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Stay in the squadron and fly as your primary job. Never volunteer to be attached and if you get wind that you are being considered for an attached or non-flying gig, resist it kicking and screaming!

Designated hitter would solve that issue. Stateside bases could still be on shift for it; I'd volunteer for that. FYI, I did volunteer for RPAs at CVS just to stay ops & fend off staff. Denied. Honestly, all of these minor issues have solutions, it's all about priorities. If the AF cared enough to fix the RPA world, they could. But they don't care. They care about F35s and the future war with China which will never happen.

A Crew Chief more eloquent than myself wrote this and has been making the rounds. I remember her as an love hate relationship scooping snow off her at K.I. Sawyer.

Not quite. Your looking at RE as a security. Doesn't work like that. It's hard to articulate your thoughts in a single post so I get what you are saying. It comes down to personal preference. But, for me, I like my cash flowing RE. Buying my first commercial property in the near future and just dropped plans for an RV park....would I trade that for Apple or target? No, but you would. Just preference. Plus, im done in four years. Not going to work anymore for w2 income, so the cash flow rox.

They were. Global Strike is now sending us all over the world on all kinds of exercises that don't count as deployments. And the 9th did six months deployed, six months home, six months deployed not long ago...and it destroyed the people and the aircraft. We spend over a year getting back to decent fleet health following that. I'm not looking forward to parking B-1s at Guam to do training missions for six months at a time. If I'm going to be away from home for six months, then let me kill some bad guys.

There is nothing about the T-38 track that prepares you to drop bombs so why does it matter?

That's what people thought in 2010 too.

And it's only going to get higher. I think now days a 95%+ selection rate will be the norm. The days of guys getting forced out as Captains are over, until the next AFPC debacle.

Check pm

Wings on the suit shouldn't be a concern. I see them worn all the time, albeit they are smaller than the ones worn by Mr. Pugh, by retired Navy guys. Same goes for SEAL Trident and SWO warfare pins. As for patch placement/type.....whatever. Good on the dude for trying to be a part of the process. Agreed, using his service as a core tenet of his campaign is probably a good tactic for his area. You might not like or agree with the guy, but I see nothing here that is out of the norm for a standard political campaign. Care to elaborate on why you're chucking spears? Got some backstory, or is it just a case of mis-identified stolen valor?

Think of how many permanent schedulers, planners, training managers, equipment custodians, building custodians, deployment managers, records managers, voting reps, security managers, resource advisors, purchase card holders, and DTS reviewers we could hire for 60k per year...

A lot of you us sound like my wife in that every problem is the end of the world. I apply the same game plan of nodding and saying "okay" to most of these gripes. There are some serious problems in the AF, but to not even join based on queep is ridiculous. And you don't get excited flying a jet with USAF on the side? Wtf excites you? Maybe CAF/MAF life is just totally sucky, but in AFSOC you won't get anywhere if you aren't a mission hacker--regardless of PowerPoint skills. 2Niner, do what you want, but if you join don't show up jaded and crusty like a lot of these guys. Your career will be miserable if you do. Instead, snapshot your lowest moment in a cubicle and compare it to your lowest moment as a pilot, and they won't compare. When I get down about work, I think back to when I was roofing houses and my mood drastically improves. And the coup de grace about military flying is that I don't keep in touch with roofing buddies, but I'm still close friends with my UPT class. That camaraderie is rare and makes it worth it.

Also, Snaplock: most who know me know that were I the WG/CC, the support squadrons' duty day would look a lot different. I'm of the Robin Olds school: "If I can send a man to fly combat 24 hours a day, he can get paid 24 hours a day!" 1. I would eliminate all internal training between 0730-1630. ("closed for training") 2. I would mandate at least min manning during all squadron functions. Hell, I might forbid squadron functions 0730-1630. 3. While this might be negotiable, I would mandate some manning from about 0300-2300, with full manning during duty hours. MX dudes are working as long as we are, and they have a right to be supported too. And so do I after flying during a night week. 4. Good cop: in AFSOC, this isn't an issue, but I would force-feed the interfly to the support types and ops types alike. Get these folks seeing what they're supporting, and morale goes up - every time. I've seen it time and time again, across AFSCs - show them, and tell them, about what you do and how their help makes your life easier, and you get the results you want. 5. Bad cop: don't like the increased duty hours? I seriously don't care. Chang, I'm taking a page from your playbook: I can train a new CP in an AFSOC C-130 in an average of 2 years. I can train a new 3-level finance troop in 2 weeks. Guess who I care more about retaining? Especially since you A1 types continue to insist that supplying an endless stream of 3 levels and 25 hour copilots replaces the combat tested Pro Sups, IPs, WOs and others we're hemorrhaging . . .

So, first of all I'm not going to bash Obama but I do think that his leadership, policies and direction given to the DOD have helped to create more suck for us. His appointees are the ones running the DOD and the AF. Think about it. Also, many say that the AF has become a social experiment. At least some of that has come from the White House. Concerning QOL. I remember driving to work early every morning as a Lt. I hated the early days but remember being so glad that I was in the AF and didn't go to the airlines like some of my friends. I also remember always thinking that I would do 20 and had no interest in ever going to the airlines. Now I have no desire to do 20 and am frantically combing over my airline apps. I've asked myself why things have changed. It's different for everyone but it really boils down to leadership, the queep and the broken promotion system for me. The AF has been a HUGE benefit for me. I wouldn't change a thing about my decision making. I would not change a thing if I could do it all over again, but I've realized that this isn't worth sticking around for. One of the biggest things that gets me is that I work 12-16 hour days while it seems like a lot of the rest of the base works 0730-1630. They also usually get to break away for lunch and are allotted time for PT. I don't get either. My days are ALWAYS crazy busy and when I have to deal with one of these 0730-1630 workers I ALWAYS get pissed off. It's usually because they will only do what I need Thursdays between 10 and 11. Or, I have to make an appointment to see them a week in advance. Or, THEY decide when they will do the training that I need and the next training that they are conducting is 3 weeks out and in the middle of the day so my squadron has to take me off the schedule for the day. I could go on, and I think we all could, but the thing that sends me through the roof is seeing their work ethic and working conditions. Their building and offices are usually new or newer. Meanwhile, I go back to a shit hole squadron and check the mouse traps to see if we caught the mice that have been running around. Meanwhile the shoe clerks are sitting in nice new leather office chairs and have book cases made of rich mahogany. While, I'm trying to get something done with this person they notice that I'm missing a signature or some other small thing and tell me that they can't do a thing for me until I go run around to get that done. This whole time they seem to be doing virtually nothing and sitting in their chair playing on their iPhone for most of the day. You all have seen this too, right? It's obvious that their work load is minimal compared to the aircrew out there and their offices completely close down for training, while we come in on the weekend to get that stuff done or do it after flying at 2000. Why in the hell can't we assign some of these people back into the flying squadrons to take some of the load off of aircrew? The whole manning in tight everywhere argument is a numbers game in my opinion. It's B.S. A lot of the rest of the AF needs to come spend a week in a flying squadron to see how long our days are and our workload and I think people will understand. It's clear to me that if leadership really cared about retaining the most highly trained members of the AF that have had millions of dollars invested into them then things would not be this way. Instead we worry about making the AF look and feel like a civilian office environment for the non-aircrew. I'm not advocating making everyone else's lives worse, but what I am saying is there are resources out there that could be used to take some of the load off of aircrew and make their quality of life better. But what do I know? Maybe it's right to let people walk away who have $10 million in training and 10 years of experience invested into them. Yeah, take care of the people who's tech school was 6 weeks long. That's how it should be...

At what manning level? I have lived shift work at the 6-7 person per CAP for 2 years with occasional spikes to 8 per CAP(the other two years of ops). You CANNOT sustain that for a career. Oh by the way guys on wing, group, sq, and OSS staff that don't have their hind end in an ops cell, a briefing room or GCS for 6-7 hours a night don't count. Until A-1 realizes that support staff are just that, and mans the combat requirement AND the support requirement you will continue to have RPA manning problems because of burn out. The best things to EVER happen in the RPA community was when the TAMI guys got sent back to Fighters and the UPT direct guys went to manned aircraft. I am sure A-1 was pissed as hell at what this did to their spreadsheets, but HOPE that guys could get back to what they signed up to do made life a hell of a lot better for everyone involved. Right now though the 11M types on loan to the RPA community are getting screwed and they are pissed. If you don't send them back to manned aircraft you will see 80% get out as soon as their commitment is up. And if you stop loss them I would be wearing a bullet proof vest to work every day if I were a sq/cc or higher. You can only push people so far before they breakdown and the Air Force is playing a very dangerous game.

If a forced re-cat happens, there are a large number of non-vol'd guys in my squadron who will punch at the earliest opportunity. Right now the only thing keeping us holding on is the slim possibility of returning to ANY manned aircraft. If I see 11M3K disappear from my primary AFSC, I will drop PC paperwork the next day. And I'll keep applying until I'm let go to the guard or my ADSC expires. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This is a great read and extremely accurate. Young guys should take heed. I'll add (from my position as an on-time non-HPO guy myself) a few of my personal observations... In my little corner of the CAF, in the past few years I've noticed a possible pendulum swing in a favorable direction. I know a few on-timers currently serving as OG/CCs, and just recently have seen a few on-time dudes get hired as SQ/CCs over some BTZers. These were seen as surprising moves and in each case the dude chosen has a great rep as a solid bro who is well respected in the jet. None were career CCEs and in one case not even a school guy. On the other hand, the BTZers that were not hired had crappy reps as careerists and were not respected in the jet. I think this is a sign of leadership possibly realizing that performance, reputation, and demonstrated combat leadership abilities outweigh the box-check/pedigree method that was always seen as the standard for advancement. The best advice I ever received was from my flight commander when I showed up at my first ops squadron. "You should strive to be the guy that people want to be on the flight schedule with - to do that you need to be good in the jet. After that, be good at your ground job, and then be good in the bar - in that order." My experience is that if you work hard to be respected by your peers and subordinates, good leaders will notice and build their impression of you from those actions. Crappy leaders may not see that and you'll probably have a few of those. Treat them like threats - avoid if possible, if not minimize time in their MEZ and move on, pressing the attack on priority targets. Timing and luck are mostly out of your control, but if you keep your head down and press you'll maximize your chances of being in the right place at the right time when the phone rings at 2AM.

Is PTSD as common as this article makes it sound? https://www.gq.com/story/drone-uav-pilot-assassination

Oklahomans, our state will be in good hands. Adam Pugh, a former ABM, is running for State Senate based on his illustrious career as an ABM. He's so awesome that he still refers to himself as "Captain" years after his gallant service. Check out his pics on his website. He is so proud of his fake (ABM) wings, that he still wears them on his suit jacket. Also... he must have stolen someone's helmet for that glamour shot. Or maybe he kept his when he washed out of UPT. https://www.pughforsenate.com