It’s her selection, her service to her country, her duty, what she’s been striving for, to be an officer.
To what Air Force career path does this refer? Pilot training? Intelligence? Combat systems? Missile operations? Or prep school assistant women’s basketball coach?
I suppose it’s possible that this is not a permanent gig, and is instead one of those stash jobs before heading on to train for something else. I doubt it, though. Why would anyone make a big to-do about a stash job with no mention of, you know, actual Air Force stuff?
Along those lines, the mythical Air Force football service selection list actually made a public appearance today. I’m not sure if this is a sign of the apocalypse or if I’m about to turn into a pillar of salt for looking at it or what. Anyway, the list includes exactly what we thought it would include: three players listed as “prep school coach, instructor” and one “AFA JV coach” with no follow-on career assignment in the operational Air Force. Now, it’s not like Navy players aren’t stashed at NAPS for a semester before they head off to the real world, but they do head off to the real world. Those operational service assignments are what gets publicized, because that’s what makes a service academy a service academy. To read how a coach “gets what it means to be at a service academy” because she was excited to announce that one of her players gets to be a basketball coach is almost surreal.
So here’s hoping that this isn’t really what’s happening here, and that there’s an actual Air Force future in store for these cadets. But I’m not holding my breath.
The Birddog 
word ….
turn the calendar back to 1947 — bring back the Army Air Corps AND the brown uni’s
yup – someone should start turning congressmen onto this stuff. we’re looking for savings everywhere. surely people would be happy to spend a million a year on something other than educating football and basketball coaches
Air Force Academy English professors toe the line, I guess.
More AF bullsh*t. Can’t say I’m surprised. It’s a surprise when AF does the right thing. It would be nice if someone asked their Supe that on TV during a game:
“So LTG Sizzlesteak you seem to have a lot of athletes that become career coaches. Is there an explanation for this?”
It would be better than the gosh golly gee media interviews we normally get.
Recommend an immediate contest to redo the words to:
Off we go into the wild blue yonder,
Climbing high into the sun;
Here they come zooming to meet our thunder,
At ’em boys, Give ‘er the gun! (Give ‘er the gun now!)
Down we dive, spouting our flame from under,
Off with one heckuva roar!
We live in fame or go down in flame. Hey!
Nothing’ll stop the U.S. Air Force!
Analysis:
Pilot = 41%
Acquisitions = 24%
Maintenance = 6%
Engineering = 6%
Combat Coach = 24%
Note: Equals more than 100% due to rounding.
The AF has no mission currently. They are giving wings to pilots who are going to fly drones. There is also a reported movement to give them combat pay with the assertion that they are under the same stress as those in combat zones. We can eliminate a lot of the defense budget by totalling eliminating the AF. The Navy and Army can handle the missions we have today.
That should have said totally. My fingers were working too fast.
That’s not exactly where I’m going with this…
on the plus side, i guess we should give AF credit for having the stones to release a list of service assignments, especially one that looks so bad
Forget about flying drones; it has been my experience dealing with the Air Force community that the USAF is essentially a Engineering / Program Management organization in which the members are forced to wear uniforms. There are communities in the other services to which that characterization applies — but nowhere close to the same extent as the USAF. I’m not sure that’s an entirely bad thing, but the the AF Academy should considering changing it’s name to something along the lines of the U.S. COTR Training Academy
Mike, the reason I made the comment is to illustrate that there are not enough meaningful assignments for AF graduates so they have to assign coaching jobs, etc.
If that’s the case, they should lower their admissions to graduate only enough to fill the needs of the AF…Not extras to fill out their coaching staffs.
Well they are reducing the number of cadets at the school. I have a feeling those important coaching careers will be safe though.
Man, the comments on the links of both of those articles are very telling about the priorities of AF grads.
Dave has it right. The AFA should be redesignated as the Army Air Corps Training Center and the mission totally subsumed into the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps. The day of the Air Force has passed on gone the way of the Dodo. That is from an Air Force fighter pilot brat – I suspect that if my dad were still with us he would agree wholeheartedly.
What, exactly, does an acquisitions guy do?
Other than a paycheck, what does he acquire?
Do we need a guy in a blue suit to do this? Or can a civ in Crystal City handle it?
Ho-ly hell.
Little surreal, isn’t it? It just about sums up every bad stereotyp of the chair farce.
Acquisitions is legit. It’s an important part of all the services. Coaching BBal does not.
Legit as an initial service selection?
A number of us took a shore stint in DC–maybe at OPNAV, maybe at NAVAIR, maybe at BUPERS (now in TN, I guess)–but who gets this as an initial selection?