DirkDiggler

https://apple.news/AcYPllCaNSP-3N_tyTSkP5g Another worthless sack of shit turned into fertilizer; Israel is on a role.

Tough place to go down, weather up there is rough a good chunk of the year.

I knew a guy in a situation very similar to yours; unfortunately he did not get picked up the year he wrote his letter. To echo Herkdrv's comments above, letters should be short, concise, and explain a gap that otherwise wouldn't be obvious to the board (boards are pretty good at seeing everything/seeing through fluff). The individual I referenced above did end up getting picked up on his next look where his last deployed LOE was visible/in the system (was in a DO role downrange). I know/knew far more people at the tail end of my career getting picked up APZ so I'd say the moral is keep working hard towards what you want. Best of luck to you.

Israel just blasted the Houthis this morning; they are not fucking around.

Not confirmed yet but a good day if Israel actually turned Nasarallah into fertilizer.

What’s your definition and or threshold for someone in the USAF to do things that matter or make a difference?

In my last assignment alone my sq was directly tasked with/involved in 3 ops to either rescue or recover Americans in harms way. If you don't believe things like that "matter" we'll have to respectfully agree to disagree. I understand and partially agree with what you're saying writ large about whether OEF/OIF/OFS/OIR brought us a better peace/world. I personally don't believe it was all for nothing but I definitely understand the viewpoint of those that do.

I'd venture a guess that this varies widely by location, command and MDS. I definitely didn't feel that way in MCs, either in the operational or FTU world. I probably felt that way through quite a bit of my time on staff. I think there's a lot of leaders (more so at the Wg/CC level and up) that don't do a great job of articulating to their formations why what the base/wing/command is doing is important, or how it ties into higher level operational or strategic goals. Especially for a lot of the support functions it's just another broken airplane, or another patient, or another customer at finance to deal with. If you're at a place where the ops tempo is crazy high it gets harder to keep people motivated/morale up. And if I'm being completely honest, some of the things the AF does probably doesn't matter.

Different strokes bro. I would never have personally volunteered for that program but some did. FWIW, I have lots of friends who found their Sq/CC time to be a highlight of their career. Sure it’s a shitload of work, but if you don’t lead scared and truly give a shit about your people over your career you can accomplish a lot. I also know a lot of guys that really enjoyed SDE. Maybe not AWC, but NPS, NWC, Eisenhower, NVWC etc are in good locations and some (like NPS) give you a legitimate higher education. I also personally was never interested in O-6 but I don’t judge people that are. We need good dudes/dudettes doing that shit. I was very very lucky in my career to, for the most part, have had very good Sq and Grp leadership. Towards the end the O-6 level leadership was starting to become uneven. Some of the people that were getting pushed at the O-4/5 level I didn’t find impressive either but some were genuinely great. I just retired so it’s not my problem anymore but I’m hopeful that the simple pendulum will swing back to the center. CAT 5 getting shitcanned in my command was at least a start.

I think the promises made to take care of them were upheld for the most part, at least for the people I know that were involved with the program. I knew of an NSAV guy that didn’t command who made O-6 and an intel guy who was offered SDE and O-6 (he ended up retiring rather than take it). There’s also a current sitting MC-J Sq/CC who was an AFPAK hand. I haven’t heard of any Hands getting fucked over, though I wouldn’t doubt that it’s happened.

#Birdsaren’treal

That guy on the left in the dark shirt is either deaf or has balls of steel; bro barely flinches, then looks down at the guy on the ground like “oh shit your bag exploded, those oranges ok?

Probably not great news for airline hiring. https://apple.news/Aemtc9tftRHi2bhpy40ZTpA

The ham slice from the old MREs used to be the shit if you had a fire to grill it over.

https://theaviationist.com/2024/09/05/mc-130j-crews-earn-award/

Why are you being FEB’d?

https://apple.news/A0EFuyJoGRdGIsHzXMlfNDg Manslaughter charge for the Deputy responsible.

Exactly

I think the better way to state this is SOCOM/AFSOC aren't the main show in the high end near peer fight. This whole "identity crisis" or whatever you want to call it that SOCOM and AFSOC are currently going through is kinda amusing to me. For the from '01 to '21 SOCOM was the show, budgets were huge, and the command grew quite a bit. It was also made very clear to me a as young guy, when asked what our mission was while we were simultaneously supporting OEF/OIF/GWOT, that the correct answer was "to do what the fuck we're told to do", and your job was to find a way to make it happen. I've heard the phrase "maintain relevance" thrown around quite a bit by senior guys in AFSOC this last year. What they really mean is they're worried our budgets will shrink because we're not leading the charge on night one into China/Russia. AFSOC's part in the high end near peer fight right of bang is limited for a multitude of reasons. IMO, AFSOC will be in a supporting role, which historically is where SOF usually existed prior to 2001. There's absolutely things we can contribute to that fight, the discussion of most of them exceed the classification of this forum. But the idea that we're going to be a main LOE is pretty silly with our current equipment. We have tons to contribute left of bang, and the C-VEO fight isn't going away anytime soon. There's also a ton of smart, motivated people working to find ways for AFSOC to support the high-end fight. I think AFSOC/SOCOM needs to calm down a bit with the "identity crisis" thing.

Ukraine and the Problem of Restoring Maneuver in Contemporary War | Institute for the Study of War (understandingwar.org) Long but quite interesting read.

Almost as if there’s already a room (or thread) for this stuff.

Of course he did. You think a new Wg/CC is gonna say no to a LtGen that was just recently his boss? The only thing that would’ve stopped that is a full on war with China, and maybe not even then.

The Wombat returns!