The Air Force is severely undermanned. Is there a proposal on how to fix it?

SrA (Join to see), if you think the Air Force has a monopoly on doing dumb stuff like that, you'd be wrong. Some genius (I know which one, but it doesn't matter)had the brilliant idea that we didn't need as much Civil Affairs people in the Horn of Africa. So we scaled back from about 120 to 32 personnel. Then they wondered why we scaled back our OPTEMPO. My company ended up doing about half the time on our mission on our own. It didn't take long for the Task Force to send up a WTH tasker to generate another 30 personnel. It didn't help me, and we did a lot with what we had, but we were running hard the whole time.

Top, for an Army guy, you understand the AF pretty well. They are heavily invested in very expensive programs (F-35 and the like) and don't have the budget to pay for everything they want. Personnel are very expensive, so they save money by cutting folks.

The CSAF and his minnions have been robbing peter to pay paul for several years now because they need money to fund their fancy new toy - the F-35. They have been quietly stripping money away from practically ever budget line so they can continue to fund that worthless POS plane. They tried to retire the A-10, but there was such an uproar over that that they had to change their minds. Maybe someone reminded them of the GOLDEN BB rule. The A-10 can take a lot of damage from ground fire and still return to base, but all it takes in ONE bullet hitting the right spot by accident on the F-35 and it will go down in flames.

Hey - you can't stop buying aircraft - look how many people will be out of work at companies like Lockheed, General Dynamics, etc... lets scale back military personnel to keep them in business.

True statement.

Col. if I'm not mistaken I think the Air Force has put in a rule that states if you pass everything but the waist measurement it would be exempted but I think that was coming in as I was going out of active duty I could be wrong. We need a PTL perspective on that one I know I used to make fun of weekend warriors and their PT scores until I became one and realized how hard it is to maintain yourself for the PT test and yet still work rotating shifts sometimes you have to go to the other side before you can really understand things and I wish some of these active duty folks would see that many of their expensive programs such as ALS, NCO, SNCO academy in the end just don't matter to a hill of beans when they leave the service. But the one program that to me was awesome and I encourage everyone whether your getting out or not to go to is an Air Force TAPS class where you learn about your benefits and hone your job seeking skills I had one interview to work in a hospital after that class and not only did I get the job they wanted to put me in a specialist position which meant better pay and more of a say in how things were done. Remember folks the military will not be there forever and many in active duty who have done 20 years will be vastly behind those of us who have been in the private sector longer. TSgt. Bryant is right about 6 years ago I noticed the attitude shift within the military and didn't really care for it wasn't the military I had joined anymore where you would give your lives for each other I still have friends from when I first came in that I would have taken a bullet or thrown myself on a grenade for but those days have come and gone now everyone likes to cut your throat and the Air Force went from being a place where you told your troops we are not a one mistake Air Force but then we became that and now its a no mistake Air Force just your expendable, now we have a few as you can see on here that refuse to believe anything is wrong but I can tell you right now if I was the SECAF I would be on here everyday getting ideas because you obviously can't talk to everyone but you can definitely get a feel for the pulse of the issues and ideas in resolving them.

I am a Navy guy and in the 70's the Navy like everyone had money issues. re-enlistment were dismal and the pay terrible. Boom, in came Reagan. All the services had the money to do what they needed to make the US Military the best of the best. Ships did not get underway at the pier anymore, we actually went to sea spending those tax dollars. Same problem now. It is the President and the Congress that is keeping our military down. The difference now is that the President has destroyed the military from the Admirals and generals from the top with destroying readiness. Top Commanders have been fired or chased out of the Military by Obama and his top advisers. Trust of the commanders is nill by these civilian hires by Obama. As with socialism which this administration has shown, the money goes to social programs and enlarging of the government to promote and execute those social programs. Now to turn the tide the military not only needs the money, the military has to persuade Congress and hope the U.S. elects an President who like Reagan changes the tide. On top of that the Military needs new leaders in uniform who have not been undermined by the civilian leadership.

Very true Col. I have read numerous studies which state body appearance does not necessarily coincide physical condition. I knew guys in my previous unit that could max out the sit-ups and push-ups, and do well in the run, but exceeded the waist measurements.