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1. You will change your mind. It's a mere function of time and life stage. Don't fret it. The young ones want to fly helos these days after MWS day out of UPT because they don't want to get "stuck in an airframe that doesn't see action". Nothing has changed much in that regard from 50 years ago. The crusty majors and above roll their eyes and welcome a family-friendly PCS duty location, or conversely 7-day opt in order to save their families in the absence of one. The two archetypes were the same person at one moment in time, bear in mind. You will be no different unless you opt out of a family, which is perfectly fine too. 2. You're misunderstanding the exodus. Just like the retirement of the baby boomers, job replacement will not occur on a one for one basis. The jobs are GOING AWAY. The 11F shortage is an 11F head count (sts) shortage for 11F coded staff jobs, NOT an 11F cockpit shortage (i.e. false advertisement). Ergo, there is NO net vacating spot for you to jump into. You're competing for less jobs, which makes your desires MORE competitive. It's not impossible, but watching all this experience leave is not leaving you with more opportunity merely because you feel willing to go where the ones before you are running away from. Understand this difference for your own sake. It will lessen the disappointment. 3. You'll quickly come to chastise your own statement. I know you're being flippant, but you really have no concept of how old queep gets. It is fundamentally defining in the career of a flying officer, that his flying duties, in paper listed as primary duties, are in effect tertiary duties after he pins on O-3. You will not escape that (there is no WO program in the AF). The closest you will get to attain such an outcome is to be a Guard/Reservist and deal with just getting to do it on a part-time basis (even full time reserve guys are being fired too, for your SA). Understand what this means. This means they'll pay you to not get to do what you're willing to sell your soul for in order to get to do in the first place. You will reject that construct in due time, like most of those before you, and again come to chastise your own words. Look, none of this has to be accompanied by a moral adjudication either. Some kool-aid drinkers could say airline_guy is a shitbag for having such an openly disdainful attitude (by proxy) for which he took an officer oath that had nothing to do with flying airplanes. Others (myself included) would view such means to an end as an admittedly apathetic but par for the course answer in an organization that's bigger than the kool aid drinker, myself or airline_guy's, and certainly an organization who doesn't care one flying fuck about me, airline_guy or even the kool-aid drinker. The only truth I know is to keep doing something until it stops making sense or you get fired. Words I live by and it's kept me sane. What makes you a SNAP is not that you think you're willing to do things others are not (you're not btw), what makes you a SNAP is that you foresee yourself as immune from these dynamics by simpleton attitude. You're not immune and you will find out. Whether that transition is a fluid one or a life-embittering one largely depends on how much common wisdom and free internet advice you're willing to accept or dismiss today. Good luck to you either way and thank you for your service.

hindsight nails it again. I'm pretty bitter myself. BUT: 1. I'm about ready to accept "leadership`s" direct and implied advice: that my services are no longer needed. I'm a salty (before my years), profane, hard-drinking, skirt-chasing gunship guy, and whether or not I agree with it, I'm not the decision authority on retaining folks like me. 2. I firmly believe that when the s**t hits the fan, and IT WILL in the next 10 years, "leadership" will be begging for folks like me and those who taught me (who, I might add, are 300% the pilots, ACs, and badass warriors that I could hope to be!) And it won't just be an AC-130: "combat" experience will be highly sought after for every airframe in the AF. 3. But, in the meantime, someone has to keep the lights on. SNAPs may be themselves, and talk out of their 3rd points of contact, but if my dire predictions come true, they will be ADOs in the squadrons we will be recalled to join. Let's hope their passion extends to technical and tactical expertise, because we will need their knowledge when we come back, voluntarily or otherwise. And in case my message was not clear, ask Rainman what the Russians intend to do to anything east of Berlin. Or Pappy Boyington what the Red Chinese intend. Ladies and gentlemen, everything that was old is new again, and I assure you that the geopolitical struggle between states is not dead. History will again repeat itself, largely because we, as Americans, are too stupid and ignorant to see the cycle coming . . .

Do you get a Light Brown Tater Tot Cluster for subsequent awards of this medal?

Did they talk about when the German's bombed Pearl Harbor?

For a 6-hour program (including commercials) that spans the time period between the beginning of WWI and the end of WWII, what did you really expect? They glossed over the Holocaust? They completely skipped the war in North Africa, among other things. For a program covering 30-ish years (in 6 hours), they did about as good as could be expected. The ship and aircraft inaccuracies are missed by the average American...

This is exactly the problem with both the F-35 and the littoral combat ship. You start with a great plan/design and by the time you've added all the "nice to have's", it's morphed into something completely different.

We do a lot of it to ourselves. Some new wiggit or capability or radio comes out, "hey PM _____ can we put that on the ______." And then we go back three steps to redo software, add weight, redo testing of the actual component and before we get back to where we should have been we do it again for another good idea. That was what killed Comanche and ARH. What's truly sad is the ARH is flying and working cheaply in form with the original requirement but we faked it away trying to squeeze every bit of mo'betta out of it instead of building what we had originally asked for. That's why the E model Apache has the same old 50 point database. PM said "knock his shit off we will add it after we actually have an aircraft to show for it." Hopefully after seeing how much better that works we can unfuck some of the self inflicted pain in acquisitions.

It's not just you. There is definitely a lowest common denominator element to he show.between the terrible continuity and being told everything 6 times to recap it over and over again I feel like it should have been narrated by John Madden.

you can't be forced to. If you want to, then have a nut, if you don't, then make sure they put the DAV code against you and don't sign a DAV waiver.

Your concept of economics is weird. If you have a cheap source of labor that is fulfilling needs and winning in competition with higher paid legal sources, then that is the free market at work. If the black market fulfills things the legal market cannot, then, like air and water, people will seek the path of least resistance. As it stands, people choose to employ millions upon millions of illegal immigrants despite your moral objections. This is America, and money talks -- people will flock to the cheaper option given a similar result/product. IMO, you simply haven't made the case to justify crushing the federal budget with even more expense just to fix this problem with solutions that most likely won't work. Nothing short of a literal genocide on the Rio Grande will fix the problem. Vertigo's suggestions just seem far more plausible.

I took the advice of others on this forum and got my ATP with Downtown Aviation in Memphis, and I'm very glad I did. I HIGHLY recommend this place. Your IP is an TN Guard C-17 pilot and the examiner is a retired Army surgeon. I can't say enough good things about these guys. I was in and out in 2 days and paid under $1500 for everything. You get a few hrs of ground school and 1 training flight followed up by a check ride the next day. They treat us military types like professional aviators and not like student pilots, consequently, they save you a lot of money by not wasting your time on unnecessary training. They are quite busy, for good reason, so if you're interested, call ASAP to get on their schedule 901-354-3001.

Three reasons why I wanted out and applied for VSP: 1) I've never wanted a career in the military. Since I was a kid, I've always wanted to fly. And an airline career has always been appealing to me. However, I never had the money to afford to go to an aviation school and pay for all the certificates and experience needed to reach the level of airline job quality. So, joining the Air Force to get the flying experience I needed was a stepping stone to help me in acquiring my dream job with the airlines. 2) There is a massive movement of experienced pilots that has just begun and I believe will continue for the next 10 years or so. Most airlines are about to experience a mass exodus of experienced captains because of the new retirement age and I would love to catch the front end of this great hiring spree that is just now starting to gather momentum. The sooner I can get in front of this tidal wave, the quicker I can move through seniority. When the airlines just started hiring last year, I was worried that by the time my ADSC commitment was up I'd miss the hiring spree and never have the chance to achieve my dream of being an airline captain. The opportunity to VSP is perfect timing for me to get out of the Air Force before my 10 yr commitment is up right when the airlines are on an upswing. 3) Queep. I hate it. Like I said before, I've never wanted a career in the Air Force. I just want to fly. And while I enjoyed my time in the air and didn't mind doing my time with deployments, I hated the fact that none of that mattered to Big Blue. What senior leadership cared most about on my OPR's were how many squadron parties I planned, or if the WG/CC thought I was the perfect paper pusher, or if I spent additional, precious free time that I did have with my family pursuing a masters degree that would never do me any good other than provide a good bullet. When I went to GRACC at Scott, the first thing some career advocating major told all of us was that my flying accomplishments didn't matter; in order to compete and stand above the rest, the Air Force was more interested in how much more queep I could accomplish than my peers. No thanks. That's not for me. I just want to get paid a lot of money to fly airplanes. No more, and no less.

Was his sister Sal a firemans gal?

I must say that I agree with the libertarian wing here, for all the bullshit people spew about competition and the free market, when their own economic security is threatened, they become protectionist as hell. It's like "the free market is best as long as everyone but me suffers the drawbacks". This, on a forum full of people who have jobs and extremely specialized skill sets that no poor immigrant could ever dream to have without a miracle. Simply put, immigrants make it cheaper to live in the states. Not only that, but they make our lives more productive. Time is money, and I am far more productive doing my highly paid job I have been trained for, than I am at doing unpaid manual labor tasks. So instead, I employ illegal immigrants to do the things I don't want to do, either directly, (like housekeeping, gardening, etc), or indirectly (buying their fruit, vegetables, purchasing goods/services from firms that hire illegals). I can take that money and spend it on things like services, consumer goods, or financial instruments, which is where the bulk of our economy is really geared towards. I want to create jobs for Americans just as much as the next guy, but creating shitty minimum wage work doesn't help us as a nation. It ironically makes us more likely to backslide into socialism, once wage workers realize that relying on the government is by far their best option. Illegal immigration is a fucking tidal wave of human effort and desperation over an impossibly long stretch of land. Nobody is going to pay for the military to patrol the border. Politicians will promise it and then never do it because it's fucking retarded, and it gets cheap, easy votes from people too naive and ignorant to know what is going on. Even if you had the manpower to detect border crossers, there's not enough manpower to round up every one of them, and it costs an illegal nothing to get across (except maybe paying a coyote), and it costs us far more to stop them. Which means they'll just try again in a couple days. A fence is just a dumb, ineffective waste of time and money. It makes for a good talking point to get cheap political support, though. The only realistic, feasible solution is to get out ahead of this thing and harness it for our economic advantage. Let the free market rule on this one.

No, they keep the poor and working class of a first world nation from ever having anything by keeping wages artificially low by allowing corporations and wealthier individuals to employ people who work off the books, for less than legal wages in shitty conditions and who either bring with them problems, require gov assistance and keep our supposedly free market from balancing itself The free market only works if there is rule of law, turning a blind or apathetic eye to illegal immigration / unsecure borders is suicidal and knowingly employing illegals is no different than buying stolen goods. BTW, our highly specialized skill set is under attack. When aircraft that are flagged in other nations start flying domestic routes with aircrew and support who work for less money that 'Mericans, the end is nigh for having a protected occupation, even for pilots. How to Revive Airline Competition

Yes, I think raising the minimum wage would be a good idea but I also think MASSIVELY simplifying our Orwellian tax code (both corporate & individual) while lowering the corporate tax and lowering the marginal rates for individuals are a good ideas also. Not exactly related, but could be politically possible to both labor and business oriented political actors but we can't get anything done anymore so put that in the snowball's chance in hell column... National policy can not be solely on what is beneficial to certain business interests, we had a war about this around the 1860's or so... there was a labor system that made a lot of people very rich directly by producing a commodity very cheaply and indirectly by supplying that commodity cheaply for production but we decided as a nation that it was not right and we weren't going to allow it anymore. Your right money talks and people flock to the cheaper option but does that mean we should allow: Goods produced by slave/child labor and/or sweatshop labor? Counterfeit or stolen goods produced and supplied illicitly? Goods produced from enemy nations to be freely traded in our economy? Should we allow Iran to directly supply the US energy market? Why do we control commerce and business on the national, state & local level? Should we let toxic waste dumps be put in the middle of low income neighborhoods because the land is cheaper? I also have to take issue with your idea that a genocide is required to secure the border and that it would be unbelievably expensive. Israel built a 143 mile fence system in two years for a cost of $377 million, it works and has dropped illegal crossing from 14,715 in 2010 to 36 in 2013 for the same stretch of the Sinai. We don't have to fence nor should be fence the entire border, we need only fence the adjoining urban areas, road crossings, and patrol with a combination of Federal & State LE in areas adjoining those areas, let the National Guard patrol the remote and wilderness area. The cost is not so great we can not afford it and it DIRECTLY adds to the security and sovereignty of the United States of America by keeping people out that are attempting to cross into it illegally. The combined cost of the CBP & ICE is $18 billion, that is equal to 2% of the entire DoD budget. It cost about $400K for every soldier to support & pay on average each soldier during the Iraq War, this is just a WAG but even at $200K per year to support & pay a soldier on the border, you could have 10,000 National Guardsmen for $2 billion or 0.2% of the DoD budget. That would average 5 soldiers for every mile of the 2,000 mile border but coordinating them with CBP, you have for a small cost in the overall scheme of things, actual boots on the ground in sufficient numbers to be in control. The ground and air support could average to $200K per soldier and you would still be spending only 0.4% of the entire DoD. Just to take another WAG at a part of the possible air support piece, you could have 25 MC-12s deployed to the border patrol mission, flying a 6 hour mission per day at a cost of $1,500 per flight hour (WAG) and cost $82 million per year for good ISR support, that is chump change in terms of the DoD budget and it would saturate high traffic areas with ISR to enhance your ground forces. Again, this is affordable, it is possible and it is what we should be doing. A border security system that is designed and funded to be effective does nothing more than stop illegal activity, if you have a problem with our labor & immigration laws then try to change them legally. Do not advocate for allowing illegal alien criminals, because they are criminals, to be allowed to keep committing their crime(s) by confusing the argument (whether or not we should defend our nation, enforce our laws and assert our sovereignty) by raising the red herring and emotional argument of it is cheap labor that benefits some businesses and individuals as being in some ways economically efficient so therefore, screw it let's allow it. The almighty dollar is not the end all be all of our decision making, it is a balance of what is right, prudent and in our long-term interest.