dream big

There are people mad about this along with eliminating school selects from the board: they seem to be the CGOC/nonner types who are mad they can't get ahead by out volunteering those actually deploying and doing the mission. Heck, if for anything, I love these changes as it is a slap in the face for every careerist CGO.

Yes! How many man hours do we waste taking a line flying IP and making him do exec work, all because he "needs it for major/ school select?" How many man hours does he then waste editing OPRs and PRFs for 0-4? I may be optimistic, but hopefully this news coupled with eliminating school selects means we at least delay the fray of queen that a mid level captain faces allowing them to focus on the mission/ their primary job.

If you want to build hours fast, 130s may not be the way to go, we sit on the ground a lot unloading/loading while deployed and guess how much time you are logging while on the ground?: zero. I can only speak to active duty but general consensus is 200-300 hours a year is considered good. Now if you want to go to some "interesting airfields," while performing airdrop and low levels..130s are where it's at.

Truth, they'll come after me 5 years later over a minor discrepancy in a complicated 7 month TDY-Deployment; when I "owe" then money it magically disappears but when they owe me money it takes months. Worst organization in the military, besides MEO.

Valid points, I'm lucky to be in a squadron now where the commander values those types and empowers them to run OPS in the squadron instead of penalizing them for not wanting to be an 0-7..but I have also seen combat tested experienced EP/WO types thrown on the sidewalk for not wanting to play the game. I do feel that a defined track system would help fix many of the issues we gripe about here if not the actual pilot shortage; because at the end of the day, we can all agree that uncertainty and lack of control in our lives as AF officers is one of the greatest morale killers.

There was (until this past majors board) a specified leadership track. There has never been an official technical track. It's 50/50 whether the major who turns down school and just wants to be a line flier gets to be that quintessential grey beard ADO with 4000 hours or the poor SOB that gets tagged with a non flying 365, passed over for 0-5 and shoved in a closet somewhere...

It's supply and demand man. Don't get me wrong, I 100% agree that our kick ass crew chiefs deserve a pay bump more than I..but at the end of the day it's not like Delta maintenance is on an unprecedented hiring boom threatening to steal all our experienced maintainers.

Ideally, everyone would be on the same (be good at your primary job aka flying) path until majors board at which point people would split off into a leadership v flying track. The flying track would include only squadron level and some group level necessary flying jobs (OGV.). These would be your WOs, ADOs and they would top out at 0-5 max and as DOs. Leadership track would play the Air Force game and go to school, work staff and command. I think there should be opportunities for flying track folks to jump over to the leadership track and those on the leadership track to jump over to the flying track when circumstances dictate. Not sure I would go for it for 20 years but I would seriously think twice about staying in longer.

When will these freaking bean counters realize that throwing money at the problem isn't going to do squat? Thanks for the $50 pay raise, but it isn't stopping me from bailing for Delta/UA/AA etc with a $200+ potential. Do any of these "leaders" have the cajones to solve the deep rooted leadership problems in the Air Force? Some of the solutions and answers are complicated but some are easy fixes: separate promotion boards for rated, homesteading instead of PCSing every 3 years, pure flying track/eliminating up or out, get rid of 99% of the CBTs.

Congressman, first thanks for coming on here and honestly soliciting feedback. Not many bag wearing pilot types on Capitol hill these days. It has been mentioned before, but one of the biggest qualms us lowly operator types have is the "do more with less;" whether that is a reduced budget, less flying hours, antiquated equipment, etc. I've seen numerous mishaps (some unfortunately fatal) where one of the root causes was lack of proficiency. The worst day of my Air Force career was to see two of my squadron buds crash a perfectly good airplane. One of the pilots had just deployed out there and had hardly flown the new airplane because of sequestration. Without making this a red v blue arguement, it boils our blood to see so much money wasted on "foreign aid," social programs etc. only for war fighters to be asked to go to the deepest sh*tholes of the world without the money or resources. My old airplane was 1970s made, broke all the time; how the heck are we supposed to go to a real war with ancient equipment? Not to mention the even older bomber fleet. How much money have we wasted in the acquisition process of the F-35? We must do better. Most of us on here love serving our country, would do it again and will continue to do so! We just wish our elected officials would have our backs. 16 years of war takes a toll.

See the "how can I get a fighter" UPT threads..

The answer might be blatantly obvious and leadership (or lack therof) 101...but what does a commander have to gain by issuing a Q-3 in a questionable situation versus turning it into a learning point? (Assuming no pressure from the OG.) Surely commanders are not graded on how many Q-3s they hand out?

As a 130J guy myself I am also curious. Feel free to Pm.

I thought so, why do we shoot ourselves in the foot? Our WG/CC also wants us to be 100% semi-annual complete before we Deploy...by end of August.

Well can he hurry up already? I was asked to come in on my day off to finish my religious freedom training CBT and green dot even though I accomplished these less than a year ago but need to be "current thru my deployment and 2 months ," you know because if we get extended two months and a day I might make fun of people's religion and sexually harass someone...and General Rand you wonder why people are leaving in masses.

What's old is new and what's new is old. 50$ says masters will become unmasked for 04 promotion within the next decade. One of my buddies passed over explained it best: "I just got passed over, I have 2 days to write my PRF for the next board with zero feedback, and am somehow expected to perform up to a secret set of moving standards that the board members decide are the flavor of the year."

Fair assessment. What about Alaska? The controllers were awesome to work with for RF-AK. My comment wasn't a stab at unions- but rather showing who is going to win at the end of the day (unionized FAA workers or DOD.)

The shoeclerks at AFPC and the managers who sit on the board who somehow got eagles on their shoulders don't give a F about things like TPS, WIC, your instructional ability, or how many air medals you earned while their execs were sitting at home station polishing said manager's you know what and earning the top strats. Heck many of them may not even be able to tell you the difference between a B1 and B2, or ever stepped out of the MSG building, but they have the biggest influence on who leads the Air Force. If this mentality changes it will take a while. In the mean time, most of my peers and I will do what we believe is right: be good in the airplane, enable the flying mission, make the young guys better and go hack the mission. If we get promoted, great. If we don't, well Delta/AA/UAL/SW, the guard/reserves could use a few people.

They were briefed thoroughly by the MPC, and every international unit complied minus the Koreans and Pakistanis (at least on the 130 side.) The Koreans are notorious for debaucherry in every exercise I've interacted with them, to include causing two separate formations to go beak to beak a few years ago. The coordination with ATC was an epic fail. The way it was explained to me was that because SEATAC ARTCC (like many civilian aviation entities) is unionized, that they could simply refuse to give IFR releases and the USAF could do nothing about it. They were having us file flight plans contrary to both FAA and USAF regs. Next time we need to have this exercise in Alaska or Nevada, with the abundance of commonly used MOAs and an existing relationship with ATC.

Well that wasn't hard, after the Pakistani C-130s violated every airspace in Washington and dropped off DZ and were subsequently restricted to airland missions only :).

While we are on the topic, Mobility Guardian just ended (thank god.) Seattle Center almost shut the entire exercise down because they didn't like how flight plans were being filed. There were about 60-70 sorties out of TCM a day. We literally had to turn in those freaking 175s 3 times: once to white cell, once to center, and once as the crews stepped. We are screwed as a fighting force when 6-7 hours of a 12 hour MPC shift are spent on flight plans.

Wow! Did the pax stay conscious ?

Quick cliffnotes version of what happened?

That's interesting, if I exhibited opinions like that in 38s, I may have gotten choke slammed and put on permenant corn duty.

The chase plane is not an MWS, it is probably fairly simple to fly. Also as for guard/reserves being "dual qualified" with their airline airplane; when most of them are at their unit, they just show up, fly, do the required training and go home. They aren't chief of <x> and I doubt they spend much effort on OPRs, etc. Get rid of all my additional duties unrelated to flying and I maybe could have time to be dual qualified.