Diablo,
I ran into the same problem in the Air National Guard. Their story was that you could not be promoted unless you were World Wide Deployable (not on 4T Status) However, I never saw that written in any reg.
Good luck,
Ron
Shane,
I am a F-16 pilot, or at least was. I had problems like yours in the same L4/L5 L5/S1 area. I decided to do a spinal fusion. It took me 4 months to return to work, and then I began to suffer some of the same nerve issues. I had a second surgery to remove the hardware they braced my...