Leaderboard

Parts plus four days.

This cat cracks me up. I have a hard time believing he's not just a troll well versed in pilot aggravation. If he's the real deal we're fvcked like BQzips mom on prom night. As for the RPA bit, some of those non-vol'd there enjoyed it, most didn't. I met some good people there. When I left, fortunate to get back to flying, I kept telling myself that the experience wasn't that bad, it was a great leadership experience and I'm better off for it. After a year I eventually I stopped lying to myself. There comes a point where you can no longer convince yourself Santa is real. My prime years as a slick wing captain were lost inside a GCS and my career growth was 3 years behind my peers. Aside from a property I purchased in Vegas when I moved there, the best thing to come from that assignment was the lesson learned never to sell my freedom to turn down a sh1tty deal. I am your poster-child aviation junky - part of the community that makes for easy recruits near your local ROTC detachment. Combine a young exposure to aviation with some early 2000s patriotism and the result is yours truly. After seeing how awesome I look in a flight suit with my sleeves rolled up, having to repeatedly tell young women that I'm married and having seen the vapes trail off my strakes from an aggressive closed pattern, my kids will undoubtedly want to follow in my footsteps. I'm already thinking about the conversation that I hope will inform them of the unseen surprises that lurk in a bureaucracy - Changs decide your next assignment, chicks don't dig droid operators, you get yelled at if your sleeves aren't around your wrists and Santa is not real.

That is not gonna buff out...glad the crew is ok.

Choke yourself you sanctimonious prick. For the record, you are not as smart as you think you are, you have simply become a mindless part of the collective, endlessly spewing the same old PA verbiage. Here is the thing, I know the game, I’ve done all the in-res schools….ACSC, ASG, War College in DC…and I’ve sat behind the glass doors on the E-Ring as an exec and watched the buffoonery. Playing the $ money card overlooks a GLARING error, we did it to ourselves. The lack of vision from people like Buzz and Zatar is what got us here, for all too long we have been stuck in the endless Do Loop of “we can only have a fifth gen force” and we are paying the price for it in spades. 10 years ago a LOT of very smart people tried to tell them the $ crunch was coming and we could not afford a force of only F-22’s and F-35’s. Despite the fact that on the second night of OIF A-10’s were fighting inside the “Super MEZ”, the seniors insisted we double-down on fifth gen and now we cry when we have no $ to buy anything else. What do you expect when we are flying Raptors that cost $44,000 a flying hour and F-35’s that cost $36,000 a flying hour instead of a mixed high-low fleet that could have economically fought the fight we have been in for the 15 YEARS! Then as we piled ever more coal into the 5th gen steam engine that we couldn’t afford, we decided to cut people to pay the bill, and we took those people from the admin heart of the Squadrons (CSS), where they were needed most…Now, after purposely cutting people we suddenly come to the conclusion that the Air Force is On Verge of Manpower Collapse…freaking brilliant! Sadly, we had multiple chances to off-ramp this road to perdition and the Navy tried to show us the way like in 2006 when they broke the “no more 4th gen fighters for any service pact.” I was there the day the boss found out the Navy was getting 24 extra Super Hornets and I was in close trail as he barged into the N-8 office screaming explicatives at the CNO and his XP staff. The Navy response “well the Super Hornet is not a 4th gen airplane, it is a 4.5 gen airplane and we probably can’t afford all the F-35’s anyway.” Congress has been more than willing to gift us extra Vipers and Eagles every year, but we foolishly keep saying no and doubled down to the point we had to start closing fighter squadrons to pay the bills. The last ten years have seen a steady retreat from the TacAir redline, No lower than 2,300 fighters!…Ok No lower than 2,100 fighters! There was a huge gasp at 2,000, but we sliced right past that number faster than some late night yaki mandu through your system after a Friday night in Aragon Alley. As we started closing fighter squadrons we suddenly had fewer to fill AEF taskings so the bros and sisters on the end of the whip have to run even faster to make up for the shortage…starting to see the picture now? When it comes to your "retention tools" again, you don’t get it…what you call having bigger fish to fry than keeping pilots on the right side of the happy meter and using STOP LOSS as a retention tool is the PROOF that the entire thing is a scam. How can senior leaders profess to care about the force, mission first…people always, and say things like “Morale is pretty darn good” almost in the same breath they admit the Air Force is on the verge of a manpower collapse? This CSAF has made countless impassioned speeches about caring for people and “every Airman has a story”, but in the end as you admit the people are just numbers and their happiness doesn’t really matter. I get it that you will never make everyone happy and there will always be sport bitching, but this is something very different. This is the heart of your ability to be an Air Force, your professional pilot force telling you with their feet…”THINGS ARE Fed UP!” Only 38% of the pilot force took the bonus last year and the numbers look worse for this year…so I would submit you better make time to fix the happy meter. It is not about hating the messenger, it is about hating the smug asshat that parades around the room showing glee in his pronouncements from on high. You represent much of what is wrong with the current system.

Squawk IDENT with AFSC or STFU and let the adults talk.

You are so full of shit. FHPs are NOT healthy, they're terrible. Our jets are broke, B-Course syllabi have been slashed multiple times with too much training kicked to a broken/underfunded CAF (not the FTU bros' fault, it's management's fault) and every year the new guy is less prepared for combat because he gets shafted on quality flying training. Us "old" guys can hang on because we have enough experience to fall back on; luckily when we were young everything hadn't completely imploded yet. I have seen entire squadrons who I would rate as below average - it's not the bros' fault, its the fact the squadron is full of young, inexperienced dudes who are trying their best, but big AF refuses to give them the tools required to succeed. WO's and the couple "real" IPs in the squadron slave to fight the uphill battle and get their guys ready, but even their 75 hr work weeks aren't enough because again, management has taken so much from them in terms of ability to provide adequate training. Those same squadrons are hemorrhaging experience at an astronomical rate for all the reasons mentioned elsewhere. Not an RPA guy, but I think it's fairly safe to say very few of them give a shit about leading the "community of the future." You managers might think that, but it's not true. Home more? Maybe they don't deploy to the extent that many of us do, but they're living in not very desirable locations, many doing a job they were involuntarily forced into, and from what I've read here, they do some fairly rough work schedules. RPAs provide a lot of capability in specific situations, but just because they do doesn't mean you have happy people operating them. These are statements of fact, not emotion. I cannot comprehend why you and other senior leadership refuse to see these simple facts and listen to your people who are the ones in the trenches. You don't like to think so, but the reality is your O-5 and below people out there in the CAF, MAF, AFSOC have much higher SA than you do on the day to day realities. That's not an insult, it's just how it is...some day I might be the old guy sitting somewhere, but if that day comes, I will rely on the guys below me to shoot me straight and provide recommendations...and I won't scoff them. That's a trait of good leadership I have seen growing up in this AF. You guys have a job to do which involves thinking on a strategic level. But it is extremely naive and a complete failure of leadership to ignore everything you get from the tactical level. Your flippant attitude towards anyone "below you" and how "we" could not possibly have any idea on what's good/bad in the AF because we don't have stars or whatever your metric for "credibility," is the primary reason we're all telling you to off and getting out. Many good dudes at the tactical level would stay and help solve the problems, but its clear senior leadership doesn't give a shit and will never listen to us, even when we're screaming the answer in your ear. You're right on one thing, there will most likely be a continuous supply of 20 yrs olds ready to sign anything to fly. But that makes this already hollow force just become worse and worse until some day we just hope we can keep up with the ability of Sudan's AF. Hyperbole a bit, but the point is valid.

Dude, are you just a shitty algorithm hosted on AFPC's computer network? Talk like a f-ing person. We (pilots/navs/E flyers, etc.) are not curious, foreign creatures "enamored with flying" that populate your spreadsheets. There are real god damn human beings out there risking their lives to protect our country. Treating people like cogs in a vast faceless machine is a big part of the problem, and you exemplify it perfectly the way you address everyone here on the boards. "We may have to eliminate some of the extraneous additional duties at flying squadrons or authorize more civilians to help. So be it." SO BE IT?? You make it sound like a bad thing...this is one of the many solutions that would alleviate actual pain points for your front-line operators. Stop loss being used means you all f-ed up at your job so badly that you have to basically go to the nuclear option. Congratulations. Edit to add: lol... -1 reputation point from General Chang. I'll take it.

FIFY.

fyi....i chose "no" on this. It just wasnt a good move for me....airlines are too much potential

Well... that oughta just about cover the fly-by....

This is the killer for me. I don't understand why more people didn't like this post. 69 people will like a post telling General Chang to piss off, but no one wants to acknowledge that with our income, from day 1 in the military, none of us should ever have to work another day in our lives (if you stay until 20 anyway). I think military officers are typically embarrassingly bad money mangers (guilty), and part of it is because we know (at least for a time) that we have guaranteed income while in the service, and most likely guaranteed once we're out. But I'm with you on this decision of work a bunch/make a bunch or work none/make some being a no-brainer. When I was in ROTC, a First Command (I'll buy you a drink AND save you $20,000 if anyone is actually still investing with them...PM me) and a USAA sales pitch were the only 2 "mil sponsored" $$ briefs I ever got while in school. That is embarrassing and borderline criminal for our service members. I was too busy eating chicken wings and drinking beer (amongst other things) to pay much attention in college, but if I would have had half a brain and mapped out my financial life at age 22, I would be set for life by now. If I didn't have a family now, I would never work a day after retiring and live the exact same lifestyle/standard of living as I do now. Because I do have a family, I will continue to work, and maybe for the airlines one day. But not by choice, and certainly not for 20 more years. I'm attempting to build a passive income stream, and that's where I 100% agree with your philosophy. Mil folks, enlisted for sure, but certainly officers, have absolutely no excuse to end a career, whether that's 5, 12, or 20 years, without a solid foundation of passive income built up already. I assume, like you, I can't live off my passive income once I quit right away, but I can definitely take a job at McDonalds if I want to, for fun. Or take 6 months off. Or coach high school baseball and teach "maths" or something. Pretty much until I don't want to anymore. One quick half-drunken proofread of this leads me to say 2 things. 1) I use a lot of commas. 2) target is again slightly on sale today closing at $67.06 (reference my random stock example in a previous post). This is only posted for future accountability/ridicule/disclosure, and since most free stock advice is rarely specific. Also, TGT increases their dividend next month...2003 is the last time they haven't had a double digit dividend increase (that includes that great recession we had from 08 to 09). For those looking at a reasonable long term investment, the transgender bathroom sensation is a perfect example (IMO) of how to take advantage of buying stocks on sale.

As an IDE-select who passed on the opportunity, I have found this sentiment to be misleading. Good leadership is highly valued on both sides of the fence. The Air Force has more opportunities per capita, but puts very tight left and right bounds in place. That makes it a better place to learn leadership. The outside world has fewer opportunities, but can have many more degrees of freedom. That makes it a better place to execute leadership. -

Bwahahahahaha! Yeah, great leadership opportunities. Who want's a 365 where you can write a leadership MFR telling people how to wear their PT gear!?

At Fedex you can be in the left seat before you're off probation! Less than two years at Delta!

And the current generation of senior leaders will sail off into retirement patting themselves on the back for having saved the Air Force. Then somewhere between 2028 and 2030, a bunch of people who liked flying in their twenties start to have an inkling that there is more to life than the Air Force. Suddenly they come to the stark realization of just how long their prison sentence really is. They'll come to absolutely despise the Air Force, and they'll have another decade with nothing to do but poison the waters. And they will. Or you can just fix the stupid things that piss people off. The current generation of leadership sails off into retirement rightly knowing that they left the Air Force a better place. Then somewhere between 2028 and 2030, a bunch of people who liked flying in their twenties are still in love with flying, leading and delivering an uninterrupted ass kicking to our nation's enemies. They see the last 10 years as an opportunity that's good for them, good for their families, and good for their nation. They'll come to love the Air Force and spend that second decade nurturing a whole other generation in how to run a fantastic organization. And they will. But you're right, Chang. Your way is better. Let's just do that.

Thanks Duck, good to know that there's always someone after something I want.

Without scouring this... March is DEFINITELY in need of full time ARTs. Hiring TRs, but if guys want to fly the tanker there, I can help. PM me or hit me at www.pilotcoaches.com coaches@pilotcoaches.com

Were you an IDE select on your O-4 promotion board? Seems that drop-down IDE "opportunities" are becoming a lot more common. IDE-selects are bailing left and right. The AF isn't retaining near as many "HPOs" as it thinks it is...

It amazes me that anyone would call stop-loss a "retention tool". Granted, you keep a few people a little longer in the short term, but if the problem is that you are burning out the force, it only accelerates the burn and speeds the increasing percentage of the force that makes the decision to bail out ASAP. Additionally, a lot of potential accessions see the burn and decide to go elsewhere to either fly, or adopt a different career, so not only does retention of the existing force suffer but it makes it harder to get new bodies in the pipeline. Retention means appealing to the force in a manner to make them WANT to stay in, not MAKE them stay in. BTW, I'd sure like to see some of those other "long term solutions". If pilots are getting out for a set of definable reasons, I'd hope the solutions address them, and not a few PC headliners that look good in the media, like working hard on that multi-gender bathroom issue. Maybe I'm just an old dinosaur, but in my 49 years of AD and contractor service to the AF and DoD I've seen this road traveled three times and it hasn't worked yet!!

I would start looking under the cushions in this jet.

Watch how productive I will be when I am stop-lossed. Also I would make it my personal priority to tell everyone I come in contact with how terrible the AF management is and hey should join another service if they want to fly/serve.

11F, brother, you are spot on! Fact is, I don't hear most of my bros who invest in RE describe it the way you do, so for them I'd advise different strategies. Look, everyone should be able to articulate what they are doing in terms economic and psychological (like your Target example) and describe how it affects the market etc. most can't. I feel that way about long term buy and hold RE. What I really like is listening to all the airline wannabe's talk about their future "dream jobs" and how much they will make....hilarious. No "job" is a dream job. Someone is still telling you when and where to be, 2 bags full etc. Check out those guys picketting for better pay etc. Sorry fellas, doesn't look like fun at all. Got it, its an extreme example, but true passive income means that sure, I'll have to work here and there, but if I want to Ride the Divide on my new mountain bike for a month, I can. Go to Patagonia for the summer, yeah, I can do that. Do a "world year" with my 5 kids, sure. Am I "rich"? No! I have income that shows up whether I do or not, and that is a beautiful thing. Last thing, I have a buddy and a business associate stop by my office this morning. He told me his check from the property manager this month was over $7K. I'm super stoked for him, because, once he retires as a Lt Col, (or Col if he wants) he doesn't have to work and will still do over 6 figures every year. Think about that for a minute. Would you rather make $250K/year working 80 hrs a month where ever, OR $150K/yr passively? Its a no-brainer for me, If I could do it in the markets I would, but right now, long term RE works, so that's what I'm doing. Good luck!

I have about 20% of my portfolio in individual stocks BUT they are all blue chip/conservative dividend payers. Once you own more than roughly 7 stocks (assuming they have betas of near one) your diversity/risk is about the same as the market. So why do I buy some individual stocks? No, I don't think I am going to beat the market-that's a fools errand. I do it because I get a lot more satisfaction and education and enjoy the dividends more. When a major US aircraft manufacturer has news, I read it with great interested. I follow the battle between the two major cell phone carriers closely. When one of my holdings announces they are raising their dividend (something that has been very common the last five years!) I recalculate what the yield is on my original investment and smile. I don't recommend this to anyone unless they have already maxed their TSP/IRA with broad funds.

Dump the bum, contact vivid entertainment, enjoy glamor and money for the next 5 years. Here is your link. http://members.vividcammodels.com/join/

It's not about the money Changer. Haven't you been listening? Wait, I know the answer to that.

Why does anyone other than the careerists want to do school in-Res? Has the USAF brainwashing worked to make you think going to one of these schools will make you a better leader/further your career that much? For F's sake, pass. If you were on the fence about getting, being sent away for a year non-flying doing f-all should only push you more. "Yeah but it's great family life"....you can simply stop doing the BS at home station to do that as well.

Too bad...these slots are huge leadership opportunities for those who earn them. Money in the airlines isn't everything. The Air Force provides leadership opportunities you'll never find on the outside.

Very mature, Colonel. Now that you feel better about yourself, let's discuss facts. A1 misjudged the effects of the 9-yr bonus. I acknowledge that. From the personnel perspective, however, A1 has a specific playbook and specific rules to follow in these scenarios. The AF is desperately trying to get Congress to approve higher bonuses. If successful, this will help slightly with officers on-the-fence. Next, some stop-lossed officers may rebel, but most will do their duty and uphold the core values (all should...we are officers first, as you learned in your schools). We may have to eliminate some of the extraneous additional duties at flying squadrons or authorize more civilians to help. So be it. Finally, a 15- or 20-year ADSC for UPT will have limited effect on the morale of pilots currently in, and the AF will still not have difficulty finding people to sign-up to fly...the novelty of flying never diminishes amongst a population enamored with it. If AF recovers from the pilot shortage down-the-road, A1 can curtail ADSCs. That won't be anytime soon, however, as AF will need to send more current pilots permanently into RPAs for the foreseeable future to meet Army demand for orbits. Pilots- you can help create a positive environment in your squadrons as we move through these difficult times. Emphasize the positives...flying hour programs are healthy, and pilots moved into the RPA community have the opportunity to establish themselves as leaders in the "community of the future," which can be a huge opportunity to excel. Also, RPA operators are home more, per the spreadsheets. Please help your GO leadership, and we will get through this together. Stay positive. You will sleep better tonight.