Goldfein advocating FAA 1500 hour rule change???

[HU&W]

This quote from the stripes article makes no sense... 

“If I don’t have pilots to fly, the enemy has a vote, and if I can’t put warheads on foreheads, then (ISIS) is winning,” he (Everhart) said.

First, how does not having enough pilots to fly mean the enemy has a vote, especially in the context of a stop loss discussion?  Is the enemy the airline industry?  Certainly their vote is taken away by stop loss.  Are pilots that choose to leave somehow the enemy of a broken system?

He does reference ISIS after, with an aside that AMC is putting warheads on foreheads.  Sure, ISIS is an enemy but how would they be influencing the number of pilots AMC has to fly?  

Edited April 11, 2017 by HU&W

[Jenkspaz]

20 minutes ago, HU&W said:

Are pilots that choose to leave somehow the enemy of a broken system?

Apparently.

[Torch09]

4 hours ago, Standby said:

Did some digging and it looks like they implemented a $500/mo special pay for individuals that were selected for stop-loss back in the 2009 timeframe which was also paid retroactively.  Seems as though the USAF last utilized stop-loss in 2003. 

Congressional Research paper on Stop-Loss
- Army policy was to stop-loss individuals/units for deployments with a termination at re-deployment + 90 days.
- No mention of USAF policy

Separating as soon as possible seems like a logical choice now.  Not sure how the IRR works -- I wonder how long they can keep you on if they brought you off IRR.

Solid link.  It mostly focuses on Army bubbas, but here's the main takeaway from a Congressional point of view:

Pg 11: "Since the beginning of OEF/OIF, there has been no definitive survey data that would demonstrate that a shortfall, either in quantity or quality, has been directly attributable to the Stop Loss Program. With the recent economic downturn and a rising unemployment rate, any concern about Stop Loss from potential recruits may be overshadowed by the military becoming an increasingly attractive and financially secure option."

So it was neutral at best when job options for Army enlisted troops on the outside sucked.  Given far better options for pilots on the outside, there's no data to support using Stop Loss for long-term manning issues.  

[tac airlifter]

15 hours ago, Jenkspaz said:

Probably not before the meeting, but he may force us to stick around so that he can tell us all about it...

Stop-Loss an Option for Air Force to Stem Pilots' Departure to Airlines

"Everhart said he has already told airline executives that stop-loss is an option. 'I said to the industry... if we can't meet the requirements, the chief could drop in a stop-loss -- and you need to understand that,' he said."

Lol, is he threatening the airlines?!

Sooooo, are you taking my bet?

[Hacker]

14 hours ago, HuggyU2 said:

Everhart is bluffing.  Even if he tried to implement Stop Loss, the blowback would be unpalatable.  

Just the fact that they're playing that card is an indicator of where their decisionmaking compass is pointing.

[Guest]

17 hours ago, HuggyU2 said:

Everhart is bluffing.  Even if he tried to implement Stop Loss, the blowback would be unpalatable.  

I don't think he is bluffing I think he is that ing clueless. Isn't he of the same leadership class that stood by as we bled so many flyers 2-3 years ago on VSP and TERA lottery!

[Jenkspaz]

7 hours ago, tac airlifter said:

Sooooo, are you taking my bet?

Unfortunately, no, because I agree with you.  There will be no forum.  That's been made abundantly clear now with the threat of stop-loss.  The fact that they've even whispered the idea shows how little they care about us, and that they still refuse to address the underlying problems.  We're just objects, and you can't pull opinions or ideas from objects.

[fire4effect]

15 minutes ago, gearpig said:

I don't think he's bluffing or clueless, just apathetic. The full ramifications of the problem won't happen on their watch, so this leadership class only need expend a level of effort necessary to "appear" to take action, without any meaningful, substantive solutions.  It's the same strategy the AF has allowed these people to use throughout their careers to attain their current rank and position. They've kicked the ball down the road this far, they'll just kick it farther. It's not going to get better.

THIS....can't tell you how many people I've had this discussion with. Good ideas in the military only have to APPEAR to be good ideas for 2-3 years max until OPRs/OERs are filed/PCS/Promotion/Retirement

[matmacwc]

59 minutes ago, fire4effect said:

THIS....can't tell you how many people I've had this discussion with. Good ideas in the military only have to APPEAR to be good ideas for 2-3 years max until OPRs/OERs are filed/PCS/Promotion/Retirement

I know people that make a career out of this..

[HuggyU2]

Just now, matmacwc said:

I know people that make a career out of this..

I was fortunate in that, while I knew they existed, I didn't deal with too many during my career.  

[Guest LumberjackAxe]

Legit question: for those who are stop lossed, I understand that there might be a $500/month bonus as mentioned above, but do you suppose there would be other limitations/bonuses? Things like:

- Primary duties only (Just flying the line)

- Deployment limitations (not eligible for things like random non-flying deployments such as a 180-day ATC Liaison in Baghad)

- Admin changes (PT tests, purple circle, etc...)

Because I certainly wouldn't mind if being stop lossed meant you became sort of like that "career pilot" that the Brits have and the Army has as Warrant Officers. I mean, really, that's the only solution I see to the pilot shortage is to gain a separate track for pilots who just wanna fly and pilots who wanna get a star. What if the AF made that career track but buttoned it up in a cheap tuxedo called stoploss?

Let's be honest... a dude in the training shop/stan eval/scheduling/anywhere who is stop lossed isn't going to do shit. So then the bulk of the queepy workload would fall to everyone who isn't stop lossed, thus shifting the flying to those who are. Which would, of course, exacerbate the problem, but that's a problem for the next staff to deal with.

So what if they decide to implement stop loss, but essentially wrote it in so that whoever is stop lossed now becomes a "career pilot" for the duration of their nonvol service?

What would be awesome is if the AF offered, instead of a 9-year $130k bonus to 10-year pilots, a 9-year career pilot track.* I think they'd see a lot more signing up for that.

*subject to change at any moment.

Edited April 12, 2017 by LumberjackAxe
words are hard

[Guest]

Legit question: for those who are stop lossed, I understand that there might be a $500/month bonus as mentioned above, but do you suppose there would be other limitations/bonuses? Things like:
- Primary duties only (Just flying the line)
- Deployment limitations (not eligible for things like random non-flying deployments such as a 180-day ATC Liaison in Baghad)
- Admin changes (PT tests, purple circle, etc...)
Because I certainly wouldn't mind if being stop lossed meant you became sort of like that "career pilot" that the Brits have and the Army has as Warrant Officers. I mean, really, that's the only solution I see to the pilot shortage is to gain a separate track for pilots who just wanna fly and pilots who wanna get a star. What if the AF made that career track but buttoned it up in a cheap tuxedo called stoploss?
Let's be honest... a dude in the training shop/stan eval/scheduling/anywhere who is stop lossed isn't going to do shit. So then the bulk of the queepy workload would fall to everyone who isn't stop lossed, thus shifting the flying to those who are. Which would, of course, exacerbate the problem, but that's a problem for the next staff to deal with.
So what if they decide to implement stop loss, but essentially wrote it in so that whoever is stop lossed now becomes a "career pilot" for the duration of their nonvol service?
What would be awesome is if the AF offered, instead of a 9-year $130k bonus to 10-year pilots, a 9-year career pilot track.* I think they'd see a lot more signing up for that.
*subject to change at any moment.

Why would they pay you 130k a year when they can get you for $500 a month?


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[VMFA187]

50 minutes ago, LumberjackAxe said:

 

What would be awesome is if the AF offered, instead of a 9-year $130k bonus to 10-year pilots, a 9-year career pilot track.* I think they'd see a lot more signing up for that.

*subject to change at any moment.

The Royal Australian Air Force does that; you have an option to take the command track, or stay in Never Never Land where you never grow up and stay a pilot forever.

[Prozac]

55 minutes ago, LumberjackAxe said:

Legit question: for those who are stop lossed, I understand that there might be a $500/month bonus as mentioned above, but do you suppose there would be other limitations/bonuses? Things like:

- Primary duties only (Just flying the line)

- Deployment limitations (not eligible for things like random non-flying deployments such as a 180-day ATC Liaison in Baghad)

- Admin changes (PT tests, purple circle, etc...)

Because I certainly wouldn't mind if being stop lossed meant you became sort of like that "career pilot" that the Brits have and the Army has as Warrant Officers. I mean, really, that's the only solution I see to the pilot shortage is to gain a separate track for pilots who just wanna fly and pilots who wanna get a star. What if the AF made that career track but buttoned it up in a cheap tuxedo called stoploss?

Let's be honest... a dude in the training shop/stan eval/scheduling/anywhere who is stop lossed isn't going to do shit. So then the bulk of the queepy workload would fall to everyone who isn't stop lossed, thus shifting the flying to those who are. Which would, of course, exacerbate the problem, but that's a problem for the next staff to deal with.

So what if they decide to implement stop loss, but essentially wrote it in so that whoever is stop lossed now becomes a "career pilot" for the duration of their nonvol service?

What would be awesome is if the AF offered, instead of a 9-year $130k bonus to 10-year pilots, a 9-year career pilot track.* I think they'd see a lot more signing up for that.

*subject to change at any moment.

Sincerely doubt there would be any change to the status quo. By considering stop loss, leadership is signaling that they don't really want to solve the underlying problems. It seems logical to me that if they really can't fill cockpits and "put warheads on foreheads", before they stop loss they should cancel all in residence schools, scrub all staff positions for non mission critical slots, audit all deployed air assets and remove anything extraneous, bring home anyone currently on an exchange, truly eliminate all non mission related duties, etc. All that stuff is hard. It's much easier just to yell "STOP LOSS" and call the problem fixed. 

[slc]

5 minutes ago, Prozac said:

Sincerely doubt there would be any change to the status quo. By considering stop loss, leadership is signaling that they don't really want to solve the underlying problems. It seems logical to me that if they really can't fill cockpits and "put warheads on foreheads", before they stop loss they should cancel all in residence schools, scrub all staff positions for non mission critical slots, audit all deployed air assets and remove anything extraneous, bring home anyone currently on an exchange, truly eliminate all non mission related duties, etc. All that stuff is hard. It's much easier just to yell "STOP LOSS" and call the problem fixed. 

Wow, well said!!!

[Clark Griswold]

1 hour ago, LumberjackAxe said:

Because I certainly wouldn't mind if being stop lossed meant you became sort of like that "career pilot" that the Brits have

So what if they decide to implement stop loss, but essentially wrote it in so that whoever is stop lossed now becomes a "career pilot" for the duration of their nonvol service?

What would be awesome is if the AF offered, instead of a 9-year $130k bonus to 10-year pilots, a 9-year career pilot track.* I think they'd see a lot more signing up for that.

*subject to change at any moment.

That's the problem, the shoe clerks that run the place I believe could not resist the temptation to poach from the career pilot pool and build empires and fiefdoms of action officers, execs, assistant to the assistant manager of pencil sharpening, etc...

The career pilot (aircrew, technical specialties, etc..) track is desperately needed in addition to reforms on the scale of Goldwater - Nichols 2.0.

Officers, 3 career tracks:

Technical/Operational, Staff, Leadership.  

Technical/Operational would be just that, technical/operational skill & experience focus.  Not merely operating equipment but leading at the tactical level

Staff would be treated no differently than a qualification to ensure competency & only accept volunteers with a special pay for those willing to serve and bring their competency and work ethic to avoid mouth breathers just interested in cruising.

Leadership you would require nomination by your peers to be done on two year intervals with selection following and individuals allowed to accept or decline.

Just a rough sketch but we have to acknowledge the current model no longer works, people are voting with their feet, we have more bullshit than mission relevant duty on a day to day basis and things can be better.

[pawnman]

On 4/10/2017 at 7:41 PM, Snooter said:

Soooo, just out of curiosity lets say they do enact stop loss and I'm one of the lucky few.  So then what?  I get to keep flying the line with minimal office work until the crisis is over and then I am free to get my line number or do I become a bent pilot?  If I get stop loss will the icing on my cake be a staff job for a tour or a six month deployment to a sunny location where I can hone my PowerPoint skills; all of the above???  

I'm not planning my immediate exit...but if I were and the AF stop-lossed me, they would see a sudden and dramatic decline in the quality of my office work.

[MD]

On ‎4‎/‎10‎/‎2017 at 5:28 PM, ClearedHot said:

 

Goldfein, Rand, Everhart and the others have abdicated any shred of integrity that remained...I am truly disgusted to say I know them and trusted them.  They can't Stop Loss you forever (the will certainly try), get out NOW!  Don't waste a day if you have the option, this is not going to get better anytime soon.

You're surprised?  I called it pages ago in this thread that Goldfein was as worthless as his older brother was, with about the same amount of integrity. This is just another layer.

[Guardian]

Fingers Goldfein is a jackass. He showed his colors when he was the ACC A3. He doesn't care at all about individuals. Or individuals families. To him, everyone is a volunteer and he gets to use and manage you as he sees fit. And he was promoted on those ideals. I wonder if he cared about himself when he got himself shot down when he was riding the parachute to the ground or if he was concerned about the Air Forces loss if he didn't make it back.


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[MechGov]

That's the problem, the shoe clerks that run the place I believe could not resist the temptation to poach from the career pilot pool and build empires and fiefdoms of action officers, execs, assistant to the assistant manager of pencil sharpening, etc...
The career pilot (aircrew, technical specialties, etc..) track is desperately needed in addition to reforms on the scale of Goldwater - Nichols 2.0.
Officers, 3 career tracks:
Technical/Operational, Staff, Leadership.  

More Words.

Good points. I wonder if that could easily be folded into the existing DT vectors at the promotion boards. That way aircrew are automatically on the technical specialist/tactical leadership track as a Lt/Capt. Then part of the PRF process involves some two-way comms between member and rater/CC/senior rater to chose which track you want to pursue as a mid-career officer.

Of course that would need to marry up with an audit or purge of superfluous "leadership"/staff jobs that do little to win wars and are seen as exclusively career builders/personal fiefdoms.

Maybe that'll free up bodies for cockpits, force shape the bureaucracy and get us away from grooming CSAFs at the CGO level.


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[faipmafiaofficial]

Cross posted in the other thread...

Looks like Grosso doesn't agree with Everhart

https://www.airforcetimes.com/articles/air-force-stop-loss-is-not-on-the-table-in-effort-to-retain-pilots

 

The disturbing part about this is it seems that the Air Force generals aren't even close to being on the same page with each other AND you even have generals acting on their own and talking with the industry about potential measures that aren't even being considered. Unreal

 

[LookieRookie]

From the article: "The Air Force feels that implementing a stop-loss policy would cause pilots to flee the Air Force before the door closed, and they won't stick around to see if things improve. "

This tells me the AF will hide stop loss till the last moment so no one can separate before.

And I think Everhart was showing an unfiltered, unauthorized view into potential scenarios.

[jazzdude]

Cross posted in the other thread...
Looks like Grosso doesn't agree with Everhart
https://www.airforcetimes.com/articles/air-force-stop-loss-is-not-on-the-table-in-effort-to-retain-pilots
 

[Jenkspaz]

1 hour ago, LookieRookie said:

From the article: "The Air Force feels that implementing a stop-loss policy would cause pilots to flee the Air Force before the door closed, and they won't stick around to see if things improve. "

This tells me the AF will hide stop loss till the last moment so no one can separate before.

And I think Everhart was showing an unfiltered, unauthorized view into potential scenarios.

Kind of hard to hide, now, if the Chief is actually considering it a card to be played at some point.  Cat's out of the bag.  And if it really isn't on the table, as the article implies, it seems that Everhart wanted to win the scare tactics game by going straight to the nuclear option, to prove that he and his friends mean business.  Or at the very least, to test the waters to see if outright bullying actually works.

And on another note, comments like these are appearing in almost every article about pilot retention I've read thus far:

"As part of its effort to improve quality of service, the Air Force is also reducing additional duties and non-mission essential training required for pilots, and outsourcing routine administrative jobs in squadrons to allow them to fly more."

Yeah, I've seen the SECAF memos, and the jobs/duties that are being cut, but I hadn't heard of nearly half of the them.  And none of them seem to equate to flying more or less.  We still fly the same amount of hours as we did before.  Squadron Website Manager?  That's a thing?  I had no idea until my buddy told me he actually was the squadron's website manager.  Had been for over a year.  When I asked him about it, he smiled, and said "we don't have a website."

[Karl Hungus]

http://www.heritage.org/defense/event/rebuilding-air-force-readiness

Former management interviews current management.

Takeaways:  "Readiness" and lack of flying is why people are leaving.  Stop-loss was just an answer to a question about tools available to the AF- doesn't mean the AF will use it.  Would love to have heard that call between CSAF and Everhart.  CSAF wants to reduce additional duties, but doesn't provide any specifics.  He wants Wg/CCs to make that happen on their own.  Barely able to hide his joy at being able to speak to his idol, Venable says 15 Spangdahlem fighter pilots will stay for one more assignment because they trust CSAF so much.  CSAF thinks people should stay in because the AF takes care of your family while you're always deployed (it does?), and your civilian employer doesn't ever ask about your family, or something.  He goes to the mall and sees geriatric vets and they're telling war stories instead of talking about their grand kids, so people should stay in so they can be geriatric vets at the mall telling war stories too.  Lots of dancing around questions.  A textbook politician.    

Edited April 12, 2017 by Karl Hungus
for the children.