My life has devolved into being a round of endless paperwork… I’m not sure why this week has shaped up so form-heavy, but it definitely has. I’m filling out forms for all the annual medical stuff, forms to renew my lease for the scant 60 days that I have left here, forms to transfer old 401(k) money into my current plan, and anticipate more forms as I get deeper into the pre-deployment process. I understand the need to document and have good records, but it’s a little ridiculous to fill out so many forms… and most of them have so much overlapping information that I’m getting more ready all the time for when we’ll have personal identification and records tracking systems that we keep on us at all times. A smart card times ten, maybe, or maybe that dreaded scourge, an implanted microchip… OK, fine. I’d take a wrist unit (the old sci-fi novel standby) with some kind of biometric failsafe on it.
But until that time, I suppose I’ll keep on filling out paperwork.
The world I work in has gone crazy since I’ve been gone… the impending deployment of 5 of our 9 junior officers, concurrent with an ORI (another dreaded scourge, the Operational Readiness Inspection, a sort of Air Force audit of acting units), has put everyone in a tizzy! I’m glad that I got my deployment when I did… the four that will be left behind are doing multiple people’s work for the duration of the deployments. (However, the other four deployers have more normal length tours… 4 to 6 months each.) The inspection is causing an overflow of paperwork, as well.
Interestingly, the Air Force (at least my corner of it) seems to be stepping up its war efforts lately. A whole bunch of the people I know are either currently deployed, just back from deployments, or getting ready to go on them. I’m curious as to whether this is because we just cut all those jobs last year (we lost 40,000 personnel in the last fiscal year, due to government-mandated reductions–seems a rather poor idea when the military as a whole is as heavily task-saturated as it is, but who am I to question Congress’s budgeting decisions?), or if it’s an attempt to prove to the Powers that Be that, yes, the AF actually does take it seriously that we’re on a war footing, or if there’s something else involved. All I see are the results–and people are going to war in numbers unprecedented in my experience, which goes back to my years as a military brat growing up as well as my present 6 years in the Air Force myself.
It’s kind of a basic business principle that asking fewer people to do more work is only a sustainable strategy for the short term–eventually, the mission suffers because the few people you have are too worn out to be able to do everything. At some point we’re going to need more people or less work… It will be interesting to watch how things progress from here. Thankfully, with better technology you need fewer people for a lot of basic tasks, and the Air Force does seem to take to heart the idea of working smarter, not harder… but I still anticipate that the next few years are going to be interesting. It’s intriguing being a part of something that’s in the midst of such existential changes… I wonder where we’re going.
But in the interim, I’ll be filling out forms. Sigh.
Posted by Kjirstin 
