Fencer,
Your post made me ROFL
You don't honestly believe that do you?
When our DS got the 130s the first thing Bullet said was DS will be gone 180-210 days a year.
Heavies for probably close to the last 13 years at least, have always ranked on the AF list as the most deployed with all of them having many more days than the fighters.
I know for DS because of his training schedule, Sat. was the first day off in 20 days and even with his wife there with him, their family time is off kiltered. He has many 2-3 a.m. show times, which means he is in bed by 6-7 p.m. She doesn't get home until 6:30 at the earliest because like your DIL her job has different shifts. Sometimes she gets home later, but never earlier. She also could be working on the weekend, so accept for HER two days off a week they don't have much family time.
~ Honestly that would also be true for fighters too or for even some FAIPs (FAIPs do country with students).
~ A heavy mission is 8 hours...fighter is 2 hrs at tops. Both are going to have long days, but when you add in the brief and debrief, hands down the heavies have a much longer mission day than fighters. Fighters are know to double turn quite frequently and that is their long day which is basically the equivalent of twelve hour days.
Plus, all pilots will need to keep their night flying status, and that will mess with family time. Once at an Op base they will also have annual inspections where they play war games. Every AF wife will tell you they HATE it when they go through these exercises. It is 24/7 and they could either be on days or nights. Nights are the worse because they come home at 6 a.m. and need to sleep while you need to clean the house and the kids are home. Try doing it with a baby!
if they are going up for their AF wing review by HQ, they do this probably 2x in the year running up to it.
Now throw into the mix, keeping up their MQ flights, upgrades, tdys and you will see that as a young officer home time in any rated world is not going to be easy either way you look at it. Plus, don't even get me started with the without fails reality of how the plane will breakdown at the TDY base and their return is delayed for days while they wait for the part. Or the weather socks them in and they are forced to divert to another base on your anniversary.
I laugh now because I endured all of these things happened to me more times than I have fingers and toes, more than if you add in family members fingers and toes. I became so accustomed to it occurring by the time he had 9 years in, I never told our kids when Bullet was coming home until he was about an hour out...no need to get their hopes up. No lie I would call the desk about an hour out and ask what time he was expected to land. Plus side was Bullet got used to us going out to dinner that night and understood I wasn't going to bake a cake and make his favorite meal only to get a call....Mrs. Bullet his plane didn't take off because the refueler broke down.
Like I said I laugh now, but back then I had some very choice words for the AF, none of them that I could post on a forum like this
PS not to give you shivers, but here is something that came from Dyess. Between Dec 2003 and April 2013, they had 3378 continuous days of deployment. If my math is correct that basically means anyway of the year they had people deployed from either the 39th or 40th airlift squadron.