hindsight2020

Yeah buddy. A guy in my old unit got drummed out of AF flying with two consecutive Q3s. Went direct to Allegiant hire (oh the writeup for the second -3 was EPIC). Certain west coast base CA now. *yikes* Pretty sweet gig, that day turn business. I wouldn't mind doing that, if these smaller outfits had better career staying power than a senior popping his cherry at prom and a more robust retirement offering. No free lunch in life I guess.

I'm afraid as far as certain circles within the MIC is concerned, that's not the bug, that's the feature.

you're not saying anything new, nor far fetched. Those of us who weren't born into the decade of "everyone gets a regional job!" have been saying it since the lost decade. Air Force plays run the clock offense, always has, always will. And will continue to do so, until the next trigger for airline hiring slow down. It's an incredibly cynical play, but historically has always been THE play. The only difference between the upcoming recession and the 9/11 confluence is the number or mando retirements plus the capacity right sizing the airlines did under post BK contract. That will yield few if no furloughs, as they throttle the demanded capacity with organic retirements and displacements as required. That doesn't help the newly-hired of course, which brings me to the next point. Sub-10 year airline Reservists flock back to their units, as they always do. Being the plug in your BSE during a period of no new-hires is no picnic, even if you're gaining longevity pay. At any rate, most of the sub-10 year guys come hide at the squadrons when the airline reminds them of the other side of "livin' da dreeeeam". This fills up the full time positions immediately, troughing pot gets thin, and the angle for active duty separatees to use the ARC as a leverage position temporarily disappears. Rinse and repeat, just like daily wind trends. I've seen this movie before. Caveat Emptor. My only dog in this fight? Whatever one decides to do, just don't sh!t where you eat. Most do an honest job on that front, but we got a small cohort of boomeranging blue falcons that ruin it for everyone on both sides of the airline/mil continuum. As to AD? I don't think it will ever get any better. I treat is as a known quantity, and something ultimately to be tolerated in small and/or non-consecutive quantities. To each their own.

Their revolving door contract mx was running a shell game and trashing the flyers and hangar queens alike due to lack of continuity. No free lunch in life but hey, contractors got paid so the senators are happy. When you realize the DOD is fundamentally a jobs program in modern times, you start seeing the fiscal failures of our military spending as success and not the Orwellian irony ive come to privately accept them to be. We might be picking up the slack for CBM by next summer until their new contractor presumably rights the ship. Hope in one hand and shit on the other amma right?

38 is getting implemented as we speak. The fleet is mixed right now. T-6s had a version of TAS (NAWCS derivative), later TCAS implementation. When I left T-6 land back to T-38s, T-6s were also mixed on TCAS capable and not. 38C is all TCAS. Not sure what the implementation timeline is for ADSB-Out for 6s. NextGen is a joke, but that's for another thread. I do love me some FIS-B in my private flying. At least I get something out of my avgas and general funding taxes. I'm still not ADSB-Out compliant in my personal aircraft. I might just quit before sticking a 5K transponder into my spam can. Thankfully there's the skybeacon, which is probably what I'll end up doing.

Your best bet will be the individual units. They all have POC for hiring, and they forward the inquiries to the respective flight commanders. the eventual formal application occurs at the 340th level, submitting an application with the unit or units, of interest, and they internally forward your application to the unit. It pays to just speak with the unit directly beforehand since they'll have the immediate pulse on hiring needs at the time. As to the 97th, nothing different about them. Not sure what portion of my previous comments gave you the impression they're different. Certainly they've had prior hiring policies in the past I consider a bit insufferable, to pick the most mild euphemism, but those dynamics are anachronisms today frankly. The game has changed and the old guard has by and large retired. As to paid travel, I've typed that on here ad nauseam. Look at my previous remarks touching on that topic. Good luck!

You can't use outliers and call it a success. There's not enough sample size density to ascertain they're not gonna start lawndarting expensive 5th gen toys in the course of one ops assignment or deployment cycle/fighter drag. Establish a more robust sample size, undiluted by classically attained (aka more expensive) personnel in the same batch, then we can talk about whether the T-6 to 11F direct is or is not a false economy. This isn't a Luddite argument, it's a truth in advertisement one. Statistics are fungible. Airlines I think? The hiring is robust at the airlines so far, so not much disincentive for being a Blue Falcon in military life the way it would have been during the Lost Decade. Indeed, but they don't have that luxury, in order to meet the production targets. Our innovation antics torpedoed our production numbers at PIT last year. We've spent the last year surging on the classic syllabus just to catch up. Which is another way of saying we fell short of the increased target for another FY in a row. No free lunch in this sausage factory....

weird, people are always singing the praises of guard autonomy over active duty lite on here. must be real bad in 130s if AFRC looks like shangri la to you. That or someones lying, cuz it cant be both.

Hooking for localisms as a factor of consequence? Meh, hyperbole ime. So is the assertion the IP cadre is so green they can't fly let alone instruct to said localisms. It's just not a current driving reason for the otherwise production quality waste in the UPT syllabus, anecdotes notwithstanding. From our perspective and feedback on the PIT/IFF side... it's the sortie count, stupid. The cats have in aggregate 50 less hours (fiscal 06 vs fiscal 18 number comparisons, per the last big brain meeting last December). Less solos, and can't fly tac form to save their lives in IFF. So to me, stop effing with the sortie count in phase III (+ solos) and you can improve the product baseline from a B-course customer perspective. But the entire premise of the innovation wank of the last 3 years was to crank up production and retain quality. That effort is failing demonstrably, and from where I sit at least it has killed a couple guys already but don't mind me. I digress. From a IP-production/development which is my current wheelhouse, the program is not resource-allocated to get non-T38 MAF/NSA guys to get to a proficiency level in tac form to be able to IP-demo to the level expected of a top-off Track A 11F "classic guy" with currency in the prior airframe. With enough extra allocations though, sure I can totally get a non-38 prior herbie to that level, but not with a track A allocation. 19th won't hear of it though. And UPT wanks as a result, big surprise there. Oh well. Kwast is gone. Maybe this ---t will normalize as a result, maybe. Going back to legacy certainly worked wonder for us as a band aid these last 12 months, un-effing the production backlog of the SGTO experiment. I personally saved a couple potential casualties from checkered FEF through no fault of their own but the syllabus fiddle -----ng, so I sleep with a clear conscience. But not all baby turtles will make it to the ocean under this clownish paradigm. We're certainly on track to eff it up again with another round of innovation, so who the eff knows. *sighs* check ain't bouncin' I guess. 🤷‍♂️

Yeah, Hope's not a plan though. The reason why it doesn't seem like a "big deal" right now is because for the last two years we've had the old timers within reach of an Active Duty retirement, volunteer for these grenades in order to hit the check o the month club a few years earlier. As a consequence, we're losing that demographic quicker than we otherwise would, which accelerates the exposure of the types of folks who don't have that option available to them. So, if you're within 4 years of a 20 year letter I can see why this is all Chicken little hyperbole. But for folks closer to a decade left, it's a much different picture, and that requires nuance, not whitewashing. 5/6 units (one is exempted) , 2 taskers a year, 2 units a year more or less. So that's a tap every other FY for most units within the 340th. For guys with 10 years to go, it's a significant threat, especially when you account for turnover at the unit as guys get nervous and 1288/IMA/IRR early. I No. 20 is MSD for O-4. They're not retaining any non-promotes beyond 20. And on the O-5 promo as a TR in AFRC, that's a 0.0% chance of promotion without ACSC. Not a State secret either, it's fairly common knowledge around here. Caveat emptor.

Just getting started? The ART2AGR conversion has been ongoing for many FY now in AFRC; I wouldn't consider it a "beginning of the wave" thing in the least. If anything, depending on how the airline hiring chills or not in 2020 when the recession hits in earnest (imo), the window for AGRs will quickly close as people panic and flock back to the unit as full timers, or remain in place (from the ART demographic) and flow into the conversion. Nevermind the new hire TR/DSG airline guys who would want to avoid that day job until relative seniority movement restarted in earnest. Their biggest QOL detractor as junior airline guys has never been the paycut; it's the schedules that does it, especially as commuters generally unwilling to move to high COL junior domiciles. Especially so for the non-DINK and/or non-empty nester households. So don't dilly dally too much on the AGR calculus, you could find yourself sucking hind teet. The big difference between now and the Lost Decade is the furlough insulation. Today you're gonna have a job, it'll just be an unenviable schedule compared to the koolaid the guys who got hired circa 2014-2016 have been on wrt airline life and "career expectations". Certainly unenviable from my perspective as a lower-paid but homesteading AGR. To each their own type of thing. Again, I only speak for my experience in the AFRC. I don't know if the NGB side has a different timeline on these conversions. By all indications the Guard has been tail gunner on the bonus and TR incentive pay fronts compared to us in the AFRC. To be clear, hardly a reason to prefer AFRC over a non-TFI Guard unit, but just mentioning it for the sake of a complete picture. Good luck to all.

pay and travel is just like the guard. you get 48 uta, 48 aftp, and 15 AT. rolling participation average of 6 days, at DLF at least you could amortize that number it on a quarterly basis, though exceptions were allowed for airline training or the odd duck civilian contract work on a case by case basis. As to non reving to the military, youre not supposed to do that and some airlines are explicit about it. the unit is responsible to give you travel pay and allowance if they hire you, its not like the typical fighter unit where they tell you theres a commuting radius restriction and its on you to get yourself to the unit. the 340th (perhaps the folks at SPS exempted, but ill digress on that one) recognize most people wont reside at the UPT locations, so they have to sweeten the pot. Theres tons of travel schemes you can do with AT travel, and generally plenty of MPA to tack on to have all your trips to the unit paid travel for. yes, lodging is direct billed to the unit when on UTA/TP status. when on AT/rpa/mpa et al, lodging is by reimbursement just like any active duty tdy. UPT units also still qualify (at least they did when i left mine 12 month ago) for IDT travel, which allows a certain cash value on a receipt basis twelve times a year to travel to an IDT string of day(s). This allows in theory to not have to work extra in order to get travel paid for (since its illegal to use one day of mpa to merely get travel pay and then work the rest of the trip on IDT status, they would make you work two mpa in that trip non travel days, before they would allow you to tack your IDTS to it). At any rate, a long conversation for new hires, but it gives you a glimpse. Do bear in mind we re now fragged for individual non-voluntary NON-FLYING 180 day deployments for TRs. Only one unit has internally been exempted from it, which is self evident if you can count with your fingers. So far we ve got random volunteers to pick up the grenade in order to finish out their active duty 20 and get the check. but we re running out of those old guys pretty quick so its a matter of time before they tap a young guy and people scram for the IMA or IRR. And yes do recognize the participation requirements are onerous coming from a heavy unit, especially when travel to the unit has to be accounted for. The non deployment aspect of the job was usually the big draw to this job, but they touched that so now people are always walking around with daggers and 1288s up their sleeve. Things used to be better before they messed with that, but then again everything was better when TFI wasnt a thing. but thats crying about 15 year old spilt milk, so ill just say Caveat emptor and digress. PIT is 4ish month long, depending on weather, mx manning, the phases of the moon, and of course your proficiency. Most TRs take the full span of the course for the per diem and active duty money, though for some of yall high faluting airline guys its still a paycut.

Random anecdote, but my wife's suitemate committed suicide in the dorms during my wife's first year of enlistment. Clamoring for attention paid to toxic SNCO leadership was and continued to be a common topic among her enlistment, which she smartly capped at one term. Her suitemate of course wasn't so fortunate.

LOL I always get that. It's not wrong; your "correction" is a common misconception from the American mouthbreathing collective. Marcus Pontius Pilatus is the full Latin naming convention for said historical figure. Pilate is for those who think historical Jesus spoke 'Murican and had Jim Caviezel for a doppelganger.

Yeah, I resemble that remark. I have a few marked regrets in this life; having decoded the AD/ARC chasm as a civilian, before I ever agreed to set foot at OTS, is definitively not one of them. A relative outlier outcome compared to most military aspirants, and certainly one of the one or two times in my life I've been #foresight2020. An AD OG once uttered in the middle of a hot swamp-ass bread van in the middle of July at DLF, when confronted with pilot talk about retention, and me being the only ARC patch wearer in the van: "Thing is guys, we already have a technician track...it's called the Guard/Reserves". Took me a while to process, as the AD dudes initial reaction was to quietly snicker and roll their eyes, but the dude was right, and I was proof of it. Not what the AD cats wanted to hear, and certainly a bit of a Pontius Pilatus derelict stance on the part of said OG, but not an inaccurate statement in the least. To each their own. Nothing will change. Recession's coming. Run the clock offense wins again, from Big Blue's perspective. We all gotta make lemonade, and we all have our personal/family drivers. AD martyrdom doesn't have a high ROI from where I sit, but I don't discourage those who wish to pursue that avenue.

No, it's no longer a thing. The bomber cap is long gone. That said, there's plenty of T-38 tracked guys making the transition to the Reserves. T-1 tracked guys are still largely being steered to T-6s and T-1s. Also remember, active Duty is sending 11Ms (et al) who were 38 tracked in phase III, so saying 11Ms are now the lion's share of the 38 UPT cadre is an unnuanced take on this manning shift. Not saying they couldn't at some point just chuck people into 38 IP UPT billets without having flown the airplane as students, but as of right now that's not the majority case. As to the Reserves, we are not undermanned in T-38s. CBM is broke and on their ass, so the manning is masked by that since there's not much metal to turn on the 38 side. Active Duty is getting creative and you guys will hear some more about it in the coming month but I'll keep that close to the vest for now. Our (AFRC 38s) footprint is the smallest within the realm of the 340th, IFF exempted. Our IFF inputs are probably the the worst manned overall based on airline projections and people's unwillingness to do that job past a certain age, but they are holding steady on the requirement for IFF graduates only. DLF would probably be the worst, and I don't know how bad it is currently. I know it's not as bad as it was when I went in as a T-6 guy in the tail end of the Lost Decade. People are posturing for the upcoming recession, so things will get quickly snatched up the second the airlines stop hiring for a bit and people panic back to Uncle Sugar. Mark my words (only been doing this shit for 13 years, BWTFDIK). 100% chance of not getting what you don't ask for though. Good luck.

Hey white knight, I was merely asking. Calm the fuck down with the keyboard hostility and go fuck yourself right back with your misplaced umbrage, trying to make me the straw man for your buddy's lot in life. You re barking up the wrong tree. This god damn board I tell ya. The stundepilot.net days seem civilized by comparison. At any rate. My aggregate point on the dynamics of the UPT fiasco stand. FUBIJAR.

nawce. Silver linings.

Seriously, does anybody know what the "consolation" assignment was? Kinda hard to plaster your sob story on the internet about getting a 38 UPT gig removed from you, if you scoffed offline at a T-6 assignment to the same location, which would have effectively ameliorated the life disruption issue for the family. Not saying that's what happened here, just asking.

Indeed. I'm certainly not defending the AF assignments process. Our PCS outlays are an example of FWA imo. But that's part and parcel of the total war campaign the AD component has always had with the concept of homesteading in military life, as a matter of principle it seems. It certainly has spilled into Active Duty Lite (aka AFRC), while the NGB is probably the last remaining bastion of hope on that front. I've never witnessed a professional organization so gratuitously and pointedly contemptuous against their employee's home life, as the DOD. I know late-to-UPT guys who gambled and lost at ENJPPT. They took a special assignment heavy, which was a hell of a lot better than an FEB, then pivoted to T-1 land and moved on to better things, whether it be an AD retirement, or an airline pivot, or both! The unfairness of life is noted, but you gotta make some lemonade if you want to move forward. As to the degradation of UPT. Again, we're conflating subjects. From my vantage point having done it for the last decade (I've done all subsets of the UPT/PIT mission, with the exception of T-1s): it's pretty much a lowering of the hours/culling of events imho. MAF folks in 38s are frankly a red herring on this topic. Yes, there's an aggregate pressure on the development programs as a result (sorry if that triggers some, but it's what we've witnessed in PIT and phase-III alike), but most end up doing ok for the job given enough time and mentorship. Furthermore, I disavow the dismissive notion that phase III 38 rigors are so overstated, the ladies at the CDC could be tasked to do it and thus there's nothing to complain about on the IP development side. It is something I've heard from both some disgruntled T11K3D coded 11F that find the UPT mission set beneath them, and MAF guys resentful of the waiver impositions. I'm a casualty of the "bomber cap" stonewalling myself for years, so I'm not speaking from the cheap seats on this one. But a spade's a spade. Not everybody is cut out for T-38 IP work, upsetting as it may be for those who may resemble the remark. From my perspective, the MAF-38-butt-hurt "problem" arose when PIT got timeline/production pressured to punt that extra mentorship, a syllabus/resource allocation PIT was never designed for mind you, to the TI side of the UPT 38 squadrons. UPT 38 squadrons naturally wailed when IFF started throwing shade at them for a product that was legitimately rushed through, in part (not in whole) due to the low turnout of IPs based on said no-kidding attrition from TI. The finger pointing went off the rails at that point. And here we are....and now we have these drunken embarrassments on FB, coming full circle. Color me not surprised. I've seen the dynamic from two of the three-sided mexican standoff now (aka UPT-PIT-IFF). Everybody has a valid gripe on that, but again from my perspective, the product is rotting at the UPT level due to syllabus cuts. At the macro level, the problem is that every time one makes this argument as an older head, one gets accused by the NAF/MAJCOM of making a Luddite argument against PTN, which isn't the case at all. Fact is Kwast is out that job, and hopefully that good idea fairy will die with it. It caused enough chaos and production losses last year as it was (again, don't ask me how I know). Guess what made up for the losses at the expense of fatigue and manning for the least year? You guessed it: surging for a year on the legacy syllabus. And now AETC wants to take credit for that, whilst touting PTN as the solution to the problem they created, and not the genesis of the problem in the first place? Typical gaslighting. It's a total con job. The ultimate reality is that HAF has essentially accepted this dilution of quality, and the deaths we have and will cause as a result of this greening, are an acceptable and more importantly, plausibly-deniable quantity to them. So we're tilting at the windmills here as the labor pawns with no say in the matter. We all signed up for a certain level of commodification of our lives when we agreed to this indentured servitude. The kitchen just happens to be getting real hot on that front as of late. I'm not being flippant; I have a family I'd like to come home to at night, and buried two co-workers in the last year alone on account of this "so easy a CDC lady could do it" job. I'm just describing the water here with the benefit of a decade's worth of hindsight. Don't hang the postman.

We're conflating grievances here. They could give him a T-6 to SPS, problem solved. No meltdown, no waiver needed, no PCS expenditure loss, wifiey can still be assistant DA (jesus how many times did he mention that, it was like watching one of Khalessi's minions announce all her titles on GOT). As to the rest? Get a fvcking grip man. I have a story too. Many of us have a story of personal grievance in this line of work. Life's not fair, we make lemons with the batch we get pelted in the head with. I didn't go on a whiny bender on the internet about it. I have family challenges too, one I seriously considered quitting the military over. Jesus T-1 driving Christ do you AD folks not have better friends to commiserate to than the internet? Or is this a millennial thing, and it pains me to say that as technically I'm the oldest year of a millennial. Here's a pro-tip for that guy: Fighter units in the ANG/AFRC pick up separating heavy drivers every now and then as a consequence of circumstances/PFA/et al. Having a god damn melt down and posting it forever on the internet, where you allocute to still having a fundamental chip on your shoulder about legitimately sucking hind teet in ENJJPT and/or not getting what you wanted out of UPT 6-9 years ago, is not the starting point to a clean transition to the next chapter of your flying career. Here's another pro tip: There's a metric fvck ton of AFRC UPT drivers on this board (and FB). Ask me how I know. Guess who's also at the hiring boards for said FTG. Our main source of guys is separating AD UPT cats. Don't drink and internet,folks, though it may be a bit late for some.

The irony of your post ending in "I like working" in a thread about scoffing at airline work via MLOA, is must definitively not lost on me. Freudian slip if there ever was one, even if "tapatalk did it". 😄😉

chicken or the egg kinda thing ain't it? In any event, from my experience doing this gig for the last 9 years, MAF guys end up fine but require non-insignificant extra time and mentorship on flight lead admin and tac proficiency, let alone debriefing to what the hell is going on, before they're in a position to be able to instruct and supervise to the same level when undertaking undergraduates. Problem is it's mostly MAF, and FAIPS on a heavily diluted UPT run, that we are getting to PIT. The syllabus was legitimately not built for this. It was built for alpha-track 11Fs doing a quick proficiency spin up and off we go. FAIPS also had the benefit of more proficiency in UPT phase III, so the extra time was devoted to the instructional skillset. I've seen their evolution from both the UPT and PIT perspective. They end up fine for the most part. The problem is that we don't have the hours or the syllabi to provide that extra training.So predictably, the product suffers both on the UPT side and the IP development side. And the B-courses complain, it's not complicated. But senior leadership won't hear of it. IMO People have died already as a result of this greening up, but it won't be acknowledged. More will die as a direct consequence of this manning/quality issue, before the trend is reversed. As to the dismissal of the rigors of phase III to the degree that it proverbially doesn't matter and the ladies at the CDC can do it? That's just more of the same chasm that creates the animosity against 11Fs in the first place. The manning realities are here, the goal is to move forward and catch these guys up so they can provide a phase III product worth a damn. Currently we are not meeting standards, and the B-courses are paying the bill in the end. It's not an insurmountable problem, but cutting hours and syllabus events in the manner we're doing is not working. Senior AF is not interested in that answer, so we will continue failing the product. Nothing to see here. I digress. Everybody stay safe out there, not all the sea turtles will make it to the ocean on account of this, politically incorrect as it may be. G'luck.

yeah understood, "tragedy of the commons" behavior abounds. To each their own.