Hacker, you know as well as I that ops-ops were never the norm for the young dudes. Ever since the '90's, they have been getting UPT / remote / IFF / RTU / etc far more often than getting a follow-on ops tour - especially if they did a full tour in a CONUS squadron. In '99, most of our experienced pilots on paper were guys returning to the CAF from some other assignment, and it is still the same today.

If the USAF was doing it correctly, they would follow the "plug flow" method (borrowing an engineering term with a big so to speak). That means, you would enter the MWS and stay in the MWS until it was your turn to leave. Sort of a 1st in / 1st out kind of concept, but not that simple. After a 2nd, and especially a 3rd tour, you could pull a pilot out and career-broaden (Alpha / Staff / UAS / etc) and there would be a steady supply of experienced pilots ending their first and second tour ready to take their place. They wouldn't necessarily be gone for good, you would bring some back for leadership positions, etc. Right now, it is random - some of the pilots stay in the CAF pool for while, while some are yanked after the 1st tour. That is how it has always been.

Back in the day, we used to blame the Korea assignments for all of our woes, now everyone blames UAS and RC-12's. Unfortunately, and I didn't learn this until late in my career, we were always blaming the symptoms while ignoring the disease. The job of the USAF is to fight wars in coordiation with our sister services, and that requires a lot more than pilots currently sitting in cockpits.

We need CAF experienced UPT instructors. No slight against FAIP's, but as good an instructor as you are now, you'd be a better instructor after flying in the CAF for a while. Take away the experience from UPT, and the long-term effect on the USAF would be devastating. How about the other AETC flying billets, do you propose that we FAIP IP's into IFF or RTU? We need experienced rated officers in those staff jobs. We need experienced rated-officers in the CAOC's. The list goes on.

The fact is, all of these assignments require experienced pilots - there is no way around that. What they need to do is figure out a way to maintain a steady supply of experience out of the CAF without affecting the overall USAF capabilities. If there was a "The USAF", then there would be one commander or organization ensuring that ALL of the units maintain the experience levels required to accomplish the overall objectives of the USAF. Unfortunately, there are just a whole bunch of individual organizations making decisions within their own organization but having effects on the whole force. AFPC does it's thing, AMC does it's thing, ACC does it's thing, and we all hope it works out in the end.