The Air Force is in a hurt.

Apparently waay too many officers. Too many airmen. Aging equipment. Money woes. And those damn'd dirty greedy grasping geezers (retirees) are killing TRICARE (a self-inflicted wound by the Services, two Administrations and five Congresses)

A comment I posted over at Milblogs:

Heh. They *all* look young now.

When you realize the Lieutenants weren't *born* when you were commissioned... sigh.

But since young Noonan is a Zoomie, putatively in an "armed service" one wonders how he'll defend this, from an internal AF document running around the .mil mail circuit:

--M-16 training weapon- a real weapon (but modified not to fire) [John of Argghhh notes: Interesting use of the words "real weapon" in conjunction with the phrase "but modified not to fire." A more accurate description would be "formerly a real weapon that has been modified not to fire," which begs the question, why not just buy Airsoft and be done with it?] --Due to safety—cannot have weapons around the recruits -[John of Argghhh! snarks: Really? And you wonder why you get the “Armed” service jokes?]

--No one is required to guard the weapons [John of Argghhh snarks: Can't have that - securing weapons would be... um, well, er, *military* and might hurt recruiting?]

--Weapons [sic] is a 100% replica of original M-16 & field stripes [sic] the same [John of Argghhh snarks: But wait! I thought it was a "a real weapon (but modified not to fire)" and not a replica? Snerk snerk snerk.]

In their defense, Chief Murray *did* observe...

--Training weapons are real but they do not fire ?

At least one guy gets it.

Yep, that's a real live excerpt from a real live document about a real live meeting of Senior Air Force Leaders. I sent it to Dusty. We've both hacked at it. A perfect example of why bloggers aren't all that popular - especially among weak leaders (a status I don't ascribe to the ones named in the document - I don't know them, though Dusty does) I'm referring to weak leaders whose impulse when things like this show up is to hunt for a scapegoat.

This is a memo from a meeting of senior AF leaders on the state of the Air Force. There are legitimate concerns in here.

There is also evidence of *why* there are concerns in here, as revealed by what the senior leaders think is important, and how they see it.

Mind you, all 5 of the Armed Services have equivalent documents, with their own unique organizational pathologies and blind-spots.

This one just got out into the wild. Any of us field grade-equivalent milbloggers (that would include Hook, 74, and the other senior enlisted guys) could savage any service’s equivalent document. Why? Because most of us moved to blog didn’t/don’t drink the Kool-Aid – which is why we blog and don’t have E-Ring offices at the Pentagon. The path to stars, outside of war, rarely includes being a smart-ass who points out the state of dishabille the Emperor is in. It’s cute in kids (you’re safe for a while, Noonan) but the big guys find it wearisome in putative adults.

And the ‘kids’ would savage them in entirely different ways - showing just how much Kool-Aid we more senior guys actually *have* drunk…

If you'd like to read the Doc with Comments (pdf reader req'd) -

Click here..

Not surprisingly, my source for this was an Army source. But before I edited it out of the doc properties - it came from AF sources. Probably guys who think like us, but are smart enough to not blog.

At least not until that first retiree paycheck hits.