guineapigfury

If you want to see how 6 year commitments for pilots will work out, give it 2 years. Thats when 18Xers start hitting the end of their 6 year URT ADSCs in large numbers.

Duck, you're on the right track. It's only 40ish pages and worth the read. On the plus side if they can't keep people in AGR slots, maybe there will be one open for me when I pull the ejection handle next year. After 4 years in RPAs I'd take any plane at any base.

TLDR. The USAF would love to "collaborate" with the Airlines; the Airlines have no incentive to do so.

Visit both campuses and choose the one with the higher density of beautiful young women.

If you can't kill people, don't join the military unless you're going to be a medic or chaplain.

Glad it all worked out.

The Russians are shrinking in both population and economic power. If they want to exhaust themselves with military ventures they cannot afford, I suggest we don't interrupt them while they're making mistakes.

There won't be any of these changes in the foreseaable future. The demand is too high for RPAs. Local politicians likely doesn't care what kind of squadron they have, as long as they've got one. They might even prefer RPAs since they're less noisy. Some people just don't appreciate the Sound of Freedom and the sweet smell of JP-8. As far as facilities changes, you won't see any on the flightline since most units will be RSO only with no need for local aircraft.

If you're set on a particular airframe, find a guard or reserve unit that flies it and apply with them.

If you're being discriminated against because of your religious beliefs, consider a quick chat with both the Chaplain and MEO. I remember from week 1 of OTS that "the Air Force's default response to questions of religious accomodation is 'yes'". Or you can fudge the truth to achieve the correct result. Pick up the pills from the pharmacy, flush them down the toilet and tell the flight doc the next day "the pills didn't affect me". That would be a true statement, and you can get on with your life.

My guess is probably not on catching them. Identity theft is hard to prosecute unless you catch someone redhanded. I'd like to see the punishment raised from a short stay in prison to hanging, preferably publicly.

I had a similar experience. Someone got my debit card info while I was in CA, probably from a card skimmer at a gas station. In the 2 days it took me to drive back to SD, they spent $3000. I called USAA, went line by line through the transactions and had the money back within 48 hours.

I have the misfortune of flying MQ-9s; nothing mentioned in this article is going to improve my life. 13 months until I can separate.

If a dude is dumb enough to lie about something as easily verifiable as graduating college, he's going to get caught at some point. That said, you may not know what you think you know. Unless you have his transcripts in hand I'd recommend letting nature take its course.

240 pilots and SOs apiece would certainly help alot, but thats damn near half of Hollomans output for this year. Guard and Reserve guys are already on long term orders and we're still shorthanded. I see lots of contractor gigs available for the foreseeable future. What terrifies me is that we'll see a modest manning improvement in 2017, think everything is returning to glidepath and increase CAPs to 70 just before the 18Xer exodus commences in the fall of 2018.

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.

Glad it all worked out for you!

3

I communicated that poorly. I was trying to get across that by upgrading a SO to an enlisted pilot, we'd have to put them through Holloman and MQT twice, burning half a manyear that could be more efficiently spent flying the line. I also left out FTAC, Aircrew Fundamentals, and URT from that timeline, which is an additional several months in total. So a 6 year SO/Pilot enlistment gets us something like 3.5-4 years of useful flying at the price of sending someone through the FTU twice. There also an FNG for twice as long since the crew positions are so different. Also, we now have to train replacement SOs more frequently. I think thats a bad deal for the Air Force.

Im looking at a 6 year enlistment split up as 5 months FTU /1 month of MQT / 2.5 years of ops / 5 months FTU / 1 month of MQT / 2.5 years of ops. I left out leave, ALS and such.

Sensor manning is nearly as bad as pilot manning; we'd be cannibalizing the right seat to fill the left. If any SOs want to make the jump, it will be only for the purpose of picking up the skill and departing for greener pastures. So now we're taking cats on a 6 year enlistment and sending them through the FTU twice, all to get 30ish months of pilot time out of them with an expected reenlistment rate in the single digits. That sounds just stupid enough for Big Blue to select it as the way forward.

It will take just as long to put an enlisted pilot through URT and IQT as it will a commissioned one, assuming we're talking 18X. If we're comparing BMT to OTS, the length is effectively the same. Medical screening would be the same for both. I'm not sure where you see a time savings, unless you're counting 4 years of ROTC or USAFA. In any event, we're not manned for a surge of enlisted pilots to come through the FTU. Holloman gets lots of new IP/ISO bodies, but they're barely enough to keep up with the outflow of separations.

This. We can't keep pilots for O-4 money + a $225k bonus, I cannot understand how we expect to keep them for E-4 money. If we had any sense, we'd hand over the bulk of the RPA enterprise to contractors and keep a skeleton crew of designated hitters to take the shots.

Can a guy ever be sure regardless of what his record is? Every year there is that one guy with a DP who doesn't make it.