Good evening. Here is my take on your post. The short skinny: Guard, Reserves, Active Duty: it doesn't matter which, will all have the same requirement for lasik or prk. In the end, everyone that goes to upt(Air Force Pilot Training) has to go through Brooks AFB and has to meet the same medical requirements. That is where they will do a final medical "weed out" process. As far as whether it's (prk or lasik) are legal, I don't know. You would want to talk to an Air force flight surgeon about that(Again, the navy, army, etc may have different rules). Don't listen to recruiters, and I would take with a grain of salt any info from people who may have dealt with that specific issue in the past. I am not saying anyone is probably going to try and steer you in the wrong direction, but all of this stuff changes, sometimes yearly and many people frequently forget those couple of little details that can be very pertinent. If you know someone who has recently been through your exact dilemma I would certainly use that as a starting point and go from there. All that being said, there is a waiver for almost anything in the Air Force; it just depends on who you are and what your particular circumstance is. Before you are "winged" it is usually more difficult to get waivers than after, but it absolutely can be done. In the end, if it's what you really want to do, go for it. All they can do is say no. I have personal friends that were told they would never be an Air Force Pilot and I went to their pilot training graduations, so, Good luck.

Check baseops.net out for some good info on what the latest gouge is (Again: the info on baseops.net is not the regulation, but it is usually pretty accurate info):

UPT Medical Questions and Answers Archive