Thanks Will. I'd much rather be writing a piece about a revolution in family support. But this is where we are ... pitting families against readiness, which obviously pisses me off.
Appreciate you reading and engaging with this, and I'm incredibly grateful for the cross-post. I want eyes on this screed to raise awareness and to stop ceding fire superiority to propagandists.
"It proves that if you live long enough, you get to see everything." Thank you for saying what needs to be said, just in case anyone is confused....Another brilliant post!
Thank you Amy for reading and commenting. Not one of my more subtle screeds. I'm obviously annoyed by the manner in which this was done, and know I'm not alone.
Without a doubt a couple of things have not changed in decades. Family’s are an implacable fact, and by their very nature a distraction from whatever the service branch and level of operational tempo. Not sure of the statistic but the number of children who make a career out of the military seemed back in the day, 50/50 at best. Meaning it is a hard life on the families. Be interesting to know that little factoid. The other is that the civilian politicians and bureaucrats could care less about the service men and women who do the fighting and dying, and care about the service families even less so. We need only to look at the deployment schedules of all services over the last 20 years wars to see a disaster in the making. Asking a smaller force to meet the operational tempo that was being run was basically insane. This writer kept waiting for everyone to come and go Charles Whitman and Texas Tower on everyone. Rather these great men and women have come home and are killing themselves at the rapid rate. It is damn heart breaking, and we are no closer to fixing it than last year, or the year before, or the year before… Lastly, lethality is a mindset, like safety, you breathe it, you wear it, you think it, you live it. It should always be there. What happened that suddenly leadership feels compelled to talk about and make long unreadable memos to be sent to all hands to remind them of lethality? Well we know. The same jerks who bum kissed their way to promotion stopped talking about core mission and got horribly distracted with the biggest bag of mumbo jumbo ever promulgated, for many years now, no one has been watching the store. It is going to take a while to set the mess to right if that can happen at all at this stage.
"lethality is a mindset, like safety, you breathe it, you wear it, you think it, you live it."
Exactly. Anything that depends on a philosophy from a headquarters swivel chair won't live or thrive. A culture of lethality happens when habits revolve around preparing for combat. Not because of down days or the lack thereof.
Family days are kind of a new thing. I never ran across them until the 1990s. They became a fixture and now they're gone. Back to the Cold War mindset.
I think this is maybe as simple as it will be, or at least feel to people. But good luck to the USAF maintaining a winning team if it steps away from families. The best performing people in a team tend to have strong relationships and support networks. If they can't take care of their family and still serve, we'll see them leaving for greener pastures.
It's being implied here that units don't currently have the flexibility to manage their own family days and schedules in the airforce?
If that is so, that blows me away... retaining that authority at the component level is Soviet levels of centralization... and I hope isn't the reality.
Unfortunately everything has gravitated toward that level of centralized execution for a while now. Even the way people think and talk to one another is the stuff of headquarters memos.
The de-centralization this memo calls for is a great development. Unfortunately, it's been taped to a Mk84 with "screw you" scrawled on the side.
You have one item incorrect. Only 4% of Air Force Officers are aviation rated the vast majority are NOT. But well over 90% of AF "Commanders" are selected ONLY from that 4% even for command of non-flying units.
When I was a JAG, there were more than a dozen ex-fighter pilot Lt. Cols. that First Sergeants and I (as defense counsel) had to teach basic leadership skills to when they suddenly commanded 300-700 airmen. A flight of four F-4s reacts differently than a pack of hundreds of E-5s and below. A funny situation involved the Procurement Office. It was always 'commanded' by an ex-flyer Lt. Col. but only the ex-SMS and the Captain held a Warrant to commit the United States on contracts. The Lt. Col. golfed until he qualified to retire.
BTW, I was never taught "Never give an order you know will not (or cannot) be obeyed" in ROTC. I learned it from my father, the Colonel (a WWII navigator who wound up in PsyWar in the Air Commandos - that dates us).
Great article. Commanders still have the discretion to use family days, but this memo sets the tone. It’s a valuable tool for commanders when they see their squadron under stress, I.e. DUI’s, behavior issues, substance abuse, etc… These issues not addressed turn into crashed planes and low mission capability rates. Frankly, this memo is dangerous and a perfect example of placing a political agenda and ego above logic.
The “lethality” buzz word is quickly losing meaning, if it ever had any. I’m sure if you poll the adversaries that have been on the business end of the US Military you’d quickly find that lethality is not something that is lacking. The family days seem to be bandaid on the root problem. Too much war for too long with reducing end strength. Everything seems like the late ‘70s military after Vietnam. It took massive investment in the ‘80s and a decade long break from major “hot” conflicts to reconstitute the Military. Buzz words and more push ups aren’t going to get the Military where it needs to be.
I was an Air Force Brat in the 1950s and 1960s when time between PCS moves were measured in months, housing (Werry) was fit for Eastern Europe, and "Family Services" was non-existent not merely ignored. Then I was a JAG officer in the 1970s when RIFs were disguised in 100 ways to avoid "fairness" rules. No wonder I applied for a DOS during my first week of active duty.
As the draft ended and enlistments dropped, the AF Brass came up with a new enticement - "family friendly". Always a slogan but never a baked-in policy.
The prime interest of AF leaders has always been pilots (4%)of officers) and their new toys. Notwithstanding blather that flowed as freely as JP-4, the rest of us have never really counted.
As this new "leak" of TRUE Air Force values strikes and the denials will soon start flowing, if you don't fly-you do not count will once again by on open display.
Something that works (but the Navy thought if it first) would be to make every flyer in O- and O-3 ranks a "Division Officer" who manages and leads a dozen AIRMEN. An officer who learns command not of 1 or 5 highly motivated aviators but of real people with real lives and real problems. If the Navy can do it, why not the USAF?
The problem is that the Air Force has for so long refused a lucid discussion of these issues that it doesn't even understand itself or know what it's trying to accomplish, which creates a barrier to even considering how to operationalize its sense of itself with the right policies and resources.
Your suggestion is one I like and one I've seen many times before. The USAF will always have most of its officer corps concentrated into aviation ops. It will always want its senior operational leaders to have had the experience of operating themselves. So it needs to build leadership into its aviation officers.
And yet, it doesn't. Because somehow, it doesn't believe a captain can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. So we have other career fields for officers to command support personnel. Which then means separating support and ops into different squadrons, groups, wings, and even commands. Some support should be organic to the operation -- maintenance, intel, weather, admin, perhaps even life support. Aircrew officers supervising these airmen on rotation would build in broadening and development.
Instead, the same USAF that believes aviators need to focus narrowly on their craft defies that logic by promoting to senior roles those with broad experience, often at the expense of narrow depth in one combat specialty. It then comes up with all sorts of things for pilots to be doing -- self-support, over-indexing on uniforms and fitness -- that actually undercut the ability to focus on core skills. It then cuts training when it runs out of money.
The whole cluster is a monkey fist of contradiction.
Your experience sound like those I've heard from others who served in those times. What's interesting is that later, in the middle of two protracted land occupations, the tables got turned and being a pilot in the USAF was no longer cool. Support was glorified. Stuff that happens on the ground was given primacy. Which only deepened the sense of identity confusion.
It's remediable, but it will take strong leadership. We don't develop strong leaders and we're so drenched in politics now that it's hard to imagine climbing out of this mess.
I believe the main reason for creating Space Force is the fact that 21st Century fighting from the air CAN be done by Army Sergeants (who spent 15 years gaining computer experience in their parent's basements) "flying" in A/C trailers located on any unused portion of a Army base. The separate mission of the AIR Force is eroding fast. When a $2mil missile (1000s in stock) can down a $200mil airplane in game has changed.
The 1948 Key West Agreement cannot forever freeze the future.
My post should read "O-2 and O-3 (maybe most O-4s)". Those with no responsibility outside their own cockpit and no leadership tasking beyond a flight of 1 or 4 aircraft.
This is a fair callout Charlie. I've also had a punch in the rib cage from a good friend of mine who spent 30 years in USAF acquisitions and told me I was both accurate and unfair, but could have been more balanced. I accept that. Appreciate you reading and engaging.
Concept—> RDTE —-> Ops System… a long and winding path that is filled with pot holes and a strange number of people who seem to forget that the mission is to actually get new systems to the field vs. talking about getting new systems to the field. PM/DevEng are two of the hardest technical jobs to do in the USAF. Yet, a dwindling few top tier ones still go in everyday to grind through a system attempting to get the job done when they could be making more and working less at a tech company. Not very motivating to paint them with such a broad brush. “We build them, you fly them”
This is a fucking masterpiece! Bruh, please tell me before you train your sites on me! I come in peace!
Thanks Will. I'd much rather be writing a piece about a revolution in family support. But this is where we are ... pitting families against readiness, which obviously pisses me off.
Appreciate you reading and engaging with this, and I'm incredibly grateful for the cross-post. I want eyes on this screed to raise awareness and to stop ceding fire superiority to propagandists.
Inshallah!
"It proves that if you live long enough, you get to see everything." Thank you for saying what needs to be said, just in case anyone is confused....Another brilliant post!
Thank you Amy for reading and commenting. Not one of my more subtle screeds. I'm obviously annoyed by the manner in which this was done, and know I'm not alone.
Without a doubt a couple of things have not changed in decades. Family’s are an implacable fact, and by their very nature a distraction from whatever the service branch and level of operational tempo. Not sure of the statistic but the number of children who make a career out of the military seemed back in the day, 50/50 at best. Meaning it is a hard life on the families. Be interesting to know that little factoid. The other is that the civilian politicians and bureaucrats could care less about the service men and women who do the fighting and dying, and care about the service families even less so. We need only to look at the deployment schedules of all services over the last 20 years wars to see a disaster in the making. Asking a smaller force to meet the operational tempo that was being run was basically insane. This writer kept waiting for everyone to come and go Charles Whitman and Texas Tower on everyone. Rather these great men and women have come home and are killing themselves at the rapid rate. It is damn heart breaking, and we are no closer to fixing it than last year, or the year before, or the year before… Lastly, lethality is a mindset, like safety, you breathe it, you wear it, you think it, you live it. It should always be there. What happened that suddenly leadership feels compelled to talk about and make long unreadable memos to be sent to all hands to remind them of lethality? Well we know. The same jerks who bum kissed their way to promotion stopped talking about core mission and got horribly distracted with the biggest bag of mumbo jumbo ever promulgated, for many years now, no one has been watching the store. It is going to take a while to set the mess to right if that can happen at all at this stage.
"lethality is a mindset, like safety, you breathe it, you wear it, you think it, you live it."
Exactly. Anything that depends on a philosophy from a headquarters swivel chair won't live or thrive. A culture of lethality happens when habits revolve around preparing for combat. Not because of down days or the lack thereof.
Family days are kind of a new thing. I never ran across them until the 1990s. They became a fixture and now they're gone. Back to the Cold War mindset.
I think this is maybe as simple as it will be, or at least feel to people. But good luck to the USAF maintaining a winning team if it steps away from families. The best performing people in a team tend to have strong relationships and support networks. If they can't take care of their family and still serve, we'll see them leaving for greener pastures.
It's being implied here that units don't currently have the flexibility to manage their own family days and schedules in the airforce?
If that is so, that blows me away... retaining that authority at the component level is Soviet levels of centralization... and I hope isn't the reality.
Unfortunately everything has gravitated toward that level of centralized execution for a while now. Even the way people think and talk to one another is the stuff of headquarters memos.
The de-centralization this memo calls for is a great development. Unfortunately, it's been taped to a Mk84 with "screw you" scrawled on the side.
You have one item incorrect. Only 4% of Air Force Officers are aviation rated the vast majority are NOT. But well over 90% of AF "Commanders" are selected ONLY from that 4% even for command of non-flying units.
When I was a JAG, there were more than a dozen ex-fighter pilot Lt. Cols. that First Sergeants and I (as defense counsel) had to teach basic leadership skills to when they suddenly commanded 300-700 airmen. A flight of four F-4s reacts differently than a pack of hundreds of E-5s and below. A funny situation involved the Procurement Office. It was always 'commanded' by an ex-flyer Lt. Col. but only the ex-SMS and the Captain held a Warrant to commit the United States on contracts. The Lt. Col. golfed until he qualified to retire.
BTW, I was never taught "Never give an order you know will not (or cannot) be obeyed" in ROTC. I learned it from my father, the Colonel (a WWII navigator who wound up in PsyWar in the Air Commandos - that dates us).
Great article. Commanders still have the discretion to use family days, but this memo sets the tone. It’s a valuable tool for commanders when they see their squadron under stress, I.e. DUI’s, behavior issues, substance abuse, etc… These issues not addressed turn into crashed planes and low mission capability rates. Frankly, this memo is dangerous and a perfect example of placing a political agenda and ego above logic.
The “lethality” buzz word is quickly losing meaning, if it ever had any. I’m sure if you poll the adversaries that have been on the business end of the US Military you’d quickly find that lethality is not something that is lacking. The family days seem to be bandaid on the root problem. Too much war for too long with reducing end strength. Everything seems like the late ‘70s military after Vietnam. It took massive investment in the ‘80s and a decade long break from major “hot” conflicts to reconstitute the Military. Buzz words and more push ups aren’t going to get the Military where it needs to be.
I was an Air Force Brat in the 1950s and 1960s when time between PCS moves were measured in months, housing (Werry) was fit for Eastern Europe, and "Family Services" was non-existent not merely ignored. Then I was a JAG officer in the 1970s when RIFs were disguised in 100 ways to avoid "fairness" rules. No wonder I applied for a DOS during my first week of active duty.
As the draft ended and enlistments dropped, the AF Brass came up with a new enticement - "family friendly". Always a slogan but never a baked-in policy.
The prime interest of AF leaders has always been pilots (4%)of officers) and their new toys. Notwithstanding blather that flowed as freely as JP-4, the rest of us have never really counted.
As this new "leak" of TRUE Air Force values strikes and the denials will soon start flowing, if you don't fly-you do not count will once again by on open display.
Something that works (but the Navy thought if it first) would be to make every flyer in O- and O-3 ranks a "Division Officer" who manages and leads a dozen AIRMEN. An officer who learns command not of 1 or 5 highly motivated aviators but of real people with real lives and real problems. If the Navy can do it, why not the USAF?
The problem is that the Air Force has for so long refused a lucid discussion of these issues that it doesn't even understand itself or know what it's trying to accomplish, which creates a barrier to even considering how to operationalize its sense of itself with the right policies and resources.
Your suggestion is one I like and one I've seen many times before. The USAF will always have most of its officer corps concentrated into aviation ops. It will always want its senior operational leaders to have had the experience of operating themselves. So it needs to build leadership into its aviation officers.
And yet, it doesn't. Because somehow, it doesn't believe a captain can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. So we have other career fields for officers to command support personnel. Which then means separating support and ops into different squadrons, groups, wings, and even commands. Some support should be organic to the operation -- maintenance, intel, weather, admin, perhaps even life support. Aircrew officers supervising these airmen on rotation would build in broadening and development.
Instead, the same USAF that believes aviators need to focus narrowly on their craft defies that logic by promoting to senior roles those with broad experience, often at the expense of narrow depth in one combat specialty. It then comes up with all sorts of things for pilots to be doing -- self-support, over-indexing on uniforms and fitness -- that actually undercut the ability to focus on core skills. It then cuts training when it runs out of money.
The whole cluster is a monkey fist of contradiction.
Your experience sound like those I've heard from others who served in those times. What's interesting is that later, in the middle of two protracted land occupations, the tables got turned and being a pilot in the USAF was no longer cool. Support was glorified. Stuff that happens on the ground was given primacy. Which only deepened the sense of identity confusion.
It's remediable, but it will take strong leadership. We don't develop strong leaders and we're so drenched in politics now that it's hard to imagine climbing out of this mess.
I believe the main reason for creating Space Force is the fact that 21st Century fighting from the air CAN be done by Army Sergeants (who spent 15 years gaining computer experience in their parent's basements) "flying" in A/C trailers located on any unused portion of a Army base. The separate mission of the AIR Force is eroding fast. When a $2mil missile (1000s in stock) can down a $200mil airplane in game has changed.
The 1948 Key West Agreement cannot forever freeze the future.
My post should read "O-2 and O-3 (maybe most O-4s)". Those with no responsibility outside their own cockpit and no leadership tasking beyond a flight of 1 or 4 aircraft.
This is a fair callout Charlie. I've also had a punch in the rib cage from a good friend of mine who spent 30 years in USAF acquisitions and told me I was both accurate and unfair, but could have been more balanced. I accept that. Appreciate you reading and engaging.
Concept—> RDTE —-> Ops System… a long and winding path that is filled with pot holes and a strange number of people who seem to forget that the mission is to actually get new systems to the field vs. talking about getting new systems to the field. PM/DevEng are two of the hardest technical jobs to do in the USAF. Yet, a dwindling few top tier ones still go in everyday to grind through a system attempting to get the job done when they could be making more and working less at a tech company. Not very motivating to paint them with such a broad brush. “We build them, you fly them”