Olds was assigned to command the 71st Fighter Squadron, which was soon detached from the 1st FG to the Air Defense Command and based at the Greater Pittsburgh Airport in Pennsylvania. As a result, he missed service in the Korean War despite repeated applications for a combat assignment. Discouraged and at odds with the Air Force, in which he was seen as an iconoclast, Olds reportedly was in the process of resigning when he was talked out of it by a mentor, Maj Gen Frederic H. Smith Jr., who brought him to work at Eastern Air Defense Command headquarters at Stewart AFB, New York.