It struck me yesterday as I was talking to one of my folks. I now know what’s bothering me about the Air Force’s recent emphasis on the fitness program. Every time any leader says, “This is our number one priority.” I grimace. I wasn’t sure why. I mean I found it annoying that all of a sudden after a few years of playing lip service to this new fitness program they actually started enforcing it. The official word was “We’ve been doing this for four years, no one should be surprised.” The truth of the matter was they were sort of, kind of, doing the new fitness program but no one knew how the hell we were supposed to do it AND accomplish the mission at the same time, so everyone sort of played along and did what we did back in the 80s and tried to basically ignore the thing. The other part of the problem, was that every base now has a civilian “expert” who makes a ridiculous amount of money annoying the wing commander with every little failure and every little non-conformity to the “new” Air Force Instruction that everyone freaking knows no one can follow and complete their mission at the same time. Yeah, I’m not a fan.
The other problem was and remains, the Air Force has always always always recruited for brains. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the other branches only have dummies, I’ve worked with too many smart people in all branches of the service. I am saying that we in the Air Force haven’t been known for being hard core. There’s Cops, there’s Ammo, there’s the seriously hard core Para Rescue, the psychotic kids in Combat Control and Combat Camera, but other than that, we’re mostly a bunch of geekoid techies doing highly skilled mechanical, electrical, or information systems and nerd-boy stuff. If we weren’t straight A students we at least had a B average. Gym Class for us was kind of a necessary evil broken only by the joy of Ellen Katz’s bikini’s refusal to stay on in swimming…all four years…God bless that girl, where ever she is.
I’m not sure about the rest of the Air Force, but I know my folks have a hard time even getting training for their 5-Level anymore. We’re supposed to be proficient at building web pages using Front Page or Dreamweaver (my preference) and we’re supposed to have classes that make us proficient at basic computer trouble-shooting. My folks? We can’t even crack a box without risk of getting fined for invalidating a warrantee or stepping on a contract. And we do continue to train them even without the resources…when we can spare them from their mandatory Gym time. Because training is secondary, Gym is mandatory.
After 22+ years of service, I’m watching my Air Force become more concerned with Gym Class over mission. We’re worried about Gym Class! WTF? It’s the same feeling I had when a friend of mine couldn’t graduate HS because he was taking extra courses at a college instead of going to Gym class for a quarter. Fucking Gym Class. You can call it WarFit, you can call it PT, you can call it whatever the hell you want, but we’re destroying people over Gym. Let me say that one more time. Your United States Air Force is kicking out good, smart, competent and talented people because some of them are cutting Gym.
It seems like such a brilliant flash of the obvious, but I do feel better knowing why it’s been bugging me.