@DanMa1156
...The most telling information is those who are still getting out and taking jobs at regional or second tier cargo gigs until they can get hired somewhere else and I'm not sure that survey was suitably designed to appropriately aggregate that kind of data.
As someone who got out in spite of COVID-19 and have had friends do the same, I’m inclined to agree- a lot of the valuable feedback might come from those people.
However, the trouble it it’s been death by a thousand cuts for some of us. Timing, golden path, material and training shortfalls, burnout, detailing, family, QoL... all of those played a role in my own decision to leave AD. And through it all, I got a real sense that things were drifting ever further from what I had been led to believe were organizational norms. During my JO tour just a few short years ago, it would have been unthinkable for a fleet squadron to be on single jet flow for 8 months straight, or to not receive a single FNG pilot for nearly three years. Or for there to be >90 aircraft on the ramp at the FRS, with only 8-10 flyable (or less) on a given day. Add all of that to a rigid timing and seniority construct that wastes expensively-attained qualifications, murky strategic goals, and absurdly long deployments with fewer of the perks that there used to be (e.g. theater security cooperation dets, actual port calls in interesting places) resulting in burnout, and it was sort of a perfect storm for me.
Still the hardest decision I’ve ever made. But even in hindsight, I would do it again.
Not all of this is fixable on a reasonable timeline. Its hard to offer constructive suggestions, even with the perspective of being gone for a little while. Personally, I think the Navy’s trying in their own, adorable Navy way. But I think it might be constructive for some senior leaders to realize that the system which worked so well for them doesn’t offer the same opportunities any more.
Also, sustained ops in the Middle East is killing us- there’s no way to get “the enterprise” back on top while that is going on. We need to be honest and introspective about what the mission really is over there.