Made AF Contact - Assistance

[Ortini159]

I can speak from experience. I spend 4 years enlisted Security Forces. To me I thought it was a joke. Probably the worst job in the AF. Everyone, especially the officers thought that they were GI Joe in the ARMY. And believe me they are far from it. Mike Lewis is right, horrible reputation and as far as measuring the brightness of the career field, it would rank among the lowest by far. I could go on and on, it was a complete waste of time for me, and could pretty much classify it as a slap in the face. The traveling was great but spent all of my deployments in the sand. You have to put your name on the list if you want convoy duty and might get it twice for a 6 month deployment. So there are no outside the wire missions. The officers would be stuck behing a desk writing reports or doing paperwork. When your done with that they would have them run around and do exercises that didnt even make sense or they would come around and ask for post briefings. Stupid!!!

TAC-P is going to be enlisted and they are basically in the ARMY. Work live and train with the Army. Had a few buddies go do that and they love it. The army doesnt claim them and the AF forgets about them. Get to do some high speed stuff, calling in a lot of air strikes. Get to go to some good army schools. Spend a lot of time in afgani land.

CCT and PJs are on the same level. They are studs. Training is long and tough. CCT go on some high speed missions and work in STS teams with other branches. The officer side of the field is fairly new and dont know too much about it. I could only imagine that it would be like most other career fields in, they go through the training but after a little while they are sitting behind a desk.

Just a little insight from me!

If you want some action, enlist TAC-P or CCT. Want to save lives PJ's. Want to do paperwork, go officer. AFOSI might be good for an officer. Otherwise if you want outside the wire, join the Army or Marines. I wish I had!

 

[4jul1776]

To reiterate, I am interested in whether or not I can choose these positions prior to "signing the line." I have a strong urge to serve, but would gain some peace of mind knowing what I'm going in for.

I commend your desire to serve, but realize what you are getting into. All of those high speed HOOAH jobs everyone mentioned above get you into a lot of hairy situations. It sounds great on a TV commercial and looks cool in a magazine ad, but it is a different story when you are doing it for real. Let's face the facts: We are going to be in Iraq for a long time. The situation is only getting worse. The Air Force is filling jobs that were traditionally done by US Army units.

Recruits pre 2003 didn’t get to choose their war; you do. My recommendation is to choose carefully.

Good Luck!

 

[falconvalley]

I'm almost positive osi has officer slots. As far as pilot slot it depends how u go in. I was explained that you needed to go via ROTC and bid for a pilot slot. You cant just come in off the street with a BA and say I want to fly F-15's doesn't work that way. A recruiter at the ROTC dept at a school will have all your answers. Don't listen to a enlisted recruiter for your needs he can't do anything about it. I know I was AF active duty for 6 years and separated about 1 1/2 ago.

You don't need to go to ROTC to get a pilot slot in the AF. You can apply off the street with a 4-year degree. You can apply to the Active Duty, an Air National Guard unit, or the Air Force Reserves.

With the Active Duty, you don't choose your aircraft. You are in the Air Force and will be assigned based on needs at the time.

With Air National Guard and AF Reserve, you apply at specific units, ie 128th Air Refueling Wing, Milwaukee, WI ANG. If selected and approved, you will go to pilot training just like everybody else, except you won't be expecting an assignment on drop night, as you will already know what you will be flying and where you will be based.

I realize I'm repeating some things, but I wanted to clear that up...

 

[Mike Lewis]

And don't get me wrong; I have a tremendous respect for the people serving in the security forces. They just have this stereotyped reputation, that, while I don't subscribe to, is prevalent out there, just as much as engineers are "pocket-protector wearing geeks" and Viper pilots are "scarf wearing egomaniacs" .

However, security forces is also a very thankless job. Don't forget that law enforcement in the military also consists of standing guard around a weapons storage area in 20 below zero in a blizzard...