PasserOGas
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Posts posted by PasserOGas
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45-60 a year in the desert at most...if that. And no. Generally not voluntary. THe "4 year rule" is garbage btw. They look for people with the most time on station, and tag them as required. Once (if) the MC-12 gets to Beale, the dual qual thing will most likely go away and there will be MC-12 guys. If it's your last, then go for it... but I also heard of people possibly getting an assignment to Beale, and getting surprised with a rerouting to the Forks following training.
How about TDY's to Sig and Guam and the CAOC? Is the 45-60 days including all TDYs? Also what is the work schedule like? Lots of shift work like the preds?
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Guam ...yes. Sigonella... yes. Grand Forks...yes. And that isn't the end of it either. If you come here, plan to be UAVs forever. There has been talk for a while of recoreing all GH peeps as 11U. Many people are jumping ship just in time. Deployments still are not bad, and there are other TDYs so the quality of life is not bad. However, plan to work weekends and holidays often....but you are still home with your family.
Bottomline..if you come to GH you will most likely be UAVs forever. So think hard about it.
Forgot to mention.. they have whored some guys out to pred squadrons. So just because you come to GH doesn't mean you won't go to preds.
What about AFCENT? Without naming bases how much time do you spend in tan flight suits? Are the deployments voluntary for the most part?
Those people "whored out to preds", were they pcs'd before their 4 years were up? I also heard you guys may get dual qualled in the mc-12. What is that looking like?
I'm seriously thinking of pulling the handle on tankers. The lack of follow on doesn't bother me as I'm pretty sure it will be my last assignment.
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To add to the suckage, they make c17 crews stay 4 to a room in the trailers. It makes alert time ridiculous and makes you choose your crewmembers wisely.
Is that just transient or all crews?
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What do you guys think about getting some "Kanye West" style sunnies just to wear for the walk through customs? I think her head would probably do a 360 and she might spit up green pea soup.
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Have they broken ground on the new trailers?
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The latest editions of the Desert Penguin are attached...feel free to disseminate.
May desert penguin "tanker article".
BTW I'm flying to MALAK every time I hear a 130 in the pattern from now on.
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PACAF and USAFE are supposedly pretty good deals as well, at least in the KC-135. Cool TDY's and no deployments unless you want to go. Both are mostly run by fighters, which for promotion at the top may be bad, but for the average tanker guy is good, as they have no idea how the tanker works. So, as long as you are there on time they don't generally care how you do got there which gives you more freedom. This is just what I've heard from friends. Anyone want to comment?
My advise? Stay as far away from AMC as humanly possible, unless you enjoy spending time in prison.
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Hadn't seen anything official on that... still trouble brewing in Bishkek?
Not sure what I can say due to OPSEC, lets just say the price of fuel went up due to a foriegn influence, and we aren't willing to pay it.
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When we opened Bagram the only things people got bitched at for were light leaks because of the snipers and staying on the marked paths because of the mines. Those were worthy, life saving things for people to worry about and make on the spot corrections for.
Eventually it was safe enough for the XVIII Airborne Corps 3 star to have his HQ on the base. They preceeded his arrival with the XVIII Airborne Corps CSM. The CSM had never seen a GP medium with a dirt floor and a heater leaking JP-8 on the floor. He had never seen a burning sawed off 55 gal drum with a JP-8/shit cocktail. He had never seen people washing their clothes in a 5 gal bucket. He had never seen the FST set up in the tower with blood everywhere.
Is it sick that I really want to deploy to what you just described? I'm still not sure what I'm going to tell my grandchildren when they ask "How did you spend your time during the war grandpa?"
"Were you a hero?"
"Not really..."
"Did you serve with heroes?"
"Yeah, not really... Let's talk about something else."
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O, I'm fully aware of that, but don't blow smoke up my ass about the reason that alcohol consumption is limited/banned is due to the host nation. If leadership doesn't want us getting piss drunk (or drinking at all) have the grapes to take responsibility for the command decision and say so, don't try to pin it on the host nation.
You know how you can tell 100% it isn't host nation sensivities? Manas. 2 beers a day in a country that could give 2 sh#ts how much you drink. Hell you can find a list of local favorites here:http://www.advantour.com/kyrgyzstan/cuisine/drinks.htm
BTW, they also have a real problem with childhood alchoholism there, so you know they like to party!
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I think plenty of B-1 guys also think having a SOF at the Deid is a dumb idea...especially since the job is basically reduced to fielding calls from protocol every ten minutes when some DG is flying.
Thats the vibe I get as well. These calls aren't made by the average "boner" as I like to call them. (Yeah, I thought of that all by myself.)
I was hoping someone would have picked up the sarcasm in that first post, kinda thought the
was a dead giveaway. -
WTF are you talking about? I'm sure senior leadership is letting you in on their plans on how they will run the base. We are not moving out of BPC. Room assignments are based on how long you are deployed here and when you start deploying almost 7 months out here straight you too can stay in the BPC.
How are B-1 guys making you sit SOF? Poor guy, you have to do extra duties besides flying? We all sit SOF out here so quit whining about it.
Well, the one "nice" thing about tankers, check our schedule one day and you are pretty much guaranteed to see a senior leader flying on one of our lines. It's one of the "benefits" of flying more than 2 or 3 lines a day. What do you think we talk about for 8 hours? Hmmm.
Do you think for one second that we would have a SOF if it weren't for the B-1's running the place?? Really?? And we all don't sit SOF, C-17's do not. Amazing how they get anything done without it... I can tell you for sure our leadership has pushed against it as an unneeded drain on our manning. If the ACC assets want a SOF, why don't the units that want one man it themselves? We don't want it, don't need it, and it in fact gets in the way of our mission.
I don't think they should be kicking you out. (And the vibe I got was that they won't. Again, it was mentioned but there were issues with it.) I think all personnel with crew rest requirements should be there before, I don't know, CE or finance. If not that it should be average days/year spent out here that decides it.
BTW I'll be out here 6 of the next 9 months, and I won't get a year at home afterward. Wanna trade?
If they don't break ground on new trailers in the next 3-4 months I'll buy you a beer. How's that? God knows I'll be here.
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who the hell will be moving into the BPC then? That place is a GHOST TOWN. Nobody is living there right now, and they're going to start doubling up the closets in the CC to free up MORE space in the BPC? YGBFSM.
What is driving the doubling up is they are tearing down trailers to build new, wait for it.... TRAILERS!!! In the mean time there won't be as many rooms on base. On the bright side, I'm sure it won't take more than 5 years for them to finish it all up.
As for the pointy nose guys. "Human Being" is of course a relative term. We all know you aren't a "Person" out here unless you hold the rank of 0-6 or above.
As for the B-1's moving out they just said they were looking at it. But it brought up a bunch of issues due to the fact that some guys PCS right after a deployment, deploy again, and up spending a year in the desert, so it probably won't happen. Of course my heart broke for them. Then I remembered I had to pull SOF duty thanks to them, and had myself spent more than 2 years of my life here without EVER having my own bathroom... Stopped feeling bad immediately.
BTW Crud is gay. So are callsigns. Deadbug.
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Talked with someone in senior leadership recently. They shall remain nameless.
Word is starting in July anyone in CC with their own room will be sharing. B-1 pilots MAY be moving out of the BPC due to the increase in population and the generally low standing of aircrew on base. I pointed out to the "the commander" that B-1 pilots are actually considered human beings at Al Udeid. He raised his eyebrow, and nodded his head...
Wouldn't hold my breath on that second one.
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When going OEF my personal technique is to yell at the top of my lungs when checking in with Karachi. You don't want to sound angry, just crazed or really confused and possibly scared just like they do. They don't notice you are doing it because its the way they naturally speak. An added beneifit, thus far ZERO "in the blind" calls to them.
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I can't tell you that. It's classified. But I understand that if you have trouble hitting your objective, your secondary targets are an accordion factory and a mime school.
Can you bomb the "desert diamonds" meeting too? I would but all I have is this floppy hose on the back of my plane...
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Wow! That sucks. The totally explains why the tanker guys that come to the Herk world or even the T-1 world totally suck (just kidding, sort of). On real-world missions in the box we usually hit around 5 different fields per day, not to mention the 5 different fields I went to last week on my two local training sorties.
I am not totally familiar with the tanker world, but a good friend in a tanker unit was quite astonished that we have UPT-like cross countries where we can just take a plane, if is not allocated to some aeromed or army training mission, and go wherever we want as long as it meets the UPT standard of being a military base or joint-use base. This opens up the game to everywhere like Nashville, Birmingham, or Minneapolis international airports to smaller places like Stewart airport in NY and certain exotic Navy bases on the different coasts. I was actually kind of shocked that they did not allow the tanker to explore the country on weekend training missions - especially considering that it is a self-sufficient aircraft in terms of not needing a power or air cart. Heck, you can even tanker (taboo word, I know) gas to the point where you wouldn't even need to fuel up at an overnight stop.
My bud told me that they have been trying to work deals like that to broaden their training horizons, but have run into some resistance. In Rainman's honor, I will blame the whole lack of experience in the tanker world on that omnipresent group of assholes known as "the leadership."
I should note that those IP's are the exception, but not by much. Most of us have been to 10-15 different fields at some point since pilot training. However those trips are very rare, it takes around 4-5 years to get that many. The 90% in and out of one field still applies.
Yes we make suck at full procedure approaches, but who else do you know can cook a full meal on the bleed-air ducts?
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Wow! I can't believe this thread is being neglected when we are so close to 100 pages.
I just heard a rumor that they closed the MUFF. True or False?
If true, where are the O-6's drinking now?
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This is where congress needs to have an inquiry.
On the bright side, there is no F'ing way EADS is winning the contract, so maybe he will have sold is reputation (such as it was) for nothing... oh, and a few million $.
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This has been a great discussion with some great points.
I think you might be lumping the that KC-10 experience with the rest of the ARC world. I don't know how the KC-10 guys get away with that, but the ARC Herk world is a lot more intense. After this next trip to the shit/sandbox, I will have deployed with the Reserves every year for the past 4 years. Only one of them was a 30-day "stint." My understanding (and personal experience) is that AFRC is rotating reserve units on 120-day rotes with no chance of breaking it up into smaller chunks for the full activations. The "voluntary" rotes can be broken up into 60-day chunks (sometimes), which makes it about a 90-day total activation for our guys after you count processing on both ends of the world and travel time.
I am not trying to say that we pull the same weight as active duty - we don't. But we also don't get paid the same or have the same benefits/retirement as active duty. As others have mentioned, it is very difficult to manage a "real" job in addition to spending a few weekdays and two weekends a month at the unit.
I guess it all boils down to each unit or airframe being different. If you really want out of active duty and want the Gucci lifestyle of little to no deployments, then perhaps the KC-10 units are for you. But if you think that by joining an AFRC or ANG Herk unit will mean you won't deploy - think again.
Again, in my opinion, this is the trade-off for reservists not being compensated for full-time work. I look at the good deals (and I agree that it seems that the current strategy is to get ARC guys to volunteer for exotic TDY's and then simply force active duty to take the shitty ones) as sort of a consolation prize for not being able to access my retirement until I am 60 (or 59 and some change now, I guess).
I agree with all of your points. I have also heard it isn't exactly a picknick in the C-17 community. I should have been more specific in that I really have no first hand knowlege of how the other platforms handle this.
However, the difference in those communities is that while the guard is probably taking some trips, they aren't taking ALL of them. My bros in the t-tail world are definitely more experienced than pretty much anyone I know in the tanker. Right now the tankers are facing a very serious pilot seasoning problem. There are IP's I know that have landed at 5 fields since pilot training, and 90% of thier time is in and out of 1 of those. This has been going on for going on 10 years now, our corporate knowlege is being lost and will (in my opinion) someday get someone killed. We recently had someone come within 100 feet of another plane on an ALTRV in large part because the AC had never seen a coronet! When brought up to AMC they so far have just blown it off. I don't need to go to Guam (although I wouldn't turn it down). I do need do see some different fields/missions that I am responsible as a mobility pilot to know how to do. Right now even the most mundane non-deployed missions are for the most part going to the Guard, and the expierence from those is going with them.
I would also like to respond to Rainman's post.
I understand that activating a unit is a big deal. The problem I have is that we ARE activating them, then sending them on paid vacation for the most part. Again, tanker only.
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does not equal..
Huh? Which is it? Or are you saying you feel very strongly both ways.
The leadership?
Ah right, the "leadership" is the problem.
Look, there's a war on and we need assets to fight the war. The "leadership" is not responsible for the war but they are duty bound to provide trained and equipped forces when called upon. That is a very simple way to put something that involves a lot of work and responsibility that is placed squarely on the shoulders of what you refer to as "the leadership."
I have always been amazed by people who talk about "the leadership" as if there were some anonymous group of alien beings out there thinking up ways to make your life difficult because they don't care about you and/or don't like you. It is an amazingly childlike point of view, especially for a grown adult wearing a military uniform.
You would be best off either trying to get a little bigger picture or just remain quiet on this one. You're not helping yourself or your bros out.
Technique only.
I'll back up Karl on this one. At the end of the day you cannot make a guard pilot take a TDY against thier will. Therefore the AD gives up the "good trips" to the guard in order to get some sort of support from them. This I understand. The one time this is not true is when said unit is activated. Right now the AF is activating the units about once every two years. While its true that some units are doing stints in the desert, in my opinion it should be ALL units going to the desert. It is one time every TWO YEARS and it is broken up into 30 day stints, and even then not everyone goes!
Instead our "leadership" is sending most to Guam, Turkey, Australia ect... This I lay at our Generals feet. It is thier descision to not give us AD guys a break when they have the option, and to instead burn us out. Our leadership makes our deployments so miserable that no one wants to go, not the enemy. I blame them and will continue to do so.
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We all make our career choices.
True, I just wish I'd known about the guard when I made mine. Counting down until my commitment is up and I can finally make another choice.
Back on topic, to say I wish I had gone guard would be an understatement. (In case you couldn't tell.)
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I hear this argument all of the time.
We tried for about 2 years to come to your Active Duty pity party in the desert back in 2007. We volunteered. They said "Thanks. Minimum of 30 days aircrew, 60 days MX, 120 days leadership"
We said "Well, we can't really do that, since we have people with jobs and there are 4 units in our 4 month AEF bucket. Can we do 15 day rotations with leadership/staff swapping every 30? Most of our guys have been there before and we can have those guys spin up our crews at home station at drill. You can get all that stuff off of the SIPR you know..."
Big Blue "No"
Us - "Okay, then will you mobilize us?"
Big Blue - "No"
ANG - "Well, I guess you don't need us that bad then. Mobilize us and we'll be happy to help. We're right here, all you gotta do is call..."
Two years later, they finally let us play. First, they did the old location "bait and switch" on us (hey you're going to Manas! Oh, did we say Manas...what we really meant was...).
The DRMD dropped, then it changed and changed and changed 69 times. Finally it ended up that we had to leave a lot of our ground staff/leadership at home (negative requirement) since the AD wanted to keep those slots. We ended up jerking a lot of folks around (you're going..no you're not...well, maybe...OK, maybe not)
Next time we go, they only want crews, no staff at all. I understand "continuity" and all, but come on.
So, it may seem from a crewdogs perspective that the ANG gets all the good deals. Most of that is undoubtedly true. However, you have to remember that we have a lot of citizen airmen that fill our ranks. Some have very liberal airline schedules. Some do not...especially our enlisted aircrew and MX. That's why we get some of these shorter trips.
On the big deployment side of the house...AMC has to fill X number of deployment requirements with tankers. The ANG/AFRC makes up a percentage of that. AMC tells us (NGB/AFRC) which requirements it wants filled when it's our turn in the bucket. Sometimes we go East, sometimes we go West, sometimes we go South.
Finally, I did two individual deployments to the Died so some Active Duty guy didn't have to. Once by myself, once with a whole crew from my unit. The second time I went, there was only one Active Duty pilot and no Active Duty booms on the whole airplane. 3 Reserve crews and 1 2/3 Guard crews.
I know each unit's philosophy varies, but I would like to go to CENTCOM more often, but each time they make it more painful with pre-deployment requirements, time you have to spend there and then the whole Died ass pain thing (see the Leadership in the Died thread) makes it difficult.
Hey, no one is blaming you guys. This griping is aimed squarely at AD leadership, or lack thereof. AMC gets to task you once every two years, and while they could use every opportunity like that to help us out, they send you guys to Guam, Turkey or the Caribbean. I know you guys come to the Deid, (on the 31st only ;-p ) I tell people how some bases work with the guard/reserve on shorter tours while ours doesn't and they don't even know its our OWN WING knifing us in the back.
I hate you, but I don't HATE you. Simple jealousy. You see the difference? I just want my leadership to talk about the people/mission debate again, and to even bring it up gets you laughed at now.
10 Year commitment
in General Discussion
Posted
Please no guard/reserve responses, we all know what your answer will be lol.