Leaderboard

Pile on, and gonna play devils advocate because I'm sitting in cue for my O-5 board results, and I've just had this conversation with two flag officers. Do you, as a pilot, care if someone is the #1/20 MPF officers or #1/20 LRS officers? No? Neither does the board. The board doesn't care if you're the best pilot in the world - when you reach the FGO ranks, they care about your ability to lead, to think, to get things done. Your skill at your AFSC matters - if you've not hit IP/EP status it will detract. But # 1/20 pilots is a second rate strat, because ultimately it doesn't matter. They want to see a demonstrated ability to lead "in the field..." Hence Field Grade Officer. No decoder wheel. No slight of hand. While obviously some are more skilled at the written word and PRFmanship than others, ultimately that form comes down to the bottom line and who is signing it. Nothing else matters. Not the C-method, not the narrative, not the language. When you see it, you'll know if you're going to be promoted. If there isn't a DP checked and a strat in the bottom line, you should have realistic expectations of your chances. The numbers are out there for you to find, to support this claim - you should know where you fall. And more importantly, your commanders should have the guts to look you in the eye and tell you where you fall and why. That's the hard part of leadership. YMMV. Chuck

Cutting the SOs won't help pilot manning. Having one guy fly the jet and operate the sensor and laser works in fighters because that guy has fighter pilot talent and more importantly fighter pilot motivation. Based on my four years in MQ-9s, my blunt assessment is that we lack the talent to pull this off. With the pitiful amount of training RPA crews get it's borderline miraculous some of these guys can stay in their airspace. Your average 18Xer shows up to his operational unit with something approximating the number of hours the rest of us got in phase 2 of upt. Dudes were getting 10 hours of training in MQT and then were on their own. Was anyone here ready to lead a combat mission where they employed and guided in munitions danger close with mountainous terrain the day after finishing T-6s or Tweets? That's what this plan is. Also, you don't get a cockpit to look out of for SA, your radio sucks, there's civilians everywhere, and you're doing NBO.

Looks like the 176th in Alaska is hiring for a C130, HC130, C17, KC135, and an HH60. Packages due July 1 https://www.176wg.ang.af.mil/resources/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=11898

My bad. Let me see if I can make this work. How to for PRFs... And last year's promotions stats to O-5 from AMC... PRF 101 January 2015.pdf CY15A Lt Col Promotion Results.pdf

I don't think that is how batting average works.

Because the "strating" system is terribly flawed... In some communities a "#3 out of 12 Majors" is better than "#1 out of 20 pilots", why? Because a pilot is your technical skill, and a strat with your rank would include your technical skill plus all the things that you would do as a major. Which has some logical sense to it, but only ifyou have the secret decoder ring. I don't agree with it either, but I've seen the discussion... So the top 75% probably had commanders with the secret ring and did a better job writing the 6-9 words in an OPR that mean anything.

I have drafted several of my own and written many others and the SR changed all of them. I doubt a self destructive PRF would be signed unless the SR truly thought it accurately reflected your performance. YMMV.

3 x U-28 1 x AC-130U 1 x JSTARS 1 x EC-130 3 x F-15E Plus 2 x Guard C-130's Nice!

ART's already get a "bonus". It's in the form of a 30% locality pay across the board for all pilots. Kind of a flawed bonus system because the individuals who live in the high cost of living areas like NYC and DC where locality is near 30% anyway get the bone. It's like AGR's getting a bonus in the form of BAH. I'd love to know who actually thought that was a great idea. Probably a bunch of dudes from Alabama and Kansas where locality pay is 14%. I will give my opinion on what I "would" do if I were on AD ready to get out. I PC'd to the ANG almost 10 years ago and I've done everything from be a Guard bum to a temp AGR, temp ART and I'm now a full-time ART. If you have no aspirations to be a commercial airline pilot, but want to stay in the military full-time without "some" of the AD stupidity, AGR is the way to go (and you can still take the same bonus... in the ANG). I will warn that although the ANG is still much more enjoyable that AD ever was, it's not the flying club it used to be. We're busy and as one of the few full-timers, there is definitely never a shortage of BS to deal with and fires to put out. Remember, less than 30% of the unit is full-time and it's not like you can just make someone come in and help out. You have to ask them and ask them nicely because at the end of the day, unless they're being mobilized, they can say no. I would say more than 50% of my duty is taking care of administrative BS supporting traditional guardsmen because they're not there enough to take care of it themselves. The part-timer card is pulled quite a bit when it comes to some of the basic responsibilities that most of us took upon ourselves on AD. The ART program isn't worth it to me for a long-term career anymore. It's great if you're a brand new 1Lt out of UPT making GS-13 pay to fly 2-3 times a week and be the Awards/Decorations/Snacko, but once you get up into the O-3/4 range, you realize you're working harder for less. The program isn't what it used to be. The retirement over the years has become less and less attractive. Prior to FERS, ART's got 50-75% retirement pay. That was $60-80k a year. Now, it's 1% for every year of service and the FERS annuity payments are now 4.4% of your salary (used to be .8%). So, $4,000+ of your annaul salary goes into your retirement ON TOP of contributing to your TSP to get the 401k matching. Lot's of your own money is going toward your retirement. Aside from that, the powers that be who've had their heads in the sand when it comes to retaining ART's are a day late and $1 (or $25,000) short to keep the waves of ART's from walking out the front door. 15 years ago, there were guys willing to give their left cahone to land an ART job. These days, an FO on 2nd year pay at United makes about as much as a GS-13 step 5 and works about 1/3 as many hours per year. Unfortunately, I'm afraid that this is a bigger monster than the ARC can handle since they've tide their hands trying to man military organizations with civilians confined to a lack-luster benefits/retirement program. They should make all full-time ARC positions AGR, but I'm not sure they can fund that. If I were on AD not taking the bonus and looking at getting picked up by an airline, I'd be rushing ARC units with ART/AGR vacancies. There's high probability you could pick up a temp-ART job while you wait for your call. As soon as you get your call, you're a free agent, but still have a traditional ARC position to stay in. If you get out of AD with 12 yrs in (4,400 points) and you can make it to 20 years/5500 points in an ARC unit, you're looking at $3,000+ per month as a Lt Col when you turn 60. Sent from my SM-G900V using Tapatalk

Maybe there's still hope for me to go to school.

Naturally. You'll have to ask people to share them individually...although it would be in interesting topic to see people post their PRF bullets with basic demographic data (B/I/APZ, DP/P/NP, etc.) and result. I always tell people they should find a PRF early on from a mentor they respect, so they have an idea of where they're going OPR to OPR. I have no secret repository, nor have I kept any that I've worked on (other than my own). That said, I would imagine a starting point here would be having trouble finding a stratification for each line, being forced to use third tier stratifications, or CGO stratification for the O-5 IPZ. Shrug...the actual "gray zone" generalization will change every time, but I bet it has some commonality through out. Probably not very helpful. I'd share mine, but it's a 1 below and (I'd like to think, at least) not in the area that would shed light on your question. Bendy

Okay, I re-read that particular sentence and I agree that Chang meant Sq/CC EA jobs and not Sq/CC jobs. Since these jobs are open to O-4s, you are essentially sending the message that you better get your Masters knocked out early to be competitive for one of these "opportunities." And this takes us right back to the pre-Gen Welsh days. It makes sense for an IPZ O-5 applicant to complete the AAD beforehand but not for an O-4 applicant. And if you are a Major who gets selected to be a GO Exec, you are more than likely to get a school slot later and a Master's along with it. So this is really not an issue, unless you just wanted to see how devoted someone is to climbing the career ladder.

I had a good experience at AMU but I know other guys didn't, box checked and I'm glad it's over

Online law school...Sounds legit!