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Dude, if you PCS to a new base after a short tour and get picked off for a 365 within 45 days you are the idiot, not the shoes. Or do you suck at writing and mean that you are about to get 300 days in 18 months to get short tour credit? They are not the same thing.

Basically, AFPC sucks at life. I just finished up a series of deployments two weeks ago that would give me short tour credit. I talked to MPF about updating my STRD, and they said it's a quick process once the deployment is showing in the system, but that I'd have to work through IPR to get the deployment in the system. When I went to IPR, they said it takes AFPC 45 days to load a contingency deployment in the system, and that was the LIMFAC for getting it updated. They also told me that several other officers at my base were having the same problem as me with AFPC taking forever to update the information. It's also made it a pain to get my PDMRA days, and I'm trying to get another deployment turned off due to it violating dwell time.

I finished my short tour in January and it still hasn't appeared. Today I went into MPF with my voucher and he updated my ribbon, but said IPR had to update my short tour return date and counter.

Has anyone recently finished a short tour? I am about to finish and have heard that it's taking 45 days for the short tour to reflect on people's records. Any insight or advice on speeding that up? Would suck to finish a short tour only to get picked off for a 365 because the shoes hadn't finished updating my records.

Thread revival. Heading unaccompanied to Osan for a short tour. Anybody know what the unaccompanied FGO dorms are like?

Being nominated for the Medal of Honor automatically hacks your short tour credit (BET ME it doesn't). Anyone willing to press-to-test nominating yourself for a MOH? If a BS if fair game to nominate yourself, where is the line?

Thanks for the info everybody. They sure did not make it easy to get a short tour with these new changes...at least not in the C-17 community (unless of course you go on a 365).

The days OCONUS TDY should be on the virtual MPF under duty history. It keeps track of all the TDYs you've ever been on and the tracking system seems to have gotten better since DTS took over all TDYs. Short tour credit is not as simple as hit 365 days, get one point. We're not back under the old system of 300 days in 18 months. Does not have to be consecutive, but if you hit 300 days within 18 months, you should get a/another short tour credit and your STRD will be reset to when you arrived back at home station. As to the question about guys with short tour credit getting hit up for a non-vol 365, I haven't personally heard of that yet. All the guys I know who have been non-vol'd did not have short tour credit.

Yes having a short tour in the bank is good money. Especially if you're prior E, or get passed over. Don't confuse deployments with 365s. Having a recent short tour return date has nothing to do with you getting picked up for a good deal 179. But it will save you from a short tour (not many for 17 drivers in my day) or a 365 (seem to be growing all the time).

Your current STRD should be a shifting date that is x number of days after your entry to active duty date (I forget the acronym). For every day that you're TDY from CONUS to OCONUS, that date should shift to the right. Deployments, trips, whatever... if you were TDY CONUS to OCONUS it changes the date. So, say you've been OCONUS TDY a total of 365 days... it would read whatever date exactly a year after your entry to AD... basically the start of your AF clock. Next to your STRD you'll see a (*) type thing. The parenthesis will get a "1" or "2" or whatever for every short tour you do. I believe this will be whether or not you do the 300 days in 18 months or the full year short tour thing. The way the system is "supposed" to work, every time you file a travel voucher your vMPF updates with your TDY duty history, and your OCONUS days TDY get updated as well. Via magic, this somehow eventually makes it on your SURF. In reality, the system doesn't work and MPF doesn't do their jobs, so you have to force them to update it using proof of travel vouchers, etc. You're right in that prior-E folks get hosed under this system. Yep, the difference in STRDs, even not having a number in the parenthesis, might be the discriminator between you or someone else getting a 365 to a shithole. Yep, the odds have never been higher that you'll get a 365 to a shithole if you decide to make the AF a career these days, especially if you sign the bonus. FAIPs and OCONUS PCS'd folks are especially nervous... it's only CONUS to OCONUS TDYs that change the STRD. Those exercises in Thailand or wherever for Yokota folks don't count as far as I know. Maybe that's changed.

I have a couple of questions about this short tour subject, if anyone has some info. First, does anyone have an answer to the above question? Seems pretty applicable in my airframe. Secondly, I am wondering how important a short tour is at my current stage. I am an 06 Captain with DOR of 2010 and a C-17 driver at second C-17 assignment. I could be getting a 180 day CAOC tour and if I combine this with another 60 day deployment, then I might be able to squeeze out a short tour (also counting other OCONUS days TDY from other missions). In this scenario I would be using the 300 days in 18 month rule. Right now my STRD is some random date in 2007, which confuses me because I don't believe I should have a short tour at all...and so I figured your STRD would just be your date of commissioning. Regardless, if I can get my STRD to be sometime this year...could that be beneficial to me to avoid other shitty deals and possible iTDYs, etc in the future? I would imagine that most of my peers do not have a short tour as well, and so once we become Majors in 2 or 3 years, we will be looked at for all these random deployments and the guys with the most recent STRD will be the winners, correct?

Maybe I'm missing your point, or maybe my math is bad, but why would anybody stay in that Battalion for 7+ years? Pretty sure I would've punched during the "home for 16" part. Mine says 8/21/12. I used 27 days of use/lose and I've been gone at least 45 days already since my short tour return. I don't even fly tankers.

Have we gotten to the point where guys with a short tour are getting tagged for 365s or is 1 short still enough to keep you off the list? I know prior Es are vulnerable for the 365s because of their ancient STRDs (relative to their commissioning year group peers). What's the latest trend? Who tops the list?

There's a mx officer job supporting the same thing, also a short tour. I think there's also a couple C-130 pilot jobs and a mx officer job doing the same type of thing with Herks in Poland, but I might be mistaken on that.

It's amazing how upper managment in the unit buys the Big Blue party line, "If you get sanctuary, the active duty can sent you ANYWHERE! ANYWHERE!" and trys to scare you with lurid tales of the AD shanghaing helpless Guardsman and sending them to a foxhole in Afghanistan, come on really! first off as a flyer for over 20 years and having only a year and four months to get 7300 points, I already have a short tour for overseas, if I get mobilized I'm going to be deployed and get dwell time when I get back and can't get deployed and besides the AD does not want some 33 plus year crusty SMSgt showing up in their "day care" squadron! Plus as a Guardsman if you get sanctuary you become an AGR. All the flyers I knew who got sanctuary ended up staying in their units.

Seriously though, talk to your assignments officer. One thing I see during the pilot assignment process is cool billets that end up being hard to fill. For instance NATO has short tours in Italy. Since most guys don't volunteer for a short tour, these billets end up getting filled by non-vols. And really, it's simply cause folks don't know about them. Talk to your AFPC rep and see what's out there.

Kayla, "You" means "ya'll." If he's deployed, and it's something you can do, go ahead and do it. Enrolling him in EFMP is something that shold be done ASAP regardless of who does it. He's probably on the vulnerable list for a 365 due to time in service and time since last short tour (if any). But once he returns from a regular deployment, he's protected for 1 yr from an Indeterminate TDY (iTDY) aka a 365. AFI 36-2110 Chapter 5. Assignment notifications for the Summer cycle will come out around March for RNTLDs between June and Sep.

Shoe standard. Meanwhile over in the Maintenance Complex some poor (now divorced) crew chief/weapons loader is deploying for the 7,000th time. After just getting back from his 3rd Korea short tour in 8 years. Been there, seen it happen...

This email officially shows that most people at the Deid don't even know there is a war still going on that they are supposed to be there supporting. They just think they get to go to the desert, get "combat" pay and tax free pay, check a container for a deployment and possibly get a short tour and that is about it. The rest of their time is spent drinking their 3 beers a day, suntanning at the pool, working on their masters, bachelors, PME and PLAYING soldier. It is time to start bringing people home from the Deid and giving them real jobs throughout the AF!

F-16 drivers and Huey guys are particularly vulnerable because of the requirements of several of the 365 taskings. AFPC takes the requirements for the tasking, and then filters the database of all officers to eliminate those that don't meet the basic requirements: rank, AFSC, etc. Then they filter out those with a DEROS or DOS, or who won't have 12 months TOS, or any special flags in their record. Then they sort by number of short tours, STRD, and ODSD in that order. So when they need an F-16 Capt or Maj to go 365 to fly with the Paki's, the guy with 0 short tours in Korea floats right to the top. But there's not a lot of 365's that require, say, a C-5 guy. So those guys get hit with the "any rated" ones. But then there's lots of people qualified to fill those, so you get hidden deep under the pile of old Maj's and Lt Col's regardless of their MWS that haven't ever gone remote or gotten enough TDY days to get a short tour. If you aren't sure how vulnerable you are, check out the iTDY site on aefonline and look over the taskings that are out there.

300 days for a short tour has to be OCONUS TDY. From Table 3.4: "If Airman performed TDY ... from a OS long tour location to any other OS location ... And served ... 300 days or more in a consecutive 18 month period ... Then ... give Airman credit for a completed short tour and award a new STRD to equal date of return from last TDY." (Ellipses represent breaks in the table, not lost information.) Each MAJCOM has a Rated Manager who is your very own "personnelist in a flight suit." In USAFE's case, he's also a rated recallee. If you have questions about exactly this kind of stuff, or deployments, assignments, and rated manning, contact him directly. Most of them work in your MAJCOM A1, except USAFE & PACAF which have theirs in the A3.

Ok, question on 36-2110 interpretation in reference to the "300 days in a 18 month period" rule. I'm stationed in USAFE. When January 2012 rolls around, I'll have been TDY for 9+ months. Except for 9 days, that's all consecutive. That said, only 179 of those days will have been spent in the AOR. The rest were deployment training back in CONUS. Do the TDY days in CONUS count towards a short tour? If they count, I can more than enough make up the roughly 30 day differnece to meet the 300 days w/in 18 months requirement with all my TDYs around Europe and Africa. Actually now that I think about it, in this calendar year alone, I will have been TDY almost 280 days. edit spelling

Correct - overseas long tours do not reset the overseas short tour date.

Are you sure this is true? I returned from a long tour in 2009 but my short tour return date stayed 2003.

Sputnik: the answer is "it has not been decided/announced yet". An implementation policy will come out to determine, among other things, a "cutoff" date. However, I'd say it is safe to assume if you are done with a short tour, your credit will stay.