brabus

You seriously regret flying military aircraft only a year after UPT? Sounds like you should never have gone to UPT in the first place. To say it’s all the AF’s fault you feel this way is not accepting responsibility for your own attitude. Honestly if you’re so jaded after this short of time, you would have been just as jaded in the guard.

No punks/future punks should form their opinion based on the metric shit ton of sport bitching that goes on here (I’m guilty). I spent 11 years AD and had a great time; the bullshit was there, but it’s not as bad as it seems here except in unique cases. And I say that not just because things worked for me, but because I can count on one hand the amount of legitimate “he got screwed” times that happened across 9 years in 4 fighter squadrons I was in + at least 6 others I was close with (i.e. the other FS on base), not to mention talking to friends from all over different communities in the AF. I got out because the next 9 years was not going to work for my family, but the first half of your career when you’re not married/married with no kids/only have very young kids - the things we bitch about as Majs with 2 older kids and a wife are just not a big deal yet. If you’re a young guy who wants to fly, you should consider the guard for sure, but don’t discount AD. Yeah you’ll probably want to punch around year 8-10, but there’s a good chance you’ll have a pretty good time for those 8-10 years. There’s also a chance you’re miserable, but I think that’s truly unlikely unless you are the most unlucky person in the world, or more likely, you’d still have a shitty attitude even if offered free blow jobs every day. FWIW, several of my airline friends talk about how much the old captains bitch about how much the airlines suck now, the company is always screwing pilots, management is bullshit, the old days were millions of times better than now, etc. Sound familiar? This is not to defend all the fuckery of the AF and the asshats who climb the ladder and are the root causes of many problems, but how bad do you want to fly awesome airplanes and shoot ISIS in the face/directly support those who do? If sport bitching Majs and some threat of dumb queep makes you second guess it, then go be a CFI, work your way to a regional, eventually get to a major and enjoy life.

Fly what you want. But here’s some consids: you have a chance to not need a full TX course if you go F-35 vs. definitely needing a full TX course if you go hornets (may make a hiring decision easier) Aren't Marine hornets in general broke as shit with MC rates in the toilet? If that’s true, that alone might make me want to go F-35. F-35 is the future, there will be a lot of forward movement in that jet with simultaneous stagnation (relatively) in 4th gen jets. In the end, what you get now will most likely not make or break your POSSIBLE future desire to work at ANG squadron X. I think you’re putting the cart well before the horse.

100% sarcasm derived from the other thread.

Probably fucked up an ELP...flying canceled, UPT will be all sims until further notice. Also, might as well skip IFF while we’re at it.

If you have time/money and want to fly because you enjoy it, then do that. It’ll always add to increasing your basic airmanship. But as others have said, don’t waste one flight minute on trying to do “AF/UPT style” flying. If you don’t have much experience at a towered airport, that’s a good thing to do. Again, think about basic airmanship stuff that applies across all flying disciplines.

I don't know anything about the pilot-physician program beyond it's existence, but I am fairly confident it will not help you get a fighter - that's still merit-based in UPT on AD. The best "guarantee" for a fighter is getting hired by an ARC unit that flies fighters. The AD, regardless of job type, is generally the antithesis of stability. Your alternative of part time ARC pilot and civ doc will likely be far more stable than anything AD will offer. Additionally, if you go pilot physician on AD, my bet is you do not get to "see the world" (at least any good parts); that's such a specialized position that I'm guessing there are only a few spots at very specific locations. Pilot physicians are not a normal position at any "standard" flying base. Additionally I'd look heavily into the program and what it entails long term - do you stay on a relatively normal flying track or do you do one assignment and then off to Walter Reed for you? Bottom line is the last time I heard of a pilot physician in the Viper world, it was 10 years ago and they had done one assignment as a pilot/flight doc, then went onto some medical-only assignment. Do your research, it may not be exactly what you want long term. There is pretty much no limit to what you can possibly do in the world with ARC vs. AD. There are ARC personnel working green door projects, at DARPA, doing 3 year assignments in Europe, working at AOCs, flying test, shooting ISIS in the face, fucking up travel vouchers, and torturing dental patients. The ARC "one weekend a month/2 weeks a year" is not the baseline these days for a lot of people...if you want to do more than that (and you have to has a pilot), there are limitless opportunities.

Nowadays you can do all of the things you listed in the ARC, and fairly easily as well. The big difference is you can do these things generally when you choose to and no one will force you to do any of them (AD is opposite on both accounts). And to be clear, many dudes get retiremet the day they leave the ARC, exactly like AD. So with that knowledge, why do you really want to go AD?

Possibly to viper b course if it's determined they're likely to pass. If not, they'll go to normal phase 3 UPT (38s).

They're in a program that's evaluating their ability to do a normal b course. Only admin flying, no grades, no bust vs. pass, etc. If the IPs think they could hack a normal b course syllabus they'll go, else they go back to phase 3 and from there it's standard syllabus (e.g. further emphasis on producing numbers and not quality pilots). As long as this is allowed to be an objective experiment, it's not a bad thing. But obviously it becomes bad if they are forced along by leadership to make the experiment a "success."

The definition of "plenty" increases as time goes on...0s in month 1 become 1s in month 5.

Are we talking month 1 or month 5?

Got a 1.3 in the F-4...like flying an overloaded dump truck through the sky compared to the viper. My hats off to those dudes who flew that thing into the shit - amazing they had to dodge SAMs and MiGs in that thing.

Depends on the state, but I'd take AGR every day, even as a young guy unless you're getting hired as a 13 step 3+ with bonus. It takes about step 7 with full bonus to equal AD Maj pay unless your location is getting awesome locality rates. And then even if your take home pay is matched to AD, you still are dealing with all the bullshit of the GS system.

Honestly its more about the larger issue of kicking non tactical training to the FTU, which means either the basic skill is ball washed quickly so they can learn the tactics (which is the primary reason they're at FTU), or a lot of time is spent on the basics and the new kid is shit at the tactics. Either way is a significant burden on the CAF. I had to FO through the weather as a young guy, and it was not perfect, but it worked out. Many years later I did it in combat with a running, but significantly reduced thrust engine. There were a couple other precautionary ones also. So in 10 years, I've had two no shitters in worse than VFR around the flagpole training and a couple less serious ones. The risk is only rising as the viper gets older, so i dont buy the "but what are the chances!" argument. Looking back I'm glad I had all of that baseline training that undoubtedly helped me get through that. While unmeasurable, I know there would have been an increased chance of death or forced ejection (due to fucked up FO pattern) if I had the reduced level of training received by young guys today.

Is your family back home? If you are single, then PCS means you either get BAH for UPT location or if living in the dorms, you get zip. Doesn't matter that you own a house. If you were at UPT in TDY status, that'd be different. If he's single, then this sounds correct (as much as it sucks, but from the AF POV, they didn't force him to buy/keep the house).

Agreed, but it is near term if said stud goes to a SE aircraft. There's a lot of young guys flying the viper and lightning who either wasted a lot of time in FTU learning something they should have in UPT or worse, never really did well at it (but got pushed along in FTU) and are an engine failure away from killing themselves and/or destroying a multi-million $ asset. Obviously a problem for U-28s as well, but I'm hoping there's an AC in there who knows how to do an engine out landing (until 5 years from now like you mentioned, then that is out the window)

I did exactly what Hoss said. Same exact situation (VPS vs. PNS). I don't remember the exact disparity in prices the RA was looking for, but bottom line took a car service there and back...cost the government $150 more in the end. The wasted time was worth it to see his reaction when he realized I had fucked the system, but there was nothing he could do as it was a legally reimbursable expense. I don't think such shenanigans happened again, at least that I'm aware of.

Better yet, just shitcan all ART positions and make them AGR. That + bonus is about the only way the ARC is going to have any chance at stemming the bleeding of full timers, at least for the time that the airlines are hiring...which is supposedly 10+ years. But government standard, they are significantly lagging the fight and will do too little, too late.

Still how my state does it. HRO also denies step increases even though the dudes up for them work 10 times harder than all of HRO combined. And they don't understand why all the ARTs are bailing...idiots.

Why did they stop teaching ELPs? Part of the cutting sorties to save time/money, product quality be damned?

They will extend your ADSC to Sep 2022. Had a former sq/cc who did this and decided he'd rather retire and wanted to completely give up the transfer benefits (about a year after he transferred) - they denied it and he's been stuck past 20 for a year or so now.

As a very general statement, you'll likely get to have more life experiences outside of "home" on AD in terms of living in other countries/states, mixing up the assignment type, etc. But, there's a whole lot of bullshit that comes along with that. It was great when I was young and didn't have kids, but by the time my oldest was 4, I didn't want to spend another day on AD. There are a lot of opportunities in the ARC to fill random jobs in USAFE, etc. So the adventure and moving around can still happen, it's just not automatic - you'll have to put in the effort to seek out opportunities and make them happen. The best part - you'll only do it under your own free will and more or less on your timeline. That kind of power to make the choice is worth a lot...there is no such choice on AD.

I don’t think that’s happening as much as the rumors say...I know a lot of ARC bros who are Capt/young Maj getting hired at delta and the rest of the big ones (including a couple at fed ex). I’m not surprised either, take the emotion out of it and by the numbers it doesn’t make sense for a company to bypass high quality applicants for anti-USERRA reasons.

I don't disagree with you, 5 years is a long time to immediately bail on your new employer. From a macro level though, does a few guys doing this really have much of an effect when there's 14K+ pilots on the payroll? Reality is you're talking about maybe 1% of the pilots at a given major doing something like that. Emotions aside, that's pretty inconsequential. Add on the fact many ARC pilots are well qualified for these jobs - does an airline want to pass on those caliber of individuals because they might execute a plan like this (not to mention they've secured a guy for 25-30 years after his hiatus)? To be clear, I'm not going down this road now or in the future, but it does seem like this topic can be emotionally blown out of proportion, especially when guys are taking mil leave to fill badly needed positions (and not just throwing mil leave around simply to avoid holiday flying, etc.). At my unit there are dudes on mil leave without a lot of time at the airline, but they are doing critical jobs that frankly we'd be in a very tough spot if they hadn't come back full time - that's what USERRA is for, why should they be judged because they came back after 1 year?