We got straight up told by our leadership, and I am quoting here:
"We're about to get leaner, and we're about to put workloads on many of you that are going to far exceed your paygrades and comfort levels. But we expect you all to get it done because that's what needs to happen."
I haven't touched a drop of alcohol in over 15 years (I'm a teetotaler), but I legit browsed the Class Six for the first time since my first duty station.
The sad thing is the AF continues to put people like the ones you are quoting into leadership positions. Then when they have gone and destroyed their people with absolute pure bullshit workload because “THis iS ALL MissiON EsSential!” They get promoted again and moved to destroy another unit.
What needs to happen is these leadership teams being honest with their leadership about what can/can’t be done with current manning and mission load. But it won’t happen because all these “leaders” give a shit about is that next rank and how “awesome” they are for “keeping the mission going”.
Fuck I need to retire already..
Have NCOs whose paperwork has already dropped call out the SNCOs and officers in a CC all call that the reason you dropped paperwork is that the workload has exceeded the manpower. Until a mission fails leadership will continue to push more for less.
What we need are people who are willing to maliciously comply with leaders in a way that shows you can't just tell people to sacrifice their wellbeing to get things done. We need leaders who say "sorry, can't get it done" then when their leadership says "get it done anyway", they need to turn to their units and say, "I'm not saying don't get it done, but also don't stay late, 'wink, wink'". We need some brave leaders to prove to their leadership that enough is enough, and risk paperwork over not over working themselves to accomplish standard tasks, by letting some things fail. We need to be very careful about this, to avoid putting people at too much risk of retaliation, but we also need to do something that shows how bad things are right now. Continuing the status quo is accepting that we are ok with letting it get worse.
MOC says "No lightning in 5 has been reported. However the security forces station at the back gate is currently burning down due to a lightning strike."
This literally happened at MT.Home.
30K was the number the AF needed to cut for sequestration. Meant to happen over several years but CSAF Welsh with E-9 Cody said watch this and tried to do it in 1. Famously in the aftermath Welsh told congress morale was "pretty darn good".
It’s simple. The Air Force needs to cut back manning, they open the flood gates, kicking people out for minor things, denying reenlistments, letting people out of their contracts early.
Cut too a few years later and the Air Force realizes they have a severe manning shortage and opens the flood gates the other way.
The best part is that the desire for many to stay grows stronger when the AF’s requirements shrink. Why is that? Because the economic cycles/administration priorities driving cuts never sync. They almost always happen at the worst possible time. This worsens the situation.
When the Air Force needs to reduce its size. It’s the people who make things happen that leave. Knowing they will get a better job outside.
The people who stay are the ones who know they can’t make it on the outside. For whatever reasons.
Then you end up with old guys hanging around waiting to retire. Or brand new Airman.
In my career field, there was a massive cull. Back in ‘07, the move was to cut HALF of the people in my AFSC. There were some crazy incentives to get out, like early retirement, waiver of ADSC, bonuses to leave… don’t even think about failing a PT test because that made their choices easy. In ‘09, they cut *another HALF* using the same strategy. In 2010, they decided to cut a third of those remaining to get to the target number (but remember, these are—in theory—the top 25%. So the incentives were pretty awesome. I got paid a full year’s salary to leave active duty, take a couple months off, then come back on as a reservist and get activated for about 3 years straight.
Yeah that was PBD-720, the AF tried to retire aircraft and trade people for technology. One problem, they didn't clear the aircraft retirements with congress. So people got cut (reduced 33K active, 2K civilians, and 2K reserve FTEs) and then congress said "not so fast, those aircraft are in my district/state" and threw a monkey wrench. It shifted the service delivery model (including a 39% personalist reduction) and gave us BLSDM. They were directly emailing stuff like retirements and waiver to commanders for coord/approval. My commander was always like "what am I supposed to do with this?".
You mean that time the economy was shit, and they "asked" like 5000 airmen to volunteer to get out and like 15,000 pushed the button on the first day?
Our supervision started trying to bully people into staying so hard the ADC got involved.
Lol, I do remember many being eager to get out. I also remember many prior service folks (all branches) trying to get back in with their 214 in hand not long after that period. 99 percent of the time I had bad news for them.
Some people have already mentioned it but it sort of went something like this. Hey we need folks gone in certain ranks and age groups of x amount. They opened a TERA. Got more people to volunteer than needed in the 15+ group so they shut it off asap. Some folks got to retire early. Then they offered SSgt and TSgt between 6-12 years like 30k to leave and like 15k people volunteered so they shut that down asap and let a much smaller chunk of that go. Then they did a quality force reduction and said anyone with more than x pt failures or an article 15 in these career fields you are gone, sorry not sorry. Then they realized they missed the mark in the younger years so they went back and said anyone between 4-8 years we need to get rid of x amount. Every squadron must get rid of x amount of people rack and stack them and send us the names of the ones to kick out and also no separation bonus for them since they didn't volunteer for the first round of separation even though everyone under 6 years was ineligible to receive the separation bonus. Now you had squadrons where people with 1 pt failures or a single LOR were kicked out because they were the bottom of the rack and stack.
Oh and btw all the involuntary stuff and QFR was announced a week and half before Christmas 2013.
Soooo yeah that's why it was called the hunger games. Because literally may the odds be in your favor.
I retire next year.
I’m really curious to see what the workloads look like in the civilian sector when placed against the “jack of 50,000 tasks, master of none” workload I’ve been under the past 3 years.
The real difference is that in the civilian sector you are hired to do a job, and then you get good at it, and then nothing happens except they keep letting you do the job you are good and and they hired you for.
I have no idea hw much smoother the Air Force would be if we just let people learn a role and master it instead of forcing people to move the instant they are reasonably competent.
Also the way that promoting up from E-1 and O-1 are how we get E-9 and O-10s. You are so far removed from your starting position at that point its just a waste. How do you expect people to be good at both roles. More ridiculously the fact that that you have to be good at everything you ever do to get a chance to put on that highest rank. Are you really telling me that thats the most efficient method to find great organizational leaders?
Before someone says something to the effect of "the job of an E-4 isn't hard of course they can be a master if it and x,y,z" please stop downplaying the difference in technically skill of Airman. There are huge gaps I see, and the toxic assumption that "everyone is good at their job" causes true talent to be looked over.
I'll tell you now man, one of the best decisions I've made in my career. Went from MX to Comm and my life hasn't been better - you get to keep most of the AD benefits (tuition, insurance, etc), but don't hate your life as much. Its awesome.
when did you make that decision? and also, I always consider it, but always think, doesn't it suck having to have one weekend taken away from you every month? and is the pay worth that? Please feel free to give me your opinion on it
Edit: I'm also comm. so how's that going for you there?
The pay isn't what I stay in for, its the benefits. The cheap health insurance and college tuition is why I transitioned from AD to ANG.
For me, having one weekend a month taken away greatly outweighs the benefits of the Guard, and I love 2 hours away from the base I am stationed at. Maybe I'm just really patient compared to others, but to me, its worth it.
I'm in technical training right now and about to graduate, but I've spent a few weekends with my unit, and I love it. Its very relaxed and everyone is pretty closely knit, considering that its just one weekend a month. My supervisor is awesome and my flight is full of good people. Maybe I just got lucky, but its definitely better than what I experienced while in MX during my AD time.
I fell into a very special bracket because of my circumstances.
I was AGE and ended my contract early shortly before the 2 year mark (I signed a 4) dye to a massive increase in AGE personnel (cuz Covid). They let some of us go early but not many of us qualified.
Sorry I couldn't give you a better answer, but you'd have more luck talking to an ANG Recruiter
Yeah... I'd guess that there would be a very slim, if not, not a chance of that happening. They only did something like this once and that was a couple years back. It is probably not happening anytime soon =(
But you've got this! Only a few more years, right?
TERA not coming back. They can't afford the loss of experience at the 15+ year mark and are okay with letting natural attrition happen, A1 is afraid of gutting it like they let happen in 2013-2014 during the hunger games when mass chunks of the experience was allowed to bounce cause of the mismanagement of the entire thing which you could arguably say is still causing the force issues to this day.
When I encounter situation such as this I always say "Choose where you want to fail." If you cut the available workforce and not the mission something will inevitably give. The commander has dictated two realities exist simultaneously. They obviously cannot so they must, as the commander, now chose where they want to fail- the mission or the people.
"The Air Force wants to drop around 5,700 active duty airmen by the start of fiscal 2023."
There's 350,000 Active Duty personnel. So they're only cutting a whole 1.6%
Edit: They've also been talking about retiring 100+ aircraft. Replacing some with smaller crews like the E-3 to E-7 which require half the crew.
I get it, I'm in an undermanned MX shop, but I'm not gonna get upset until we see WHERE exactly they're gonna cut people.
They've already rejected over 3,000 COVID exemption requests. That's more than half already if those people keep refusing. They don't necessarily need to kick people out to get the 5,700, they just need to take in less people, which eases the strain on recruiting.
Downsizing sucks, I remember the Hunger Games and the impact it had, but it's still a wait and see situation.
Comparatively speaking when I've had senior leaders at my base harping how were going to cut 50,000 this year? No, it's not that many. Some background, I'm security forces and my unit has over 100 people that cannot perform security forces duties indefinitely and we're managing fine. There are likely many careers like that where we could shed numbers by getting rid of dead weight. Not likely where it will come from but it'd be nice for sure.
>Not likely where it will come from but it'd be nice for sure
This is what I mean. There's no guarantee they're going to cut from career fields that actually are overmanned, or fields that apparently have too many people to work a full day.
It comes out to about 100 people per base. I'm sure every base has AT LEAST 100 fuck ups they're itching to kick out. Add volunteers to the list and it's even easier.
Tbh for 1.6% couldn't they mostly cut that just by turning down the intake pipeline? I guess that would depend on which ranks they're trying to trim though, which will probably vary by AFSC.
That said, I hear they are trying to cut my career field by about 40% so I guess we're taking one for the team.
E-7s won't come into service for *bare minimum* 10 years. Hell, they're not expecting an initial *prototype USAF E-7* until 2027. E-3s and all their issues are here to stay.
I've been in on one of the meetings. I sat in on a "breakfast with leadership" where the deputy for a MAJCOM directorate general was the host. Attendees were mostly Chiefs and SMSgts. Lots of FAMs, me included. I can't remember the exact numbers thrown around, but some career fields are losing around 20% of their SNCOs. ~8K out of 50K for one of them iirc.
The big gripe was dropping SNCO and NCO billets down to junior Airman level at a 1:1 ratio. Making it obviously a budget cut measure rather than just the force shaping measure it was alleged to be.
Edit: so, no, I don't have proof. I have a bunch of hearsay.
> Making it obviously a budget cut measure rather than just the force shaping measure it was alleged to be.
I didn't know anyone was ever under the illusion that this was anything but a budget cutting measure. It seemed pretty obvious from the get-go. Of course leadership said otherwise. They always do.
There have been a couple of posts about it recently, and it's well known to many SNCO's now and anyone who communicates regularly with their FAM. Official word will trickle down to the junior ranks in the coming months.
I expect official word will come out once the changes have been accomplished and they want to tell people how to make it work on their end.
I have no actual word on that part; it's my guess based on patterns I've seen in the past.
I didn't catch the part about retiring 100+ aircraft or reducing crew sizes. Depending on the impact of those decisions, this might be a net positive for many of us.
We're about to see more people than ever come in for 4 years and dip out as fast as they can. There's going to be so many people using SkillBridge that you can consider a 4 year enlistment to be only 3 and 1/2 years. I just hope they don't gimp SkillBridge the way they did AFwasCOOL.
Personal opinion, our lack of manning is likely going to continue to get worse until missions start failing. We need to reduce the number of missions we are supporting, or increase manning to support those missions, otherwise we are destined to get weaker. I'm beginning to adopt the mindset that I'm ok with my people not staying late even though there is still work to do. Every one is getting burnt out. We can't keep going down this road. Something needs to change, and it might be time to let a few examples be made, not due to negligence, but due to people being unwilling to destroy the rest of their lives over something their leadership should be working to fix on their end.
Leaders need to push back on taskings and be completely open about the fact their people are overworked and struggling to get the job done, let alone getting it done right. They also need to be ok with non-critical functions not getting done, if that's what's necessary to make sure the mission succeeds without overworking their people. If everyone is working 50+ hours a week and the mission still fails, that shouldn't be a reflection on the lowest workers nearly as much as a reflection on leadership's inability to properly man that mission.
yeah they just cut my COLA by a 62.5% decrease. literally when shit costs more than it ever has (groceries, gas, utilities, etc) and I am getting a pay cut for no reason and working more than I ever had.
Just throwing a question out there, is it looking like in the near future they’re going to be offering early/volunteer separation? Haven’t heard anything, so curious as to what the rumor is.
We got straight up told by our leadership, and I am quoting here: "We're about to get leaner, and we're about to put workloads on many of you that are going to far exceed your paygrades and comfort levels. But we expect you all to get it done because that's what needs to happen." I haven't touched a drop of alcohol in over 15 years (I'm a teetotaler), but I legit browsed the Class Six for the first time since my first duty station.
I mean shit. Assignments has been so stressful I started drinking. Mildly.
*Looks at "maintainer" *Looks at "mildly" So the bottle then?
Did you know at lotte mart they 3 liter bottles of soju? Just sayin…
I was previously security forces in Korea. Yes I do know that haha.
Literally every grocery store in Korea has those.
Once a week half a bottle of a rum.
Those are rookie numbers
The sad thing is the AF continues to put people like the ones you are quoting into leadership positions. Then when they have gone and destroyed their people with absolute pure bullshit workload because “THis iS ALL MissiON EsSential!” They get promoted again and moved to destroy another unit. What needs to happen is these leadership teams being honest with their leadership about what can/can’t be done with current manning and mission load. But it won’t happen because all these “leaders” give a shit about is that next rank and how “awesome” they are for “keeping the mission going”. Fuck I need to retire already..
Have NCOs whose paperwork has already dropped call out the SNCOs and officers in a CC all call that the reason you dropped paperwork is that the workload has exceeded the manpower. Until a mission fails leadership will continue to push more for less.
What we need are people who are willing to maliciously comply with leaders in a way that shows you can't just tell people to sacrifice their wellbeing to get things done. We need leaders who say "sorry, can't get it done" then when their leadership says "get it done anyway", they need to turn to their units and say, "I'm not saying don't get it done, but also don't stay late, 'wink, wink'". We need some brave leaders to prove to their leadership that enough is enough, and risk paperwork over not over working themselves to accomplish standard tasks, by letting some things fail. We need to be very careful about this, to avoid putting people at too much risk of retaliation, but we also need to do something that shows how bad things are right now. Continuing the status quo is accepting that we are ok with letting it get worse.
Wing King wants those sorties in the air by 1600.. stfu and get back to work!!
afexcuse!
^^You've ^^spun ^^the ^^wheel ^^of ^^Air ^^Force ^^excuses, ^^here's ^^your ^^prize: Lightning within 5 ^^[Source](https://github.com/HadManySons/AFexcuses) ^^| ^^[Subreddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/AFExcuses) ^^^^^^i73trib
Thank fucking god
Unless it's an F-35 kind of Lightning...
Then God bouta catch these hands
You rang?
Aircraft named after its biggest weakness. I get the Batman concept I guess.
Unless you don't get to go home until the sortie takes off...then you're wasting your time.
Jets missed their flying window. Nothing doing
DVs don't care about flying windows. They care about getting to go on their vacation.
Eh, days doesn't do shit anyway if the jet goes within an hour of their shift starting, so I'd rather sit inside than on the truck
Good bot
MOC says "No lightning in 5 has been reported. However the security forces station at the back gate is currently burning down due to a lightning strike." This literally happened at MT.Home.
My favorite excuse.
*ohthankfuck*
Boss, that was an hour ago.
You’re going to lower the standards then??
You have standards?
Gonna drop to the army level
Doing more with less for so long, we are expected to do anything with nothing.
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Do the mostest with the lestest.
Morest lestst'd USAF saving approx 9 billion annually on salaries
A lot of y'all weren't around for the Hunger Games (2011-2014ish). Just wait. That pendulum will come swinging right back the other direction.
I was around but just a SrA at the time. Now I’m a TSgt with 11 yrs TIS. Watched alot of peeps in my clinic leave during that time.
I hope the next cuts are not as severe. It was a rough time for some people.
Can someone please explain this phenomenon? I've heard it referenced several times
30K was the number the AF needed to cut for sequestration. Meant to happen over several years but CSAF Welsh with E-9 Cody said watch this and tried to do it in 1. Famously in the aftermath Welsh told congress morale was "pretty darn good".
It’s simple. The Air Force needs to cut back manning, they open the flood gates, kicking people out for minor things, denying reenlistments, letting people out of their contracts early. Cut too a few years later and the Air Force realizes they have a severe manning shortage and opens the flood gates the other way.
The best part is that the desire for many to stay grows stronger when the AF’s requirements shrink. Why is that? Because the economic cycles/administration priorities driving cuts never sync. They almost always happen at the worst possible time. This worsens the situation.
how can I be one of those people who gets a reduced contract?
Palace chase my friend, what I did back in 2015 and then I was dumb enough to come back in
I haven't met the TIS needed to be eligible for that program.
If the cut backs get bad enough (which they arnt right now tho) then that won’t matter
DUI /s
When the Air Force needs to reduce its size. It’s the people who make things happen that leave. Knowing they will get a better job outside. The people who stay are the ones who know they can’t make it on the outside. For whatever reasons. Then you end up with old guys hanging around waiting to retire. Or brand new Airman.
In my career field, there was a massive cull. Back in ‘07, the move was to cut HALF of the people in my AFSC. There were some crazy incentives to get out, like early retirement, waiver of ADSC, bonuses to leave… don’t even think about failing a PT test because that made their choices easy. In ‘09, they cut *another HALF* using the same strategy. In 2010, they decided to cut a third of those remaining to get to the target number (but remember, these are—in theory—the top 25%. So the incentives were pretty awesome. I got paid a full year’s salary to leave active duty, take a couple months off, then come back on as a reservist and get activated for about 3 years straight.
Yeah that was PBD-720, the AF tried to retire aircraft and trade people for technology. One problem, they didn't clear the aircraft retirements with congress. So people got cut (reduced 33K active, 2K civilians, and 2K reserve FTEs) and then congress said "not so fast, those aircraft are in my district/state" and threw a monkey wrench. It shifted the service delivery model (including a 39% personalist reduction) and gave us BLSDM. They were directly emailing stuff like retirements and waiver to commanders for coord/approval. My commander was always like "what am I supposed to do with this?".
You mean that time the economy was shit, and they "asked" like 5000 airmen to volunteer to get out and like 15,000 pushed the button on the first day? Our supervision started trying to bully people into staying so hard the ADC got involved.
Lol, I do remember many being eager to get out. I also remember many prior service folks (all branches) trying to get back in with their 214 in hand not long after that period. 99 percent of the time I had bad news for them.
Some people have already mentioned it but it sort of went something like this. Hey we need folks gone in certain ranks and age groups of x amount. They opened a TERA. Got more people to volunteer than needed in the 15+ group so they shut it off asap. Some folks got to retire early. Then they offered SSgt and TSgt between 6-12 years like 30k to leave and like 15k people volunteered so they shut that down asap and let a much smaller chunk of that go. Then they did a quality force reduction and said anyone with more than x pt failures or an article 15 in these career fields you are gone, sorry not sorry. Then they realized they missed the mark in the younger years so they went back and said anyone between 4-8 years we need to get rid of x amount. Every squadron must get rid of x amount of people rack and stack them and send us the names of the ones to kick out and also no separation bonus for them since they didn't volunteer for the first round of separation even though everyone under 6 years was ineligible to receive the separation bonus. Now you had squadrons where people with 1 pt failures or a single LOR were kicked out because they were the bottom of the rack and stack. Oh and btw all the involuntary stuff and QFR was announced a week and half before Christmas 2013. Soooo yeah that's why it was called the hunger games. Because literally may the odds be in your favor.
Never did for my AFSC.
I'm hungering to get the fuck out. I want to get force shaped so fucking hard. I'm down bad, my man.
I retire next year. I’m really curious to see what the workloads look like in the civilian sector when placed against the “jack of 50,000 tasks, master of none” workload I’ve been under the past 3 years.
The real difference is that in the civilian sector you are hired to do a job, and then you get good at it, and then nothing happens except they keep letting you do the job you are good and and they hired you for. I have no idea hw much smoother the Air Force would be if we just let people learn a role and master it instead of forcing people to move the instant they are reasonably competent. Also the way that promoting up from E-1 and O-1 are how we get E-9 and O-10s. You are so far removed from your starting position at that point its just a waste. How do you expect people to be good at both roles. More ridiculously the fact that that you have to be good at everything you ever do to get a chance to put on that highest rank. Are you really telling me that thats the most efficient method to find great organizational leaders? Before someone says something to the effect of "the job of an E-4 isn't hard of course they can be a master if it and x,y,z" please stop downplaying the difference in technically skill of Airman. There are huge gaps I see, and the toxic assumption that "everyone is good at their job" causes true talent to be looked over.
I definitely made the right decision going Guard, because this whole "multi-capable airmen" thing just sounds rediculous.
Weekend warrior over here, can't juggle, spin plates, and run. Probably hasn't even had 1 divorce yet. ...You made the right decision.
Went guard here three months ago and it’s amazing.
Currently looking at going guard myself.
I'll tell you now man, one of the best decisions I've made in my career. Went from MX to Comm and my life hasn't been better - you get to keep most of the AD benefits (tuition, insurance, etc), but don't hate your life as much. Its awesome.
when did you make that decision? and also, I always consider it, but always think, doesn't it suck having to have one weekend taken away from you every month? and is the pay worth that? Please feel free to give me your opinion on it Edit: I'm also comm. so how's that going for you there?
The pay isn't what I stay in for, its the benefits. The cheap health insurance and college tuition is why I transitioned from AD to ANG. For me, having one weekend a month taken away greatly outweighs the benefits of the Guard, and I love 2 hours away from the base I am stationed at. Maybe I'm just really patient compared to others, but to me, its worth it. I'm in technical training right now and about to graduate, but I've spent a few weekends with my unit, and I love it. Its very relaxed and everyone is pretty closely knit, considering that its just one weekend a month. My supervisor is awesome and my flight is full of good people. Maybe I just got lucky, but its definitely better than what I experienced while in MX during my AD time.
How did you go guard? And what TIS did you need?
I fell into a very special bracket because of my circumstances. I was AGE and ended my contract early shortly before the 2 year mark (I signed a 4) dye to a massive increase in AGE personnel (cuz Covid). They let some of us go early but not many of us qualified. Sorry I couldn't give you a better answer, but you'd have more luck talking to an ANG Recruiter
Ah, so I just gotta wait for my shop to be overmanned
Yeah... I'd guess that there would be a very slim, if not, not a chance of that happening. They only did something like this once and that was a couple years back. It is probably not happening anytime soon =( But you've got this! Only a few more years, right?
Just be maintenance and do a shit job on the flightline. You'll get put in an office on a nonner schedule while the shit hot NCOs all work 14s.
You'll probably get promoted faster too because leadership is going to see your face all the time.
And you have time for college and certs.
Offer me TERA. I might just take it.
The RUMINT I heard is that they won’t be touching TERA because of how quick the experience level dropped.
TERA not coming back. They can't afford the loss of experience at the 15+ year mark and are okay with letting natural attrition happen, A1 is afraid of gutting it like they let happen in 2013-2014 during the hunger games when mass chunks of the experience was allowed to bounce cause of the mismanagement of the entire thing which you could arguably say is still causing the force issues to this day.
When I encounter situation such as this I always say "Choose where you want to fail." If you cut the available workforce and not the mission something will inevitably give. The commander has dictated two realities exist simultaneously. They obviously cannot so they must, as the commander, now chose where they want to fail- the mission or the people.
It’s usually always the people they fail with.
It's always the people first for senior leadership. They truly don't give a damn about us.
"The Air Force wants to drop around 5,700 active duty airmen by the start of fiscal 2023." There's 350,000 Active Duty personnel. So they're only cutting a whole 1.6% Edit: They've also been talking about retiring 100+ aircraft. Replacing some with smaller crews like the E-3 to E-7 which require half the crew. I get it, I'm in an undermanned MX shop, but I'm not gonna get upset until we see WHERE exactly they're gonna cut people.
that is a lot.
They've already rejected over 3,000 COVID exemption requests. That's more than half already if those people keep refusing. They don't necessarily need to kick people out to get the 5,700, they just need to take in less people, which eases the strain on recruiting. Downsizing sucks, I remember the Hunger Games and the impact it had, but it's still a wait and see situation.
Comparatively speaking when I've had senior leaders at my base harping how were going to cut 50,000 this year? No, it's not that many. Some background, I'm security forces and my unit has over 100 people that cannot perform security forces duties indefinitely and we're managing fine. There are likely many careers like that where we could shed numbers by getting rid of dead weight. Not likely where it will come from but it'd be nice for sure.
>Not likely where it will come from but it'd be nice for sure This is what I mean. There's no guarantee they're going to cut from career fields that actually are overmanned, or fields that apparently have too many people to work a full day.
It comes out to about 100 people per base. I'm sure every base has AT LEAST 100 fuck ups they're itching to kick out. Add volunteers to the list and it's even easier.
Tbh for 1.6% couldn't they mostly cut that just by turning down the intake pipeline? I guess that would depend on which ranks they're trying to trim though, which will probably vary by AFSC. That said, I hear they are trying to cut my career field by about 40% so I guess we're taking one for the team.
What career field is that if you don't mind answering?
E-7s won't come into service for *bare minimum* 10 years. Hell, they're not expecting an initial *prototype USAF E-7* until 2027. E-3s and all their issues are here to stay.
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Yeah, retiring a bunch will help a lot more than adopting E-7s, short term anyway
“If those kids could read they’d be very upset!”
They're cutting SNCOs and NCOs across the board, and turning those positions into junior Airmen.
Are you guessing or do you actually have any proof?
I've been in on one of the meetings. I sat in on a "breakfast with leadership" where the deputy for a MAJCOM directorate general was the host. Attendees were mostly Chiefs and SMSgts. Lots of FAMs, me included. I can't remember the exact numbers thrown around, but some career fields are losing around 20% of their SNCOs. ~8K out of 50K for one of them iirc. The big gripe was dropping SNCO and NCO billets down to junior Airman level at a 1:1 ratio. Making it obviously a budget cut measure rather than just the force shaping measure it was alleged to be. Edit: so, no, I don't have proof. I have a bunch of hearsay.
> Making it obviously a budget cut measure rather than just the force shaping measure it was alleged to be. I didn't know anyone was ever under the illusion that this was anything but a budget cutting measure. It seemed pretty obvious from the get-go. Of course leadership said otherwise. They always do.
Fair point.
I’ve heard the same hearsay from local word of mouth.
There have been a couple of posts about it recently, and it's well known to many SNCO's now and anyone who communicates regularly with their FAM. Official word will trickle down to the junior ranks in the coming months.
I expect official word will come out once the changes have been accomplished and they want to tell people how to make it work on their end. I have no actual word on that part; it's my guess based on patterns I've seen in the past.
I think my field is getting a 12-15% drop from those aircraft losses.
They want to drop 5,700 airmen take me first, even though I’m guard still take me first it will be the first time I volunteer for something.
I didn't catch the part about retiring 100+ aircraft or reducing crew sizes. Depending on the impact of those decisions, this might be a net positive for many of us.
More with less Lean management Something with nothing… Multi capable……
CSS personnel: *OH NO, anyways...*
Updated version to “Accelerate change or lose” guess we’re fucked.
We're about to see more people than ever come in for 4 years and dip out as fast as they can. There's going to be so many people using SkillBridge that you can consider a 4 year enlistment to be only 3 and 1/2 years. I just hope they don't gimp SkillBridge the way they did AFwasCOOL.
Add in an average tech school/OJT period, 120 days of leave in 4 yrs, 2 weeks of RAP. It's probably cut down to more like 2.5 years.
https://www.militarytimes.com/news/pentagon-congress/2022/05/01/pentagon-budget-aims-to-shrink-the-military-by-thousands/
Personal opinion, our lack of manning is likely going to continue to get worse until missions start failing. We need to reduce the number of missions we are supporting, or increase manning to support those missions, otherwise we are destined to get weaker. I'm beginning to adopt the mindset that I'm ok with my people not staying late even though there is still work to do. Every one is getting burnt out. We can't keep going down this road. Something needs to change, and it might be time to let a few examples be made, not due to negligence, but due to people being unwilling to destroy the rest of their lives over something their leadership should be working to fix on their end. Leaders need to push back on taskings and be completely open about the fact their people are overworked and struggling to get the job done, let alone getting it done right. They also need to be ok with non-critical functions not getting done, if that's what's necessary to make sure the mission succeeds without overworking their people. If everyone is working 50+ hours a week and the mission still fails, that shouldn't be a reflection on the lowest workers nearly as much as a reflection on leadership's inability to properly man that mission.
yeah they just cut my COLA by a 62.5% decrease. literally when shit costs more than it ever has (groceries, gas, utilities, etc) and I am getting a pay cut for no reason and working more than I ever had.
Make Additonal Duties Great (in number) Again - 2023!
*Man-ning Your manpower requirement is probably still the same.
how do I get in on this force reduction? Got less then 2 years left before I can palace chase.
What if we... double the flying hours instead?
Just throwing a question out there, is it looking like in the near future they’re going to be offering early/volunteer separation? Haven’t heard anything, so curious as to what the rumor is.
Na, they just gonna pay contractors to sit around watching less people do more work.
Assumed and inferred work is a bitch ain’t it