Excellent post "Mom!"
General Schwartz outlined recently the "Force Shaping" that will soon be taking place. I'll "cut/paste" a quote from the article:
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For junior officers, the plan includes force-shaping boards beginning this May. The FSB initially will consider year groups with excess officers in the judge advocate general, biomedical science corps and medical service corps competitive categories. The May FSB impacts officers in the 2006 through 2008 commissioned year groups. Officers not selected for retention by this FSB will be required to separate no later than Oct. 1, 2011.
Air Force officials also will conduct a reduction-in-force board in September for mid-grade officers. In lieu of meeting the board, eligible officers will have a one-month window in March to apply for voluntary separation pay, with separation by Oct. 1, 2011. The RIF board will consider all year groups with excess officers in the line-of-the-Air Force, chaplain, JAG, BSC and MSC competitive categories. This impacts officers in the 1999 through 2005 commissioned year groups. Officers not selected for retention by the RIF board will be required to separate no later than Feb. 1, 2012.
For both the RIF board and the FSB, Air Force leaders decided to apply a quality review of the entire competitive category, instead of the methodology used in past retention boards which focused only on certain Air Force specialties. The boards will retain the top 90 percent of officers within the affected competitive categories in eligible year groups. Following retention board results, Air Force officials will use the recently-announced officer crossflow process to rebalance between line specialties as needed.
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Now...IMHO...By NOT going into some of these fields, the AF may be saving folks from another RIF in the future, based upon AFSCs.
These are NEVER fun.
Steve
USAFA ALO
USAFA '83