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Dear Boss, I quit! A letter to Air Force leadership....
- Thread starter bunk22
- Start date
He (the branch of service) that kills Bin Laden avoids most budget cuts. No one told him that was the stakes?
MasterBates
Well-Known Member
Other than a couple swipes at the Navy, not seeing much that isn't a DOD wide problem.
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No kidding. I'm sure this guys awesome team-oriented skills will be instantly scooped up in the private sector. I'm sure I'll be branded a "Kool-Aid" drinker, or some other pejorative, but I love how a mid-grade officer somehow feels qualified to judge and criticize his service chief on issues that are beyond his paygrade by stratospheric orders of magnitude. It all must seem very simple to him.
Something tells me that the kinds of tough choices being made by the JCS are a bit more complex than that.
I think the execution is poor, however the sentiments are understandable. Particularly in the glorious afterglow of my mandated C&I training yesterday.
The link within this article was interesting also. Well I'll be! A storied Air Force tradition older than 2008!
I think the author makes some valid points that stretch across all the services regarding aviation. Granted, I have zero fleet experience, but I keep up with close friends who are in a sister community that are routinely getting 5-10 hours of flight time a month, and in a couple instances, going over two months without flying - How can one maintain proficiency? They've said they'd settle for being safe, and even that is a stretch. And while I'd imagine it isn't that bad in other communities, its characteristic of what I've been hearing.
Certainly that doesn't bode well for US air power in the Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, or Army.
Certainly that doesn't bode well for US air power in the Air Force, Marine Corps, Navy, or Army.
After clicking on the link describing the history of the letter and doing a little more wandering on the internets it turns out the original author of the USAF 'Dear Boss' letter from 1979, a Capt. Ron Keys, went on to become General Ronald Keys. I wonder, would you call that irony?
I know the Marines tend to suffer in the OPTAR department a bit more than the Navy, but we had this dubious flirtation with "Tactical Hard Deck" as applied to OPTAR a few years ago where squadrons were shutting down flight ops for a month or more. Obviously the squadrons doing this were at a point in their FRTP where readiness wasn't a concern, but the safety/proficiency issues certainly were a factor. Hopefully we won't have to go through that again.
Fish got to swim, birds got to fly, and tools have to write sentences like the one Flash quoted.
On the other hand, I'm a huge fan of voting with your feet, so I'm willing to call it a wash.
Maybe it's a timing thing. Maybe I was lucky. I happened to come in at a time when the post-Vietnam drawdown was already in progress. I was happy to be there, and over-the-moon to have a job I loved. So many of my personal "role models" that I met in my first fleet squadron (which I joined in late '72)...MiG killers, guys with "River Rats", "Yankee Air Pirate" and "200 Missions" patches on their jackets (you get the idea...) got fed up with stuff that I absolutely thought was NORMAL. Quarters for muster, occasional personnel inspections, dwindling spare parts (although I admit to not knowing Jack-squat about such things at the time...), less tolerance for absolute and uncontrolled mayhem at the Cubi O'Club....yadda, yadda, yadda. They bitched and moaned and left when their time was up. "IT WILL NEVER BE THE SAME AND I CAN'T STAND IT!" I felt like I'd lost a lot of great "older brothers".
Skip ahead 4 years, and now we're in the doldrums of the Jimmy Carter years. I was in a new airplane by then (Tomcats), but the shortages were a thing of legend...and no clear enemy. More bare firewalls on F-14s than you could shake a stick at. Made me happy for every time my name appeared on the flight schedule, and every time Maintenance Control had an UP jet to give me. As often as I could, I "danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings". I was happy to be there, and over-the-moon to STILL have a job I loved.
TINS: With the tacit approval of whoever was COMFIT at the time, my CO appeared on "20-20" (as I recall...a then on-air magazine much like 60 Minutes), or maybe it was "Eye on LA" (similar format). His line, as best I can recall, was something like: "As a young boy, I had two dreams...to command a fighter squadron, and to own a junk yard. Now I have both." Some few of you will know who I'm talking about...one of the best leaders I EVER had. He stayed the course.
Then things just got better...Reagan, Lehman, the Cold War, fleet build-up for the 600-ship Navy, newer versions and newer aircraft, tactical enhancements of all types...fuckin' "Hog Heaven" for those of us who were there...young and old alike. Then comes Desert SHIELD/STORM....and the rest is sorta history. With some very small valleys between that and 9/11...I think it was a pretty good time for the military for about the past 30 years. Which is when any of you still serving came in. You've never known anything different.
Maybe I was lucky, but we surely need many of you who were here during "the fat years" to lead the next generation through what are likely to be some "lean years"...maybe "very lean years".
If you're not up for that assignment, leave now and open up command and other leadership slots for those who remain "happy to be here, and still over-the-moon to have a job they still love."
Skip ahead 4 years, and now we're in the doldrums of the Jimmy Carter years. I was in a new airplane by then (Tomcats), but the shortages were a thing of legend...and no clear enemy. More bare firewalls on F-14s than you could shake a stick at. Made me happy for every time my name appeared on the flight schedule, and every time Maintenance Control had an UP jet to give me. As often as I could, I "danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings". I was happy to be there, and over-the-moon to STILL have a job I loved.
TINS: With the tacit approval of whoever was COMFIT at the time, my CO appeared on "20-20" (as I recall...a then on-air magazine much like 60 Minutes), or maybe it was "Eye on LA" (similar format). His line, as best I can recall, was something like: "As a young boy, I had two dreams...to command a fighter squadron, and to own a junk yard. Now I have both." Some few of you will know who I'm talking about...one of the best leaders I EVER had. He stayed the course.
Then things just got better...Reagan, Lehman, the Cold War, fleet build-up for the 600-ship Navy, newer versions and newer aircraft, tactical enhancements of all types...fuckin' "Hog Heaven" for those of us who were there...young and old alike. Then comes Desert SHIELD/STORM....and the rest is sorta history. With some very small valleys between that and 9/11...I think it was a pretty good time for the military for about the past 30 years. Which is when any of you still serving came in. You've never known anything different.
Maybe I was lucky, but we surely need many of you who were here during "the fat years" to lead the next generation through what are likely to be some "lean years"...maybe "very lean years".
If you're not up for that assignment, leave now and open up command and other leadership slots for those who remain "happy to be here, and still over-the-moon to have a job they still love."
MasterBates
Well-Known Member
Those days sucked. That coupled with FLM issues in the 60B fleet resulted in a lot of guys leaving JO tours with under 600 hours in model and maybe 100 HAC hours.
I flew 703 SeaHawk hours in a 42 month JO tour and 2.5,cruises, and I think only about 675 were in the B, rest was in F models when I bummed some hours from HS squadrons. 400+ of those hours came between the RAG and my first year in a fleet squadron.
Near the end all I flew was FCFs and NVGs, and I was lucky to fly that much because I was one of the few available NVGIs in the wing at the time.
Contrast that with 800+ in the E-2 in a 23 month tour and one cruise.
Flying 5 hours a month is insane. Anything less than 25-30 a month is not enough for a first tour JO to get and stay proficient.
Read that as unsafe.
DH and CO/XO types can get away with less, since they have the experience to help. Or at least used to. Now, I have a lot of friends from my helo flying tours going to be DHs with under 1000 total hours, and 700 of that on a different fleet helo than they flew before. (B to R guys)
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This douche-nozzle lost me when misspelled the Secretary of Defense's name...A SECDEF who love some of his calls or hate them...was a class act who gave a shit for his troops.
"CAS is king, and my Chief publicly endorses Gate’s decision to kill the F-22 because Airpower is really just airborne artillery...
"CAS is king, and my Chief publicly endorses Gate’s decision to kill the F-22 because Airpower is really just airborne artillery...
Great hour-long Gates interview on Charlie Rose recently. Interesting insights, as always.