We Want YOU, for US Air Force: Air Force Actively Recruiting Retired A/F Personnel

[Bill]

https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Disp...-personnel-sh/

Retired officers, enlisted members can rejoin active duty to offset personnel shortfalls

Published Feb. 7, 2024
Secretary of the Air Force Public Affairs

ARLINGTON, Va. (AFNS) --

The Secretary of the Air Force has reimplemented the Voluntary Retired Return to Active Duty Program in an effort to leverage the talents of our highly trained and experienced officer and enlisted military retirees to help minimize the service's critical manning shortages. Application window opens Feb. 8, 2024.

Applications must be submitted by Jan. 31, 2026, and the program allows up to 1,000 retired officer or enlisted personnel to active duty at any given time. Additionally, under this VRRAD program, the period of active duty service is limited to no more than 48 months. Personnel will only fill vacant active duty authorizations. Retired applicants selected for Extended Active Duty can expect to return to active duty anywhere from 4 to 6 months from their date of application.

“The VRRAD program is a strategic enabler to embrace experienced talent, tapping into a valuable resource of retired members to fill critical roles to close the gap against our peer competitors,” said Lt. Gen. Caroline Miller, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Manpower, Personnel and Services.

Retired officer applicants are limited to Line of the Air Force commissioned officers retired in the grade of captain through lieutenant colonel. Officers who volunteer to return to active duty under the VRRAD program will primarily fill vacant rated staff, active flying staff, Officer Training School, Squadron Officer School, and Jeanne M. Holm Center academic staff. While all members that meet eligibility may apply, we are targeting the following Air Force special duty codes:
11X – Pilot
12X – Combat Systems
13B – Air Battle Manager
13H – Aerospace Physiologist
13M – Airfield Operations
13N – Nuclear and Missile Operations
14X – Information Operations/Intelligence
15X – Operations Analysis and Weather
16X – Operations Support
17X – Cyber Operations
18X – Remotely Piloted Aircraft
19Z – Special Warfare
21X – Logistics
31P – Security Forces
32E – Civil Engineering
35P – Public Affairs
38F – Force Support Officer
61X – Scientific/Research
62X –Developmental Engineering
63X – Acquisition
64P – Contracting
65X – Finance
71S – Special Investigation
Retired enlisted applicants are limited to members retired in the grade of staff sergeant through senior master sergeant. While all members that meet eligibility may apply, the following AFSCs are being targeted:

1C171 – Air Traffic Control
2G071 – Logistics Plans
2T377 – Fleet Management & Analysis
3F071 – Personnel
3P071 – Security Forces
4A271 – Biomedical Equipment
4E071 – Public Health
4N071 – Aerospace Medical Service
4R071 – Diagnostic Imaging
7S071 – Special Investigations
8R000/8R200 – Recruiter(s)

Information about the Voluntary Retired Return to Active Duty Program, to include detailed official program guidance, eligibility criteria and application requirements, can be found here.

[Onebadcad]

Would not be necessary if they addressed their woke culture impact, and the incompetence of their poor quality senior management.

[MadInNc]

I say we re-enlist @Hardluck ie. Porter


@Old Ben can teach them how to land bi-planes on carrier's also

[GTOguy]

My old place of work called me last year and wanted to hire me back as a retired annuitant because they are so short handed and nobody qualifies anymore. I didn't even consider it for a minute. Not even a little bit. 42 years of working for other people was long enough for me.

[Tikiman]

Having to sit through all the DEI classes to hear how wonderful the 13% are would be a deal killer for me.

[69camfrk]

Originally Posted by Tikiman

Having to sit through all the DEI classes to hear how wonderful the 13% are would be a deal killer for me.

Plus, you better get up to speed on preferred pronouns and get ready to celebrate gay pride month in June. They can keep it....

[BayouCountry]

Did my time and having too much fun to even think about ending my well deserved retirement. I wouldn’t serve under this clown administration anyway.

[slewfoot]

What about double dipping?

[Bill]

Originally Posted by slewfoot

What about double dipping?

They seem to be promoting all manner of deviant and abhorrent behavior now, so I'm sure they'd be OK with that, too. Might even get you a promotion.

[Old Ben]

Originally Posted by MadInNc

I say we re-enlist @Hardluck ie. Porter


@Old Ben can teach them how to land bi-planes on carrier's also

Air Force does not have carriers. I spent 11 years telling pilots where to go and what to do. That was enough for me. The last 10 years in construction management was okay though.


Now BIOUA...

[Dan47]

I got a new ID card at StratCom today. My brother set it up so I wouldn’t have to sit with the hoi polloi at “pass & ID”. It was cool seeing the inside of the place and all the humans that work there. General officers everywhere. Not something I’m used to as an enlisted guy. I think I got a little “star struck”.

Dude doing my ID was a former Navy Seal with an attitude. My brother said he was a nice guy but I didn’t feel it from him. Maybe I intimidated him?

Anyway, only thing I heard there were people wanting to retire and GTFO, while the getting is good. Nobody there seemed to like Joey or politicians, in general. I can’t imagine any of them desiring a return to active duty.

[tjfontaine]

I wonder if the Navy would want me back? Let's see ...

Was an IT specialist - I am 70 now - was in from when I was 20-24 ...

If I could have that same job (or similar given tech changes) with the same type of guys I worked with, and could be at Sea - that would be wonderful. I'd do it ...

[lrobe22]

[Rikki Z-06]

Originally Posted by MadInNc

I say we re-enlist @Hardluck ie. Porter


@Old Ben can teach them how to land bi-planes on carrier's also

[slewfoot]

I was asked to go back to where I just retired from 2 yrs ago. The job was fine but to undo retirement and social security, not worth the aggravation

[ratflinger]

Originally Posted by slewfoot

I was asked to go back to where I just retired from 2 yrs ago. The job was fine but to undo retirement and social security, not worth the aggravation

No shit, I canceled my retirement in 2020 because I knew that because of covid I could sit at home that year and the company would pay me. I had already applied for SS. So I filled out the forms, sent the $$ back and it took them almost a year to catch up. Almost had to wait into 21 to retire because of that.

[Frankie the Fink]

Until you hit a certain age you can take a massive SS hit.....by working a gig.

I took early SS at 62 but my old Federal client signed me up for a VERY lucrative consulting gig a few months later. It turns out that you can pay back (not sure it still is allowed) ALL of the SS you received in that first year and literally "unretire". I worked another 3-1/2 years and THEN started the SS up again.

A word about consulting (which I did for 15 years); if you are already retired with an income its nothing like working for nasty boss. You aren't beholden to do whatever you're told if it violates your contract and (at least with the govt) nobody can directly order you about like an employee (that's called Personal Services and prohibited).

[jw38]

Originally Posted by Dan47

I got a new ID card at StratCom today. My brother set it up so I wouldn’t have to sit with the hoi polloi at “pass & ID”. It was cool seeing the inside of the place and all the humans that work there. General officers everywhere. Not something I’m used to as an enlisted guy. I think I got a little “star struck”.

Dude doing my ID was a former Navy Seal with an attitude. My brother said he was a nice guy but I didn’t feel it from him. Maybe I intimidated him?

Anyway, only thing I heard there were people wanting to retire and GTFO, while the getting is good. Nobody there seemed to like Joey or politicians, in general. I can’t imagine any of them desiring a return to active duty.

Sucks that you had to go to Offutt to get an ID card. I retired from that shithole and the day I drove "off it" was the last time I ever want to see it. Worst base ever!

[VatorMan]

Originally Posted by tjfontaine

I wonder if the Navy would want me back? Let's see ...

Was an IT specialist - I am 70 now - was in from when I was 20-24 ...

If I could have that same job (or similar given tech changes) with the same type of guys I worked with, and could be at Sea - that would be wonderful. I'd do it ...

I thought about that and remembered all the ladders I had to use everywhere I went on a ship. Hell no !

[Bill]

Navy now OK with recruits sailing the HIGH seas:

https://www.marijuanamoment.net/u-s-...ng-shortfalls/

U.S. Navy Expands Marijuana Waiver Authority To Address Recruiting Shortfalls

Published 2 days ago

on February 9, 2024

By Ben Adlin

Amid the U.S. military’s ongoing recruiting crisis, the Navy is expanding authority to grant waivers to recruits who arrive at boot camp and initially test positive for marijuana, instead of simply sending them home.

“If they fail that test and own up—’Yes, I smoke marijuana ‘—we do an evaluation of the young person to make sure there’s not something else going on,” Rear Adm. James Waters told reporters this week. “But we trust that through the process of boot camp that we have an opportunity to bring them along with our culture.”

Waters, who directs the Navy’s military personnel plans and policy division, explained that the goal of the change is to be “reflective of where legislation is in society.”

“We recognize that many states have legalized marijuana,” he said, according to the outlet Military.com.

As that publication notes, however, the policy shift is among a host of steps military officials across multiple branches have taken to address recruiting shortfalls in recent years across the armed forces. The changes have brought the current boot-camp dropout rate to about 10 percent, among the lowest in recent history.

If the Navy is going to meet its 2024 recruiting goal of bringing on 40,000 new sailors, Waters said, even losing 4,000 recruits during boot camp “is really, really unhelpful, and so we want to try to continue to work on that.”

The more lenient approach to failed drug tests is limited to initial screening for THC, Waters emphasized, noting that the policy does not apply to other drugs and adding: “We don’t do drugs in the military.”

The change comes shortly after a similar one was enacted at the Air Force, which reported late last year that it granted more than three times as many enlistment waivers to recruits who tested positive for THC as officials anticipated when they first expanded the waiver program in 2022.

The Air Force recently missed its annual recruitment goal for the first time since 1999, but Gen. Christopher Amrhein, the branch’s recruitment service commander, said last September that the situation could have been much worse if they hadn’t instituted the marijuana waiver policy.

In the first year since the waivers became available, the branch said it issued 165. That’s more than triple the 50 waivers it predicted it would grant annually. The policy covers both the Air Force and the Space Force.

For the Air Force in particular, this waiver program represents a notable development, as the branch instituted a policy in 2019 barring service members from using even non-intoxicating CBD, even if its derived from hemp and is therefore federally legal under the 2018 farm bill.

Over the past several years, particularly since hemp was legalized, multiple military branches have notified their rank-and-file about their specific rules around cannabis.

The Navy issued an initial notice in 2018 informing ranks that they’re barred from using CBD and hemp products no matter their legality. Then in 2020 it released an update explaining why it enacted the rule change.

In 2022, the Naval War College warned sailors and marines about new hemp products on the market, issuing a notice earlier last year that said members may test positive for marijuana if they drank a Rockstar energy drink that contained hemp seed oil.

A Massachusetts base of the Air Force, meanwhile, released a notice in 2021 stating that service members can’t even bring hemp-infused products like shampoos, lotions and lip balms to the base. “Even if it’s for your pet, it’s still illegal,” the notice said.

Officials with the division also said in 2018 that it wants its members to be extra careful around “grandma’s miracle sticky buns” that might contain marijuana.

The Coast Guard has said sailors can’t use marijuana or visit state-legal dispensaries.

In February, the Department of Defense (DOD) said that marijuana’s active ingredient delta-9 THC is the most common substance that appears on positive drug tests for active duty military service members. The second most common is delta-8 THC, which is found in a growing number of hemp-derived products that are being made available, including in states where marijuana itself remains illegal.

One of the first attempts by the U.S. military to communicate its cannabis ban came in the form of a fake press conference in 2019, where officials took scripted questions that touched on hypotheticals like the eating cannabis-infused burritos and washing cats with CBD shampoos. That was staged around the time that DOD codified its rules around the non-intoxicating cannabinoid.

On the opposite side of their military careers from the new recruits, military veterans have long been a driving force in the drug reform movement, in part because veterans have used the drug to treat mental and physical health issues and as an alternative to opioids.

Earlier this year, a study found that 6 in 10 military veterans support marijuana legalization generally, while an earlier survey found more than 72 percent support among veterans for Veterans Administration (VA) doctors being able to legally recommend marijuana.

In Congress, meanwhile, lawmakers are pushing to keep provisions in a large-scale federal spending bill that would allow VA doctors to issue medical marijuana recommendations to veterans living in legal states.

That reform would achieve the same policy outcome as a standalone bill that was refiled on the House side in March by Congressional Cannabis Caucus co-chairs Reps. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR) and Brian Mast (R-FL).

The Veterans Equal Access Act has been introduced several times in recent years with bipartisan support—and moved through committee and floor approval a number of times—but has yet to be enacted. Blumenauer, who is retiring at the end of this Congress, has made the modest reform a priority even as he’s pushed for broader legalization.

In August, bipartisan congressional lawmakers expressed “deep concern” over a recently updated VA marijuana directive that continues to prohibit its doctors from making medical cannabis recommendations to veterans living in states where it’s legal.

They said the decision to maintain the “harmful policy” on cannabis recommendations is especially “alarming” in the context of VA’s latest clinical guidance on PTSD, which strongly recommends against using medical cannabis as a treatment option.

“Many veterans already report using cannabis for medical purposes as a substitute for prescription drugs and their side effects,” they said, adding that a recent survey of veterans who use cannabis found that they report improved quality of life and reduced use of certain prescription drugs, including opioids.

VA has updated its cannabis guidance before, adding language in its 2017 version that explicitly encouraged VA doctors to discuss veterans’ marijuana use, for example.

Last April, Senate Republicans separately blocked a procedural vote to advance a bill to the floor that would promote VA research into the therapeutic effects of marijuana for military veterans with conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The medical cannabis recommendations amendment was one of relatively few drug policy reform measures to make it through the GOP-controlled House Rules Committee, which has consistently blocked such proposals from bipartisan members this session.

However, it did advance a Republican-led amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that would require Department of Defense (DOD) funding of clinical trials exploring the therapeutic potential of certain psychedelics for active duty military service members. Following bicameral negotiations, the reform was ultimately included in the final deal that President Joe Biden signed into law late last year.