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Enthusiast Joined: Aug 20, 2007 Posts: 46 Status: Offline

Well being a veteran of the AMS/FMS/MMS/OMS and then the AGS/CRS/EMS and then ops and log group. There are pros and cons to both. I have seen maintenance badly abused being part of ops and I have seen things work well. Two things have to happen for it to work well. The commander has to understand at least a little of maintenance and you have to have a Chief or maintenance officer that's not afraid of telling ops the truth and sticking up for maintenance. A good many, but not all, of the officers are so worried about promotion they just rolled over for ops. One things I did really notice from my perspective. Under the DCM/ Maintenance group, bad or marginally maintenance officers were moved to other places, out of maintenance. Under ops they just keep getting promoted. The real good ones don't get DPs on their performance reports since the ops commanders will, 99% of the time give all of his to the pilots. I knew a captain the had the AMU of the year, what evcer that award was called, who did not get a DP and was RIF'd. So as I said, pros and cons but to the guy and guy on the line, being part of the fighter squadron usually is the better deal.

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Bottom line: Good units have good leadership. Lousy units have lousy leadership.

There are officers and NCOs and Airmen out there who are good leaders. There are also those who are lousy. The cream tends to rise to the top, but the dregs are so hard to get rid of that we have to deal with them, too.

Is there really such a thing as lousy APRs and OERs? I think I was the only dummy in the whole USAF who got an APR lower than an 8!! I deserved what I got, too!!

Wow. Everything old is new again.

I really, really enjoyed working hand-in-hand with pilots. Camaraderie was better, and there was a greater sense of purpose and pride.

Having said that, it was an unmitigated disaster in two of the units I was in.

At the time I retired, I was the MX Superintendent of an AMU in an AMXS. What the guys on the ramp don't understand, possibly, is the ops schedulers asked us to jump through hoops on a daily basis. And on a daily basis, we politely refused.

At that point, the O-3 in Ops knew he had to get his boss to go to the AMXS/CC in order to force us to comply. I should mention that we usually just did what they asked. Our job is to provide safe aircraft in the configuration they need, after all. But asking me to defuel and reconfigure 8 aircraft on Thursday so you can fly slick and then reconfigure them back by Monday will always get me to say "No."

The AMXS/CC is getting his ticket punched by the MXG/CC, and you don't make O-6 by allowing your maintainers to get abused. So the AMXS/CC almost always sided with us and told the FS/CC to pound sand. A couple times this didn't happen, but most of the time we "won" battles of this nature.

This means that the ops scheduler now needs to convince his boss to go to the OG and have him call the MXG/CC to get us to hang some tanks or whatever. That probably isn't going to happen.

A great example of this happened when I took the AMU last year up to Vegas for FWIC support. We were asked after we got there to hang -188 pods on all our jets. None of it had been planned, coordinated, or even mentioned for the three months we'd been planning the trip, so I said no. I didn't have anyone with me who'd ever even hung the pod, let alone ops checked it. The OPSO tried playing the "I'm the detachment commander" card, but I flatly told him no pods would be hung without my OIC or commander back home giving the word. He even tried getting the 2Lt I'd brought up to order me to do it. LOL.

So I wish you guys luck with whatever happens. Purplehaze and I lived through some horror stories at Base X with this very phenomenon. Some fond memories, and some that aren't so fond.

Elite 1K Joined: Apr 26, 2004 Posts: 1215 Status: Offline

PointyHead and I do remember this very well. Sometimes you win, and others you lose. When you lose salute smartly, say yes sir, and get the job done. Bottom line is the mission does come first.

This may come as a surprise to some, but there are FS commanders out there that do understand how maintenance works. If you are lucky enough to have one, keep him....... Crazy Pilot

Purple

Purplehaze wrote:

If you are lucky enough to have one, keep him....... Crazy Pilot

Purple

Those are the ones that retire, only the bad ones stick around and get promoted beyond their capabilities.

Newbie Joined: Jul 12, 2007 Posts: 8 Status: Offline

Best thing that ever happened to me as a young Captain Ops Scheduler was that my OpsO made me go to the MOC and learn how the jets got scheduled...why we could only have a 10 front in a 24 PAA unit...how phase, the load barn, etc got scheduled. Figuring out that I wasn't the center of the known universe.

Comma, the discussion was about FS vs AMU - as observed, they both work, but the focus can be different based on the Commanders/Supervisors at all levels. I enjoyed working with Maintenance...made the first deployment to SWA a hell of a lot easier. On the downside, the Maint officers had an unlevel promotion field.

The only thing we can never do is go back to the Wing level maintenance concept...pre POMO (before '79...the McNamara/Ford Motor Co world). That was an unmitigated disaster for both Ops and Maint.

Elite 2K Joined: Oct 20, 2005 Posts: 2103 Status: Offline

AFPN wrote:

Key maintenance, logistics functions realign

by Staff Sgt. Monique Randolph
Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs

12/11/2007 - WASHINGTON (AFPN) -- The alignment of fighter and combat search and rescue aircraft maintenance units under flying squadrons was announced by the Air Force chief of the staff Dec. 7 here.

Between July and November 2008, AMUs supporting fighter and CSAR flying squadrons will realign within those squadrons, Gen. T. Michael Moseley said.

"I believe the most effective formula is to structure Air Force units by mission and not by function, and aligning maintenance units responsible for sortie generation together with the flying squadrons they support is best for our Air Force," General Moseley said. "Aircraft maintenance is a vital element of a flying squadron's mission, and the maintainers that directly support sortie generation belong in that chain of command."

Additionally, the new organizational construct will give flying squadron commanders at home station all the necessary resources and authority to execute their missions, while ensuring consistency with operations at deployed locations. Further, it will provide combatant commanders with the most complete and capable fighting squadrons possible, he said.

With this reorganization, the Air Force is given an opportunity to create a new process-aligned structure that will better support the logistics enterprise, flying wings and combatant commanders, General Moseley said.

Simultaneous with the fighter and CSAR maintenance units' realignment, maintenance groups across the Air Force will deactivate and materiel groups will stand up in their place. The materiel groups will include logistics readiness squadrons, aerial port squadrons and the remaining maintenance squadrons.

"This alignment will consolidate traditional logistics functions under a single logistics leader in the wing and position the logistics community for future transformation initiatives," General Moseley said. "It will also better prepare our maintenance and logistics officers for senior leadership positions.

"The squadron is the building block of Air Force organizational structure, and they must be organized for success," the general said. "These initiatives allow us to take advantage or process improvements, pool our resources and reorient our squadrons around our mission."

Air Force leaders are still examining organizational options for bomber, mobility, special operations and intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance platforms.

Over the next 18 months, Air Force officials will conduct analysis with major commands to determine the correct organizational solutions for the remaining platforms.

Source: http://www.af.mil/news/story.asp?id=123078892

Enthusiast Joined: Oct 28, 2006 Posts: 25 Status: Offline

This may seem like chicken sh*t whining, but now comes the fun part for all the units to go about changing ALL the signs, patches and regs required to realign everything with this "wonderful" idea of realigning the AMUs and creating a Materiel Group. This doesn't happen overnight. How many zipper suits ever had to sit thru the hours of mtgs required just to realign the local 21-101 supplmt to meet this new org concept?

And where will the $ come from to make all these changes? It won't fall from the sky (or MAJCOM or Air Staff), and will impact wing-level O&M accts. Nice.

I'd love to ask Mosely personally to justify the expense and man-hr expenditures that will be required to implement this "way forward". He's only doing this to placate deployed Ops CCs who pissed and moaned about not having their deployed AMU fall under them when they went TDY to an established base. Boo freakin' hoo.

Pathetic leadership.

Enthusiast Joined: Sep 26, 2006 Posts: 28 Status: Offline

I'll tell you what. It absolutely depends on the sq CC and the Chief of the maintenance unit to determine if the squadron will be successful. If you have a strong Chief that says "No way Jose" to the sq CC he will respect what it is we do for a living. I have seen firsthand what a yes-man does to a maintenance unit inside a fighter squadron and it is UGLY!!!

Enthusiast Joined: Feb 01, 2004 Posts: 78 Status: Offline

Ditto on that Rupp!!

Gunny

Slimm wrote:

This may seem like chicken sh*t whining, but now comes the fun part for all the units to go about changing ALL the signs, patches and regs required to realign everything with this "wonderful" idea of realigning the AMUs and creating a Materiel Group. This doesn't happen overnight. How many zipper suits ever had to sit thru the hours of mtgs required just to realign the local 21-101 supplmt to meet this new org concept?

And where will the $ come from to make all these changes? It won't fall from the sky (or MAJCOM or Air Staff), and will impact wing-level O&M accts. Nice.

I'd love to ask Mosely personally to justify the expense and man-hr expenditures that will be required to implement this "way forward". He's only doing this to placate deployed Ops CCs who pissed and moaned about not having their deployed AMU fall under them when they went TDY to an established base. Boo freakin' hoo.

Pathetic leadership.

I get you on the regulation re-writes but other than that I don't see any actual money expense involved. The re-writes are basically just editing the unit names essentially correct? I've never done it so maybe you can educate us a little more on it.

Enthusiast Joined: Oct 28, 2006 Posts: 25 Status: Offline

Re-writing the 21-101 supps are a major PITA. It took Snr Mx leadership numerous sessions of a couple hrs each to go over EVERY page to ensure that the proper organization wound up being held accountable for the newly acquired responsibilities when we did CWO. Just taking the previous AFI versions (pre-CWO) won’t cut it.

Who do you think will pay for all the patches and signage? CE (and probably Fab Flt) will be tasked to re-do all the signs on base that are affected by this, while Fab will be given all sorts of fun little “bonus” jobs to amend whatever cloth items need to be changed. So, who’s paying for that? And what about the man-hrs involved. Guess they think those shops were just sitting around with nothing better to do.

Plus, all the manpower databases now have to be re-arranged to chop all the AMU maintainers over to the OG. You would think that this would be a simple cut and pace. That is, unless you’ve ever dealt with PCIII/Mil PDS. Now don’t forget how all the Orderly Rms/CSSs have been raped of their Manpower slots (3S0 AFSCs) that would normally do this grunt work for the commander. Those slots are mostly gone now since the AF decided to have everyone do all their own personnel work on-line.

This is the kind of situation that will royally screw up EPRs, decorations, (and promotion boards), PCSs, UMDs, UMPRs, etc. The second and third order effects hit the hardest at the lowest level.

As I mentioned in my first post, this sounds like a measly amount of work…until you actually get down to all the details. I did this when we converted over to AMXS in ’02 and we were STILL finding things wrong in assorted corners up till the mid-’06. I also did this for a re-numbering of a wing in the mid-90s. Another PITA, but the regs weren’t affected.

Bet Moseley won’t be impacted by it too much, though.

In the current tight budgetary times where PBD 720 dictates that we cut the ranks in order to pay for re-capitalization, this makes ZERO sense. The previous system might not have been perfect, but it worked sufficiently fine enough to negate the requirement to force the (Mx side of) fighter/CSAR wings to go thru this a$$-pain. As I mentioned, I think this was instituted primarily to placate whiny deployed operational CCs who were pissed about not having jurisdiction over their AMUs when they were away from home station.

Plus, the scheduling fears I talked about a couple months ago on this post still apply.

Newbie Joined: Aug 23, 2007 Posts: 8 Status: Offline

If USAF really wants to do it, let it be done quickly. Right now my home country aifrorce is in the process of withdrawing the AMU from flying squadrons. The decision to do this was mainly influenced by the USAF organisation( of course the best in the world), specifically the place of AMU in it. It is understood that since we have acquired the vipers we also should copy USAF organisation to support new aircraft.
It's probable that if the USAF accept changes and AMU will be moved to flying squadrons, we will be saved from another reorganisation. Wink

Newbie Joined: Aug 23, 2007 Posts: 8 Status: Offline

[quote="DORF"] The commander has to understand at least a little of maintenance and you have to have a Chief or maintenance officer that's not afraid of telling ops the truth and sticking up for maintenance.

I had once such a chief of maintenance. He ended up with heart disorder. As for the commander - pilot, I would not expect too much understanding of maintenance.

Not a proposed idea anymore...it's happening. Like it/hate it/indifferent...it's coming to a theater near you.

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USAF leaders consider returning AMUs to flying squadrons