more sequester posturing?
 

There's only one place such orders could come from, and boy howdy that says a whole lot right there...no further comment necessary. :mad:
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^^^^^
Agreed.

The Air Force is preparing heavily for a sequester if it is not averted.

I don't know. We go thorough this all the time. Its always funny how we happen to get the money at the last minute. It just makes me laugh how we are in these situations. We'll see what happens.

I think it's gonna happen and then money will be added back to specific areas as the pain increases. It's just going to mess stuff up for a while.

How much is getting cut from the defense budget this year? They're only cutting $1.2 trillion over 10 years. That isn't a lot.

I think part of the problem is that all of the GWOT and Overseas Contingency funds now must come out of the services baseline budget, and those baseline budgets just got cut by the $1.2T over 10 years. And oh-by-the-way, the USAF isn't allowed to close any bases or retire any old airplanes.

GWOT/OCO is winding down to low intensity and relatively lower costs, especially once we are out of AFG.

The only wildcard is Iran...our readiness there has piggy-backed on the OCO assets in the AOR.

Not a lot? Wasn't the 2012 DoD budget approximately $670 billion? Just for easy math if you reduce that by $120 billion for the first year isn't that about a 18% cut? That's pretty severe, IMO.

Now that's based purely on your number of "$1.2 trillion over 10 years." Not sure if that's accurate.

How soon before they say all the sims are high enough quality for all currency requirements, so the only local sorties are for guys leaving for deployment the next day?

The idea was that the cuts would be over all spending, not just the military, so the 1.2 trillion over ten years amounts to less than the annual deficit for ONE year. Or, less than five percent of total spending.

In that context the proposed cuts are tiny in the big picture, and the real deficit generators are not even going to be touched.

It has caused much howling though and the Kabuki continues.



During FY2012, the federal government collected approximately $2.45 trillion in tax revenue, up $147 billion or 6% versus FY2011 revenues of $2.30 trillion.




During FY 2012, the federal government spent $3.54 trillion on a budget or cash basis, down $60 billion or 1.7% vs. FY 2011 spending of $3.60 trillion. Major categories of FY 2012 spending included: Medicare & Medicaid ($802B or 23% of spending), Social Security ($768B or 22%), Defense Department ($670B or 19%), non-defense discretionary ($615B or 17%), other mandatory ($461B or 13%) and interest ($223B or 6%). Social Security spending increased versus 2011 while Defense, Medicare and Medicaid spending fell.[10]

Expenditures are classified as mandatory, with payments required by specific laws, or discretionary, with payment amounts renewed annually as part of the budget process. Expenditures averaged 20.6% GDP from 1971 to 2008, generally ranging +/-2% GDP from that level. The 2012 spend was 22.8% GDP, versus 2011 spend of 24.1% GDP.[10][11]

Mandatory spending and entitlements




Source: CBO Report-July 2010.
Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid expenditures are funded by more permanent Congressional appropriations and so are considered mandatory spending. Social Security and Medicare are sometimes called "entitlements," because people meeting relevant eligibility requirements are legally entitled to benefits, although most pay taxes into these programs throughout their working lives. Some programs, such as Food Stamps, are appropriated entitlements. Some mandatory spending, such as Congressional salaries, is not part of any entitlement program. Mandatory spending accounted for 57.4% of total federal outlays in FY2012, with net interest payments accounting for an additional 6.3%. In 2000, these were 53.2% and 12.5%, respectively

http://www.popularmechanics.com/cm/p...cememocutz.pdf

4 page powerpoint.

No more flying but taskers for everyone!

The other extreme being the flying hour program and the insistence to fly out your scheduled duration, even when training is completed.

These "cuts" seem drastic because the leaders in charge have failed to be fiscally responsible. As always, the warfighter is going to take the brunt of the cuts instead of the wasteful spending.

Sadly, that's just how some people like and want it. And we all know who they are, too. So do they, although they will deny, deny, deny...much in the same way that the same such people will claim that pouring urine on the flag should be considered "art" and not offensive.

They're just preparing in case an enemy launches a PowerPoint attack on us. We will brief them silly and win! :D

Good plan, that Powerpoint made me queasy, and I found it much like a game of three card monte in the dark.
No direction, but lots of boxes and charts and diagrams to explain failure.:D

BINGO! Easier to make across the board slashing cuts to personnel than to do the hard work of determining where money can be saved if people just worked at it. Just like counties do across the nation, they tell citizens critical services will be the first to go--cops, firemen, etc. The goal is to spread fear and pain so they can keep their power and kingdoms instead of doing what needs to be done to save money.

Maybe now wings are finally getting the message that if you don't have to fly out the flying hour program than guess what???? Don't fly out the flying hour program! Who here among us hasn't felt the pressure to get the hours flown just to zero out the hours?!! Even when I confronted my group CC in my final year of service about the need to fly out the hours (I had a memo in hand from the Air Staff stating you're done flying when you say your training is done, circa '08) he replied, "You told me before the FY started you needed XXXX hours to accomplish your training. Therefore, your training is not complete until you fly those hours."

The unneeded TDYs, the unneeded HD flat screens, blowing money at the end of the year that you won't get back if you don't spend it....it all should be looked at. But the low hanging fruit are the DoD's civilian employees. Generals need to stand up to their bosses and tell them the hard work of determining where the wasted dollars are has yet to even begin.

I just started on orders at a MAJCOM/HQ a couple of weeks ago. I'm astounded at the amount of taskers and flowcharts, briefings, telecons, presentations, meetings, VTCs and on and on and on day in and day out. It seems there's a lot of eyes inward, looking at the processes and programs put in place, and not a lot of eyes looking outward. Lots of "make work" that never goes anywhere. At the same time, there's some pretty drastic sequestration COAs being presented. Maybe we should save some airplanes and say goodbye 75% of the MAJCOM staff.

I hope they start with the fitness monitors. There's some low hanging fruit. The AFRC could also shed every 0-5 over 22 not in a leadership position and barely blink.

Thank god I retired when I did, because you know all that sim time isn't going to mean crap to the airlines.

I can see guys who've been in now for less than five years, getting out at their 10 year point and count themselves lucky to have ATP mins.

We handed back quite a few hours last year. We still got the same amount this year.

Got to love the self licking ice cream cones.
http://cdn.memegenerator.net/instanc...x/25901356.jpg



Fitness monitors are very important. See, we like to preach Integrity First, but we don't really believe in it... :rolleyes:

With the budget cuts we are facing, why don't we just shed the whole AFRC? Move the iron/people, fold the jobs into the ANG or AD and cut the redundant positions. Do we really need to have a HQ staff for both? It seems like we could cut quite a few people, with a relatively low strain on the deployment cycle, and save a significant amount of money.

Been there and concur: work for work sake. Yes, someone thinks it's important, but the majority of it is just continued insanity. Literally (and not figuratively Biden-Literally) millions of man-hours wasted every year.

Any O-7 or above getting the axe? Methinks no.

Sounds like a normal month.

Plus 1000. I just got augmented to a major command from a flying job and I agree %100. My days continuously filled with busy work or no work at all yet I am on per diem. This place could lose several thousand civilians and the warfighters in the field wouldn't notice.

:eek: Well can you send those extra hours to ACC? We're forecasting to me finished with our FHP in Jun. :mad:

Get rid of AFRC! Fix broken civil service bureaucracy! Restrain the contracting buffoonery! :) nice thoughts aren't they.

Amen. Two true stories from a past life:

1. Lots of fuel dollars remaining in a VC-131H squadron. How did they get spent? Fly the plane out over the Atlantic, dump the fuel, come back and log the hours.

2. $100K left in the King Air account with 30 days left in the FY. Fighter squadron next door out of fuel with 6 weeks remaining. When I asked if we could transfer that fuel money to them the answer: "No, can't be done because they're funded out of a different pot of money."
That resulted in a month of "instrument trainers" from SoCal to ACV for a can of soda and return (no fuel dump system on a King Air!).

Upside: Logged a boatload of multi-engine TPIC for my airline job! Thank you Mr. and Mrs. Taxpayer.

And the Pentagon INSISTS we can't cut their budget. HA!

MG Wells told our base yesterday that the cuts are coming and the AF plans on shutting down squadrons (no flying) starting in May for a month or two at a time. BL: we need to shave off $12 billion from our budget He said if you are not deploying or spinning up to deploy (funny, thats all I do) then you won't get any flying hours. He said the AF's focus is on the F-35. This is right after he "gave out" two Bronze Stars. One was to a MSgt finance person who "saved the AF millions while deployed" and another to a contracting Officer who went above and beyond by "going outside the wire". I guess we are now officially in the military where everyone get a trophy. Then he went on to talk about sexual harassment.

Yes, this is what drives me crazy. We're broke.......but we need more flat screens.

i think we're almost there

We are ACC...Vipers. I don't think we'll have that problem this year though.

How so early? Did you get some hours yanked? Too many dudes/not enough hours for everyone to make RAP? Did they not plan out the FHP to cover the year or are the boses unwilling to say no?

Yeah, get rid of AFRC where you get twice the combat capability and effectiveness for a third of the cost of REGAF. You must be ripe for AD senior leadership.

Didn't know who that was so had to check bio. First a congrats is in order, for after over 30 years in the AF he has logged 2500 hours of flight time including some elusive drone time. Wouldn't want flying to get in the way of being an AF leader. I am a major (no general behind it) with half that time in the service including 10 years of active duty and I have more single seat time than that. I graduated exactly two decades after him and have somehow surpassed him. Good news - from the bio and multiple stories like this one the retention problem is going to fix itself for AD. The freebie they got by upping the commitment is finally over. Everyone can stop pretending they are ALL in it for big blue. The problem is with the leadership. Which is irreparable unless Gen Welsh is able to work a miracle. And every day that goes by, that becomes less likely.

Haha, you obviously don't know me. I've never been, nor have I ever considered AD. Part time/airline guy that has zero aspirations of leadership. I'm content with being a flying major my whole career, although Ltc 3 years prior to bailing wouldn't hurt. Zero in-residence and if I do get a masters, it will not be for the AF. The AD would not like a guy like me...they don't seem interested in a guy that just want to be good at my job (flying), and not deal with all the bs butt snorkeling required to make rank.

Let's take a quick look at the Viper community. There are two stand alone Viper wings in the AFRC. Neither sits alert, in fact Homestead has a Guard unit that has an alert det on their base... Ft Worth has the Tulsa Guard sitting alert in their back yard. I could be wrong, but as far I can tell the last time FT Worth deployed was 2007. We're going on our 3rd deployment since that time (would be 4th but we were pulled out to do an ORI). At a minimum, they could consolidate their jets into one wing, with two squadrons, and get rid of a lot of redundant positions. This isn't meant to bash these units...I just think they could easily be folded in the ANG, and that move could save some $$$.

Since we've talked about the HQ, self licking ice cream cone. With two ARC components with such close mission sets, to provide a ready force to deploy when needed, at a much cheaper cost. Do we really need two separate compenents? Do we really need an ANG A staff and a AFRC A staff? So instead of having one group of people running around justifying their existence, we have two... Think of how much we could save in just getting rid of redundancies in the two components.

I'm not a hater of the reserve, I have lots of bros in various reserve positions, and feel that the ANG/Res bring a wealth of skill/knowledge that is irreplaceable. I'm just looking at the budget concerns and thinking of ways to free up cash. Being that the ANG is a bigger (and I believe tougher to get rid of), we could fold AFRC into the Gaurd and save some serious cash. Sure we can sit and have measuring contest, but at the end of the day, we're flat broke. If we don't fix it some way, we are totally screwed.


That's downright criminal...someone should got to jail for this!

This stuff angers me to no end! IT'S ALL ONE FREAKING BUDGET, and we all have the same end goal in mind! This whole "you can't use that because it's a different color (or pot) of money," bs has to end! It makes no freaking sense, and is a horrible way of doing business. We can't get certain clothing issue items for a deployment but the squadron next door, just got all brand new furniture to replace stuff that was neither outdated, nor damaged. Don't even get me started on the flat screens that do nothing but show how much money we made for the CFC!

A squadron mate thought he was helping the AF out by finding a better deal on a hotel. He saved the AF 150 bucks. But since he went through a third party website, finance would not pay it. What mind of sense does that make? He tried to save the AF money and they say F you!

Yep. Not a single one of my peers in the 04 and later year groups are staying AD a minute longer than they have to. Not a one.

The shoe clerks can fight the next war.

More needless drama and until they get serious about cutting waste then all of this is just a lesson in futility.