FTP Leadership Positions

JMPO, but if they delayed the 5 year cadets for another a year, all they are doing is kicking the can down the road. The fact is the AF is serious about following DoD's request of cutting their budget by at least 20%.

If you look at the AFA thread regarding the budget they are cutting not only staff, but even majors.

This is going to be going on for years, and not just this year alone.
 
ERAUMattmom said:
typo on my part should have read
Not that it's really going to matter this year ...but according to the chart referenced in 4.25.4......page 264 attachment #12...only a 2.0 is needed for TPGA for EA .(not CPGA )

Read 4.25.4 more carefully...states must meet all requirements as outlined in chapter8 and attachment 12...

also in 8.3.2 states that Cadets competing for an EA from PSP must have a CGPA of a least 2.5 on a 4.0 scale .. AND .TGPA IS NOT A FACTOR FOR ELIGIBILITY

You had stated " But we were told by our Education Officer that in order to contract as a POC, you cannot have below a 2.5 term gpa for the spring before FT. It doesn't matter if your cgpa is well above that, if you pull less than a 2.5 this semester you will not be able to become a POC until the next semester where you can up up your tgpa."

It seems that different parts of the same publication have conflicting information.

I still am having issues cutting and pasting from the adobe reader for AFROTCI36-2011....or I would have already put the chart on one of my posts... If you can cut and paste to this forum attachment 12 please do so that others can see what we are debating....

Once again I concede the fact that a 2.0 or a 2.5 isn't going to get you where you need to be.....Just want to make sure the end result is that accurate info is getting put out there......so if it's me that's still getting it wrong...straighten me out pronto....
Click to expand...

The info is confusing, but it is not conflicting...at least not that I can find. I think you misunderstood me earlier in that yes, you can have a 2.0 term GPA and 2.5 CGPA to keep your EA (because you would have gotten one by the time final grades for this term came out) and still go to field training. But you cannot contract as a POC until you raise it to a 2.5 term. Look under the "Contract as a POC" column. You can't go at all if your gpa is below 2.5 cumulative gpa.

Here's the chart we're talking about to make things less confusing...hopefully this will work lol

2812xl.jpg


Edit:
EARU,

I did see the section about term not being applicable for PSP, but I'm not exactly sure what that is. It cant mean general AFROTC cadets, it might mean pursuing student program??? But even if it's not applicable to them, you still need a 2.5 term and cumulative to contract as a POC which is what really matters. It looks like there may be some work around for scholarship cadets to become POC anyways if they met all the 2.5 CGPA requirement prior to getting an EA, but I'm not sure what that entails. But your right, it really doesn't since if your gpa is that low your probably not getting an EA anyways. However it sure would be a nasty surprise to go to FT and come back to find out you have to act as a GMC for another whole semester because you have a 3.0+ CGPA but didnt have the 2.5 term gpa to contract as a POC. We've been warned that this has happened before.
 
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Pima said:
JMPO, but if they delayed the 5 year cadets for another a year, all they are doing is kicking the can down the road. The fact is the AF is serious about following DoD's request of cutting their budget by at least 20%.

If you look at the AFA thread regarding the budget they are cutting not only staff, but even majors.

This is going to be going on for years, and not just this year alone.
Click to expand...

I noticed that they are supposed to be cutting 1/3 of their majors....WOW that's CRAZY!!
 
It could be –and someday soon might be – orders of magnitude worse. This is true to some extent for all of the services, but the dirty little secret is that the Air Force doesn’t really need AFA or AFROTC to get the mission done. With some very small exceptions barely worth considering, graduates of AFA and AFROTC do not have any direct military command responsibilities in operational situations immediately upon graduation. They will have plenty of time to learn the military stuff on the job, to the extent that it is even relevant to what they do. Most non-rated AF officers will spend their careers filling jobs that are held interchangeably with civilians – and which could be exclusively filled with civilians if that was more advantageous budgetwise.

It is never hard to recruit potential pilots; the AF could fill all of its needs by directly recruiting highly-qualified college grads who can be quickly and cheaply run through OCS. The only practical reason to put students through school on scholarship is to lock in graduates who possess skills that the AF needs and must pay for in order to compete with private employers. In this economy that applies to engineering students and hardly anyone else. Does anyone doubt that the AF would have no problem hiring top graduating college talent right now for starting positions in finance, contract management, logistics, etc, particularly if the prospective employees didn't have to bother with uniforms and military courtesies and the like? And these civilians will happily accept a conventional civil service pension or even a 401K plan.

The non-practical reason to maintain the AFA and AFROTC is because as a matter of institutional tradition/pride/inertia, the AF is going to field as many uniformed officers as the Navy, even though they don’t need to. But at some point the economics of the situation may trump tradition, and we will see a radically downsized AFROTC program.
 
DeskJockey said:
It could be –and someday soon might be – orders of magnitude worse. This is true to some extent for all of the services, but the dirty little secret is that the Air Force doesn’t really need AFA or AFROTC to get the mission done. With some very small exceptions barely worth considering, graduates of AFA and AFROTC do not have any direct military command responsibilities in operational situations immediately upon graduation.
Click to expand...

Such a poor understanding and perception of AF command responsibility for our non-rated junior officer corps and how they contribute to the operational mission as to be laughable.

Are they expected to become technical experts at the junior level? Certainly, and that is something that we can expect from a civilian doing the same job. But they are doing much more than that. I recommend you go talk to a young maintenance officer about what HIS / HER day is like....


DeskJockey said:
They will have plenty of time to learn the military stuff on the job, to the extent that it is even relevant to what they do. Most non-rated AF officers will spend their careers filling jobs that are held interchangeably with civilians – and which could be exclusively filled with civilians if that was more advantageous budgetwise.
Click to expand...

See my repsonse above.

DeskJockey said:
It is never hard to recruit potential pilots; the AF could fill all of its needs by directly recruiting highly-qualified college grads who can be quickly and cheaply run through OCS. The only practical reason to put students through school on scholarship is to lock in graduates who possess skills that the AF needs and must pay for in order to compete with private employers. In this economy that applies to engineering students and hardly anyone else. Does anyone doubt that the AF would have no problem hiring top graduating college talent right now for starting positions in finance, contract management, logistics, etc, particularly if the prospective employees didn't have to bother with uniforms and military courtesies and the like? And these civilians will happily accept a conventional civil service pension or even a 401K plan.
Click to expand...

And exaclty HOW MANY of these non-uniform-wearing, 401k-making civilians will be willing to deploy to some backwoods-stuck-in-the-14th-century-with-a-cot-and-some-body-armor-garden-spots while doing said job? How many will be willing to work 50-60 hours a week in those positions? How many would be willing to SACRIFICE their time, sweat, family lives, and potentially their very lives for that 401K?



DeskJockey said:
The non-practical reason to maintain the AFA and AFROTC is because as a matter of institutional tradition/pride/inertia, the AF is going to field as many uniformed officers as the Navy, even though they don’t need to. But at some point the economics of the situation may trump tradition, and we will see a radically downsized AFROTC program.
Click to expand...

Where is that "facepalm" emoticon when I need it?
 
I am not trying to offend anyone. I am a former Air Force officer myself, and as you can see from my screen name, the only thing I ever flew was a desk. I spent almost six years on active duty working on projects that were interesting, professionally challenging, and critical to national defense. I am proud to be a veteran, and I honor everyone who has or will serve in the Air Force. But I am also honest enough with myself to recognize that the job that I did, and that of almost every other AF officer I ever encountered who didn’t sit in a cockpit or a silo, could be and often was interchangeably done by civilians. That doesn’t mean that they weren’t superb military officers; most of them were. But it does mean that it would, in most cases, be possible to use civilians to do their jobs.

Please notice that I said in most cases. Of course there are exceptions. Obviously commissioned officers are necessary whenever the mission calls for a deployment to an active theater of battle, or whenever someone has to act or make a decision in an operational situation. But as far as I can tell, such circumstances are rare or practically non-existent for vast swaths of the AFSC spectrum.

My only point was to make what I think is a fairly obvious observation – that due to the fact that most non-rated officer jobs do not have a direct operational component, the Air Force has a great deal of flexibility to (1) scale back AFA and AFROTC, and directly commission college graduates into support fields where they can learn the military aspect of their vocation on the job; and (2) substitute civilians for uniformed personnel if it is financially advantageous to do so. I did not say that this would be a good thing to do – in fact, I am sure that it would have disastrous consequences if taken too far – but it is an option that can, and in my opinion likely will, be exercised more aggressively in the future if the current budget pressure continues. I don't think that we are going to see AFROTC go away completely, but I think it is likely to be significantly downsized and even more tightly focused on technical majors.
 
We are drifting way off of FTP Leadership Positions.

Maybe this conversation should take on a new thread.

I would still like to hear more input from POC's regarding anything that was or wasn't really relevant in FTP when it came time to SFT and their opinion on if having leadership positions in FTP was beneficial in preparing them for SFT.

But always honored to have Bullet post on any thread of mine :)
 
Erau,

Threads have a habit of going off topic, and sometimes the off topic is tied to the topic, in this case it does.

We are talking about training future officers. As everyone knows Bullet is my better half. He also rarely steps into the fray....me not so much.:shake:

Anyhow, one thing I want to say to desk jockey is that believe it or not it can be just as expensive to hire civilians. Most will come in at the same pay as the officer. They are not forced into time commitment payback, even the non-scolarship cadet will owe 4 years. Scholarship cadets are the minority, maybe 20%.

That means in this case that as they do their job and another furlough occurs like last year that phone will not be answered 1 day a week. Civilians can give two weeks notice at anytime, they don't owe 4 years. Remember some jobs require a TS, it takes 6 months, if a civilian leaves that hole can be vacant for months, it impacts the mission. Civilians get to invest in a 401k program, that costs tax dollars too.

Desk when you left at 6 years, you walked with only your accrued leave, 60 days at best. Civilians can roll their sick days. Bullet is a GS, we were joking about how he can retire basically 18 months prior without taking a ding financially. Meanwhile, taxpayers like you and me are either seeing that job left unfilled because someone like him is on the books, or they fill it and now we are paying for two people. Like I said Bullet after 3 years as a GS (he was contractor until Obama forced his job to GS) can leave with more days than you had when you left. Is that really a good use of taxpayer dollars compared to having control like they do with AF officers?

Additionally, leave the sandbox assignments out of the equation. How do you fill the Korean remotes? How many civilians do you think want to be the exec officer for Camp Red Cloud?

Now back on topic.

ERAU,

You know I love you, but you are thinking way too deep regarding this aspect. There are @350 cadets per class, 2200/6 classes.

Take the approach that this is just part of the path that they endure. Honestly, we were totally laid back on this, the stressed was they flew him out of BWIinstead of Dulles....90 minute ride instead of 30.

Knowing any info from posters here would have gone through one ear and out the other for our DS. Trust me, Bullet went to SFT as an AFROTC cadet from the same detachment (25 years earlier) and that is exactly how it went down in our house when he asked DS have you been studying boldface?
 
LOL

Pima - you know I love you too! But are forgetting....it's not my DS looking for the answers to the questions I pose.....

He is an extreme optimist. He is extremely comfortable in his own skin and not in the slightest bit concerned about EA's.. Could have something to do with the fact he loves his plan B almost as much as his plan A.

Like I've mentioned before....I am the unfortunate one who grew up as a pessimist....my father while a great man taught me always to expect the worst and hope for the best.

These questions and or concerns are all owned by me and not my Matt.

However, I definitely appreciate it when you let me know its time to poke it with a fork cause it's done!!!
 
Pima, you said approximately 350 cadets a class, 2200/6 classes. It has already been announced that there would be only 5 Max's this year. By your math and in keeping with the same class sizes, that would only leave about 1850 EA's available. So my question is do you think they will increase class sizes or will EA's take that big of a hit? ERAU, what is your DS's plan B?
 
I don't know what his plan B is, but my plan B initially involves allowing myself an immediate month of weeping and self disappointment lol
 
Flying,

I wouldn't use my Math as. A baseline for anything. Understand when they went down to 5 Max classes it was before sequestration. They have done a run through with 5 once before, when they went back to 6 they didn't know sequestration would be in place.

The real defining factor for SFT is going to be the number they need to commission in 16. Posters are assuming that there will be less slots available this year than last year because they are asking for rated decisions and the word is fewer non-tech slots. However, we are not in the inner sanctum and working on the MPC personnel goal for 5 years out.
~~~~ If you have not watched the news, the AF for about a year or more that starting in five years the airlines will be facing a huge pilot shortage....guess where they get their pilots from? It could be as simple as trying to plan how many pilots they need to get through the rated pipeline.

Let's also be honest, the first word in the name for this branch is not CHAIR, but Air. Those that were in the AF in the early 90s (equivalent to this current environment) can tell you that when they cut non-rated positions, they didn't fill them with GS/civilians, they filled them with rated positions. You can't take a non-rated and place them in a rated slot without a lot of training, but you can take a rated and place them into a non-rated quicker, especially since every MQ rated officer has a 2nd job....a desk job. They could be the scheduling officer, life support, flight commander, weapons shop, wing IG, etc. which is why they can do this.

Staying with the 90s and history repeating itself. In the late 90s airlines were hiring at a faster pace than ever. The AF started losing experience pilots at a higher rate, hence why they extended the commitment and started giving out bonuses to stay until 20.
~~~~ Are you starting to see a pattern now? The AF right now has to cut because of the budget, but because of what occurred 20 years ago, and knowing the airline's pilot projections this time they be able to get in front of the game.
 
Makes sense, I guess all of our questions about EA's will be answered in a couple of weeks. Good luck to all the cadets on this forum competing!
 
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