mcbush

I'm still in the outer reaches of AMC (aka PACAF), so I have somewhat low SA on life at the super bases, but from my perspective it hasn't changed that much over the past five years or so. As an IP, I try to fly about one ~50 hour trip every 3-4 months and one ~4 hour local per week. That means I probably spend one month a year on the road... a far cry from the 300 days a year some people were logging 10-15 years ago. That being said, I think a lot of the "ops tempo" grind for our younger folks comes from other TDYs not necessarily related to mission employment. Once you're done with your 5 trips to Altus (for airdroppers), SOS, CATS/MECOC, AIS, etc., you've eliminated a lot of the things that pull you away from home. It also helps that we only deploy a handful of copilots and ACs from the PACAF squadrons, so the threat of deployments is extremely low out here. I haven't seen one in over 4 years, but of course, YMMV.

I think some of that stems from a legitimate difference in philosophy and perspective, but mostly boils down to the fact that incumbents are always going to tell you that everything has been awesome on their watch, and challengers have to sell the notion that everything is terrible.

You forgot Kurdistan. But don’t worry, everybody always does.

I think it’s just base pay. Here’s a chart that’s going around on Reddit: https://i.redd.it/9rnge9wpbfl51.jpg

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Good friend of mine did exactly that. Really wanted A-10s, but it wasn't going to happen out of his student drop, so he put FAIP near the top of his list. Got picked for it, did a couple years at Columbus, and is now out flying A-10s and loving life. That said, this is the ultimate YMMV. There's obviously no guarantee that your FAIP drop is going to be any better than the drop you saw as a student, and it could be significantly worse. All comes down to the same factors as everything else: luck and timing (and a little hard work and being a good dude).

How/where do you guys watch F1? I'm not usually a huge car guy, but I'm interested in checking it out. Where do I start?

Another year down, and we’re further than ever from dedicated light attack. For the optimists out there... see you next year.

Yeah, DOR is drop on request

This is something I've always been unclear on as an AD guy. How exactly does USERRA "reset"? If you go back to your civilian job for one day, do you get another five years of protection? Does it come back on a rolling one day for one day basis? Some other more complex way?

2, same. This was under the old ATP system and I don’t know if the checkride has changed at all since then, but I had no complaints with their program. And that’s coming from a guy with maybe 5 hours GA experience and zero time in light twins.

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For what it’s worth, CSAF apparently couldn’t agree with you less. He attached the Chief’s statement to an email sent to all wing commanders today, and told them to disseminate it to their wings. Standing by for words about Fingers in 3, 2, 1...

Anybody have access to old UPT syllabi? Trying to track down a copy of the one that would have been in place when I went through KCBM as a student in 2011-2012.

ANG still significantly better than AFRC?

Kim Yo Jong... not a bad description

Not in the ARC, so correct me to 100%, but wouldn't it make sense for a part-timer to always take their leave rather than selling it so that you get the points in addition to the pay?

Hey, it's VFR!

Harvested some capital losses and pushed that cash into oil/energy on 23 Mar. Otherwise just boosting regular contributions to passive funds.

I’m surprised the LAF Lt Col board is still a go. Is it mission essential to turn LAF O-4s into O-5s, but not nurses/chaplains/whatever?

Asked that exact question to the education office last year. They told me no.

Obviously this is going to put a stop to airline hiring for a significant amount of time. I've seen estimates as short as 6 months and as long as 10 years, with a current consensus in the ~2 year range. Once hiring does start up again, do you guys see it initially being more competitive than it has been in the recent past for mil guys, based on the potential glut of guys whose UPT commitments are now expired, who got enough hours at their regional to be competitive, etc? Just wondering how much of my new-found free time I should be dedicating to the more ancillary parts of the resume like formal education.

And if we’re talking about overall AD end strength and not just pilot manning, the numbers on RAW show us about 1K below what’s authorized in the FY19 NDAA

Re: 13K over end strength. Last numbers I saw were at the end of FY19 citing our end of FY18 stats. So this data’s a year old, but it showed that the total force is short roughly 2K pilots out of a required 21K. If you exclude the ARC and look just at AD, we were apparently 1.8K short on CGOs and 1K over on FGOs for a total of 807 AD pilots short. Not sure I believe those numbers, but that’s what’s on the slide. Obviously that also implies that the ARC is about 1.2K shy. Bashi, same thing here as above. The last PC app we sent up got disapprovals all the way up to the PC office, and still ultimately got approved for 6 months off. I think your odds are still good.

Didn't have the pleasure of knowing him personally, but it's obvious he was a titan of a man. Cheers, sir.