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What's wrong with the Air Force?


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2 hours ago, ATIS said:

The squadron I once knew, cowboy-ish...just fly and do the mission and keep the GFC's/JTAC's happy and calling on us, was long dead and buried.  Still great guys and gals flying the mission and did great work on station...but not the same culture as the original bunch. 

Calling total fucking bullshit on this.  We all know the type of culture that existed in the Block 10 days and while it may have been fitting at the time, I'm certain that even the greybeards who came back in leadership capacities were glad to see that it had changed.  Facts are facts: UPT direct accessions changed the age distribution, the program became more inculcated into the normal AFSOC hierarchy, and the "cowboy" culture disappeared.  What remained was a more highly skilled group of aviators who knew when to push it up and how to do it properly.  You know damn well the type of skeletons that linger in the U-28 closet and a lot of those black eyes haven't been seen recently which is for the better.

Edited by Standby
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SB:

Not saying we were perfect by any means (sometimes far from it), just different when the first tails were on the line. And not saying greybeard guys/and gal were better or worse. I was very impressed with the on station performance of the later block crews I witnessed, and the level of Stan you brought. A lot of that was a pickup game in the early days with the different communities we had.  The oversight from the staff level seemed a little over the top in my opinion (I’ve git the same opinion in my service the higher I get). “Highly skilled, that could be debated, but only over a beer. 

As you said “fitting at the time”. 

ATIS

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19 hours ago, ATIS said:

Fast forward to 2013-14 when I came back for a touch and go in my Bragg capacity....it was full on stupid at that point.  The squadron I once knew, cowboy-ish...just fly and do the mission and keep the GFC's/JTAC's happy and calling on us, was long dead and buried.  Still great guys and gals flying the mission and did great work on station...but not the same culture as the original bunch.  

Curious what you mean by “full on stupid.”  Yes, by 2013 we had successfully crushed the culture of the cowboy, plane crashing early days.  That was on purpose.  By 2013 we were better at the mission and more lethal.  Quantifiably.  Nowadays they’re better than we were in 13, and isn’t that the objective of leaving something better than you found it?  We should all want the new guys to be better than us, and we’ve failed if it isn’t so.

What they did in 06-early 08 worked for the reason you described (small teams, selected by name) but that mission environment was unique and those guys mostly weren’t good at building it bigger when that was required.  Things had to change.   

Free whisky on me if we cross paths.  Good stuff too, I won’t go cheap on you!

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17 hours ago, tac airlifter said:

Curious what you mean by “full on stupid.”  Yes, by 2013 we had successfully crushed the culture of the cowboy, plane crashing early days.  That was on purpose.  By 2013 we were better at the mission and more lethal.  Quantifiably.  Nowadays they’re better than we were in 13, and isn’t that the objective of leaving something better than you found it?  We should all want the new guys to be better than us, and we’ve failed if it isn’t so.

What they did in 06-early 08 worked for the reason you described (small teams, selected by name) but that mission environment was unique and those guys mostly weren’t good at building it bigger when that was required.  Things had to change.   

Free whisky on me if we cross paths.  Good stuff too, I won’t go cheap on you!

We don't have the death problems in cyber, but this is exactly what it's like in our space now.  Hopefully we can replicate your success as fast, if not faster.  I'm going to steal your words for when I have to brief another GO about why there's no cyber "easy button."

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Half the original guys were top dudes and the other half were booger flicks. Those booger flicks caused some problems that are still being dealt with today. And honestly, they weren’t that good. The community now is so far beyond where they started it’s pretty unbelievable. 

The part that has always cracked me up about the original dudes is that they always talk about being all about the mission. However, they had such an insular, “Cowboy”, and flat out dickish culture that they stifled true mission hacking IOT stoke their own egos. Not true in all cases of course, but a lot of the original guys were their own worst enemies.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Sorta related to both the bonus thread and the promotion/PRF thread, but what could the AF do for non-command track dudes to incentivize performance in the second half of your career? It seems like the HPOs have their trajectory pretty much setup for success. Reading the other few threads, the bonus isn’t enough to offset the asspain that is AD, or those that take the blood money are hoping to stay at the unit until retirement.

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2 minutes ago, MechGov said:

Sorta related to both the bonus thread and the promotion/PRF thread, but what could the AF do for non-command track dudes to incentivize performance in the second half of your career? It seems like the HPOs have their trajectory pretty much setup for success. Reading the other few threads, the bonus isn’t enough to offset the asspain that is AD, or those that take the blood money are hoping to stay at the unit until retirement.

Due to the close proximity I've had to endure with AD due to the TFI boondoggle, AD leadership always left me with the distinct impression they always found the Guard/Reserve the organic answer to what you're asking about. One OG pretty much said it in mixed company on a step bus: "we already have the technician track...it's called the Guard/Reserve". Can't say I was surprised to hear that from him, but I suppose I appreciated his honesty in the way he felt, especially in mixed company.

To be fair to the guy, that's how we've been manning my last two squadrons. Hordes of carbon copy twice passed over O-4s with airline hopes, zero intentions of doing leadership/management work, and varying levels of interest in attaining an AD retirement in the Reserves. Only problem with that trend has been an increasing willingness on the part of the gallery to accept the AD lifestyle encroachment into the Reserves, but that's more relevant to a  "what's wrong with the Air Force Reserves" thread. I digress.

In short, no I really don't think the AD AF is legitimately interested in addressing your grievance. They may still not acknowledge it as one in the first place, even in this environment. They're certainly not going to address it with soft pay (aka non-monetary QOL incentives). That's anathema to the Active Duty Social Contract (ADSC for short lol). Massa never barters with his human property, as a matter of principle. 

This is like a commuting vs living in domicile question to me. Might as well be talking about two entirely different jobs. Are you an officer that happens to be a pilot as your retention shtick, or are you a pilot who happens to be an officer as your retention shtick? If the former, yeah 20 years potato. If the latter, perhaps this is ultimately a 10/10 hi-lo mix career of full time and part time work after all. To each their own. 

 

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5 hours ago, MechGov said:

Sorta related to both the bonus thread and the promotion/PRF thread, but what could the AF do for non-command track dudes to incentivize performance in the second half of your career? It seems like the HPOs have their trajectory pretty much setup for success. Reading the other few threads, the bonus isn’t enough to offset the asspain that is AD, or those that take the blood money are hoping to stay at the unit until retirement.

This is the point I was trying to make in the bonus thread. After 13 YOS, you are in your mid 30s, prime of your working life, and your civilian counterparts are at the apex of their development. The AF though cannot offer a meaningful answer to how they will incentivize the 90% of folks who won't command and since the bonus is flat rate, you are pretty much leveling off as soon as you pin on Lt Col. 

I think the AF should honestly look at a stair stepping bonus that starts at maybe 25K for 2 years but cam then be renewed in 2 year increments for 10K more each time, netting you 55-65 you last 2 years depending when you were elligible. 

If they don't solve this though (and it's a combination of a development and a pay issue) then I don't see retention getting better because as I continue to find out how marketable I am outside the AF the appeal to stay in an organization that decides it's pretty much done with me is gone.

Edited by FLEA
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1 hour ago, FLEA said:

The AF though cannot offer a meaningful answer to how they will incentivize the 90% of folks who won't command

The AF can't incentivize the folks who will command if they stay, that's how fucked they are.

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The AF can't incentivize the folks who will command if they stay, that's how ed they are.

Wow.

Yet I don’t entirely disagree. Big Blue seems to think putting “will command” or something similar on an OPR is the magical bullet to entice retention. However, the number of command pushes I’ve seen on OPRs has to exceed the number of available command billets.

Granted I’ve figured out I’m in the bottom 90% somewhere, so not my problem...
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I asked this exact question to my leadership last year after the MAF Roadshow.  All the A1K folks would talk about were the “on ramps” but had zero to say about the 80-90% of folks that weren’t going to be HPOs.  The AF NEEDS to figure out how to acknowledge the Average Joe or retention will continue to plummet.

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I asked this exact question to my leadership last year after the MAF Roadshow.  All the A1K folks would talk about were the “on ramps” but had zero to say about the 80-90% of folks that weren’t going to be HPOs.  The AF NEEDS to figure out how to acknowledge the Average Joe or retention will continue to plummet.


Nah, they’ll just further obfuscate who’s in the top 10% like they’ve done by not identifying school selects at the O-4 board. The longer the machine can make people think they’re in the top tier the longer people will try to be in the top tier.

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3 hours ago, Tunes3 said:

The AF NEEDS to figure out how to acknowledge the Average Joe or retention will continue to plummet

Agreed that’s a CF, but not the RC of the retention problem. HPOs are leaving in droves as well. 

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I asked this exact question to my leadership last year after the MAF Roadshow.  All the A1K folks would talk about were the “on ramps” but had zero to say about the 80-90% of folks that weren’t going to be HPOs.  The AF NEEDS to figure out how to acknowledge the Average Joe or retention will continue to plummet.


And you expected something different from the people who manage only HPOs?
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3 hours ago, Tunes3 said:

I asked this exact question to my leadership last year after the MAF Roadshow.  All the A1K folks would talk about were the “on ramps” but had zero to say about the 80-90% of folks that weren’t going to be HPOs.  The AF NEEDS to figure out how to acknowledge the Average Joe or retention will continue to plummet.

Calling an O-4/5 line IP an Average Joe is why the enlisted hate us, just saying.

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