Originally Posted by
Oxinatah
Hey guys,
I heard from an AA Pilot recently that said after hearing about my background, what I"m doing and trying to do, he suggested I look into joining the USAF.
Ox
What is your background? College degree, close to degree, post grad? You have to be an officer to fly in the USAF and that requires a degree.
Flying time? Not that it matters, but everyone!!! goes to the current version of Flight Screening at Doss in Colorado. In theory your prior time will not count for much, nor will many IPs care how much time you have. Because you are there to learn our way and adapt to our culture and be assimiliated.
What are you trying to do? If close to a degree with decent hours already, the ANG or AFRES might be more up your alley. If selected for those few and highly coveted flight training spots, you would be nearly full time pay status for at least two years for UPT, follow on aircraft training, then some home station seasoning--longer for some airframes with more complicated missions.
Don't talk to a recruiter about officer opportunities. The best people who are more than happy to discuss active duty opportunities for officers are at your closest university with an AFROTC detachment. In lieu of them, find an USAF Academy Liason admissions person--they can tell you about the Air Force Academy and AFROTC scholarship opportunities.
The basic ways to get here:
Four year AFROTC with or with out a scholarship.
Two year AFROTC if you are more than halfway to a degree, also works to get a second degree, if you already have one and can't get picked up via OTS--even more competitive these days.
Officer Training School--everything you wanted to know about the AF in a few short weeks. The smallest source of commissioned officers after ROTC and the Academy. Their numbers fluctuate based on needs of the AF based somewhat on who doesn't graduate from USAFA and AFROTC. In times like these, OTS is very small. In times of big buildups, like the great Ronald Reagan gave us, which likely never to be seen again, the tap is wide open and OTS can be very quick way to the AF and the cockpit.
The Air Force Academy
ANG or AFRES
RPAs (Remotely Piloted Aircraft), the emperor's new term for UAVs are supposedly going to get their own training program separate from 1st person UPT, and is getting started now. These 3rd person pilots will have their own set of pilot wings and be in a career field all their own. That means, if all goes according to plan, the threat of getting one from UPT is supposed to go away in a couple of years. This doesn't mean you can't go to one as a follow on from another airframe for career broadening later on. Hopefully this is successful and these folks do well at employing the weapon for its intended purpose. Because there are several threads here debating the merits of using these things and whether or not these folks will ever be able to rise to the task to do the job as well as someone trained to fly and who has done the job from a first person perspective. Plus we have yet to see how they perform when the big solar flares knock out the satellites from which they are controlled. This week may be a good test of that from an astronomical standpoint.
Go to the other sites as others have suggested and use the search function, because your questions have been posed many times over and some people aren't too amenable to folks who can't do basic research. If you don't have the initiative to seek out the info in this day and age of the "googles" and the "internets", then we don't want to spoon feed you in the military.
Good luck and thanks in advance for your interest in serving our country.