Drone pilots offered $175,000 bonuses
Bobo sends us a link to the Air Force Times that reports drone pilots are being offered up to $175,000 bonuses for a five year commitment to the job;
The critical skills retention bonus provides some RPA pilots $35,000 per year — for a total of $175,000 — if they agree to a five-year active-duty service commitment, or $35,000 for an additional year of commitment if they’re already receiving a similar CSRB or aviation retention pay bonus. The Air Force said in a Friday release that the bonuses are now officially authorized, and airmen can search for information on eligibility and application processes on the myPers website.
To be eligible, drone pilots must be in the 18S special operations RPA pilot, 11U pilots who started on manned aircraft and permanently transitioned to RPAs, 11X pilot, 12U RPA combat systems officers, or 13U RPA air battle manager career fields, and their undergraduate RPA or flying training commitments must be expiring in fiscal 2016 or 2017. The Air Force said the program will be retroactive for airmen whose commitment expired in 2016, and that applications for them must be submitted to the Air Force Personnel Center by Jan. 31, 2017.
Yeah, well, ten years from now the Pentagon will want their money back, if history teaches us anything.
Category: Air Force
Hmm. Offer commissioned officer pilots an extra $35k a year to fly RPAs, or create a USAF WO specialty with no bonus and let enlisted personnel with prior RPA pilot experience and demonstrated ability apply (and let the commissioned officer pilots continue to fly manned aircraft).
Gee, I wonder which alternative would be more effective?
Sorry Hondo, the Air Farce is too weak kneed and politically correct to reinstate warrant officer grades. Besides, the commissioned corps would be up in arms at the O Club because all of the ladies would flock to them. Better to pay the bonus then come back in ten years to take it back.
Club Manager O Clubs have gone by the wayside. They are more the exception than the rule any more. Most Officers could care less about the Club anymore. They lost my business when they required me to get yet another credit card. If I found myself TDY to an overseas location that still had an O Club or even all ranks club, I could join on a temporary basis and not get the credit card and I did.
RPA/UAV strikes me as an ideal career to bring back the Warrant Officer.
Nice, they sit their fat little asses in a nice air conditioned office in a plush chair and get all the bucks while the troops with boots on the ground are getting their asses shot off for NOTHING, and the a.h.’s in govt want their puny little bonus’s returned…..”WADDA COUNTRY”! It is way past time for vigilantism!!!
Let’s be real though, some infantryman deploy and do nothing more than 12 hours of standing post every day, don’t see anything the entire tour, then come back home telling strippers how they saw the pink mist. Every job, no matter how cool or uncool it sounds to the uninitiated, has some level of suck.
Don’t take it !!!!!
It’s a TRAP ! ! !
In ten year the pentagon will want there money ? Back
? ? ?
The first thing that came to my mind too.
Only if Chelsea Clinton is president!
??
That’s why the Pentagon is taking back the bonuses from 10 years ago.
They need the money to pay these bonuses.
Word ^^^
Sounds like a great deal, but I think I’d have my lawyer read the fine print so those lying cocksuckers can’t take the money back later because some fucktard bureaucrat sent me an extra thousand too early along the way.
As Hondo points out the efficient option will be the one they don’t use because it’s, well, the efficient option.
Funny thing how when you treat people like shit they tend to walk away as soon as they can. Drone pilots have been a joke to the Air Force for a long time, not so fucking funny now that they are quitting in droves.
How come the Academies don’t seem to be able to teach basic fucking common sense in how to treat a subordinate? Some of these “leaders” had better realize if they’d like a civilian career outside of the government sector treating a subordinate like shit can get you fired and litigated…and depending on the state the litigation can be quite ugly for the company and the supervisor.
Or they could just keep doing what they’re doing and scratching their heads on retention issues.
????
What, VOV? You expect sense out of these people?
You flaming optimist you.
Can we do a stop loss on officers?
Officers have no ETS date so there is nothing to stop loss.
They can resign and leave at any time.
They also do not get reenlistment bonuses.
Minor correction: they can only leave at any time AFTER their initial commitment period is up. Otherwise we’d have people going to West Point to get free education, then peacing out once they pin on.
After ALL periods of active duty service obligation (ADSOs) have been completed, actually. An officer’s initial ADSO is often not the only one in play.
Pretty sure that PCS moves incur an ADSO for an officer – 1 year, as I recall. If memory serves, the same is true for attendance at certain service schools. Full-time attendance at civilian higher education also incurs a pretty big ADSO – technically 3-for-1, as I recall – but part of that time often is served while attending civilian school, so the net result is usually 2-for-1 after completion.
Uncle Sam can get pretty nasty if an officer who’s still serving under an ADSO tries to resign. PCS moves and school attendance is kinda expensive, and often Uncle Sam wants that coin back when an officer having an ADSO tries to bolt early.
In theory.
An CO (usually Brigade or higher) can deny REFRAD.
I’ve often wondered why these guys are required to take flight physicals ?? I dunno maybe I’m missing something or maybe that just doesn’t sound right
Because they’re “pilots”.
Oh okay. Now it’s clear lol
Its a valid question why all “pilots” have to meet the same medical standards. Its not like your pulling G’s in the control room, or doing aerobatics in a KC-135.
It must be hell in those cuckpits.
When someone offers you something that seems too good to be true, it probably is. Be suspicious, get documents and keep many sets of copies in a safe place, and for something like this, don’t spend it. Since you have to pay the tax on it, the Big They should have to reimburse you for that, plus interest, plus a whole lot of other things too numerous to mention here.
You know it’s a shit job when they have to throw wads of cash at ppl and still nobody wants it.
I wonder if that turd Brandon Bryant will try to re-enlist?
That has to be such a hellish job, braving rush hour commuter traffic every day, wondering what the wife has cooked for dinner at home, getting a traffic ticket coming to or from work while the aircraft is in a war zone, maybe someone making bad coffee one day, the A/C not being up to snuff…
YEAH, I pity those critters.
Hey API, duty at Indian Springs is rough!
And a computer flies 95% of the mission profile. The “pilot” is basically a redundant system.
I click the button, I get my check I go home. Paraphrased from the original “Longest Yard.”
They are offering huge amounts of cash because being a drone pilot is important work that sucks ass. Drones are often used as an alternative to ground troops nowadays because you won’t have to bury a drone in Arlington National Cemetery if it goes down. Way more cost effective and publicly acceptable to strike bad guys with a hellfire than to make people get in firefights. That said, drone pilots are required to sit there for 12-14 hour shifts 6 or 7 days a week with no breaks, pay attention at all times, and never fuck up because lives literally depend on them not fucking up. On top of that, nobody outside of the drone community takes the job seriously because there are a lot of assumptions and misunderstandings about how easy the job is – often from combat arms folks who have not been in a unit outside an infantry battalion and don’t want to accept that they aren’t the only ones who work for a living. So, when a job is high stress/low reward, there are only two options to keep billets properly manned: send mostly “voluntold” people (this is usually done for Army/Marine recruiters who just reenlisted or cooks who recently failed another MOS school who are enlisted and therefore can’t quit…but officers can quit er ‘resign’ when they want to, so this isn’t an option), or entice them with huge ass bonuses. The Pentagon would save so much money if it just made an effort to not treat worker bees like dog shit. Treating people well – weird concept right?