Flight School backed up

[DanMa1156]

What does "1 year to send people to boat" mean? Is this the dis-associated sea tour - and is it only 12 months? Rhetorically I would ask why the Navy keeps insisting on taking aviators out of the cockpit at just the point where they have a peak of flying skill, judgement and experience.

In order for the Navy to PCS you CONUS, you need to have 12 months left of your Wings+8 service requirement. In order to do this, they shorten Instructor Tour (or generic shore tour) lengths in order to maintain 12 months left by the time your "new" tour length is up. There's been some mixed history of this - in my case - my detailer was very upfront with it that my orders would be written as 30 months in order to make that requirement; the lowest I saw any of my peers get was 27 months. During my last lap in the FRS as a CAT III, the instructors there all had 36 month orders, but I'd guess 80% of them were getting ORDMOD'd or otherwise being told to leave early (someone with PERS experience can tell me what's in the realm of possible) down to about 26-30 months total shore tour time for many of them. Problematically, it also sets those folks back considerably on their production tours (even being just flying hours) with respect to FITREPS, because they are inevitably competing with some people whose orders weren't cut short due to their timing, so it screws people both who want to stay in the Navy (less competitive FITREP and quals) and those who want to get out (less time instructing/logging hours). Also bad: for those pursuing a Master's Degree on shore duty, they often struggle to change their schedule around on their second sea tour to accommodate the last portion that they hadn't originally planned on missing out on.

Yes, that does mean many people go to their disassociated tour second sea tour for 12 months and drop their resignation papers on their first day.

To your rhetorical question asked here, it's been discussed routinely here with the overall consensus being that the more senior you are, the more you look back on that tour and realized you gained something. I realized pretty quickly on my disassociated tour, as much as I didn't like it, I was learning a lot on my disassociated tour that, if the Navy wanted me to progress, gave me a lot of exposure and information that I would end up needing down the road. With that said, I didn't do a "typical" LPD/LHD/LHA/CVN second sea tour. On the other hand, the burn out is real of back to back sea duty and deployments with a short stint in the FRS in between.

 

[nittany03]

As opposed to AF where *every single officer in pilot training* is tracked by name at SECAF level. By name. And senior officials ask "when will 2LT Smith be winged"....

Source? This seems like such a waste of Service Secretary-level staff time compared to all the other things that come up that high.

 

[ChuckMK23]

Source? This seems like such a waste of Service Secretary-level staff time compared to all the other things that come up that high.

Convo with SES level asst sec heading manpower and reserve/guard affairs. And initially was in the context of Rated Diversity, but I learned the tracking was for all AF pilot candidates. There is staff to do stuff like this.

In general one of my takeaways working in Air Force land and contrasting my limited JO Navy experience is that of resource constraints and scarcity. The Air Force rejects scarcity of resources and constraints where as I remember even as a JO, it was a theme of Navy life. Navy leaders always thought about "can I afford it" and the AF O-6 and above leaders I've worked with have always said "we'll go get more $, do what you need to"

 

[Flash]

Convo with SES level asst sec heading manpower and reserve/guard affairs. And initially was in the context of Rated Diversity, but I learned the tracking was for all AF pilot candidates. There is staff to do stuff like this.

Seems like 1- A waste of staff manpower and 2- A case of having too many folks on staff to be able to waste on the level of detail like this.

In general one of my takeaways working in Air Force land and contrasting my limited JO Navy experience is that of resource constraints and scarcity. The Air Force rejects scarcity of resources and constraints where as I remember even as a JO, it was a theme of Navy life. Navy leaders always thought about "can I afford it" and the AF O-6 and above leaders I've worked with have always said "we'll go get more $, do what you need to"

While the Navy is certainly fond of doing 'more with less', with our Marine brethren taking it to the extreme, the USAF like to ask for more money but the results can be....mixed. I still regularly deal with USAF assets and money has been poured into them for years yet their availability and utility has greatly diminished for a variety of reasons, from USAF-wide deployment polices and a lack of a 'can-do' attitude among personnel (for a lack of better term off the top of my head) to perpetually 'broken' (PMC) aircraft.

Every service has its goods and bads and while this latest flight school backup has some unfortunately typical Navy fingerprints all over it in addition to DoD-wide issues I wouldn't look to the USAF as a lodestar to 'fix' our issues.

 

[sevenhelmet]

I wouldn't look to the USAF as a lodestar to 'fix' our issues.

Quite the reverse, since the USAF's sortie generation rate per aircraft rate is about half of the Navy's requirement. From what I understand, the USAF are the ones that pulled the plug on the parts contract, which puts the Navy in a bind, while the USAF planned to ride it out with spares and cannibalized parts.

 

[SynixMan]

There are several reasons, but one rather glaring reason is that we don’t have enough IPs. With PERS shortening shore tours (some straight to the minimum of 24 months) to preserve 1 year to send people to the boat things aren’t getting better anytime soon. It is frustratingly predictable..

This is my shocked face. Sad that the Air Boss now has to pay for the sins of his predecessors circa 2013, but he could reverse course quickly if he wanted.

To your rhetorical question asked here, it's been discussed routinely here with the overall consensus being that the more senior you are, the more you look back on that tour and realized you gained something. I realized pretty quickly on my disassociated tour, as much as I didn't like it, I was learning a lot on my disassociated tour that, if the Navy wanted me to progress, gave me a lot of exposure and information that I would end up needing down the road. With that said, I didn't do a "typical" LPD/LHD/LHA/CVN second sea tour. On the other hand, the burn out is real of back to back sea duty and deployments with a short stint in the FRS in between.

I'll be honest. I did learn a lot on my 5th Fleet Staff job, but I also gathered quickly that the Mark 1 Mod 0 aviator/NFO is leaps and bounds better than their black shoe counterparts, so I kind of *had to* learn and adapt quickly. Half the job was being mildly social and asking "I need x, who does that?" and then not being a werido/demanding asshole if and when I needed something. Also we grow up briefing our seniors from day 1 of flight school, so briefing a transit/CONOP/exercise to a Flag wasn't that big of a deal to me as a senior LT. I'm throughly convinced I could've stayed in the cockpit through DH and been just fine with any old staff job after DH. Using 13x0s as first for the PERS seat mill and the golden path are a bitch.

BT BT

Heard a rumor of an ENS in hot water for calling in a bomb threat? Any funny story there?

 

[KODAK]

Weiterleitungshinweis

 

[robav8r]

Well, looks like the "wait" just got a bit shorter ?

 

[CommodoreMid]

That’s impressively dumb. If you’re going to be dumb enough to make a threat, it would be a good idea not to waive your 5th amendment rights and simultaneously try to delete the evidence.

 

[dxfan06]

Yikes that's a big oof my guy

 

[sevenhelmet]

If you’re going to fail, fail big I guess…

 

[Griz882]

Says he “missed flight school…” Guess he’ll really miss it now.

 

[Flash]

Quite the reverse, since the USAF's sortie generation rate per aircraft rate is about half of the Navy's requirement. From what I understand, the USAF are the ones that pulled the plug on the parts contract, which puts the Navy in a bind, while the USAF planned to ride it out with spares and cannibalized parts.

Wait, what? Why?

 

[sevenhelmet]

Wait, what? Why?

Don't know- this is relating the story I've been told from a reliable source. He didn't say why.

 

[nittany03]

They could have a sign outside Building 633:

“It has now been 0️⃣0️⃣0️⃣ days since an A-Pooler committed career seppuku in amazingly stupid fashion.”