Exercise CHARLIE FOXTROT

Have you ever sat at your desk after lunch in your mid-afternoon torpor and pondered the great mysteries of life? You may ruminate on such weighty questions as...

How do they get the ship inside the bottle?
What causes the skin to form on top of pudding?

And the $64,000 question...

Why are mission support personnel always so perpetually pissed off?

I'm supposed to leave for this big exercise next week. I was actually looking forward to it--until Friday. It started when I walked in the door. The exercise is on hold, they told me. The MAJCOM realized they have no money. We all know the ideal time to realize this would be fiscally challenging is right when everybody going out the door. Finally, they decided we could go after all, but they were cutting the number of people they would send in half to save money.

So, in another attempt at saving money they decided to change the per diem that people would get. Initially, everyone would get partial per diem while a lucky few the full per diem. I'm not sure how they arrived at who would get what. I'm starting to suspect they're using a magic eight ball because they changed it so that now most everyone would get full per diem, except for a few who would get completely screwed, one of them being yours truly. The aircrew would get full per diem because they won't be around to use the meal card except for every other day. Oh yeah, they do get meals from the flight kitchen, so they're still getting free food AND full per diem even though they'll be around to use the chow hall every other day.

If the MAJCOM was so desperate to save money, wouldn't it make more sense to just give everybody the partial per diem? Evidently, it's good enough for the other squadron that we'll be flying with. Another way they decided to save money was to cut the number of intel personnel they would send. The initial plan was to send two intel people--one from each squadron. Now, they're just sending one who will do all the work for two squadrons. I'll be the extremely fortunate individual who will get to work 16 hour days, back to back for two straight weeks. If I'm lucky (and it's a distinct possibility that I will be--this is AWACS after all) the jets will break the minute we land.