I was wondering if any of you have been in the air force. I’m not looking to sign up immediately, but I can say that my interest is piqued. I just graduated from college and I still feel pretty unfocused. I feel like there’s still dozens of paths I can take, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but I know that I should start trying to figure out something and become more focused soon.
I was talking to my brother who recently returned to Iraq. He’s a little different from me; he got into college via a ROTC scholarship but for some reason decided to flunk out and go straight into active duty in the National Guard and earn himself a one way ticket to Iraq. Luckily his tour is over and he’s back home with us. I was discussing my dilemma with my brother and he recommended that I look into the Air Force (“Or ‘Chair Force’ as I like to call it!”) He thinks that with my college degree and brains (I guess? For a lack of better term), I’m a definite shoo-in.
I guess it’s getting to me. The benefits and having a steady paycheck sound great right about now. I’m half-tempted to meet with a recruiter. I feel confident in my ability to make it in and everyone I’ve talked to about it feels the same way, too.
However, until recently I’ve never even considered entering any branch of the military. Before delving deeper into any of the possibilities I have, I was wondering if there were any dopers who were or are in the Air Force who could give me their personal experiences and opinions. What was the physical training like? What job opportunities are available in this branch? For some reason I feel like I’m selling my soul to the government forever if I join the military—am I mistaken? What is the pay like? I hold the dopers’ experiences and opinions in high regard so if you have any that you could input here, I would really appreciate it!
I was in the Air Force in the 90’s; specifically 1994 - 1998. Here’s a current military pay chart. For an enlisted guy, the pay is terrible. It’s not much better for officers. But then again, you’re serving your country, so you shouldn’t be in it for the pay
As far as physical training, it was a joke. We had to do 30 pushups and run a mile and a half (on average) 2 or 3 days a week. And that was pretty much it. One day in basic was dedicated to the “Confidence Course”, which was really like a slightly overgrown playground complete with monkey bars. One day involved an M-16. The rest of it was pretty uneventful.
You’re assigned a job based on your ASVAB score and the needs of the miltary. You can ask the recruiter to garauntee you a particular job, but you have to know what you’re looking for. They probably won’t help you out in that regard too much. But it pays to do the research & get the garaunteed job, or you’ll end up an SP (the USAF version of the military police) or something similarly undesirable, which doesn’t help you too much in the civilian world.
Job opportunities on the outside really open up for you after you’ve served, as that’s service is also several years experience you can put on a resume. If you become an SP in the AF, you’ll be qualified to be a cop as a civilian. By way of counter-example, I went in as a computer programmer (AF Specialty Code 491x2 at the time) and have been ridin that pony ever since. I’ve been out for 10 years, still have no college degree of any kind, and make about $120,000 per year. (And I’m in the south-eastern US, where things are cheap!! It was definitely the best decision I ever made )
I recently read that the USAF is the only branch that isn’t falling short of their annual recruiting goals. Make of that what you will. As an enlisted guy, you will be on the hook for at least 8 years - 4 years active duty and 4 years ‘inactive’ reserve. Not sure how the officer corp works.
My general advice is:
Do not let the recruiter talk you into anything. If you’re going to join, do some research before hand, find a decent job, and tell the guy you’ll join when he can gaurantee you that job. Do not sign the contract until he puts that AFSC on the papers.
Baseops Forums is a good place to look around, research, and ask specific questions.
Make of the pay what you will. As a junior O, fresh out of college, it’s a pretty good start. The Air Force isn’t much on leadership and ‘military,’ (I mean, you only have a Physical Readiness Test once a friggin’ year), but it’s a comfortable lifestyle. I’d say your first step is deciding on if you want to be a part of the AF, then deciding on whether you want to enlist or try for Officer, then deciding on which career path.
Earthworm Jim’s advice about recruiters is dead on. And if you decide on the Officer path, make sure you talk to an Officer recruiter, not an Enlisted recuiter (at least, that’s the advice we give to guys thinking about joining the Navy).
Oh yeah–from my experience, joining the military isn’t something most guys ever regret. If you like it and stay for 20, it sets you up with a good retirement and a fantastic resume; if you get out before that, it still gives you a good resume and, if you play your cards like Earthworm Jim, you’ll have a lucrative skill, hopefully some decent management skills, and a slew of good friends and good times under your belt as you walk away.
It’s hard to explain this without sounding like I’m dissing the enlisted ranks, but …
If you’re a college grad, you want to be an officer, period. The pay, cultural, & lifestyle difference between officer & enlisted are hard for a civilian to fathom. It’s really like working for two very different organizations.
I had a fine time when I was in as an officer & pilot, but that was 20 years ago. So I don’t have much current info to share.
Many people think USAF Officer = pilot & that’s just not true. The pilots get the glory & hog a lot of the senior jobs, but that won’t matter to you for another 10 or 15 years. There are hundreds of non-flying officer jobs.
What was your degree in, and what sort of jobs in civilian life (either small company or Corporate America) would you be interested in doing?
The military, even the fairly laid back USAF, is a lot more than a just a civilian job with a funny hat. A LOT more.
But the best place to start to get your arms around how & where to fit in is to think about what you could or would do in the civilian world. That’s the world you know now and presumably your skills & interests line up at least a little with your aptitudes.
Army guy pitching in my two cents - we needed the AF to fly us around from place to place. The best thing about the AF that I recall is that the higher ups would use their annual budget from congress to take care of MWR (Morale, Welfare and Recreation) needs and things like new bowling alleys, daycare centers, PX facilities and general base improvements to housing and training facilities as their first priority. They usually took good care of their people and their families. When the money ran out, then they would go back to congress and say ‘oh, and we need another 4 bazillion dollars for new planes’.
All the AF bases I have seen have always been prettier and better maintained than the army bases I have seen.
Oh, and the physical requirements are a joke. Once in a while, I would exercise with AF friends, and while I was no slouch, I was not Ahnold either. But none of my AF friends could ever keep up with me physically. In the army, we worked out 4 days a week (mandatory), but often did after work or lunch workouts at the gym.
Yeah, we envied their MWR facilities and their chow. I spent one deployment on an AF base in Japan and thought I was in hog heaven. A choice of main courses? And why isn’t it all served with a ladle? Whaddya mean “ice cream bar”?
As for the military side, I never saw them hold morning muster or formation and never saw anybody in PT gear. Seabees in battalion rotation did PT every morning after formal morning quarters on the parade field. Come to think of it, the Naval air people never did any of that either. Maybe it’s just people who work with airplanes.
Thanks for your input so far guys, I really appreciate it.
LSL Guy, I majored in International Relations (focusing in Japan) and minored in Japanese. I took about 5 years of Japanese, 4 1/2 years of Spanish and studied abroad in Japan so I know a bit about the history and culture. I’m still interested in both of the aforementioned as well as teaching and linguistics. My brother is sure that I could get in as an officer but I’ll do some research of my own to make sure.
The pay has to be better than anything I can get right now. I just can’t find anything that’s not part time. I love the job I have now, but it’s only ten hours a week with a maximum of $800 a month. And that’s only until the school year ends. It’s not going to cut it now that I have to start paying back my school loans ($350 a month for the next ten years). I’ve been looking for a second job but nobody wants to hire a person who could pretty much only work just Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays. Hell, Americorps pays less than $1000 a month for a 40 hour week.
Anyway, I feel that I’m pretty mentally strong and disciplined. Physically weak, but I’ve been working on it and plan to continue to do so.
My brother scored extremely high on the ASVAB- in the top 90th percentile. I’m curious to see how I would do. Is there any way to take the ASVAB just to see?
I would prefer not to fly, I’ll leave that glory for somebody else. I’m pretty open to anything else. I would enjoy anything relating to teaching, languages, or managing. But I’ve never really complained about a job I’ve had before.
In case I failed to mention it, I’m a female. I’m not sure if that will change any aspects of this or not.
Again, thanks for your opinions, guys!
Anyway, the OP sounds like she has language aptitude…Arab translators are probably in pretty high demand across all branches I would assume. That Japanese fluency may also help you a bit.
If you have a college education and aren’t looking to pound sand every day, the USAF would be a good branch for you. It’s the least physically demanding branch of service for most (pilots aside) and you should really look into being an officer, as mentioned upthread.
An officer in any branch of service makes your resume much better than enlisted status. You’ll have to look into that though, because most officers become that way from ROTC or one of the academies, and you have already completed college. You may have to take some type of OCS (Officer Candidate School) to get in as an officer despite your degree.
The recruiter can set you up with the ASVAB with no further obligation. He will probably pressure you to join, sign papers, etc - don’t. Assuming you want to go in as some kind of linguist, find the AFSC for the job you’re looking for & go with that in hand. Tell the recruiter you’re interested in that field only, and want to take the ASVAB to see if you qualify. And stick to that story no matter what. If he can’t do it for you, walk away! He’ll call you back in couple of days to let you know something opened up
FYI, another thing to consider is where you may be deployed. Some locations require people with different skills than others. In my case, there were only maybe a couple dozen places world-wide I might be deployed & the vast majority were in the States. Unlike (again) SPs who could be deployed pretty much anywhere.
IMHO, the AF is probably the most female-friendly branch of the service (barring maybe the coast guard). But that’s just cause they’re so danged laid back.
DON’T think just because you have a linguistic talent that you should enlist and become a linguist. Before going down that road, you seriously need to look at the life of a linguist in the AF. At the same time, look at what opportunities you’ll have in the AF as an Officer. I don’t think there’s much aside from attache-type duty as an O that requires you to know and speak a foreign language, so you really need to ask yourself if you could separate yourself from the language thing. If the answer is yes, then I highly recommend talking to an Officer recruiter.
You’re really going to need to talk to AF O’s and E’s (linguists). Check the link I posted and hunt around for other AF forums. That will give you a better idea as to the day-to-day and long-term training/career path as an O and E. While I highly respect folks that enlist, if you have the choice of going in as an O or E, you’d be crazy to pass up the shot at a comission.
I don’t think you should try to pick the branch that fits who you are. You should choose the one that fits who you want to be. The best advice a recruiter/friend told me was that “The Army doesn’t find soldiers. It makes soldiers.” Don’t worry about not being physically strong. They’ll fix that.
Your main decision criteria (and mine) is the job you’ll get. I chose the Army because they’d let me to Intelligence and the others wouldn’t. I don’t regret it.
Also consider if the prestige means anything to you. To most civilians, the rank of prestige is Marine-Soldier-Sailor-Airman. If that’s not important to you, then forget it. But it was a big deal to me. I knew the Air Force was the easiest branch but I didn’t want easy, I wanted cool.
If you want to travel, I’d recommend the Navy. They get around a lot, including Japan, and I’ve never heard bad things about that. I have no idea where the others will send you. A popular Army destination is Germany, FWIW.
As for the money, ask recruiters what rank they can put you in at. With a college degree, if you go enlisted, you’ll come in as an E4 in the Army and already have a lot of promotion points so you can make Sergeant pretty quickly. I don’t know how it works elsewhere.
I don’t think any branch suits me as I am now. I know that each branch will change me in some way. But I think that looking at it as a person who is selling their skills and time to an employer (albeit this time the employer is the government), I can have a little say so in choice.
My brother and all his friends thought they’d be lucky enough to go to Germany. Nope, straight to Iraq. I have no interest in going out there and I after seeing all the bureaucratic crap my friends have to wade through just to get their paychecks, I have no interest in joining that branch. I think I can live without that prestige.
I’ve been thinking about the Navy, too. I am definitely going to do lots of research into all the branches before making a decision- I have no plans on making a hasty choice!
It’s funny. I was hoping college would narrow my interests or direct me into a certain field but after graduating it feels like I just have a million more possible directions! Such is life, I suppose. I’m just trying to narrow it down…I was really hoping to get into teaching but after hearing from my fiance’s father about how California’s government is currently furloughing all of the government workers (they’re talking about cutting off days of school to save money) so now I’m not so sure about becoming a teacher here if they’re doing that.
**lady **, thanks again for your e-mail. I added you to Yahoo. I’ll be out today but I’ll definitely be around in the future and I use my yahoo messenger the most.
I guess what I’m wondering with everyone who is in the air force is what got you interested in joining? What was your background before joining? Do you feel that the recruiters were truthful in what they said about it? I’m curious about the training and what it’s like working for them for the stretch of time. I’m juuuust starting out in the process; I’ve gone from the mindset of “I’ll NEVER EVER work for any branch of military!” to thinking “Hmmm, the experience made my brother a better person, and it looks like what they’re offering is better than anything I’m doing on my own right now…” so any input from people who have already been through this is greatly appreciated.
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I’m pretty open to anything else. I would enjoy anything relating to teaching, languages, or managing. But I’ve never really complained about a job I’ve had before.
