Iāve been in the Air Force now for a year, so still fairly ānewā. The ops/Mx split has been the toughest to get used to. At one point in my time in the Navy, as a normal flying pilot, I was previously in charge of the entire squadron maintenance department involving 15 aircraft and roughly 200 people. At other times, even when I wasnāt working directly in Mx, Iād still interact with the maintainers daily because they were in the same halls, their shops were right next to mine. It helped to bridge the gap. Now, Iāve found it extremely difficult to get a maintainer to open up and talk other than āyes sir, no sirā in the current AF construct.
My takeaway is that the split hurts by-in by the maintainers. All they see are flyers when they come to brief/debrief, or at the bottle brief. When maintainers have to pull 12 hour shifts it can really help morale when they understand what the mission is, or when they actually know the aircrew more than just as another dude in a green bag. Pilots arenāt some mythical creatures, but we do think and approach situations a lot differently than maintenance officers do, and I think that variability and more frequent interaction would help morale.
Combining ops/Mx wouldnāt cure all of the issues (hereās looking at you, OPSEC CBTs...) but it would help.