Pilot7576,
Congrats to our son. A long road but an exciting one.
I just left the VP community and alot of the current URL pilots were passed over for good ground tours because the VP fleet is falling apart. The community went from 36 officers (pilots and NFOs) to 30. This was a requirement for the sqaudrons to do because the airplanes are going away. And when I mean going away, they are not flight worthy. Many are going to the bone yard at Davis Monthans. Check it out at:
http://www.amarcexperience.com/AMARCArticleP3Orion.asp
The VP community is flying them so little right now to just get enough years out of the old girls until the new MMA program comes along. Check it out:
http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/...mma/index.html
The Military has never been known to be ahead of the power curve any way. Maybe this is a program to fill the seats of the new MMA (737-800ER) plane. Although they took the Flight Engineer away from us now they want to take the pilot seats away from us too. I would say that the next 8 years the VP VQ community is not the plane guys will be very happy in.