No they can't. Congress can make that happen, USERRA is a federal law not a DoD policy. Likely that congress would get advice from national guard and reserve leaders before asking regular AC leaders.

Don't assume congress would never change USERRA, but probably not anytime soon (with folks engaged on the ground in AFG).

 

This is the leverage some of these generals have:


https://www.jqpublicblog.com/general...-choose-leave/

Among the myriad of reasons pilots are getting out, I also think many of us have simply "lost faith" in the mission. They see very little value to the purpose of their deployment/additional duty/training task. Aside from tasks having direct correlation to their primary job, everything else is seen as a hindrance.

Asshats like the general who made this comment only furthers the resolve. Take a quick look at this guy's biography. He hasn't been in an operational squadron in 20 years. I argue he would is out of touch.

 

I'd be very surprised if the airlines agree to help bail the Air Force out of a problem the AIR FORCE created due to gross mismanagement, self serving middle managers and the PC culture decimating mission effectiveness. The Air Force was paying guys (and kicking guys out early) to leave just 3 years ago. I sincerely hope the airlines tell the Air Force to pound sand and that they will continue to "poach" their pilots.

Just out of curiosity, what could the generals do to help the airlines out wrt to mil leave and what could the airlines possibly offer in return?

 

The airlines "could" agree to reduce military hiring, or target certain demographics which would have less impact on military ops.

The military could possibly pay for certain demographics (senior staff tour guys) to stay current.

I truly don't think the generals can trade away USERRA, which is what would really get the airlines attention. It's purpose goes far beyond pilot manning. Although I wouldn't put it past some of these arrogant appendages to think that it would be worth selling out all guard and reserve personnel to help fix their management failings.

But regardless...The airlines need pilots bad, and plenty of mil guys want out bad. That's not changing anytime soon. Even if legacies offered flow to retirees (as an incentive to stay in the mil for 20), any junior pilot with an excel spreadsheet can determine that the economics don't make sense.

 

Um, isn't this called the ANG/AFRC? We have this already. It works bueno until you start treating us like AD and then we walk also.

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Generals can't rewrite USERRA laws.

 

There are some blue koolaid drunk senior leaders *cough cough* my old commander that scoff at the guard/reserves. They think less of them. They don't realize that at the end of the day, we on active duty and the guard/reserves provide the same product to national defense. Heck, some even do it full time!

My solution for this pilot crisis? Increase utilization of the guard/reserves. Boost up AGR slots, etc. As rapidly as I want to bail active duty myself along with many of my peers will happily continue serving in the guard/reserves while starting our careers at airlines....2 cents

 

Sounds good in theory... We already have dudes bailing to UAVs, non-flying gigs, or just getting out. Dwell time has decreased and TDYs have increased. Ops tempo has increased dramatically since I entered the Guard over 15 years ago. Now they've decided to start "deploying" some of us to NON-contingecy operations (read: NOT USERRA exempt). Add in an alert mission and it creates a very busy squadron...even for the part timers. If they raise our ops tempo much more, it will only make the manning situation worse, not better.

Adding AGR spots, may not do much either. Some squadron can't fill the full time jobs they have, and it's not just as easy as hiring dudes of AD...unless you want to boot all your part-timers.

 

25 yrs in the Reserves and My new saying is "the same dumb dumbs that f@cked up the active duty are ****ing up the reserves". Its just gotten stupid. Dont worry General Miller will save us.

 

This is a simple problem that will never be fixed. Congress and/or the military needs to make the military an attractive option. Period. They will never do that due to reasons that would require I use half the silicon on the planet to type it out.

Hint, most people don't join the military because of pay but they leave when they're treated like shlt and are forced to participate in some grand social experiment.