Tac fighter aquadrons were pretty well self contained in the late 60s with both
maintenance and ops in the same unit. Then the AF mandated a SAC type
organizational structure with separate squadrons for ops and the various
maintenance types, Avionics (AMS), Munitions (MMS), Field or backshop (FMS) and
Organizational or flightline OMS. Apparently worked for big airplanes but well
at all for fighters, but then those were still the days when SAC ran the AF and
looked at all planes as potential nuke delivery platforms.

The Wing King's scorecard was heavily based on "scheduling effectiveness". For
ops that meant that if the actual tailnumber you were scheduled to fly was not
ready, you didn't fly or at least didn't fly on time, missed your range period
or sortie with the other planes you were scheduled with. It was like night and
dayu for the ops guys who were used to flying when the schedule said they would
fly and created a great deal of animosity between Ops and Mx, and morale was
terrible.

Mx officer promotion rates, by boards staffed heavily with Ops guys, dropped to
40% or less for 0-3. Then Jimmah Cawtah was elected and immediately cut the
military. Many Mx officers saw the writing on the wall and got out. A few
years later, the AF had a critical shortage of Mx officers - duh!

Things improved a lot under COMO and POMO in TAC. Now the pendulum is headed
the other way again for some strange reason, apparently.

Steve







Subject: BUFDRVR - about new squadron structure
From: Jughead
Date: 11/15/2003 10:02 PM Eastern Standard Time
Message-id: 2

(Smartace11) wrote in
:


I didn't want to hijack the "Joining the USAF" thread with somthing
unrelated, so I'll start a new thread to respond to something you
wrote over there.

So other than different names, how does the new structure differ from
what it was in the 70s when Ops and MX were almost mortal enemies?

hehe I'm too young to know anything about that. I was born in '73. But
honestly, I don't notice any major "ops vs. maintenance" problems in my
neck of the woods. Maintainers seem to have a good general idea who the
good pilots, FE's, and load toads are as well as who the not-so-good ones
are (and vice versa). As long as there is some mutual level of respect
between individuals from both sides, the "ops vs. maintenance" mentality,
for the most part, doesn't really exist.