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Congress hasn't been in good faith for over a decade. Just look at the requests for Obama to have a new AUMF for the ISIS fight. Nobody on either side of the isle wanted to put their name on a "vote for war" that may end poorly like the one for GW II. It's easier for them to not do anything and blame the Executive rather than actually do their job and legislate.

Tracking - sacrifice more now, so you can sacrifice even more later...all of it of questionable value. How's pilot and cyber retention going? Looks like Chang is back.

https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/19810010485.pdf Nerd it up. Could have saved ~$1-2B by now. My other favorite stupid decision is the continual failure to re-engine the BUFFs, but I digress.

Let’s examine the clues: - posts about his own mentorship prowess - posts his own strats - works at a non-flying training wing & is clearly better than everyone else - dumb enough to think changing a screen name but keeping same life details & writing style will fool us all. I think you’ve cracked this case.

Hi all, Thought I'd create a separate thread from the AD UFT one. Anyone else reapplying/applying to the active duty civilian boards for active duty Air Force (not Reserve)? Curious if anyone else has had any success getting a UPT slot this route. As a quick lesson learned from the last board don't let your recruiter force you to put any job on your sheet other than pilot. My recruiter(s) made me believe it was required to put alternate jobs beside pilot (put CSO as the 2nd choice just to get pushed through). Turns out that is not true and is absolutely not required. If your recruiter tells you this is required just move on and call a different one don't make my mistake.

Yeah, I don't know, but I've made my peace with it. Got some great advice from my then Group CC, that I've taken to heart. Straight up told that I probably wouldn't get an opportunity to command (wasn't really gunning for it anyways, and that wasn't a surprise anyways), but because of that, I don't have the pressure to play the game, so go out and find what makes me happy and do it. If I want to just fly, just do it, the pilot shortage isn't getting better. If I want to get out, the airlines are hiring. If I want to do something else, shoot for it without worrying about career progression. Lots of options still out there. And that mindset has given me some great opportunities since. I've found little niches where I can make make my corner of the AF a better place doing something I enjoy, so it ends up being a win-win for me and the AF. If I retire as a major, great, I went out doing what I liked to do. If I make lt col, great, that retirement paycheck will be bigger. My self worth doesn't rely on what's on my shoulders.

I didn't see any part of his post that said you should do ACSC in correspondence to make yourself more competitive for in residence. I did see in his post that you should do ACSC if you want to get promoted. I did mine as early as I did not so that I would get picked up for school, but because I knew after not getting picked up off my major's board, the odds of getting picked up on subsequent boards was slim to none. In my community especially, it seems the less time you spend flying the B-1 and the more time you can spend doing literally anything else, the better your chances for promotion are.

That's about it. Crap happens, glad you have been fortunate enough to dodge it. Probably hurt having a long casual LT period (not by choice, ~1 year) followed by training with the Navy (last choice on my dream sheet, ~15 months because of how the AF prioritized classing up for training, so I sat casual again for several months), followed by a UPT contractor strike. So bad timing all around early in my career, and essentially 1 Lt opr short of what I should've had. Flew the line, 2x flying deployments + 1x non flying deployment, C-17 IP, airdrop AC, UPT IP. Played the "if I deserve an award, my supervisor should take care of me" game, so only had 1 quarterly award. Only real strat was from the OG as a top 20%-ish flt/cc on my top opr for the board. Nothing spectacular, but not bottom of the bucket. PME done, Masters degree done, no UIF or PFT failures. No missed end of tour decorations, no referral OPRs, no NJP/LOR/LOA. The only thing the promotion counselor had for feedback was not enough awards. So yeah, crap happens, better lucky than good, timing is everything, etc

Cool. That's what they told me, and I got passed over for major in my first look (95% promotion rate). No negative indicators, SOS in res complete, flt/cc, etc, just not a lot of real strats or awards, but nothing that would've pointed to bottom 5%. All my leadership up through the wing were as surprised as I was when I didn't make it. Best part was that on the same board, a dude that was a FP (needed supervision to fly, failed to check out as an IP in MQT) in the T-6 that was getting sent back to his previous unit made it. Picked up second look with a DP though So yeah, glad you've been lucky, some of us aren't.

The problem is that some communities won't release people who aren't the Golden Child to staff, ergo@pawnman

You don't "have" to go to staff. If someone wants to just fly, go for it. But there's a price to pay for that choice-it'll be a lot harder to make O-5. That's not wrong or unfair, it's just the nature of the business, and the mid-level captains should be made aware of the rules of the game so they can make informed career decisions. Even when I was in college working on my PPL, my CFI (who had just retired from the AF and was an AF pilot that didn't command) mentioned that if all you wanted to do was fly, be prepared to retire as a major, but if you could could suck it up and do a staff assignment, O-5 becomes realistic (but not guaranteed). And that was 16 years ago when I had that talk. But it seems to check, the couple guys I knew in my career so far that just flew their entire careers retired as majors. Same goes for ACSC- if all you care about is flying your jet and staying in the wing, then yeah, ACSC does nothing for you and is a complete waste of time. But it is a requirement for O-5. Not saying you should do it as soon as you have a line number to major, but if you've had your 3 looks at school and didn't get picked up, maybe you should consider doing ACSC-DL. Then again, if you just want to fly and are okay with retiring as a major, then cool, don't do it. Just don't be surprised you didn't make O-5. Something about the more things change, the more they stay the same... I will say that the myvector assignment process is (hopefully) a step in the right direction. I was going to just stay flying because going to Scott to do AMC staff or TACC is something I have no interest in. But I was able to find a few staff jobs that sound interesting in locations I'd like to be in, with some of them being flying staff billets. Sent from my SM-T700 using Tapatalk

ACSC in correspondence to make competitive for in res is indeed a waste of time, CSAF said so.

1: clearly marked as chaff 2: fuck those guys if they think everyone has to go to staff. If you want to fly, stay in a flying squadron.

“And this section right here lists all the girls I took on dates but never slept with”

Banking may be a strong word. I just wish I hadn't been as blindsided by it. I had a whole series of commanders telling me how great I was, that I was integral to the mission, that I had improved the unit, that I was doing great work...then I got passed over. So either the boards were fucked up, or my commanders lacked the balls to actually tell me where I stood early enough to make a difference. I did do the feedback with AFPC. Basically worthless, because they told me all the things I already knew: 1. Didn't get a DP, so I was already at a disadvantage compared to the majority meeting the board. 2. Not enough (read - zero) career broadening. Never got out of a bomb wing, so again at a disadvantage compared to people who went to a staff/ALO/non-flying job. Not that I didn't try...I applied for three of those AFPC mail robot things, including the one to be a finance officer, but I couldn't get released by my functional to do any of them. 3. Limited supervision time. As a rated officer in a flying squadron, I had at most 6 people I rated on at any given point. MX, LRS, SFS, etc officers are supervising 200+ airmen at the same time in their career. 4. Everything was flying. The board doesn't want 4 deployments and 2000 combat hours. They want one deployment, enough sorties to get one Air Medal, then they want you to move on to the next job. 5. Not enough Tier 1 strats. A lot of #x/xx shop chief, #y/yy flight commanders, but not enough early #x/xx captains.

The "Frozen Middle" is real. https://othjournal.com/2018/12/17/forget-the-frozen-middle-this-mysterious-layer-of-bureaucracy-is-not-an-insurmountable-obstacle-to-innovation-even-if-it-did-exist/

Apparently, he's confident that his security forces will get to you faster than you can draw your own weapon...

Practice bleeding is unquestionably a fucking waste of time, I don’t care what your afsc is. if you want to read for fun on your own, just read books. Don’t press your overinflated opinion of what a “real” officer should do on others and then later on levy it as a promotion prereq against the CSAF wishes. They call that the frozen middle.

You don't like the bargain, don't take it. If enough of "you" don't take it, the system will have to flex. I don't see a lot of flex, yet. If I'm in an echo chamber and there's only one right answer, that's ok, but it's still worth saying. I started poor and the pay/security of the military has been worth it to me. ACSC and AWC online were nothing compared to digging ditches. It might not be for others, but knowing the rules helps make decisions. As far as me being a repeat of a prior user, the moderators could probably look at IPs and tell you how right you are. I'm sure a cyber "operator" would know more about that than I do...

Waste of time? Reading and writing about our profession is a waste of time? I think that's extreme. As far as whether it's "Basing selection for promotion on that single item...", I gotta say it's not. With ACSC and crap performance in your primary duty, you probably won't make it. ACSC plus DUI = no promotion and maybe early separation. The truth is that good candidates for promotion probably have all of it. One difficult part of the conversation is that ACSC today isn't the same as ACSC 14 years ago, roughly when I did it. It was easy to knock out at that time, but they purposefully made it more cumbersome, which I disagree with. Anything that's fairly even among all candidates though isn't worthless. It teaches you more about your profession and you may question how much, but I doubt you can honestly say not at all, at least not if you try to complete it with that end in mine. Further, it filters those willing to do something that's a pain but is clearly helpful for career progression from those who won't. In my career there have been a lot of sacrifices. I'm not saying adding some as a discriminator is necessary, but I am saying if you're not willing to do something so relatively easy, then you're unlikely to be willing to do a lot of the later ones that are much more demanding.