Originally Posted by
OrionDriver
I think you're right. Piloting is a secondary duty in the AF, at best, more often than not tertiary! You gotta have guys who can do DTS, give X and Y training, track this, track that. So much is levied on the bag wearers that should be carried by the professional support core - but that would require more personnel. The amount of ancillary BS a pilot has to deal with, in addition to pilot related duties, is a bigger hindrance than the $ delta. If you got rid of at least most of those duties and let aircrew just aircrew, people would never leave.
This is one of the reasons I left full time ASAP and why I only take orders for squadron TDYs, deployment spinup and deployments. I hated how much time spent behind a computer vs actually flew, but even being a part-timer is becoming the same. In my 20+ years in the ANG, every new "advancement" that's come along, has made it harder and harder to be a part timer. Pay cards used to take a minute while I sat in the morning mass brief, but now it can be an hour+ process. Travel vouchers used to be completed as the TDY progressed and I'd just drop it off as soon as I got back to base...never had an issue being paid out quickly. Now it can be a multi-day process and a lot of back and forth/headache. I have had to show up on a day and log 2 pay cards just to process all the crap needed to get paid...getting paid to get paid. If it weren't so damn sad, I'd have to laugh. On an up-note, they got me my corrected W2 on 17Apr...so I got that going for me, which is nice.