BuddhaSixFour

Here's what I think just went down. AF: "We have this massive problem! We can't fix it!" Mattis: "Of course you can, it's called leadership. Get some." AF: "But it's a bigger problem than that! <insert AF talking points b.s.>" Mattis/Trump: "Okay, if it's such a critical problem, here's a tool that can fix it overnight. Recall 1,000 pilots, voluntary or not." AF: "But we can't do that!" Mattis/Trump: "Then I guess it's not such a big f**king problem then. STFU and do your jobs."

Zero regrets about doing it for one decade. Zero regrets about not doing it for two.

See, that's why you need to serve your country by separating and getting out of the way. There isn't anything personnelists can do because it isn't a beauracratic problem. It's a leadership problem. Commanders can fix it. Not you. Not AFPC. The more you try, the worse it will get.

Med school. If planes were really your thing, you wouldn't have been premed.

Sorry, man. For what it's worth, it's an illustration of the problem I have with 10-year ADSCs, and anything longer the AF may consider. There is zero way to predict what life is going to deal you that far out. I see it as a bit of a moral imperative to provide some flexibility on the back half of it for that exact reason. A hard and fast six-month limit is lazy ass senior leadership not trusting lazy ass middle leadership to make an informed decision about balancing personal needs and the needs of the Air Force. Could be you're a slacker looking to shirk a commitment. I dunno. Not sure we've ever met. But your SQ/CC does know you, your story, and the state of your community's manning. If he/she supported it, well, consider yourself backed by a random poster on base ops. Good luck.

Could you just apply for Misc Sep and cite the family issues and your commitment to the Guard? I've seen that get approved for guys with 18 months left at separation time. May or may not work, but it's way less likely to burn anything down in the way out.

Silicon Valley and Redmond are very good at what they do and have already spent uncounted billions on the problem over many years. I don't see a magic check to Lockheed or any other player suddenly showing the pros what's up. The best they would do would be a system that was secure by virtue of the fact it was worthless and didn't do anything so there was nothing on it of value. Imagine trying to use Governet Explorer on you govOS computer to look up a how-to for GoverPoint. I'm sure lots of work goes into focusing on really important things that are limited in scope (key infrastructure, communications, etc). But a general purpose compute stack? I vote no.

As an IDE-select who passed on the opportunity, I have found this sentiment to be misleading. Good leadership is highly valued on both sides of the fence. The Air Force has more opportunities per capita, but puts very tight left and right bounds in place. That makes it a better place to learn leadership. The outside world has fewer opportunities, but can have many more degrees of freedom. That makes it a better place to execute leadership. -

And the current generation of senior leaders will sail off into retirement patting themselves on the back for having saved the Air Force. Then somewhere between 2028 and 2030, a bunch of people who liked flying in their twenties start to have an inkling that there is more to life than the Air Force. Suddenly they come to the stark realization of just how long their prison sentence really is. They'll come to absolutely despise the Air Force, and they'll have another decade with nothing to do but poison the waters. And they will. Or you can just fix the stupid things that piss people off. The current generation of leadership sails off into retirement rightly knowing that they left the Air Force a better place. Then somewhere between 2028 and 2030, a bunch of people who liked flying in their twenties are still in love with flying, leading and delivering an uninterrupted ass kicking to our nation's enemies. They see the last 10 years as an opportunity that's good for them, good for their families, and good for their nation. They'll come to love the Air Force and spend that second decade nurturing a whole other generation in how to run a fantastic organization. And they will. But you're right, Chang. Your way is better. Let's just do that.

Disregard. I'm actually thinking of another user on here. No idea who Chang is.

Good god, man. Surely you jest. Flying should, by all accounts, be just the most awesome job ever created. Tactical flying is just about as much fun as anything. The job pays well. You get to serve your country in a meaningful way. And airplanes... f**k yeah. If the Air Force can only get people to do it by A) getting people too young to know better to sign an obscenely long contract, or B) by abusing the terms of the contract to keep people around, then senior leadership really needs to ask how they f***ed it up that bad and shake things up as much as necessary to fix it. Best of all, your people are screaming the solutions at you. Just step back for a second, listen without brushing them of as malcontents, and realize that you do actually have the power to do 75% of what they're asking for, and that you can do it with precisely 0% negative impact to mission effectiveness.

Calling anything pertaining to AU "academic" is an insult to professors of 17th century French poetry everywhere.

A reasonable two-bedroom apartment with a parking spot in a good but not stellar part of the city. In some of the trendy spots, the box guy would still need a roommate to be that close to a hydrant.

Obviously there's no universal Active Duty experience or AD service member. Some people will love it. Some will hate it. Got it. My heartburn with an ADSC longer than the current one is that you're asking a 22-year old to go all-in on the bulk of their professional life without any reasonable understanding of what that entails or what the opportunity costs really are. Some will get lucky and love it. Good for them. But the others will be trapped for no reason other than its hard to predict who you'll be or what your life circumstances will be a decade down the road. How is the Air Force supposed to build a leader/follower relationship built on trust when the AF's first move is to take adavantage of youthful naïveté and dream chasing for its own cynical ends? I understand the investment it takes to build a pilot, and that you need a guaranteed return if you're going to put in that effort and resources, but there's an upper limit to what it's morally reasonable to ask someone to agree to with no way out and no recourse. At some point it becomes predatory. I really consider the 10-year ADSC as at the upper limit. Hopefully it's just talk and we can get back to figuring out how to encourage quality people to stay rather than trapping them when they just don't know any better.

Agreed. My point is that's the real problem. Fix that (I know, easier said than done... trust me, I get it) and other options come into play for dealing with the retention issue, up to and including accepting high turnover.