MooseAg03

I'm still showing "Referred to BPO." Last time it was updated was 19 Feb.

Just something I thought of the other day when I read the article about how miraculously the personnel cuts aren't going to be as bad as first thought - What's to stop someone from applying for the VSP/TERA multiple times until the window is closed? I'm afraid there will be plenty to VSP, or that this whole process was just a shakedown to scare Congress into easing the budget pressure and those who tried to bail will be left with every shitty deal over the remainder of our ADSC. I knew that was possible before I hit submit on my VSP application, but if it gets returned here shortly I think my next action will be to immediately resubmit. Maybe someone at AFPC will hit the wrong button the second time...

I agree that we may not see much improvement with continued engagement there. Hopefully we'll be able to find some place nearby to base our Reapers and when the radicals start their jihad training and terrorist plotting, we'll be watching and selectively eliminating them with Hellfires. Who knows if Karzai would even agree to that, but I bet if he doesn't he'll be one of the first ones the Taliban strings up from a light post in downtown Kabul.

I hate the thought of risking any more American lives in that crap hole part of the world, but we had a huge hand in starting the mess in the first place. I'm halfway through reading "Ghost Wars" and it royally pisses me off. We were so focused on giving the mujahideen the upper hand in killing as many Soviet troops as possible, we didn't look 10 years down the road and failed to see the part we had in fueling the civil war that led to the rising of the Taliban. Pakistan and the ISI had more responsibility for direct support to the Taliban that allowed them to take over most of the country, but the fact that the Bush 41 and Clinton administrations had zero stomach for engaging in any sort of constructive foreign policy in Afghanistan helped create the mess where the Taliban gave harbor to bin Laden and Al Qaeda. For those reasons we wound up back in the country just over a decade after the CIA's well funded covert war ended, and this time we would spend 10x as much money and thousands of our own troops would die, not just the proxy Afghan fighters we had armed in the 1980's. So I hate to say it, but our foreign policy got us into this mess in the first place, and our hasty withdrawal of support and influence after the Soviet departure is a large part in why we had to spend the last 12 years fighting there. I don't see how another hasty withdrawal would fare any better another decade from now. I would love for us to pack up shop and never look back, but it makes me fear that our kids will wind up back there in the future.

Anybody on here have any up to date info about the 136AW/181AS in Ft Worth? They have a posting on the Texas Military Forces job site but no direct contact info, only an e-mail for questions.

I'm still confused why everyone keeps referring to PSDM 13-65. Is that not completely separate guidance from 13-130 and 14-08? 13-130 clearly says if you are eligible for the RIF, you are eligible to VSP. I guess they figured they needed to stop the flood from the open gates before it even had a chance to get started. Although it sucks for a lot of us, this may be the smartest thing I've seen the AF do to date.

We were told the Officer Pre-selection Briefs would not be making it to us by the NLT date of 14 Feb this past week. Leave it up to AFPC to write guidance with deadlines that they then have no hope of even following. I think on my 'do not retain me' letter I'll put something to the effect of - I didn't sign a 10 year commitment to sit in a GCS for 8 years and if you call that lack of 'Service Before Self,' see your entire organization's lack of 'Excellence in All We Do' i.e. the entire force shaping process or countless other leadership failures.

I still can't get the page to load from home. I have MacBooks, so I drug out an old Windows laptop and tried that. In Internet Explorer the first time I click on the Voluntary Separation link it opens a new window that gives me the SQL error. After that when I try to refresh or re-click the link it just says the page cannot load. I've been on my weekend, so I guess I'll try tonight at work and see what happens.

I was told straight up last night by my FLT/CC that taking the VSP "does not waive your pilot training commitment." I'm not sure if it's coming down the chain to tell everyone that, or what is going on. I was told that the AF would recoup that commitment in some way and possibly monetarily. It doesn't make sense to me that the AF would pay you to separate early then charge you for the commitment they let you out of. What happened to CSAF saying nobody would be subject to RIF without first having the option to voluntarily separate? When I pressed that point I was told I was absolutely still eligible to be RIFed. I don't know what I believe anymore, other than the AF is plainly showing people why there are so many who want to jump off of this train wreck.

"The member is separated from active duty at the member's own request. The following are considered to be separations at the member's own request: A member declines training that the Military Service offers to qualify for a new skill or rating as a precondition to reenlistment or continuation on active duty; A member requests separation under regulations established by the Secretary of the Military Service concerned; a Reserve officer declines a Regular appointment at the mandatory integration point." Ref: http://militarypay.defense.gov/Benefits/separation/ This is what I found that gave me a warm fuzzy about writing a "do not retain" me letter. You have to decline a training RIP or voluntarily apply for separation via the normal AFIs. IMHO A RIF board is considered "involuntary separation" even if you raise your hand and say you'd like to be RIFed. At this point, I'm seriously looking into the VSP because I have lost complete faith in the leadership of this organization.

Anyone flying here currently who can talk about lifestyle, number of flying days per month in the MQ-1? Pending RIF results, there may be many of us with RPA experience looking for a guard job.

So this means basically 2 rounds of this shit? I wonder if that 18 months starts from Dec when this crap began. If those who will be RIFed are separating Jan 2015, that means the second round should come late next year. I still haven't seen anything definitive about whether or not guys in my situation are eligible. 11Ms that I know who cross trained to RPAs still have 11M as Core AFSC, and the other code on my surf is GJ, which is an 11M3K/C-17. Nobody has been able to say whether or not we are eligible for any of this, but the PSDM states that all O-3s from 04-08 (I think) will meet the RIF board. Now my squadron is gathering all pertinent info such as how soon every CGO completed SOS by correspondence, Master's, etc. I think I can see the writing on the wall that we will be eligible.

So VSP payment has to be repaid eventually through retirement pay if you jump to guard/reserve, what about RIF payments? I would hope if you are involuntarily separated they would not make you pay back the compensation for choosing to join a reserve component.

You are correct, I did not "sign in" at Holloman, I was there TDY to school. So I was still assigned to Charleston and receiving Charleston BAH. As far as finance is concerned, how do they know I wasn't still making a house payment in Charleston? Which technically I was. That is what my BAH payment was for, not the base house at Holloman. I agree that the legacy house is basically the same as staying at an apartment downtown, and I know that I am not eligible for any more than the government lodging rate, but I'm asking for less than that. Hopefully my push back will work, but if not I'll go up the chain. Thanks for the sanity check.

I'm having an issue with lodging payment for a TDY. Hopefully others on here, or even Finance Guy can help me out and tell me if I am seeing things the correct way. I completed a 4 month TDY en-route at Holloman when I was PCSing from Charleston to Creech. I chose to bring the family along and we wound up staying in an old legacy house on base (privatized housing) on a temporary basis. The Soaring Heights people at Holloman charged me what my BAH would have been there ($1329), which works out to $44.30 per night. I figured since the on base lodging was going to cost $53 per night, the Air Force would be thrilled to pay me $10 less per night, but I am now being told by Nellis finance that since my dependents were with me, I am not entitled to TDY lodging payment. Holloman finance had no problem paying me 2 accrual vouchers while I was there, and those lodging payments were subtracted from my PCS voucher and Nellis is now refusing to pay me. Am I crazy to think I should be paid lodging? My dependents were not on my TDY orders, so the BAH I was being paid was from Charleston - my previous duty station. It should make no difference to the AF if my family was still there or not. I am being told that my BAH covered the base housing at Holloman and that if I was to be paid lodging that would be "double dipping." They used JFTR paragraph U4130-G-1 which says if you stay with a "friend or relative" during TDY that you receive no lodging, and said that since my family was with me, that was the "relatives" I was staying with. To me that is totally ridiculous because that rule is written saying you stayed with a relative who lives near the TDY location and incurred no lodging cost on your own. Anyone, please help. I'm sick of arguing with these people and they can provide no reg that says I shouldn't be paid lodging.

This was a wonderful family who was deeply involved in the church my family attended while we were there for pilot training. Such a tragic loss, they will all be missed. We are definitely praying for Zach's recovery and peace as he continues his life without his parents and sisters.

We have been told in my community that our 120% manning is now being lowered down to 100%, thus the reason for my year group being decimated with early follow ons out of the C-17 world. Only 20% of my year group went ops to ops, and when we all PCS over the next 8 months, the only guys left in the squadron from my year group will be SOLL II guys. The rest of us got RPAs, staff, or MC-12s. What you're saying is definitely true, when they want to reach back and pull out (STS) the 38 guys and try to crossflow them back into fighters, they'll just be passing their manning problem on to the 11M world.

I agree. If this was truly newsworthy on its own merit, why did it not come to light sooner than 2 years after the fact? Everyone is out there digging now for any bit of dirt to blow open the 'next big Afghan scandal.' All its going to do is undermine what the guys on the ground are trying to do over there and get more people killed, both our guys and Afghans. The soldier who turned to photos over says he did it to highlight a dangerous breakdown in discipline that will endanger troops? Bullshit, the only reason they are in danger is because he made these pictures public. The "media" is such a joke these days. They are grabbing at any straw they can to make themselves relevant.

I'm still wondering who the other A-10 pilot is whose name is worth $5.

CHS has alerts which probably add to the tail requirement.

Check your PM.

Can you shed more light on this? Was this before/after the RIF announcement a few months ago?

1. It's better, just the other day my co-pilot and I were talking about how nowhere else would an organization hand the keys of a $200 million airplane to a couple of 29 year old pilots with combined experience of less than 2000 hours. In the airlines you have to have tons of experience to be in charge on the larger airframes. Plus our flying is a lot more exciting at times. I second that the other crap we have to deal with isn't so great, but you learn how to ignore it as much as possible - or you just come bitch about it here. 2. The pros do outweigh the cons, and the only cons I can really think of at the moment is our high ops tempo and all of the deployments. One can only imagine what our lives would be like in the heavy world if we hadn't been fighting these wars for the past decade. Maybe we'd actually get to fly somewhere other than the desert.

It's true that Phase III is a clean slate as far as assignments go. Your performance in Phase II will have an effect for things such as Top Academic Performer, because they figure the academic score from written exams in all phases. There were guys in my class who hooked multiple checkrides in T-6s but wound up getting their number 1 choice because of performance in T-1s. I'm sure feedback and rankings from classmates and flight commander ranking had a big part in that. I definitely took that into account when ranking my fellow classmates. There's something to be said about almost washing out (Going to 89 rides) on more than one occasion in T-6s and then kicking ass in Phase III. As others have said, just do your best and try to be a good bro to your classmates and everything will work out. But don't be a kiss ass and make it obvious that all you're working toward is a good flight commander ranking or peer evals, usually behavior like that is pretty transparent.