[stackghost]

The military is like this. Higher Headquarters decides to contract out maintenance and logistical support for $aircraft_fleet. Uniformed maintainers go home in Friday and show up Monday making a lot more money to do the same job but without risk of getting posted or deployed.

Contractor fees come out because of a different pot of money, so perverse incentives abound.

[LPisGood]

Don’t those uniformed maintainers get reassigned to other military jobs or are they allowed to work as a contractor while being active military?

[trollbridge]

They're dismissed due to a reduction in force.

[derektank]

That’s pretty rare in the USAF. Most servicemembers will be sent to be retrained on a different airframe or even into a different career field unless their date of separation doesn’t make it worth it. Voluntary separation programs do sometimes pop up but they’re not that common.

It is common to have people separating and coming back immediately as contractors into basically the same job, but that’s usually because there is already a contracted workforce in place and they made connections while serving.

[stackghost]

Sometimes they do but often they quit because the work life balance is much better.