Negatory

Do you not like people showing emotion? Maybe his views don’t mesh with everyone’s but I respect that he actually shows how he feels in regards to some comments, as opposed to just being politically correct and staying quiet.

I’d love to hear what these defensive capes are and how truly effective and useful they are. My bet is not much. Seems to me that mobility assets never have significantly more capes than turning to put the threat at their six and accelerating to whatever max Mach is. Honestly against any China/Russia scenario I don’t see how you can make a tanker any more survivable against PL-12/AA-12/SA-20+ without going and entirely redesigning it to make it a stealth asset. IMHO, you’d need a paradigm shift like the MQ-25 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing_MQ-25_Stingray If we’re giving up the ability to carry over twice the gas for diminishing returns in defensive suites, I struggle to see the value.

Holy shit, what a foul. Dudes thinking they will be pilots for 2 years and now won’t get to because we can’t just ramp up/down when we make a decision. Instead, it seems like we always elect to overshoot/undershoot dramatically and rebound from the new mean. Short sighted manning decisions are a large part of what got us to our current rated crisis. Things like this will totally be great for retention of those year groups. Maybe bonus take rates will finally turn around in 2032?

Really the 11B numbers are the only weird ones. Everyone else that is immediately eligible for the airlines has a take rate in the 30s or 40s. And big AF will continue saying the money doesn’t matter and they won’t budge because “it isn’t fair” to pay people that can make more money a compensatory amount. Give me a break. You don’t see the family medicine physician complaining that his Air Force bonus is less than the heart surgeon’s. Make it competitive based on earning potential or lose out.

Yeah it was takes/eligibles, but the stats I saw were only for 11 series (11B/11U/etc). I don’t have the numbers handy, but 12 and 18 series were relatively high - ~60-75% - and not as applicable to the rated crisis imo. Although I bet their corner of the AF has the exact same problems 11X folks face, those folks do not have the same economic factors - read almost a guaranteed airline job/alternate employment - that allow them to easily transition out of the AF. Also they are much younger when they make that bonus decision because their commitment only takes them to 6-8 years, which I think means they are less jaded (have never competed for school or seen just how bleak AF opportunities can look past major).

Mid 40s overall with 11R/11F/11M all in the 30s Bomber, rescue, and RPA guys are all loving life with >60. Wonder why the difference?

Well I don’t think you can argue we need new airplanes for the medium/long term timescale if we expect to maintain parity with the likes of China. It’s just that our acquisition process is bogus and ends up costing way more time and money than we are led to believe. Also doesn’t help that we are constantly deployed to CENTCOM and other AORs and have very little to show after 20 years of effort.

If you’re the best pilot you will get what you want. In my experience age has nothing to do with drops. Plenty of fighter guys that were older/faips. Anecdotally, older guys often had other responsibilities like a family to take care of, so I saw some of them that couldn’t put in as much work as the single 21 year olds. But there is nothing stopping you from flying whatever you want other than standard luck and timing (which affects everyone).

Why are some of you on this forum criticizing other people’s literal first hand observations and experiences in their lives? You don’t get to say that guys’ lack of realistic employment or career options for their spouses can’t or doesn’t impact their retention. For some people, this is the biggest issue they have with the Air Force. Im glad it’s not a factor for all of you, but I know for me and numerous other peers, it’s a huge consideration. High performing people marry high performing people. And sometimes they do it without understanding 100% of what their military career implies for both of their lives. And that’s not their fault. It’s impossible to understand the full scope of a military career until you’re there. If my wife who has 2 real masters degrees gets told one more time by the employment office she should be happy to take a NAF job - by the way the best one they had was a gym receptionist job paying 60k less than her last job - I’m probably out. And all of this happens while there are GS jobs she is qualified and interested in, but for some reason don’t utilize spouse preference. Don’t try to turn this into a single issue problem. Opinion crushing and narratives that say it’s just one thing like QoL are why now dudes can’t say that lack of compensation might also be a problem. The truth is this is a multipronged problem. We’re all on the same team here, let’s support fixing it all.

Not to get sidetracked, but tax brackets don’t work that way. You only pay the higher rate on the dollars that exceed the tier values - taking the bonus will have absolutely no effect on the rest of your “normal” pay/“the % you are used to paying.” It’s impossible to lose money by bringing in more income.

Just stop expecting me to put in 8 hours flying and 4 hours for queep, if you want to be promotable. Yes, if you pay me 50-100k more, I’ll consider working this investment banker hours job, but it won’t make me invested in the organization - it will just keep me around for a paycheck. Numerous SQ/CCs and OG/CCs have told me that the expectation is that you should be working 12 hours a day. Literally, the only point of that is so they can put a line on your OPR: “#1 Flt/CC/ADO/FGO/etc. Totally rehauled something that didn’t need to be fixed! He doesn’t care about the crushing hours, promote this man!” The truth is, I want a job where I can fly and concentrate on flying, I can either eat breakfast or dinner with my family every single day that I’m not on the road, and I can make O-5 without having to jump through hoops so I can get a decent retirement. Current Air Force active duty value proposition is sketchy at best: “Stay in! We need you to stay in to become a GP/CC and WG/CC! Did we mention that only the top 10% of you that do decide to stay will have a realistic opportunity of even having a chance at these positions? Don’t worry about that, we won’t tell you where you stand until it’s too late, but, trust me, you’re either in or you’re not at this point in your career. Oh, and 30-40% of you will either be passed over or relegated to do jobs that you never expected or wanted in a shocking response to your years of what you thought were decent performance reports? Hope you enjoy the Deid/not flying - remember, service before self and this is why you joined!” Whereas, if you join the guard, you get promoted to O-5 damn near guaranteed, fly at the same rate of active duty guys, and often don’t even have a real queep job. You don’t have to move, you’re pulling in extra money doing what you want on the side, and you have significantly more control over TDYs/Deployments. Where is the value in AD if you don’t want to, or, worse, can’t and don’t even know it, become a WG/CC or GO? I think talent management is a big deal. Personally seeing dudes I really look up to get f*@%ed without any notice I know has scared a lot of guys about to make the bonus decision. Up or out has to go. APZ needs to be a thing. HPOs as a quota have to go. Fix DOPMA. OPR/promotions have to get better so people can plan their lives. And we need to stop working just to work. Everyone is burned out and tired.

That article simultaneously argues that fighter pilot take rate improved while at the same time the overall number of bodies decreased by 40%. It didn’t improve at all - the eligible YG was decimated by TAMI/VSP/Low Drop rates and a lot of people that are left already fought pretty hard to stay. I have seen below average officers in that YG be told that they are going to be 2BTZ or GP/CCs just based on attrition. “There’s already only 6 of you left, sooooooo we basically have to promote you.” This article is another example of messaging being what you make of it. And I’m excited for the Air Force to start claiming that they have turned the fighter pilot retention problem around when they just retained 50 less pilots than they did last year.

Anti-discrimination laws don't apply to racists. They exist for groups that cannot change some aspect of themselves, be it race, gender, disability, age, sexual orientation (I understand some people think this is still up to debate), etc. Do you really think the Ku Klux Klan and the Westboro Church need the RIGHT to be served at any private business, regardless of what the owner wants? No. Because they should be able to change their views, or at least keep their ideals to themselves. But if you turned a woman away for her gender, an Asian for his heritage, or a veteran for his disabilities, that isn't fair. You can't change or hide those things. And I know that the first thing you are going to say is that you can hide your sexual orientation. But that's not really true if you want to get married or have a family, and in the last 3-5 years, it has become recognized - in some states and federal organizations - that it is their right to do that.

The first amendment only guarantees you won't go to jail or face legal repercussions for saying things. It doesn't mean you won't be judged, sometimes harshly, by the rest of the world and potentially face retribution from them. You can still call black people the "n-word" without going for jail. Hell, you can even grab 10 of your closest buddies and their kids and go to a funeral of an army private who died in Iraq. Then, you can picket outside of said funeral with signs saying he deserved to die, is a "######," and god hates him, and your speech will be protected 8-1 by the Supreme Court. You just can't do it without having almost everyone around you think you are a piece of shit. Sometimes, cops screw up and arrest people without legal basis. The Supreme Court ruled in 1989 that desecrating flags was legal in Texas vs Johnson, and I assure you they would rule it again.

Numerous PDF scripts for non-official POW/MIA ceremonies reference the bible, but it seems it was thrown in more as an afterthought than an actual part of the ceremony. The only official doc I found had no mention of a bible. http://www.62aw.af.mil/shared/media/document/AFD-120524-091.pdf The most annoying thing about the Fox News article, though, was that they incorrectly argue that the first amendment's freedom of speech allows those that are pro-religion to force official military events to continue with religious nuances or have religious undertones. I don't know about you, but I always feel a little bit weird when at a commander's call or an awards ceremony or any other random event, the commander or chaplain starts praying, sometimes even prefacing it with something like, "If you like, join us." I can always look up and see that, while there are plenty of guys going along with it, plenty of truly Christian people in the Air Force, there are also a good 1/4 to 1/3 of the people there wondering "WTF is going on?" Forcing religion directly into the mainstream military culture is not something that the AF should be doing or caring about whatsoever. The point of religion is to help bolster someones personal spiritual life.