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Stepped out to lunch to find four inches of snow atop my car in the two hours since I last cleared it. Screw you, Maryland. For all the GIs with brodozers around here, I'd think at least a handful would be able to drive in snow, but my commute to work this morning proved otherwise.
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Jan 3, 2022 17:12
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Yeah, I'll throw in with the lived experience of a SNCO who's actually still in the USAF, and the prior enlisted Os have almost always been better than USAFA sociopaths and usually better than the ROTC/OTS cats. I can count on one hand the number of USAFA grads who wouldn't let me die for a good OPR strat. The prior E officers at least gave a poo poo if we lived or died, and had some empathy because they'd already been in our shoes.
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Apr 17, 2022 01:00
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Godholio posted:Everything between Denver and the Mississippi is hot garbage. How dare you besmirch the good name of states like Iowa, famous for, uhhh, for having the world's largest truck stop??
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Apr 27, 2022 01:00
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Mark my words, if/when the USAF switches to narrative EPRs, it will be 3 weeks before a closeout date, meaning the EPRs will have already been routed to the Flight Chief in bullet format. ...I say, as I put the finishing touches on my own bullet format EPR... 
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Jul 11, 2022 05:18
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Congratulations on escaping. I mean that with complete sincerity. Enjoy your retirement!
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Oct 23, 2022 02:39
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My (cyber) captain is heading off to Weapons School this week, and I'm desperately trying to convince her she should wear the patch afterwards and speak exclusively in Top Gun quotes
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Dec 7, 2022 04:14
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Exec comm is one of those gigs that really should be selectively manned with the best of the best, but every single interaction I had with them boiled down to "We don't know how to <load a key/clear a port/install a program/etc>, so can someone from <insert shop> come out to the General's house and do it for us?" Which made for a nice change of pace, but for the sheer number of times I fixed some general's SIPR, they should have just pulled me into the exec comm team and given me a civilian clothing allowance.
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Feb 5, 2023 12:12
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I'm the only airman in my chain. Supervisor is a retired soldier, and my senior rater is a Marine Colonel. On the one hand, this means I'll probably be able to write a real narrative for my EPR. On the other hand, when I finally return to a normal unit, I'll have zero experience with whatever nitpicky nonsense the Air Force wants, so the culture shock will hit extra hard.
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Feb 11, 2023 02:27
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It is certainly possible to enlist and then subsequently commission with a college degree. It is generally much easier to get a pilot slot via the US Air Force Academy (best odds) or ROTC and a normal university (second best odds)* than it is via Officer Training School. With that said, I'm enlisted, and I've seen a bunch of my enlisted friends and colleagues get their degrees and commission. The two of them who wanted to fly both got pilot slots, so while that is more difficult than going officer from the start, it's definitely possible. *The asterisk is because both of those options require US citizenship, as far as I know. Enlisting is indeed a fast track to citizenship. Back when I went through basic training, the instructors came in one day about five weeks into training and asked if we had any noncitizens who wanted to get their citizenship. They all went out to the personnel office and were sworn in as US citizens that same day. I don't know if it's still that easy. Something that your cousin should absolutely look into before he commits. If your cousin is dead set on doing this - the job he chooses will play a dramatic role in how much he enjoys his enlistment, and also in how likely he is to develop lifelong back and/or knee and/or mental health problems. Unfortunately for him, most of the less physically demanding jobs in the USAF require a US Secret security clearance, and that requires - you guessed it - US citizenship. What I'm getting at is, an office job checks the box for getting that citizenship just as well as turning a wrench on an airplane, and only one of those jobs will involve exposure to the elements and night shift. Even for whatever is left, there's a requirement to be a legal permanent resident with a green card (CAVEAT - historically, Filipinos were the exception to that rule. Due to the prior history of US administration of the Philippines, there was a standing waiver that allowed Filipinos to enlist in the US armed forces without any other connection to the US. I don't know if this is still valid). I know the goon consensus in GiP is generally along the lines of nooooo, don't enlist, but I've had a great life over the past fifteen years, and I wouldn't trade it for anything. But for everyone like me, the people who succeeded at the game, there are those who walked out after a single enlistment to deal with a lifetime of physical and/or mental pain. (Pro tip: I joined to fix long range telecommunications nodes) So, if your cousin has any other reasonable path to US citizenship, he'd probably be better off going that route, and getting a degree at a US college and attending ROTC, if he really wants that pilot slot.
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Feb 13, 2023 12:52
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Boris Galerkin posted:Alright, was just wondering because in pretty much every media with scientists, they always make it a point to introduce each other like "this is Dr. Soandso, and this is Dr. Suchandsuch, and this is Prof. Blahblah". In the real world nobody is being so formal when introducing themselves to each other as peers lol. Everyone is just "hi I'm Bob and this is John" not "hi I'm Dr. Whatever." I'm not a pilot, just a filthy enlisted comm troop, but I've spent a fair bit of my career working with fighter and bomber pilots as their comm support. When you're the only enlisted guy amongst officers, and you're socially competent, they kind of forget that they're supposed to pretend to be a better class of rat and start treating you as one of their own. Introducing oneself by callsign happens with pilots in real life, but it's almost always a sign that the pilot is an enormous tool. By and large, the normal people just introduce themselves by name, usually first name. In real life, call signs are also almost always embarrassing, so you don't see a whole lot of Maverick and Iceman type names. Instead you usually get names that are oblique references to the time a pilot screwed up in some horrifying/entertaining fashion.
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Feb 17, 2023 16:16
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Shogunner posted:so do recruiters really just lie to kids... and is it even legal? are they held accountable to some sort of quota? There were definitely quotas back when I enlisted. At my recruiting station in 2008, when I worked the Recruiters Assistance Program, the expectation was iirc 2 new recruits a month, every month. Failing to meet the quota for more than a couple of months in a row meant being on the flight chief's poo poo list and non-stop hassling from recruiting command. idk if the quota was actually official in writing. I'd be shocked if they weren't still a thing. In any given year, each branch of the US military tries to hit a particular end strength. Depending on outside factors like the relative strength of the job market, getting the desired number of recruits can be difficult. Recruiters absolutely stretch the truth in general, and lie when they think they can get away with it. That doesn't just mean lying to potential recruits, it also means lying about the eligibility of said recruits, and encouraging them to lie about themselves. To use an example, lying about past drug use and/or medical issues. My recruiter never encouraged that, but I've worked with a bunch of Airmen (and for that matter, Soldiers, Marines, etc) whose recruiters coached them to lie about those things. Part of the initial recruitment process involves a mountain of paperwork to establish medical history and background checks. For questions about drug use, prior ADHD diagnosis, etc, enterprising recruiters told their guys to think of it as YES (Your Enlistment Stops) or NO (New Opportunities). Which causes real problems if the recruit gets caught in the lie later on. I got really lucky with my recruiter. He was previously Security Forces and he became a recruiter to escape from that job for a few years. I just wanted to ship out to basic training as quickly as possible, and I told him I'd be happy to sign up for SecFo or anything else. He sat me down and told me it would be better to live in a box under a bridge than to be a 19 year old E-2 in Security Forces. And then he told me to go for comm, because I'd almost always be working indoors, and I'd have job opportunities afterwards, and I probably wouldn't wreck my spine or my knees. 15 years later, my knees and my back both still work the way they should, and I think about that conversation from time to time.
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Feb 19, 2023 06:11
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That was my initial thought, too, but it's the MSG and LRS commanders, so who even knows. The only MSG CC firing I was personally familiar with involved generally toxic leadership and specifically misusing resources (including using base funds to have a dog park installed next to the CC's house for their near-exclusive use) so I wouldn't be surprised if it was just leaders failing to hide their selfishness beyond what the Air Force normally tolerates. Or some kind of swinger thing.
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Mar 1, 2023 03:22
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New 36-2903 dropped a few days ago. Commercial cold weather outerwear is authorized. The only real guideline is that it needs to be either coyote brown or OCP pattern, with name/rank/etc patches. I eagerly await the increasing insane brown jackets belligerent Airmen will start wearing. Might even get an OCP M-65 field jacket, I need something warm and cozy for a TDY to Korea next winter.
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Apr 7, 2023 04:32
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Casimir Radon posted:Are old snorkel parkas still in there? Yeeeep. There's still a paragraph for them. The last vestige of the Korean War uniform won't die until there is true peace between the Koreas.
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Apr 7, 2023 05:05
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Yeah, as an E-7 I was paying out of pocket for a pretty mediocre rental at my last assignment. While at that same assignment, I got a job offer for a contractor job that started at $150K and great benefits, with a boost to 160 after the first year, regular raises, and COLA adjustments, to do essentially the same work I'd been doing in uniform but none of the admin nonsense. And the freedom to wear normal clothes to work. Would have been an absolutely massive boost to my paycheck compared against mil pay. Instead, I extended my enlistment, because I'm either profoundly stupid or extremely committed to the Air Force. But just about all of my competent colleagues jumped ship for the civilian world, leaving us with only the extremely loyal and the extremely useless at the higher ranks. If we want to retain talent, it costs money.
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Jun 13, 2023 00:54
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There are a few things I miss about being an E-1 with absolutely no responsibilities beyond "march to class and don't gently caress up," but I do not miss the feeling in my stomach when I used an ATM right after buying an Xbox 360 and a cheapo TV at Sears, and realized I had less than $50 dollars left to my name.
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Jun 15, 2023 13:52
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LtCol J. Krusinski posted:I don’t even know what the gently caress I spent my pay back then on. The family crest and sword set they hawked at the BX using some random European family's heraldry from 200 years ago because that name sounded vaguely similar to yours. I never actually met anyone who fell for that, but there were always tech schoolers in line at that stall, so I guess P.T. Barnum was on to something.
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Jun 16, 2023 07:33
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Wrr posted:They let 14 year olds get commissions these days? When you can't hit hiring goals, and there's no money to PCS or give retention bonuses, you've got to get creative. https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/3453178/air-force-delays-some-pcss-bonuses/ quote:Headquarters Air Force is directing actions to be taken now to avoid exhausting funds. AFPC is currently approving PCS orders for Airmen with projected departure dates in July. quote:The Air Force is also temporarily pausing the Aviation Bonus program that opened on June 6, 2023, to restructure the program to continue offering bonuses to aviators. Within the next 14 days, the Air Force expects to reopen a restructured AvB, at which time officers who did not already elect to sign the AvB contract will be able to do so as long as funds remain. It's probably fine.
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Jul 14, 2023 06:47
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Some of the absolutely dumbest people I've ever known are Air Force and now Space Force cyber officers, so if you have two brain cells to rub together, I'm confident you're up to the task. That said, some of the cleverest and kindest people I've had the privilege to work with are also cyber officers, so that's what keeps me in, instead of bailing for contract work. I gripe about the Air Force quite a bit, but it's taken me all around the world to do cool things for America. I've seen the sun rise over the Philippine Sea and I've seen it set on the Italian Alps, and I did it on the government's dime. And once or twice, I did something that actually helped defend the US and our allies in a genuinely meaningful way. The only person who knows if you should join the military is you. As for Air Force vs Space Force? I was assigned to an Air Force base in Colorado when the Space Force stood up, and the base converted. In the cyber career fields, we were given a choice to swap to USSF and stay where we were, or remain in the Air Force and get reassigned to other Air Force units. I chose to stick with the USAF. My buddies who swapped to the USSF largely hate it, owing to a major lack of meaningful assignments. All the cool space work is done by the NRO or NGA, and the USSF mostly just monitors satellite telemetry. If you're going to join up, the USSF is an answer in search of a question. It doesn't even deal with the terrible secret of space.
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Jul 28, 2023 09:01
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17.4% promotion rate for 23E5, looks like. I guess we'll have a brief promotion release party this year. Very efficient.
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Aug 8, 2023 04:49
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At least the thread title still checks out
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Aug 8, 2023 16:27
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Shalhavet posted:My sister made it, so that's cool. Nice! I'm phoneposting, so I can't check the portal - has the list been released publicly, or is it still at the CC level for individual notifications?
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Aug 9, 2023 08:49
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I went TDY to Maxwell once. I'm so sorry. The only nice things I can say about Maxwell are (1) their air park is legit pretty great, with a bunch of cool airframes, and (2) they named one of their roads 'OODA Loop' which is  "
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Jan 2, 2024 17:37
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AFStealth posted:Stan/Eval is not an ACC program, it is an AF wide flying operations program. Why non flying units would have stan/eval is beyond me. Because it's a CYBER WEAPON SYSTEM, duh. Just like an F-16, there's no difference really. That's why we give our computers tail numbers. And why, when we push out a targeted patch to outdated operating systems, we call it a cyber sortie and plan out the patching using PBED and pretend as if we can't step back and undo a change, because you can't move back to an earlier stage of an aerial refueling mission and this is the US Air Force god drat it, we are flying cyber planes in the cyber defense of our cyber infrastructure. Absolutely none of that was a joke and what I just described is factually true USAF cyber operation doctrine, even though in a sane world it absolutely should be a joke, and indeed is a joke to anyone with half a brain forced to play along until they qualify for the GI Bill. Edit: It's not science fiction. It's what we do every day. Arc Light fucked around with this message at 09:40 on Feb 16, 2024 |
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Feb 16, 2024 09:36
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My "unit" is a GSU consisting of 5 people. A Lt Col as the detachment chief, two E-7s, and two GS-13s. There are several similar GSUs attached to my headquarters. Hear me out! If we redesignate each GSU as a five man squadron and make the Lt Cols "commanders"...
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Feb 17, 2024 05:27
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