Air Force Careers

For an Air Force career, start with "Basic Training" below, and then pick one of the career paths.

“All the way through flight training, there's this constant weeding-out process.

"After they get rid of the guys who physically and psychologically can't handle flight school, they really go to work on you.

"Ground school gets a lot of guysthey just bombard you with more information that you think you can handle, and if you can't regurtitate it back on command, 'hasta la vista, baybee'".

"Then comes basic flight, where they get rid of the guys who just don't take to flying. Then jetsmore guys get psyched out by all the extra power.

"Then comes advanced, where the jets - T38's, supersonic trainers - have some serious horsepower. That's what got me - I didn't take to combat formation flying as fast as the instructors said I should if I wanted to be a combat pilot. The rest of the guys were real nice about it, almost apologetic, but I knew what they were thinking - so long, sucker, you didn't make the grade.

"So I learned to fly C130's - transports. "Trash Haulers", the fighter jocks call them.

"The joke was on them, though. Back in '93, when the Air Force got cut back so bad, all these out of work F15 jocks found that the airlines only needed so many pilots. There's a lot of F16 drivers looking for work as cropdusters right now.

"Meanwhile, I hooked up with one of them private 'security' outfits. They don't need a guy who can pull 9G turns and shoot down planes that're 20 miles away. They DO need somebody who can fly their guys into tiny, unpaved little airstrips, and fly them out again in one piece, under fire, in whatever kind of aircraft they can lease.

"They don't teach that kind of thing to fighter pilots.

"Maybe they can get jobs with the IRS or something."

These are the characters that fly the world's fixed-wing combat and transport aircraft.

Air Force Basic Training

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