I have to ask – what do y’all think of the Air Force’s new endeavor to pull a motto outta our butts? I agree we need a motto, and I like the idea that they want our input, but there’s something inside me that feels we’re going about this the wrong way. I put that in my comments at the end of my survey, but I get the feeling more eyes will see it here.
That might not actually be a good thing.
-Farva
AIR FORCE: Cuttin Back Yo
US Air Force: The one with the A/C and satellite TV
I hope they come up with a decent motto. I’d much rather ask the airmen doing the job for input than paying a consulting firm. The AF famously paid $800K to a firm to redesign the AF symbol, and I can’t stand it (but I digress).
AIR FORCE: We’re not ALL fighter pilots!
At least I know it’s not just me. I won’t buy anything with that new logo on it.
Me neither!
Except, of course, for PT gear gear. Oi.
I like how, aside from the PT gear (and the lightweight jackets that some dorks actually spend money to have embroidered), the new logo doesn’t actually appear on any of our uniform items, but the Hap Arnold logo does.
I would be thrilled if they just bowed to “tradition” and started using the Hap Arnold wings again. But once again, it is traditional in the Air Force to have no traditions.
Props for the creepy cactus… guess it takes a maintainer to see these things…
also:
AIR FORCE: ask us about job security.
No, really, i want to know…..
Unless you want to actually pay someone to come up with one and later realize the motto was crap, I think it’s a good idea. Although, I can’t come up with anything better than “Fly, Fight, and Win”.
For Barbie’s case, though, I’d go for “Look out below”.
AIR FORCE: Sorry, I got a tee time
*SNORT*
Why doesn’t God wear a flight suit?
He doesn’t think he’s a fighter pilot!! ;-O
“AIR FORCE: It’s almost like joining the military”
The Air Force…we’re like the boy scouts but with guns
Wait, they let you have a gun?
I wanna gun!
They never let me have one!
Yes, but the Boy Scouts have adult supervision…
Point, set, game and match.
We have adult supervision…atleast in maintenance we do…thats why we have so many OICs everywhere.
2AMXS… 6 officers, 700+ enlisted. Personal knowlege, and you know why…
We had guns when I was in Boy Scouts . . .
Also, this is almost like a throwback to http://www.afblues.com/?p=695
The Few, The Proud, The Air Force of One Strong.
SemPer Diem
LMAO
Air Force, because I didn’t want to be a bullet stopper and I hate boats.
Sadly, this^
I love that one! Also SemPer Diem is good too.
The United States Air Force: The proud tradition of not having any.
Why do we have to keep changing things? Leadership loves to talk about how the other services have such great traditions and we should have some. That means they need to stop screwing with everything. The Air Force Symbol, uniforms, the slogan, etc.
HOO-RAH!!!! Oh wait, that isnt our cheer……………
PT WAIVER!!! There, that’s more like it
I think they’ve finally gone beyond the waiver here, now it’s more like “Air Force, Get a splinter and get MEB’d at 19 1/2 years with 10%”
The Air Force: When “Army Strong” just isn’t strong enough
or
Air Force: When the Autobots need covering fire…
I am trying very hard as a professional Army NCO to not laugh at the first half of the above comment.
Wow, I’ve never know an Army troop to not say something
Ready, Fire, Aim, then Blame
Air Force: We Slip the Surly Bonds of Earth…
I remember when they came out with the “Aim High” slogan, we painted a line over the Urinals in the Bathroom of the Dorm and stuck a couple of Aim High stickers above it.
Well, if the mind has to be in the gutter…
Mine wasn’t and I always thought Aim High was pretty decent. I still remember the ads, too.
Around the time the AF went with their Aim High slogan I was able to acquire a bunch of Jane Fonda urinal stickers.
I put a bunch of them near the top of the piss pots and the aiming accuracy from what I was told went up by a significant percent.
The sergeants in charge never found out who put the stickers all over base.
BTW, here is the link to the sticker:
http://www.bonanzle.com/booths/dsimporting/items/Bumper_Sticker_3X4_Hanoi_Jane_Fonda_Urinal_target_decal
The Air Force isn’t looking for a motto, like the Army’s “This we’ll defend.” It is looking for an advertising slogan, which is what “Aim High” or “Cross into the Blue” are.
So, when a gold star mother finds out her comptroller son was KIA in Afghanistan because the AF cut trained her boy for a combat role, rolling as a convoy gunner to some shithole in the middle of Afghanistan, so a soldier who was trained to fight from jumpstreet can get a break from the job he signed up for, our advertising slogan will be “Air Force: Because We Over Estimate our Abilities and Sacrifice Your Son to Cover Our Wrinkled Old Asses”. Or, shorter, “Air Force: Bent Over and BOY Do We Have It Coming!”
Even shorter: “
Well if we’re only talking about fiction here since I am to assume we are…
That would only be cops doing that ILO mission since we’re the only ones (apart from other “Arming Group A” personnel) with the training and certifications to use those weapons (since the AF loves to bitch about certs) Most likely if a “Comptroller” (isn’t that Finance) is rolling on a convoy as a gunner then he raised his hand to do it and knew the risks.
As far as the “Soldier who was trained to fight from jumpstreet can get a break from the job he signed up for” he’s not changing jobs he’s most likely getting a break for a day since they work more days then us as Air Force, i.e. being deployed for 12-18 months (such as my cousin) versus the 4 months the AF does (excluding Cops, EOD, and other such jobs doing 6 months). Since I take this as all hypothetical, that would be my reasoning.
On the comment of Gold Star Mothers, I like the saying “if you don’t know personal , don’t talk about it” just sayin’
If you are going to bash on his so called “fictional story” than you should make sure you arent creating one of your own. I am an AMMO troop who isnt neerly certified to do the things described over there yet in my 7 year carrear I have spent 1 tour to Iraq and 2 tours to Afganastan. All of which were 6 month plus. And guess what… It was doing army details that we were not trained to do. I have seen plenty of untrained airmen and young NCOs get sent over that clearly dont belong and when you ask them what they were doing while they were there… they wont tell you that they were doing AMMO duties. They were integrated with the Army out there to “lighten their load.”
Not sure where you get your numbers but 4 month deployments are all but gone for everyone.
Might help to gather your facts before posting. throughout the course of the conflicts in both Iraq and Afghanistan there have been plenty of Air Force personnel from a myriad of career fields that have performed ILO (or JET as they call them now), specifically on convoy duties. I know you’;d like to think that SF had that market cornered, but the don’t. All members who had no prior combat training were provided training by Army personnel at bases like Fort Bragg as well as others before being sent down range. In fact, very early on in the convoy ops for OIF, there were more transportation and supply folks manning guns in convoys than there were SF members. The stories are well documented on Air Force Link if you think I’m wrong.
And as someone else pointed out, I’m not sure where you got your info that 4 month deployments are still the norm. They haven’t been for at least 2 years now. There’s still a few out there, but they are the minority.
I can personally state that I would love to go outside the wire. It’s what they train 3P’s to do… granted on a very small scale. If you look at operational doctorine that we learned and developed (the hard way) from ‘nam cops should be providing security on the and immediately outside a base’s perimeter. The last time I was in the ‘stan the one star (fighter pilot) would shit his pants if you even looked at the perimeter while at the same time I could watch an entire off base EOD escort on a camera in the army’s BDOC. Cops spend at a minimum 20ish days in predeployment training to do things that we aren’t allowed to do. It’s very frustraiting.
If you’re gonna create a fictional scenario, you might as well come up with a sympathetic victim. A comptroller? Really? The majority of the Air Force fantasizes about terrible things happening to finance personnel on a regular basis.
Psh, take a number–you could plug any mission support job in that fictional story and there are plenty of folks ready to fantasize about bad stuff happening to them. If you think our finance personnel are bad just head over to the Army–why do you think the number of finance officer and NCO deployments have gone up even though we’re supposedly decreasing our prescence? Yeah, we’re directly supporting the Army because their folks can’t keep up.
Had to pick on us finance types, eh?
Funny thing is I just got back from 8 months in Iraq doing Army accounting… with almost no Army around. Seems only officers and civilians do budget work in the Army, so they pulled in a bunch AF enlisted and a couple of Navy types to get it done, using their messed up accounting practices. BTW, the Navy peeps were cool as hell; Es, Os, and CWOs.
Air Force: Blame it on Comm
Hey, I am Commo and nothing the Air Force doesn’t do is our fault.
Ex-commie here and I can tell you that even when you do fix something, there is no thanks, only “why didnt you fix it sooner” or “it shouldnt have broke to begin with”. Of course I relished in the fact that I could tell an O-6 “no sir, you cant have it back, you’ve already broken it three times this week”.
I know that feeling. We commo guys are not loved at all until the big ones have their phones working and internet running and we are extremely hated especially if either are not working…doesn’t matter on which end where the fault lies.
And of course, my favorite moment as commo is when I had to tell an O-4 that it would help his computer run faster if he knew where the “on” button was.
chAir Force: Get paid to sit on your a$$
Air Force: If we can’t prove its broke, we don’t fix it.
A friend of mine is worried about her PT test. She has asked to be enrolled in a Running Improvement Program. Her leadership (the whole enlisted chain of command) has told her, “we cant let you PT, we are undermanned”, “we won’t enroll you in a running program until AFTER you fail the PT test… because we are under manned”, and from the Unit Training Fitness Monitor, “there are some experimental drugs out there that can help you burn fat and void your bowels so you can pass the PT test, but we can’t enroll you in a PT program, before you take the PT test”…
Air Force: Too busy to exercise…
“Air Force: If we can’t prove its broke, we don’t fix it.” it should have been worded “Air Force: If it ain’t broke, we fix it.” LOL
Guess I’m lucky. My Squadron is really stressing PT as one of it’s top priorities. Our entire Squadron is in a focus group whether we need it or not. and we’re Comm!
Air Force: we do less with more.
Semper Fi ( now there’s something people remember)
Air Force: BOHICA
I could get behind that (STS)
Air Force:
More Robin Olds
Less McPeak
Wow…now THAT would motivate the force!
AMEN! If you wern’t a fighter pilot you wern’t shit! He must be spitting bullets now that a MAC guy is running the show!
In all seriousness.
If I had any input as to what the new Air Force motto would be it would be:
United States Air Force. Anywhere and Everywhere.
Well, since the only motto of any of the US armed forces anyone can remember is “Semper Fidelis”, yours obviously needs to be in Latin too. How about “Per Ardua Ad Astra”? Sure the RAF, RAAF and RNZAF are already using it, but at least you’ll be among friends…
I don’t know, how many people outside of the Coast Guard know about “Semper Paratus”?
A good, truthful recruiting slogan would probably be: “Join the Air Force. Work in an office. Never touch a plane.”
But for all my maintainer brethren out there…
“Clean, Sweep, Fix!”
I’ve seen “Semper Paratus” used for a few unit mottos within the Air Force.
“Ut Viri Volent” used to be used at Randolph AFB…
Farva…I’ve endured countless uniform changes, emblem changes and mottos. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, the only “Tradition” the Air Force has IS CHANGE.” They don’t know how to enjoy our past, only screw with sacred parts of our past and create mottos about it.
Nice cactus penis
You like that? Carley assisted in the design phase.
Wow, that totally didn’t register
Sad face, for hinting in the 4th post on this page, and no comments…
Back to trolling the interwebs
(note, must look up the “interwebs” thingy)
I stopped reading at Gates4life comment about only Cops doing ILO missions. WRONG. im a 1N0X1 and was deployed from an intel SQ to fill army role. Drove an MRAP for 6 months around Zabul. soo no its not only Cops.
Back on track. i like the Above all slogan. I liked how it pissed all the other services off.
Air Force: Because even the government needs to RIF some times!
Air Force: Join us to find out what corporate America looks like!
Air Force: We still pay better than McDonalds.
How about: Air Force – The new Army Reserve
The USAF: Another Broken Arrow just waiting to happen.
The USAF: America’s medical guinea pigs.
The USAF: Learn to fly a desk and play on Facebook all day.
The USAF: Better than prostituting yourself to dirty old men on the streets of Austin, Texas.
(That last one was my alternate career choice back in the day. Ya, I’m a dude).
and here I thought I was the only one going to do that
Air force: Our deployments are 45 days…..to the base……
We need a slogan that speaks to both our Warrior Ethos, and to how we are a force for doing good.
“Air Force: Death From Above. In Your Community.”
“Aim High”-I am just saying
The Air Force: Leadership should be a popularity contest.
What? You mean it isnt? Could explain why after 8 years in, I’ve only had one troop under me, and that lasted 6 months. Maybe if I’d start kissing butt and not kicking it, I might get somewhere in my *career*.
Are you a *yr SRa Crewchief? You sound like some i used to know!
8Yr, dammit
Ex-Comm Cable Maintainer. I’ve always been the lowest ranking in my workcenters, even as a staff. I guess if you count my Honor Guard flight, I had a lot of troops since I was the highest ranking there. But I didnt rate on them, so I cant officially count them as “troops”. Even in my current job, if I made TSgt, I’d most likely not have any troops because we are TSgt heavy. Just the way the cookie crumbles……….=(
In the last 11 years I’ve seen a new AF symbol, an Airman’s Creed (borred very heavily from the Army’s Warrior Ethos) and now they want to come up with a new slogan? This is also not the first attempt at a new slogan in recent years. This was tried about 3 or 4 years ago as well if I remember right.
The Air Force turns 70 on the 18th of this month, yet we still don’t have an identity. The only tradition we seem to have is change.
Um, actually, the AF is only 63 this year (established in 1947).
Hey how about United States Air Force: Not Yet Retirement Age…
Wow. I was having the ultimate brain fart last night *NCO fail*
Anywho, the rest of my post still stands.
United States Air Force: Change We Can Believe In.
United States Air Force: Haunted by Robert McNamara’s Ghost.
as to the mouseover text, if he’s already got blue balls there’s hardly any point in putting ice on them to make them bluer.
United States Air Force: Reflection of Freedom in neon colors
I think I may the only one with a serious suggestion but here goes: U.S. Air Force: Anywhere, Anytime. Simple and easily remembered.
I personally like that. I know the nuke community has a popular one.
Air Force: 30 Minutes or less, or the next ones free.
I don’t know which nuke community you’re talking about, but thats not that in ICBMs.
More like:
Air Force: Morale Stops Here.
Air Force: When’s YOUR Tee Time
I was gonna submit “Nuke ‘em from orbit, it’s the only way to be sure!” but I think it’s been used.
And if you don’t like the history, you probably don’t want to go back to ‘US Army Air Corps’ again.
How about “On Time, On Target”
That’s my old Battalion’s motto, 7th Transportation Battalion, 82nd Sustainment Brigade.
But then again, they’re deactivating in a little bit…
Sine the AF likes to change so much, how about “Semper Gumby” i.e. always flexible…
Hey, that was our motto on the line at Rhein-Main AB! Wow what a screwed up organization that could be, and once they decided that Ram(it up your)stein AB would be kept and they would kill the base that actually did all the work it became “Yep…we’re almost breathing”.
US Air Force: our dorms have a stove.
MSG Cliff – My shop used the “Semper Gumby” back during OIF, even had it on a coin at one point
Air Force: Swimming Pools and A/C
Can’t forget the golf courses… might be par 3, but it is still a golf course