What's The Problem With The Air Force Culture?

It irritates me to have a MAJ in the Army post a provocative headline about the Air Force and then sit back watch the Airmen try to critique themselves based on critiques in previous posts he's already read. I'm critiquing the fact that the Air Force has a robust culture of critiquing itself? That seems self-evident.

We are great at what we do. Not just good, stellar. But that's no knock on the Army, I've deployed with them, they are excellent at what they do, God Bless them. Same for our Navy and Marine brothers and sisters. All the Airmen who responded have some excellent points about Air Force culture, but they are rising above the initial post in both tone and substance. Nice work.

Are Airmen more vocal about what they want to improve, perhaps yes, and that is a function of our culture. But there is nothing "wrong" with us. Soldier on brother.

I can sum it up in two words: "political correctness". The Air Force isn't the only service marching to that drum beat though. I saw plenty in the Army too.

First off I'm Navy and I will tell you that the Commanding Officer of a ship at sea is as close to a monarch as possible. During my time the CO of The Enterprise could put you in the brig for 30 days and on bread and water for 15 and there was NO appeal. I was and NCO and I have seen other discussions on here about saluting jr officers. I guess it was different in my day. ALL Officers got a salute and we took pride in our salute. So much so I wasn't above questioning an officer that didn't put as much effort in returning the salute as I did in giving it. I deserved the same effort I made.

In my humble yet professional opinion, I think the culture in the USAF is experiencing a decline in promoting unit cohesion, pride and camaraderie due to many factors.

My professional opinion is based on 24 years of service (1990-2015) with 13 of them overseas. My experience is based on nine assignments and four deployments. I have had three Joint assignments with two on the Joint Staff. I have been deployed with JSOC and SOCOM and worked primarily with Soldiers during those deployments.

Leadership: There seems to be more emphasis on self-promotion than mentorship. NCO's should concentrate more on training their subordinates, holding them to standard, and promoting a sense of pride.

Evaluations/Feedback Process and Boards: Places more emphasis on self glory rather than team accomplishment. Feedbacks are not properly monitored across the service and members often go an entire rating period without one. Some can even go years without a proper feedback. Evaluations are inflated because promotion points can stack up. Evaluations are often written by the member. I know of many who started writing their EPRs as TSgt. Many supervisors do not know how to write an EPR which hurts their subordinates in comparison to having a supervisor who can write very well or better yet, engaged in the subordinates career.

PT Standards: Unit PT should be the standard across the board. NCOs should work with their subordinates who struggle. Officer's should promote and lead the NCOs efforts. There should never be a surprise. And we should never let an Airman out-to-dry because they failed a PT test.

Deployments: We deploy our members in 1's and 2's. We take Airman from one unit and scatter them across the AOR at various locations. Although there is a great benefit in this by gaining experience and learning from new sources, it leaves little support when the member returns home to a unit and has few people who understand what they experienced because they weren't there too.

Unit Pride: When I came into the AF in 1990, I experienced unit cohesion via team sports, unit activities, unit field trips and unit pride. It was unheard of to participate on a different unit's team because they had better athletes. It was expected to go to events and cheer for your unit. It was expected to show up...at picnics, unit holiday parties, AF ball, promotion and award ceremonies. I remember a time when my fellow Airmen were proud to wear their unit patch or unit cover or unit T-shirt.

The USAF is still the best in the world and the Airmen are still highly motivated and proud to serve. Yet, I am sure more than half would say they joined to be part of a team. Being part of the AF team is one thing....but being part of a unit team can energize the Airman and promote unit cohesion. When we see unit pride and unit cohesion, we see respect as a fighting force, for what we bring to the Joint table and for being dedicated to protecting the country just as a Soldier, Marine or Sailor is.

Thank you for this question.

Although I was only a junior enlisted Airman, I do still have a brother in active duty who is a Squadron Commander with a line number for Lt. Col.

We chatted last week about the IG inspection Teams and how they have changed their approach to inspections. I found their new approach encouraging and positive.

When I was active duty (91-95) I was Stationed at Malmstrom AFB as a Flight Security Controller and was responsible for controlling entry and access to our Minuteman II priority A resources among other duties related to that unit.

Nuclear Surety was one of the many policies applied and was extremely stringent with regards to performance of duty and compliance with established procedures. When the IG came to visit, our wing had already been under 6 months of additional training in preparation for the inspection. This created an atmosphere of low morale because the Officers at the Wing and Group levels flatly stated that they expected the highest performance rating for the IG team.

In essence, The Colonel wanted a perfect rating "or else". This obviously made our jobs unnecessarily more difficult and we troops felt demeaned for having to play a role in "the dog and pony show".

From the Squadron Commander level and up, there was a social disconnect, as we did not feel supported by them even though our efforts were doubled and we actually did achieve a Best In Air Force award for two consecutive years.

That Top Performance rating only solidified the old approach and had adverse effects on all the troops and their families. We felt that it was not mission critical, nor did it contribute to the accomplishment of our mission statement. Quite the opposite, in fact.

Today, the IG is almost invisible. They arrive without notice, setup an operational space of about 600 square feet, and focus primarily on the leadership personnel. They would look further into an organization's operations if they saw a flag at the upper level. This had a very positive effect on morale. If your unit was doing a good job, you were left alone.

Another aspect that you may find pertinent is that the funding has been diminished to the point of requiring personnel to give of themselves even more than what is required in their mission. I would consider this to be more the primary concern for the Air Force over the topic of IG and inspections.

I have been separated for almost 20 years now, but during my enlistment the Air Force we had Total Quality Management policies and procedures across the entire branch. At that time, it was the only branch using said policy, I don't know about present day operations.

TQM was the only way that we could "Do more with less" by focusing on procedurally based orientation instead of outcome based approach. Quality Awareness was mandatory, and for good reason, "It works, and you need it".

Continuous Improvement Process policies allowed the person who owns the process the ability to change it, (within the parameters of course) and meant that our doctrine was a living one. Improvements were rewarded and subsequently standardized.

On a separate note, I has a friend who is a retired MSgt in the same field of Security. Our discussions reveal that "the troops feel overly entitled and don't have the same dedication to service and duty" that was present 20 years ago. I would find this example equivalent to what "Millennials" represent today, and I think it is truly disconcerting.

I don't know if this feedback was helpful to you, but I hope that our Active Duty leaders may find value for their own units.

Thank you for your service.

I have served in Navy and Army National Guard, and was a civilian contractor to the Air Force at Thule AB.

While at Thule I worked closely with those stationed there with the Air Force. I was shocked to witness fraternization between Officers and Enlisted in such a blatant manner. Calling each other by first names instead of by rank, some dating one another, etc. I never saw or heard of any of that while on Active Duty with either branch I served in.

Guess the excuse was that being stationed in Thule allowed for such indiscretions. I hope its not that way at other Air Force bases.

Sir, good evening I sent a copy of fake officer video to my LINKEDIN professional with CSM, LTC, and BGs along with a governor and asked with that type clout within my group, I can not see why we can not get a handle on this growing problem, or am I missing are Larger point of View?

It is all about your mission. With that you have different Training and Attitudes An Airman that works the Flightline on jets will be more laid back than our Para Rescue brothers. Again, different mission. An Army Infantryman could appear lazy when compared to the Air Force's Para Rescue. Again, different mission. If you are in a branch of Service where you are in a position of being face to face with the enemy, your training and gung-ho attitude will be a whole lot different than the Army Admin Troop. Does that make sense?

all I know is the AF has the best DFACS,gyms, barracks etc etc ..................maybe they've coddled all these undisciplined technical whizzes:)...........

I actually really appreciate this issue being brought up. MAJ (Join to see) is speaking on something many of the community members may be thinking and not saying.

My take: I don't see this as the USAF having a culture problem. Couple contributing factors I think are the reasons this perception is happening:

1. I can't speak for all the services, but I feel the Air Force tends to approach disciplinary action and corrections in a much different way. Just watching the various services and their basic training videos, you can draw some pretty quick conclusions on cultural differences in how we are "raised' in the training environment. This has a direct effect on how we enforce regulations and standards as we grow. It's not that we don't enforce them, I think we tend to approach problems like this in a different way, culturally.

2. The approach you may perceive on stolen valor cases can also be partially tied to #1 above. The majority of these also seem to be Army and Marine impersonators. This doesn't mean we don't care about stolen valor, but I do know seeing your own uniform being disgraced seems to have a much different effect on an individual.