Introduction
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Video
Well, howdy there internet, people, it's, beau again.
So today, we're going to talk about air force, readiness, um because something happened.
And it just cracked me up, y'all send me a lot of messages every day.
And I try to read them all.
But over the course of 20 minutes, I got three messages back to back all about readiness all very different messages.
But all revolving around that topic.
The first one was from somebody who was just telling me, I was wrong there's, no way that the laws in texas would impact readiness or cause economic issues for the areas around it.
And that there's, no way that congress would allow the air force to close or de-prioritize bases because of this okay.
The very next message was from somebody at af, the air force personnel office, their central bureaucracy for personnel, asking me to put out a video explaining how much of a headache.
This has caused for them and how it would impact readiness.
The third message was from somebody who is trans and is thinking about joining the army and is basically like I have no idea what readiness is.
But this seems like really something I really need to know about, um, so that's, why we're going to talk about it? Um to answer that.
Third, one, first, why are you looking at joining the the army that they didn't put out a memo like this? They didn't say they were going to try to help or protect.
You that's, just the department of the air force.
You might want to rethink that.
And as I say that advice and while it's true, I want to point out that that might cause a readiness issue for the army, not being able to recruit people, but that's, not what we're here to talk about we're here to talk about air force readiness and how the the chain of events works.
The first thing you need to know is that generally speaking there are exceptions.
But generally speaking, if you're in the air force you're going to move every four years you and your dependents are going to pack up and you're going to go to a different location.
And this happens because people leave the air force.
People get promoted.
There are slots that need to get filled there are positions that need to get filled.
Okay.
The orders to do this to to move around come from that central bureaucracy that that sends out the orders.
Okay.
So captain smith is up at minot and captain smith catches orders to go to an installation in texas.
Well, captain smith then has to go to his chain of command and say, I can't go my kid's trans.
so has to work its way up the chain there at the base, and then get sent back to the central bureaucracy, right? Um at that point, the people at the personnel office, they start banging on their keyboards because it's, not just as simple as finding a new place for captain smith to go.
They also have to find somebody to take that spot.
So they need another captain who has similar career development to go and take that position, that's going to be captain jones.
So they send new orders to captain jones.
Captain jones is going to show up in march.
Now, instead of captain smith showing up in january already, three months, where they're missing somebody at this base that's, where the readiness issues begin.
Now, meanwhile, the people at the air force personnel office, they're, trying to figure out how to stop this from happening.
Because since they moved that second captain since they moved second, uh, captain jones.
They have to find somebody to replace her wherever she was going to go and that's.
Just this it's.
This long domino thing that goes on from there.
So they're trying to figure out how to stop it from happening again.
And the only real way that I can think of is for the air force to start tracking the gender and orientation of every air force dependent that's going to get really expensive and really complicated, because it would take the the active duty member constantly updating these forms because people's status when it comes to that may change and there's.
Also the issue of the fact that I mean, we all know, there's, no way.
The military is going to, make a mistake with paperwork right it's going to be a.
Giant headache, it's going to cause gaps, where positions aren't filled and that's a readiness issue.
And then you have captain jones.
She shows up down in texas, right? She loves it there.
She loves it that's, that's the base that she's going to tell everybody for the rest of her career.
You know, this place is nice, but it's nowhere near as nice as wherever right.
And then six months after getting there, her kid's like, hey, can I talk to you about something then she has to go to her chain of command, and she has to leave texas that gap.
Well, it starts all over because now they have to find somebody else to come in.
It absolutely will cause a readiness issue, um, there's.
Zero doubt about that it's going to cause personnel problems, it's going to cause issues when it comes to training and and all kinds of other stuff, there's a lot of downstream effects to this.
And I really can't think of a way to avoid these kinds of problems without tracking everybody's, gender and orientation, but even that doesn't solve it because that changes.
And it may change while this active duty service member is at an installation that is hostile to the existence of their children.
And then you have some situations in which the only location they could go for that job happens to be in one of those states it's going to cause problems, um.
And then as far as economic impact, sure congress might step in and say, okay, you can't do this.
You can't close this base.
You can't, de-prioritize, whatever that can happen, but I'm willing to bet the air force wouldn't open up anything new there.
Why would you invest in a installation? You can't, send all your people to? And then as time goes on the stuff, there becomes obsolete, gets replaced with new investments in different locations just takes longer.
So rather than an immediate economic impact, the community around the base, just withers doesn't, actually sound better to me.
But aside from that, without any of that happening just the readiness issue.
And the lack of personnel and those gaps that is going to cause an economic impact just there so let's, take a number nice, round, number million dollars.
What would it take to take a million dollars directly out of the economy when it comes to this we're talking about captains? So their pay plus their housing allowance? Uh, I don't know, a dozen 14., a dozen 12 to 14 somewhere in there.
That happens 12 to 14 captains, can't, go there.
And I understand the air force's officer, heavy, um and that's, a million bucks out of the economy.
But that's, just the starting point just like with the air force bureaucracy, there's domino effects because those gaps create time when people aren't there totals up to 14 captains being gone for a year.
That is, I don't know, 14 3 bedroom houses that aren't getting rented, which means the price of rent drops just a little bit because we're only talking about a dozen or so right now.
But because the price of rent drops property, values will also go down again, just a little bit.
But each little thing adds up, captain jones, captain jones used to uh, be stationed at eglin.
She loved that little coffee shop right there on 20 outside the gate.
She go through there every day get a five dollar coffee and a four dollar sausage biscuit.
And it became a tradition.
She does it everywhere.
She goes now right she's, not doing that anymore because she's not there and that's part of that million dollars.
But because that million dollars isn't being spent in that coffee shop that coffee shop now has less money.
So the coffee shop, maybe it pays its people less.
Maybe it doesn't hire a new employee.
Maybe it doesn't have flyers made and hire the print shop down the road to make them.
And it just continues to grow understand without the air force doing anything other than honoring the policy that's already in place to protect their people.
There will already be economic impacts, um.
And the the reality of this is these states, the politicians that pass this stuff.
They are asking the air force to make all kinds of adjustments and policy changes just to appease a campaign stunt.
So they can get the bigot vote that's all that that's that's all it's for I don't think the air force is going to be really receptive to that.
I I would suggest that the air force is probably going to be more interested in getting their people somewhere where they can feel at home and their dependents can feel at home.
They move around every four years as it is there aren't a lot of laws that are bigoted in nature that don't cause a negative economic impact by definition, you're excluding people.
These are people that would be contributing to the economy.
Um, remember that the next time your politician wants to catch your vote by telling you that you're better than somebody else and to kick down at them it's going to hurt your wallet always does it's cheaper to be a good person.
Anyway, it's just a thought, y'all have a good day.