Mis-led and Under-worked: Life in Today's Air Force
Keisling, Phillip
Mis-led and Under-worked: Life in Today's Air Force by Phillip Keisling "Aim High" The slogan used to be "A Great Way of Life' but last year the United States Air Force decided to change it. "We...
...The answer—the minimum wage—works out to a lot less than what the Air Force will pay...
...Perhaps the greatest savings would be realized by the wholesale consolidation of jobs...
...The AFSC, which has nearly 30,000 military personnel, is responsible for procuring and testing all new weapons...
...Secondly, the Pentagon claims that a little slack in the system is preferable in peacetime...
...The Air Force says it doesn't know how often recruits are placed in their career area of first choice...
...That's something we're definitely watching for',' Chandler says...
...Sometimes even less...
...Yet it is just such unnatural acts, multiplied thousands of times over, on which battles and wars have turned...
...It's worth noting that Israel's Air Force, which has one-sixth the number of combat planes, also has one-20th the number of people in uniform...
...The military gauges "quality" on the basis of a battery of intelligence and aptitude tests, the most basic of which is something called the Armed Forces Qualifying Test...
...Not at all...
...Those recruits who've always had a yearning to play the tuba will doubtless be glad to know today's Air Force has 1,100 slots reserved for the career field "band ." But there's a bigger reason for the general silence of those enlisted men who've found their visions of working on state-of-the-art fighters transformed into early-morning patrols around the perimeter of a supply depot...
...That argument is not wholly without merit, given, the Air Forces responsibility for much of our nuclear arsenal and its world-wide obligations...
...This not only wastes money and talent, but, over time, breeds a subtle contempt for the system, even among those who like military service...
...But even greater savings would be realized by readjusting the pay scales of careerists, which have climbed in step with the dramatic increases for first-term volunteers...
...Security guards, for example, are occasionally roused from their torpor by a signal from an electronic alarm, which in most cases goes off only because the sensor is malfunctioning...
...So those within thebureaucracY get to work creating new missions and= responsibilities...
...The presence of so many people serving involuntarily, and at relatively low wages, would also put pressure on the Air Force to consolidate many of its specialties...
...As for the extra demands, a retired chief master sergeant—the highest enlisted rank in the military—who now lobbies Congress on behalf of retired enlistees, comments, "I can understand why the general populace gets a little tired of listening to Air Force people go on and on about the long hours and alert duties...
...But not so fast...
...Indeed, the slot-seeking bureaucrat knows that crisis is often opportunity, as illustrated by a final example involving the Air Force Systems Command...
...as a result, the Air Force now en. joys a disproportionate share of the high quality recruits for which all the military services must compete...
...If it doesn't, that's great too...
...The AFQT, the military's equivalent of the SAT test, divides . recruits into five categories of intelligence...
...There's some merit to each argument—but far less than is initially apparent...
...At the low end of the scale, only 2 percent— compared to 30 percent of the rest of the population—scored in categories IV and V. "We've never seen such extremely high quality',' enthuses Lieutenant Colonel Dee Miller, who commands the recruiting squadron that covers the Washington D.C...
...work that World War II veterans will instantly recognize for having once gone under the title of "clerk ." Nearly 2,200 have become "inventory management specialists:' performing such chores as ordering supplies and stocking shelves with spare parts...
...The term refers to the interchangeable components— "black boxes"--that control the computer, radar, and communications systems on the Air Force's most modern weapons...
...military reached similar conclusions...
...one Air Force colonel observes, readily conceding that this bureaucratic urge, extends to colonels as well, though usually in somewhat more subdued form...
...People with the high intelligence go for the more sophisticated jobs, like electronics, and those with the low levels go into combat jobs...
...But avionics, while making weapons such as the F-15 fighter more sophisticated than the F-4 it succeeded, have also made much maintenance and repair work simpler, just as solid-state technology has made television sets easier to repair...
...The AFAFC ,still has the same, relatively -simple task of disbursing Monthly checks to all active and retired personnel;, if anything, the job has gotten easier' v4sltthe advent of data processing equipment...
...No doubt commanders would still inflate their job requirements, and each service would continue to fight for as much quality as it could...
...Another 3,700 are "administrative specialists',' performing Phillip Keisling is an editor of The Washington Monthly...
...the bureaucracy just said 'Fix it' and you moved;' says the officer, who flew an F-4...
...But there's actually no better time...
...And though a few combat jobs have sufficient prestige...
...And the higher the lank, the greater the expectations about subordinates...
...Bill Fendley, for example, served one term in the Air Force as an operator of flight simulators used by pilots...
...You have guys patrolling or maybe just sitting in a three-quarter ton truck all night with the heater on, watching a plane on the runway...
...Indeed, studies of battlefield behavior conducted after World War II by the U.S...
...There's also the matter of institutional self-interest...
...With recruiters having so much success, it may seem like the worst of times to propose a revival of the draft...
...Upon seeing the advertisement, you rush down to the store, only to be told by the salesman—who knows full well the store never had more than two of those sets—that the last one was just carted away by a happy customer...
...it doesn't take a military psychologist to tell you that most people prefer a pleasant, 9-to-5 job to a nine-month tour of duty on an aircraft carrier or combat maneuvers in the Mojave desert...
...Another is that many servicemen don't really want challenging work, hightech or otherwise, and the Air Force obligingly accommodates them...
...they get off early the next day...
...instead, he had to summon a maintenance crew, which usually consisted of three to five people...
...More to the point, TAC's change has had a predictable effect on the number of slots for maintenance officers—none...
...They told me they were used to working two, three hours a day:' he says...
...Perhaps the most unnatural act in the world is to convince yourself and your men to move out of the relative comfort of the foxhole and charge into enemy fire:' observes one retired Army colonel...
...I'd say the high-tech, computer jobs:' answers Chandler...
...Most conscripts would want to make their time pass as quickly, and be as worthwhile, as possible...
...And that's certainly what most of the radio and television ads emphasize: eager fighter.pilots double-checking their electronic instrument panels before slipping the surly bonds of earth...
...One is the fear that superior officers will punish them for their candor...
...Almost 10 percent of enlisted personnel are now women...
...In March 1983 the Pentagon actually boasted to Congress that of the Army's noncommissioned officers in combat arms, "only" 60 percent were now drawn from "below-average" categories of intelligence...
...It's quite another to have able, competent security guards who enlisted because they really wanted to work with airplanes...
...Indeed, officers in today's Air Force seem hardpressedto find...
...Senior enlisted personnel now make six times what those of the same rank made in 1964, and officers make almost five times as much...
...A closer look at what that service's 476,000 enlisted personnel actually do reveals that, however much aspiring recruits may strive to "Aim High:' most end up landing in some surprising—and disappointing—places...
...we developed some of the most proficient ping-pong players in the state of Texas...
...The Air Force's own figures tell the story...
...Air Force enlisted personnel in the middle ranks reported that they worked 30 to 32 regular hours a week...
...aYouth Tracking Survey conducted by the military recently found that 37 percent of potential recruits thought beginning pay was less than $75.a month...
...The rest of the month is divided among flight simulators, classroom instruction, and other duty...
...Taylor recalls one Air Force colonel he worked with in the Pentagon who was dubbed "Handball Harp...
...Something called "avionics" is the largest high-tech "career field" in the Air Force, employing 30,000 enlisted personnel...
...Indeed, behind the appearance of seemingly purposeful activity at a typical Air Force base, former and current airmen attest to a pace of work that's considerably less than vigorous...
...In between, I tried to keep busy:' he recalls...
...Everyone fought the change at first, even me, but it's made a world of difference:' says a chief master sergeant who now supervises a squadron of F-15 fighters...
...That includes tank commanders, soldiers and NCOs in rifle squads, artillery gunners, first lieutenants who lead the assaults on the beaches...
...he'd come back all tired and flushed and red in the face and fall asleep in meetings...
...There are usually 24 planes in a squadron, and three squadrons to a wing...
...Another former airman recalls how he was fortunate enough to land a job operating computers...
...It's tedious, excruciatingly boring work, and a lot of guys definitely think the recruiters sold them a bill of goods!' Moskos adds, "So much for aiming high!' Hush money It's one thing to have able, competent people joining the Air Force because their childhood dream was to get a chance to stand watch over highly sophisticated weapons...
...And the hardest jobs to get...
...And since quality matters far more in a war than in peace, it's vital that the best fighters be placed where they can make a difference—not behind a Xerox machine, photocopying the previous day's casualty reports...
...The people at headquarters know that—after all, they make sure the manuals for these jobs are written so fifth graders can understand them !' The not-so-surprising result is that many airmen find themselves performing work that's somewhat different than what they expected when they first walked into a recruiter's office...
...It's not exactly what a Wall Street lawyer would expect, but it's an enticing enough package that last year, more than 70 percent of all first-term airmen reenlisted, far more than the Air Force had planned for...
...Well, it's the Air Force's Big Lie...
...In 1958, - a more representative peacetime year, the Air force had 858,000 people in uniform, 27,000 aircraft--and 418 generals, or one per 64 planes...
...But once the threat subsides, many of the ostensibly unnecessary slots linger on...
...Volunteering for a unit that might someday find itself faced with the necessity of charging an enemy machine gun, much less actually committing that act, is hardly a decision reflecting enlightened self-interest...
...Another 2,000 are "law enforcement specialists',' the Air Force's version of policemen...
...But most of all, it promises to give us a military that's still filled with qualified, highly trained, and patriotic men and women—but a military that, when put to the test of war, stands a much greater chance of meeting it...
...He says, "From 11 to 2 every day he'd be down on the court...
...It has come under heavy criticism recently for a variety of sins, including a nagging propensity to spend its money on new airplanes while old ones are rendered idle because too few spare parts were ordered...
...But one conclusion is fairly obvious: many of the jobs so invitingly portrayed in the commercials are about as rare as those $99 color television sets...
...It perhaps is best exemplified by the Air Force's preference for breaking down its jobs into an almost maddening number of specialties...
...Jadick says...
...Marsh, the fourstar general who commands AFSC, generously conceded that them had been a problem...
...But with 'only 7,200 planes, the main complaint of pilots seems to be-having toolittletime-to fly...
...He is not asked to perform guard duty—that's now a career field—nor is he subjected to that traditional bane of the serviceman who's low on the totem pole: kitchen police...
...and like many union members and civil servants, airmen observe United Nations Day on the fourth Monday in October...
...The most-obvious advantage of a draft is, of course, the savings that will result from not having to pay new recruits such high wages...
...The reluctance of the chief master sergeant to speak for the record is not unusual...
...And as one Air Force colonel whose command has been subjected to such studies observes, "No one ever seemed to ask the fundamental questions, like `Should your organization be doing this work at all?' " The need for "surge" capacity to meet a sudden threat has some plausibility, but if it applies to of all the services, it applies to the Air Force least...
...But keeping busy is hardly the same as doing useful work...
...Eugene Behr, a technical sergeant in charge of a B-52 jet engine testing cell at Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, has been in the Air Force for 16 years...
...Conscripts would be given room and board and paid .a reasonable sum, say $200 a month, for expenses...
...I'm paid well, and I want to put in my 20 years and retire...
...What did they do with their large blocks of free time...
...From the beginning of his service, the airman also gets used to regular working hours...
...We break the jobs down into much larger units:' says Gal, "and it's not unusual for people to put in 16-hour days if they're needed ." But most important for the nation's defense in a time of emergency, a draft will allow the military to assign people based on its own needs, rather than individual preferences...
...only a few are trained to fix the bad ones...
...Today Were are 12,500 lieutenant colonels, helping to manage a force -that has one-fourth the, number of-peo/Ae and one-tenth the number of Planes...
...The "right" amount of quality still seems to be as much as the Air Force can get...
...As you start to leave, however, he grabs you by the arm and whispers, "But I've got an even better bargain over here...
...But then there's comp time...
...several airmen assembled around a computer print-out...
...K-P, which has never been widespread in the Air Force, has vanished, save for an occasional stint during the six weeks of basic training that every airman receives...
...Intelligence obviously isn't an automatic guide to performance in battle, but by and large, Israel has found that the higher the scores, the better the performance under fire...
...But lekiffbrce .standards, the job now requires the expertise diatwo, star general...
...that would take at least three weeks to find, if it's even in our computers:' Chandler says...
...The Air Force divides its work into more than 350 specialties...
...Maintenance responsibility was elevated to the wing level...
...Who should be put in the rifle platoons and tank battalions...
...Oh—and those emergency notification cards...
...Upwards of 20 percent of the people at these bases are security guards:' he says...
...Sometimes my colleagues and I shake our heads and say, 'Boy, we're lucky we got in when we did, because we couldn't if we applied today' " Common sense suggests there's a danger in too much quality...
...About 800 are "personnel specialists ." What do they do...
...But only eight of the 20 largest career areas for new recruits have more than a passing connection to these vocations...
...But at least the decisions would be made with the needs of the entire force in mind...
...That shouldn't be surprising with an all volunteer force...
...At the squadron level, a major typically commanded maintenance operations...
...The advertisements will no doubt get slicker, and the pay and benefits will increase accordingly, both to keep people in, and then to keep them quiet...
...In a recent interview with Newsday, Robert 1...
...besides, they always said, 'Physical training is part of the Air Force's mission.' " Quality for the Taking Yet wasting money is not the biggest expense of luring people into the Air Force under misleading pretenses, and then giving them too little to do...
...Civilian ranks at all levels would contain people who knew what military life was really like...
...The day the Air Force unilaterally lowers its standards, or reduces pay and benefits to deliberately steer people to the Army or the Marines, will be the day its top brass abandons the MX missile and concedes that the Navy's submarine force is a better nuclear deterrent...
...In 1945, for example, the Air , Force had 2..4 million men, 72,000 planes, and: 298 generals...
...The explanation that Air Force officials prefer is that their increasingly complex and sophisticated mission requires officers of greater experience and rank...
...But right before the Vietnam war, the system was centralized for "greater efficiency...
...The Air Force has a well-deserved reputation of offering the most comfortable billets in the military: most of the work is indoors, 80 percent of the jobs are in the continental United States, and even those who make the Air Force a career rarely spend more than a year separated from their family...
...This is a definite improvement over previous years;' testified Assistant Secretary of Defense Lawrence Korb...
...I've got a wife, three kids, and a mortgage,' observes one master sergeant...
...Then there are the benefits available to all military personnel...
...Maintenance people could react faster...
...In a conventional war—the kind of war we should expect and be prepared for because it's the only kind we've ever fought—the most important jobs are on the front lines...
...that requires an electronics technician to be summoned to the scene...
...Competition for many electronics specialties—and only 15 percent of the Air Force's jobs are so classified—is so keen that scoring in the 80th percentile on-the Air Force's aptitude and vocational test is almost a prerequisite...
...The Air Force gave Fendley nine months of training in how to maintain and repair the simulators...
...says one former pilot, who happens to have been one...
...The commercials and the relative comforts of Air Force life have proved too alluring...
...The Making of Make-Work Why does the Air Force have too little work for too many people...
...For the whole military, savings in pay and benefits alone would be several billion dollars a year, money that could be better used for necessary spare parts and weapons...
...Here it's worth taking a look at the personnel policies of what is arguably the best trained and effective military of its size in the world: Israel's...
...The vast majority of "avionics specialists" do little more than detect a malfunctioning black box and replace it with a good one...
...But actually, it just increased the number of people!' Why...
...Gone would be the commercials, misleading and otherwise, and diminished would be the tendency to use people badly...
...The real damage that's done lies in compromising the excellence of our entire military force, in a manner that at first glance seems quite paradoxical...
...bored enlisted men who harbor deep resentments about being steered into a dull job can create morale problems for the entire unit...
...It is hardly surprising the Air Force's own studies justify its present use of people and its future needs...
...The draft addresses all these problems, as well as reestablishes the principle that the defense of the country is something that should be equally shared among all classes of citizens...
...Fifteen minutes later you're the proud owner of a combination microwave oven/automatic dishwasher that you're convinced really is a steal at just $899...
...To put it somewhat crudely, the Air Force manages to maintain silence among most of its enlisted men with a simple strategy: bribing...
...today, onegeneratis responsible for an average of 21 aircraft • The bloatis even worse in the less,noticedrniddle ranks...
...There's a price to be paid for managerial bloat...
...AnT45 fighter pilot typically shares his plane with two or three others, with each flying about 15 hours every month...
...This has meant a preference for the Air Force in general, and noncombat and high-technology jobs in particular...
...Yet the very lodestar of the All Volunteer Force is just that, a message that starts with the recruiting ads themselves, from "Aim High;' to the Army's "Be All You Can Be'.' Volunteers are encouraged to choose the career field they want, and the training they think will do them the most good later in life...
...I spend most of my time typing and filing forms...
...First, they deny the charge, pointing to their own manpower studies that show the Air Force needs 90,000 additional people by 1988...
...Only 3,000 of last year's 65,000 enlistees became jet engine mechanics or "maintenance specialists" for the Air Force's fleet of bombers and tactical fighters...
...Of last year's Air Force enlistees, 50 percent—compared to only 35 percent of the rest of the population— scored in the two highest categories, I and II...
...I could have learned how to do this in a secretarial school!' Charles Moskos, a sociologist from Northwestern University whose specialty is enlisted men in the All-Volunteer Force, recently returned from a visit to several Strategic Air Command bases in North Dakota...
...Most people don't deal with that, and even in the hightech jobs you're not really trained, you're programmed like robots...
...Those who make the Air Force a career are provided with additional reasons for not complaining...
...The firing system on the F-15 fighter, for example, is tended by hydraulic, radar, and electronics specialists...
...Few feel inclined to protest obvious signs of waste, much less ones that make their own jobs easier...
...And many of those jobs—in the tradition of most cheap appliances—aren't what they're cracked up to be...
...Those who decide to remain in the military can expect to make about $30,000 by the time they're eligible for early retirement after 20 years, an option most exercise—the average age of retiring enlisted personnel is 39 years...
...The number of generals, has since dropped to about 340, but the -number: of planes has plummeted to 7,200...
...the number of Air Force personnel is supposedly tied to the number of planes, many of which presumably would be lost in the early days of an all-out war...
...That solution is the reinstitution of a fair and equitable peacetime draft...
...Air Force officials respond to suggestions of make-work and featherbedding in several ways...
...As G. Thomas Sicilia, the Pentagon's director of Accessions Policy, remarks, "All the services tend to ask for x percent quality, and when you ask why, they just say it's because they had x-minus 1 percent last year:' Even so, it would obviously be unrealistic—if not self-defeating—to ask the Air Force to compromise its search for excellence in its recruiting efforts...
...It's just a lazy, peaceful day type of thing...
...It now goes by the more refined title of "mess attendant duty...
...But it was dangerous to criticize him...
...The themes are unmistakable: excitement, living on the cutting edge of technology, learning a highly marketable skill...
...Having too little real work to divide among too many talented people is one of the modern Air Force's most vexing problems...
...Another way to keep restless officers busy is,tiisend.thent to school...
...But as a simulator instructor he wasn't allowed to do such work...
...Sid Taylor, now research director for the National Taxpayers Union, retired from a civil service job with the Air Force...
...there are good reasons enlisted men in uniform or those lobbying on their behalf don't speak out much about the widespread misuse of people's time...
...The younger noncommissioned officers really have this attitude of 'I'm trained in electronics...
...And after the war...
...A general has an almost pathological urge to command...
...They make sure they're in the folder, too...
...Most personnel have access to a commissary, where they can buy groceries, . appliances, and other goods at discounts of at least 25 percent...
...The working conditions provide further consolation...
...One obvious result is the glorification of the trivial -and4he'pnrsuit of new ways to pass the time...
...Can you imagine Chuck Yeager having to be a snack bar officer...
...In 1958, for*ample, the commander of the Air "Force Accounting and Finance Center in Denver was a colonel...
...something to commarict'b.esides.iieli other...
...he worked in the Strategic Air Command's underground complex at Cheyenne Mountain, spending 15 minutes at the beginning and end of each day checking to see if the computer program was functioning properly...
...Many jobs such as guard duty, food service, fire protection, and runway repairs could be easily shared among conscripts...
...If the plane takes off on time, great...
...Yet that's exactly why the Air Force's commercials, award-winning or not, are so disturbing...
...I've never heard one guy complain about working too many hours:' he says...
...As a division manager for Search and Recruit International, a Virginia firm that specializes in finding former enlisted men jobs with high-tech companies, Kevin Beale has quizzed hundreds of former airmen about their work during their term of service...
...modern Air Force:' explains Captain Maryellen Jadick, who's in charge of Air Force advertising for an area that includes Washington, D.C., Northern Virginia, and most of the states of Maryland and Delaware...
...But the analogy to the MX is an apt one...
...Referring recently to the new generation of Air Force planes, Roberts enthused, "They're straight-forward, more honest to fix, and require less technical skill!' Less technical skill...
...The Draft's The Thing This problem will continue as long as the services compete against one another for available recruits, and as long as one of the main inducements to service is giving those who score highest on tests the most choice in selecting a career field...
...This is exactly why the Air Force's surplus of high-quality people should be of such concern...
...By the end of his first four-year term, when the airman is -typically 23 years old and a sergeant, his annual compensation will exceed $15,000, including the value ofthis housing and subsistence allowances...
...But we no longer make assignments on that basis...
...In between, you did a lot of waiting around...
...One former maintenance officer who's still in the Air Force recalls how for repair of a malfunctioning radio he had to rely on five separate departments: a crew chief to unbolt a few panels, a team of two or three to pull the seat, a crew of electricians to disconnect the radio, a crew to transport it to the repair shop, and another to fix it...
...The result is quicker, more efficient maintenance, he says...
...Take aircraft maintenance...
...He adds, "The boredom was just unbelievable most days...
...A four-hour job that ended up taking four days seemed to be the rule, not the exception ." It's also a system designed to frustrate the conscientious employee...
...Experienced shoppers might detect something familiar in the Air Force's recruiting pitch—a tactic the Better Business Bureau refers to as "bait and switch ." In the retail trade, it works like this: Lefty's House of Discount Appliances advertises a fabulous special—say, a 25-inch color television for just $99...
...The whole idea was to reduce the number of people:' explains a lieutenant colonel who once commanded a maintenance unit...
...They handle the paperwork for all the transfers, make sure the military record is complete,' explains Charles Chandler, the public affairs director for the Air Force's recruiting division...
...The sin of misleading is further compounded, however, by using people unproductively once they're in their assigned career areas...
...Welcome to the modern Air Force, where more enlisted men provide fire protection and sanitation services than maintain and repair computers, where more serve as "food services specialists" than maintain nuclear missiles, and where the Security Police Academy is, according to a spokesman, "the largest institution of its kind in the free world!' One lieutenant colonel in the Air Force describes it this way: "All those recruiting ads, with the planes and the high tech...
...They're beautiful spots...
...The Navy, for example, puts its people into about 150 different specialties, assigning them to work on its array of weapons—ships, submarines, carrier-based fighters, reconnaissance planes, helicopters, and nuclear missiles...
...But aside from money, having too many people often compromises the Air Force's ability to effectively perform its most basic functions...
...So they created a lot of new slots:' the lieutenant colonel explains...
...And they know how to work the system—they may work overtime three days so they can get a four-day weekend ." A survey of 54,000 military personnel conducted in 1978 and 1979 by the Rand Corporation confirms this...
...As one security guard at a SAC base in North Dakota puts it, "The job's lousy, but I have to admit I'm probably overpaid...
...If the nation must persuade young men and women to serve in uniform, it's only right that it neither mislead them about the work they'll do, nor waste their talents once they've enlisted...
...But a much better explanation lies in the deep-seated instinct of military bureaucrats to protect and justify existing postions...
...By definition, those who decide they want to stay in the military are generally satisfied with it...
...The result is that those people whom the military considers of highest quality gravitate to the jobs that are interesting, comfortable, or both...
...area...
...In 1945 there were just 7,225 lieutenant colonels, a rank'most officers reach byretireinent...
...Another -strategy is assigning too many people to-one Fo example, only officers can becornePilots, arid only 20;000 of the Air Force's 100,000 hold this job...
...Almost 8 percent of the technical sergeants—a rank usually attained by the tenth year of service— said their moonlighting consumed more than 20 hours a week...
...According to Chandler, most potential recruits aren't interested in these jobs...
...Recruiting will become much more difficult in the years ahead—the traditional recruiting pool of 18-year-olds will decrease by 20 percent in the next decade—and the pressure will only intensify among the services to try to maintain the quality they're now enjoying...
...Rather than wanting make-work jobs, they'll want to be given enough broad responsibility that the skills they acquire will be truly useful once they leave...
...There's a full month's paid vacation every year in addition to regular national holidays...
...In fact, I got the impression that a lot of them had about four hours of real work a day...
...It was craft unionism run amok:' he recalled...
...There is only one way to redress the problem that is so graphically illustrated by the Air Force's "success" in attracting quality people, and its tendency to then misuse and squander their talents...
...But only TAC has made the change...
...How much could I expect to get on the outside for doing .this kind of work...
...An "administrative specialist" at Bolling Air Force Base in Washington, D.C., recalls, "I wanted to work on computers, but they told me my real aptitude was in administrative work...
...But the luck ended there...
...42 percent of all Air Force officers mow have master's degress or Ph:D:s...
...During an emergency, such as a war, the number of slots expands to meet the perceived threat...
...Where the Navy typically assigns one generalist to repair several different types of weapons, the Air Force will assign several specialists to one weapon system...
...at the wing level, lieutenant colonels, then colonels, began moving into the position...
...He was building five a month, so the Air Force said he was 100 percent efficient:' Taylor says...
...The first day an enlistee joins the Air Force, his pay is more than seven times that—$573 a month to be exact, which doesn't include free room and board, or generous taxfree allowances for food and housing if he lives off-base...
...a young black man in headphones peering intently at a radar screen...
...to attract high-quality people—Air Force fighter pilots actually being a good example—in general, the military has found that it must pay large bonuses—again, bribes really—to convince people to take those jobs that would be most critical in a war...
...It's also pointed out that Air Force personnel are subject to special requirements usually not applicable to civilians, such as being on alert 24 hours a day, having little choice but to work where and when the boss orders, and getting no additional pay for overtime...
...But if memos are circulating inside the Pentagon, or studies being conducted to determine if the Air Force now has too much of a good thing, they've yet to be made public...
...For the Marines, the figure was "only" 66 percent...
...if the Soviets were to launch a full-fledged assault on Western Europe, it would be better to have too many people ready to respond than too few...
...They also know not to complain about the lessthandiligent working habits of superiors...
...But the security guard is usually not allowed to reset it...
...They went right back to wing maintenance so the officers could get their old jobs back" To be fair, the Tactical Air Command—recently restored some of the lost authority to squadrons, largely to remedy its abysmal record of keeping planes combat-ready...
...the Strategic Air Command and the Military Airlift Command—which consist largely of B-52 bombers and cargo planes, respectively—have kept the old system intact...
...They've won all kinds of awards...
...Each now has someone occupying it, and those of lower rank know that promotions come faster with more slots...
...Good organizations always put a priority on getting the best people...
...One manpower study he worked on turned up an enlisted man assigned the task of building five birdhouses a month for "morale purposes...
...We wanted a new emphasis on the increased technology aspect of the...
...in the same period, the cost of living has tripled...
...A 27-year-old captain typically earns the equivalent of about $25,000 a year in pay and tax-free allowances...
...During the 1950s, responsibility for maintaining airplanes rested largely with the enlisted crew chief on the squadron level...
...But did he suggest punishing or replacing those procurement officers who hadn't done their job...
...All Israeli officers are selected from the enlisted ranks, and the idea of new recruits selecting a "career field" is completely foreign...
...It would be much harder for the military to keep its misuse of personnel hidden from the public, silently acknowledged but unpublicized among well-paid careerists...
...The Air Force would have to justify why it needed a Category II recruit as a radio operator more than the Army needed him as a rifleman...
...If married, an additional $1,000 in housing allowance is provided, regardless of whether or not the spouse works...
...just as nuclear policy should be based on overall strategic needs, so should the use of able, competent people be based on the needs of the entire military...
...How pronounced is • this tendency...
...I don't do nuts and bolts ' " The result, Behr says with annoyance, "is to slow things down to a 'getalong' pace—like a trot on a horse...
...I remember going through a backgammon phase when I just couldn't read another magazine?' Most enlisted men have more to do all day than thumb through magazines...
...as Colonel Reuven Gal, one of the Israeli military's chief psychologists, observes, "It's now the reverse here in America...
...About 20 percent of them admitted they held second jobs...
...One result of this system is to make a job that's dull even more so...
...One of the most persistent myths about the modern military is that its members are paid starvation 'wages...
...The problem;' Marsh noted soberly, was "going to take more resources on our part—more people, really" —RK...
...It was terrible...
...Yet, to an alarming extent, that's exactly where far too many of them are right now...
...On the maintenance line, this specialization often results in too many people taking too long to do a given job...
...Sure there are guys who work the flight line for 12 hours a day...
...a 39-year-old lieutenant colonel, more than $45,000...
...Since- private employers are usually interested only in those ex-enlisted men with the latter skill, the typical avionics specialist will find the words of Major General Albert G. Roberts, commander of logistics for the Tactical Air Command, somewhat disheartening...
...As "security specialists" they keep watch over everything from B-52 bombers to the clubhouse at the base golf course...
...That's very important...
...In addition to these jobs—the top four "career areas" for new enlistees in fiscal year 1983—the Air Force turned 1,200 recruits into "fire protection specialists:' more than 1,000 into "vehicle operators:' and 840 into "food service specialists...
...But most important, Israel deliberately assigns those who score highest on its battery of intelligence and leadership tests to combat specialties...
...This is what happens when you regard military service as an occupation!' Gal adds, "The problem is, what will motivate the soldier to fight when it comes to going into combat...
...Quality control officers, with enlisted men under them, safety officers—all these people looking over someone's shoulder at the few doing the work!' During the Vietnam war, when the Air Force had to get serious about keeping its combat planes in good repair, the Air Force reverted to its old system...
...Of last year's•65,000 new recruits, 7,000 are now, well, guarding things...
...they prefer "high tech, electronics, working with airplanes...
...He recalls how he sometimes worked a sixhour day, which "absolutely staggered" the career people in his midst...
Vol. 16 • February 1984 • No. 1
