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Tbh I’m surprised any recruitment strategy works in peacetime at all
The Air Force got me by mentioning that college was practically free (became 100% free a couple years into my service) and that my job training counted toward a degree in my field. Also, I would get food and housing allowances on top of my paycheck, so I could afford to live anywhere they stationed me without spending my own paycheck on bills and food. Plus, free travel around the world on the govt’s dime.
I also was given the option to retire and collect a pension for life after only 20 years served, which I took advantage of. At 38 years old, I retired and now I don’t need to work anymore. Granted, my wife and I both earned 100% disability from our military service, which pays out more than my pithy 20-yr pension and allows us to be fully retired. But still, the military took pretty good care of me while I was in.
I’ll admit though, I signed up one month before 9/11 happened, and as soon as the planes hit the World Trade Center, my first thought was, “Fuck… I just signed up to die in some foreign war.” Thankfully, I survived that conflict; although my disability rating might suggest otherwise…
Might I ask what you did in the air force and what gave you your disability? Feel free to decline.
I worked in IT, fixing computers. Spent 20 years in the Air Force and I know absolutely nothing about planes, haha.
I didn’t get 100% disability from one specific thing; a whole bunch of smaller things across 20 years of service added up to a 100% rating.
The biggest thing was a PTSD evaluation, which gave me 70% alone. I was in Iraq and saw some shit; nearly died a few times, so that kind of messed me up for a while. I don’t have the stereotypical “go nuts and murder your family in your sleep” kind of PTSD; it’s more just mild anxiety and insomnia that strike randomly. But the military is trying to make up for decades of neglecting PTSD symptoms, so they’re hyper-vigilant about identifying/treating it nowadays, hence the high rating.
On top of that, I broke my leg while serving and it never healed properly, so I’ve had leg pain for the past decade. I barely made it to retirement. I almost got medically separated, but a doctor decided at the last minute that I didn’t need my legs to sit at a desk and do my job, so they put me on a medical waiver and let me finish the last few years of my career. That earned me a pretty decent disability rating as well
Plus I’ve had a few other minor medical issues throughout the years that got small ratings. They have some weird diminishing returns formula for calculating disability ratings, so 20% + 20% ≠ 40%. It’s more like 25%. It’s super hard to earn a 100% rating. I got approved for about 30 independent ratings, which barely made it to the 100% cutoff once added up.
Thank you for taking the time to answer!
I don’t quite understand why the air force would send an IT guy to a place in Iraq where it’s actually dangerous and not somewhere there’s computers. But I don’t know anything.
We need computers at every base, and we need people in place to maintain those systems. Especially at remote bases like in Iraq; they can’t communicate with the rest of the world if they don’t have any communications set up.
My original job title when I joined the Air Force was Communications-Computers Systems Operator. We were essentially a jack-of-all-trades IT profession. If it touched a computer network, we fixed it. So I learned how to maintain and repair satellites, phones, radios, servers, desktop computers, laptops, tablets, GPS trackers, etc. We even built these computer networks from scratch every time we set up a new forward base somewhere, so we needed IT guys in place to get it done.
In 2009, our profession modernized and we were split into dedicated specialties under a new “cyber” umbrella. At that point, I became solely a server administrator; although it took many years for the Air Force to adapt to the change and I ended up being a jack-of-all-trades IT guy for the rest of my career.
A half year before I retired in 2022, the Air Force started shifting our maintenance and repair over to civilian companies and they moved our Cyber Support career field into a Cyber Warfare one; identifying and mitigating cyber threats instead of just being the support/repair guys behind the scenes. But I never got to see that vision play out, as I retired before they’d figured out how to transfer us into the new roles.
When I was in Iraq, I wasn’t allowed to leave our base because it was too dangerous, and us IT guys didn’t have any sort of field missions that required us to be physically present with boots-on-ground forces. Still, that didn’t keep war from coming to our doorstep, and our base was regularly mortared the whole time I was there. I had a few close calls, and even suffered a concussion from a nearby blast that killed 3 of my customers. If I hadn’t gone back to my truck to grab a tool, I would’ve been there in the building with them. That was probably the closest I came to dying, and definitely made me feel less safe, even living and working in bunkers on a military base.
Thank you for sharing your story. It was a very compelling read. I wish you the best of luck and hope that you can still recover from what must have been a truly terrifying time in your young life.
There are needs for IT, logistics, medical, administrative, engineering and so many other professions everywhere the military goes. Most jobs in the military are non-combat roles.
Yeah along with this guy my friend is JAG and was deployed to Iraq. He also almost died and saw some unfortunate shit, suppose both of them just had really bad timing at the wrong place/wrong time. My buddy is on record for the only JAG to unholster his sidearm in like 30 years or something haha pretty sure he gets razzed for that.
What’s a JAG
A military lawyer. They can be your defense, your prosecutor, or even your judge.
Hah, same story here. Signed up, and then 2 months later it happened.
Removed by mod
Gotta jack those uni tuitions way up then.
Investing into healthcare for rural areas so 90% of the local population isn’t unfit for service would probably do more than luring uni kids into the service.
Bariatrics is expensive, though
Bringing back the tradition of allowing recruits to lie about their medical history would do more as well. They forgot they looked the other way as something like 30 percent of their recruits just didn’t report medical issues. Then they put in a digital medical system and suddenly a third of their recruits need waivers that take months to get. They finally figured that out and recruiting numbers magically went back up.
Thats actually how we got fluoride in our water.
Oh recruitment in peacetime usually goes up. The big problem the last couple years wasn’t the strategy or some wave of sudden weakness in our youth. It was a new digital medical system that meant you couldn’t lie at the intake station anymore. Turns out quite a few people got to intake, took a look at the questions and just decided they’d never had a doctor appointment in their life. For the Army’s part, as long as they could duck walk and didn’t have an oxygen tank following them around they didn’t care. So the big problem was just the introduction of the standards that were supposed to have been there already.
The recent uptick in recruiting was due to the Army introducing a fast waiver system for minor things that needed a months long waiver process before. People understandably didn’t want to wait months for a thankless job that arguably pays less than minimum wage.
Usually in peacetime the siren call of free college and free technical training fills the recruiting line. If you slot into the right specialty you’re looking at six figures when you get out. And the Army gives you a lot of control over where you end up job wise. They’ll let you write the technical training into your contract as long as it’s in the same job field.
They have the good crayons!
Green flavored is the best
I’m too much of a removed.
