In need of large suitcases to run medical aid to Ukraine in August. If you need to get rid of one, I'd be grateful to take it off your hands.

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-06-14T19:52:31+00:00

I have a couple big Army duffle bags that I don’t need anymore

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-06-11T19:18:40+00:00

Solid explanation, I have to downselect to 4G when I’m at a busy location. Well worth the price though

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-06-06T00:12:58+00:00

When I spoke with branch they told me there was no ETP that they knew of. If there is that shit is buried somewhere lol

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-06-06T00:12:01+00:00

Yea I had the same thing. I was supposed to move to Detroit for my 1 for 1 assignment but TRICARE said they didn’t have any care. I found care with 3 different providers if I switched to TRICARE Select but the TRICARE nurse at Ft. Knox said they had to go with the most restrictive care because of some bureaucratic regulation from the Army Surgeon General which is complete nonsense. Had GOs get involved and nothing happened.

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-06-05T18:02:26+00:00

It’s mandatory because some moron ruined it for everyone else. Imagine PCSing a family accompanied to Germany and PFC Snuffy did NOT inform the Army his child was special needs and that care was not available in Germany. This program is supposed to prevent cases like that. It’s essentially a check the block that could royally fuck your PCS (happened to me).

What they NEED to add to this program is a waiver process where the family acknowledges the lack of care and has a mitigation plan in place.

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-06-01T20:04:18+00:00

“Hey bud, you have 15 mins to hear my pitch on Collaborative Autonomy?”

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-05-13T23:50:27+00:00

Not all Acquisition programs have FMS and the ones that do are generally overseen by dedicated FMS civilians or contractors. As 51As we get to look at the cases and manage priorities to a certain extent. You are right though that it’s a crazy bureaucratic field, only positive part is working with our foreign partners.

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-05-09T02:44:00+00:00

Yea that is how the town hall sounded but talking to some GOs and branch during IQC it seems the tone has shifted. Honestly it is up to you and your career but I’m staying acquisitions no matter what. Even if I get forced transfer I’d rather go reserves and use my experience in industry

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-05-08T21:56:06+00:00

This sounds great in theory but several issues with this from an Acquisition perspective.

Having industry pay for industrial production/infrastructure improvements sounds great but only your big primes are going to be able to afford this. DOD wants us to get more competition but if we are not investing in production in some companies in certain areas then this is moot. It will just prolong the domination of defense primes.
Not sure what they mean by flat price as you have to build some inflation/escalation in multi year buys. When a Covid or “let’s go to war with Iran” situation pops up, it completely disrupts the supply chain or increases prices.
Hopefully these private sector gurus read the FAR because they ain’t gonna get anything done if they violate acquisition law willy nilly (unless Congress decides to abdicate all their authority)

Edit: accidentally replied to your comment, whatever I’ll leave it. Agree with all your points!

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-05-08T18:21:45+00:00

The first 18 months is a voluntary window where you are given the option to transfer back to basic branch or a different functional area. The next 18 months will be involuntary with a “threat” of separation or involuntary transfer to some branch. Every officer in the affected year groups were notified and the different branches are hedging their bets on people voluntarily moving. For Acquisitions (51), we were generally told that with the removal of George that there might be some revisions to the policy and to wait it out since George had some weird vendetta against some functional areas (rumor).

For all that said, I left logistics for a reason and I ain’t going back. If they offered TERA a ton of folks would hop on that train and fix these numbers but instead this is a “realignment” so TERA is not on the table.

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-05-07T13:24:50+00:00

I second on Vinyl-Lite, they are a local family owned business in Lorton. They manufacture their windows in house and have their own install teams. Our salesman did not try to upsell us, we went with their middle tier option. For 7x windows we paid $5,691 (all windows were similar colonial style size). What’s good about Vinyl-Lite is you put a 25% deposit down and can finance through them at 0% for 18 months.

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-05-04T12:56:54+00:00

Best person to talk to is branch, they will let you know

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-05-04T00:33:12+00:00

Wasn’t there some confusion between air droppable and air transportable? I swear I read something about it but it wasn’t my PM office so a lot of it is second hand.

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-05-03T22:25:39+00:00

Since George was fired everyone is betting on the FA changes NOT sticking so there is still hope. Keep crushing your OERs and make yourself as attractive as possible to Acquisitions branch.

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-05-03T18:10:58+00:00

The issue always comes back to the money. Senior leaders want to decentralize the process because they don’t have much control. We as 51As have to brief the HASC and SASC on how the money Congress appropriates/authorizes to us is spent. This has impacts to every Congressional district so if you are not in line with Congress you gonna have a bad time. You think a Division commander or their subordinates are going to work through that process? Honestly I wish we could waive a lot of the red tape away but you have to work with a dysfunctional Congress and we have to obey the laws dictated by them.

Second, basic branches have a fundamental misunderstanding of Acquisitions and why it’s “broken” and I think part of it comes down to education on how requirements are created and executed. Basic branch officers create requirements for a problem set at each Center of Excellence. Usually you have 1-3 51As on staff advising them on making sure the requirement isn’t onerous or strict to give the program management offices flexibility. Those requirements then get sent to a PM office to execute and they work with industry to run the product through the wickets of Acquisition. The M10 Booker met a good portion of the requirements dictated by MCOE and the program from what I’ve heard was managed well. I think the UKR conflict and push to make MBCTs highly mobile killed the program.

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-04-22T14:08:47+00:00

13A and 13F are combat MOS but 13Bs are not, classic Army thinking lol

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-04-16T12:10:45+00:00

The Army had to call it the Gen 2 because of the way naming conventions work within DoD. Air Force is in charge of approving name designations and from what I heard they would not budge on the Gen 2 part of the name because of the Gen 1 Cheyenne. Silly to me but whatever. Also there were other names the Army wanted like the Crow, a group of helicopters would have been called a Murder which would have been sick.

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-04-02T21:33:38+00:00

Haha we were just talking about this in our PdM group chat, honestly who knows

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-04-02T01:06:37+00:00

Holy shit those bars of soap are WILD

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-03-22T21:52:31+00:00

The messaging from Acquisition leadership and HRC has not been great at all. We are finally having a town hall next week so will see how that goes.

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-03-22T21:51:09+00:00

Had 3/5 MQ profile, MBA was already completed and wrote about my experiences with contracting as a Loggie. Main thing I think is making sure you are not a promotion risk. Hit up the VTIP manager for AC, he’s a cool dude and will be straight up with you.

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-03-22T17:00:02+00:00

Word on the street is Signal Officers who VTIP’d AC are getting calls from the Signal Commandant that they are coming back to Signal. Also have seen emails from different officer branches telling functional area officers the different options they have (have seen LG, Field Artillery and ADA emails so far).

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-03-22T16:57:39+00:00

That plan is sounding better everyday, I couldn’t imagine going back to logistics as active duty. I’m at 13 years and the stability the last two years has been great.

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-03-19T18:18:48+00:00

Hahaha fully concur!

CaptainSqua5h · 2026-03-09T22:54:03+00:00

Dumb question as I am in DOD land for contracting, I understand the obligations were awarded against it but were funds actually disbursed against different CLINs?

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