Well I'm looking seriously into getting out of the military but I'm going to have to defend the AF a little bit on this one. The thing we have to remember is that no one takes an oath to be a pilot. We take an oath to be officers and consequently to be leaders. The AF has its mission but as with any organization it needs leadership to handle all the administration and managing or that group. That would be the officers. Now we fly a lot our first 4-8 years on active duty but then as has been mentioned in previous post the AF starts to push us towards schools and non-flying assignments. Why? Because in order for us to be effective leaders from years 10 and up we need to broaden our experiences and knowledge (hence SOS, ACSC, AWC, etc). We spent the first few years flying, learning, and doing the mission which is necessary to be an effective leader. You can equate it to the McDonalds CEO flipping burgers so they know whats happening on the front lines of their "company". Many of lose sight of this or never actually understand it. The AF never recruited us to fly for 20 yrs. Think about it...officers are leaders (or supposed to be) and enlisted are technical experts. If the AF wanted 20 yr pilots they would just make us all warrant officers or enlisted like the Army does (and cut your pay in half). The problem is that when we were all young and bright eyed many of us were lured in by fast/big jets. Some (myself included) came in for the sole purpose of getting flight time in good jets so we could head to the airlines. Now I'm not knocking anyone for doing that b/c we are providing service to the AF but we cant look surprised when the AF says "ok enough flying come do some leadership stuff". We made a deal and nowhere did they even suggest we could fly our entire career.

As for the caliber of pilots I kinda disagree that military pilots arent that good. I agree that some slugs can slip through and that upgrades are sometimes simply to check a block but you have to remember that we are already pilots. UPT kicks your butt and weeds out some. After that you're a pilot and its just a matter of learning your particular airframe. The AF spends a lot with our training and I think we take it for granted. Have you noticed that airlines and most civilian pilots dont do transition. They do their annual (not sure how often) sim training (just as we do) and thats probably about it. In addition, we do all kinds of missions to all kinds of fields. Its not always one ILS to a full stop at some airfield with great support that our company goes to all the time. We dont fly as frequently as they do but somehow the mission has been getting done all these years with no more accidents than the civilian sector...

Well now I'm ranting...I'm actually all for punching if you can and like I said I'm even trying to get out myself but I just think we should be fair to the AF..they may ask alot but they've also given us a lot....