Not trying to be obstinate over this just to troll. I have a serious point to make. I have been on both sides of this particular fence.
I take issue with your point above about pilots being employed primarily as weapons system operators as opposed to needing ‘hands-on’ poling skills. Although I didn’t qualify as CR (that’s another thread entirely!) I did a lot of low level flying, trooping and IFR on Chinooks. I won’t bore you with the details but it takes tolerance to fatigue, sweat, vibration, spatial awareness and G to do it; not to mention CRM, leadership in the air and a hard-to-define notion of having ‘skin in the game’.
My ground tours involved targeteering and approving PW4 from Reaper in a CAOC, and Stormshadow on GR4 from the UK. Not going to say too much more on that, but I never thought for a minute that I was ‘flying’ my bomb as it hit the target. And nobody I worked with who didn’t wear wings claimed that they were doing the same job and taking the same risks as the tonka crews.
Just my view is all. (Ditto the AF Board. Self-selecting, self-serving management-speak gurus the lot of them).