in a Coalition, good enough for the USAF to fly now. Smaller platforms to replace JSTARS, G-650 based sounds fine. EA / ELINT G-650 also. RIVET / COBRA / OPEN SKIES / CONSTANT PHOENIX etc...probably needs to be a 767 based platform for range, size, power, space, etc..

G650...this problem has already been somewhat solved, just need the AF to commit. Replace big wing ISR, EC-130, etc. with G650s - higher density to meet the demand with more capability. Throw in some wedge tails to replace the E-3s. Its ridiculous we haven't done this yet.

C-5 near home. Get a job at Home Depot until you learn the ropes. I bet you can bum "full time."

God damn this thread is a dumpster fire. How about if you don't have an answer to the man's question, or at least a piece of information that could lead to an answer, you don't comment? It's easier if it's not necessary to wade through a metric shit-ton of rambling, incoherent, responses to find the person with a rational thought who's posting to be helpful rather than just to hear the sound of their own voice. May God have mercy on your souls. And yes, I'm aware that I just violated this advice.

If by that you mean turn on “own ship” on my Foreflight sectional then yeah. 😁

Seriously? That's what Big Air Force does!

Probably the people who wear G-suits for a living. If you have issues dropping your sleeves on the Cadillac floors, that’s on you

Not a pilot. Not prior.

ROTC is a good option, but if you’re worried about their age limit, call up the detachment and ask. But they may be unaware of the new age limit of 33 since it won’t have an impact on 99.9% of their cadets. As for OTS, you’ll know for sure that you have a pilot slot before you attend, so there’s less risk there. Edit: I’d just visit the detachment and try to set a meeting with the commander to ask the questions you’re worried about. Sent from my iPhone using Baseops Network mobile app

I’ll be reaching out to the retention manager in my wing tomorrow and I’ll see what comes of that. No promises though

I've been wearing coyote boots with a green flight suit recently just because my brown boots are comfy and my green boots are shot. No one has said shit to me so far so I'm going to keep doing it. Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk