Military feeler?

[Josh11]

I am going to the military, but I can not decide on which branch. I have looked really hard into the Army and Navy. I am married and have kids, which is a big reason of wanting to join. I know about the Army side because I have an uncle that was a recruiter a couple years back. I do not know much about the Navy except what the recruiter has told me, and you know how that goes.

Ive read a ton of info online but I wanted to talk to people who have been in recently or are still in.

My first concern is the ship duty. I know it is the Navy and it is about water. But my recruiter has been telling me about the jobs that are not on ships. She told me that she has been in the Navy for seventeen years and she has never been on a ship. I am looking into jobs such as, Aircrewman, master at arms, and Hospital Corpsman. I already have my EMT-B license and I will have my Associates in Law Enforcement this semester so I was looking for a job in those fields. Needless to say I want to stay close to the family as much as possible. Not counting the deployments....As I know they are more than likely. I do not want to take a job that I spend a ton of time just on a ship and not deployed.

Not looking to start a service battle on which is better but I know how this community is on this website so I thought I would ask here. If you do not want to post on here in the open, please send me a pm or email. Thanks to all.

 

[jr600yd]

Josh, congraduations on wanting to go in the military. That said what do you want to do? A lot of people go in the military to learn a trade. All the services have medical personnel, law enforcement and all the trades. I don't know about the other services but the Army has always been short medical corpsmen. Choose this occupation and you will be deployed. Whether your a combat medic, Special Forces medical specialist, PA, or RN your going. Where you go is the question. I know you want to stay as close to the family as possible but remember you serve at the need of the military.

 

[Cassidy]

Based on my experience the Air Force has always offered better family housing and generally more time with family.

 

[Panzer22]

Based on my experience the Air Force has always offered better family housing and generally more time with family.

Absolutely. I have been AF and Army... If you have family, go to the AF, and don't look back.

 

[doc gordon]

you will never regret USN corpsman I became fmf ( fleet marine force ) and spent the last 2 years with marines . I was with " the walking dead " 1st battalion 9th marines in viet nam 65-66 , and worked with the greatest fighting force on earth !

 

[Minesweeper3433]

With family hands down try and go in the airforce. Second to that I would go army. Third navy then marines last. This is all due to family though. If i was going in to have fun I would go army, marines, airforce navy. If I was going in and loved good discipline and order it would be navy airforce marines army. I loved working with navy and airforce as a contractor but army and marines have problems with simple paperwork errors and professionalism on different levels.

This may upset some people but this is my opinion on the services.

However if you want a very disciplined yet family oriented service one that 99% of people forget while enlisting is Coast Guard. Look into it and you may really like what you see.

And for ease of enlisting regarding getting in its marines as the easiest army second navy airforce then coastguard.

 

[navyrad8r]

Josh,
PM incoming.
Deck seaman, Navy Corpsman (xray tech, Cardiovascular tech), Command Career Counselor, Small Arms Instructor (0812) and the son of a FMF Corpsman. Lucky enough to have a wife who stayed with me my entire career, and 2 children.
Cheers,
Doc

 

[Scott Harris]

The Navy has the highest divorce rate in the military. I'm guessing the Air Force has the lowest.

 

[Jet]

Josh

30 year USAF veteran here who served with, trained along side and deployed with all services. Thanks for your desire to serve but I must make some statements up front.

Not all families are cut out for military life since the demands of the service can put huge strains on marriages. Some services are better then others but it cannot be compared to a 40hr a week civilian job. To be successful, you must look at military service as more than just a job/occupation. You will be trained to perform a specific skill or a combination of skills. Whether you are an air traffic controller or an infantryman, often, you will be required to perform those duties more than 40 hours a week. The military can work you everyday of the week. There is a reason military members earn 30 days paid leave a year. I have been retired for 6 years and work as a weapons instructor/weapons repair guy for the USAF. I'm the only civilian in the shop and the 5 GIs I work with routinely work 10-11 hr days. They get most weekends off but that's not always guaranteed.

Are you and your family willing to move every few years. If you are warm climate folks, how will assignments to MT, ND, WY go over. If you like rural living, how will an assignment to San Diego or WA DC be handled? I was assigned to 12 different duty locations in 30 years. My first 2 I was single but the wife/kids followed me around for the next 10. We always enjoyed going to new assignments but not all families would view the chance to travel the same.

The USAF learned a long time ago that you recruit the member but you retain the family. Meaning, you must convince the spouses and kids that the AF is a great place to serve and to get them to encourage the military parent/spouse to reenlist and serve 20-30 years.

For both me and my family, we have found that even though the hours were long and deployments/overseas tours can separate you from loved ones, the positives always outweighed the negatives.

Knowing what I know now and if I were to do it all over again there would be very few things I would change. For a young single guy wanting to serve one tour, get some training, life experiences, see the world, the USMC is the best choice. For a married guy, the USAF is hard to beat.

Make sure you gather as much information as possible. All services have their pros and cons, select the branch and occupation (MOS/AFSC) that best suites you, your desires and goals. Remember recruiters are working hard to get #s and they will tell you things you want to hear. They may not be lying to you but they may leave some specifics out. Lastly make sure both you and your wife make the decision together.

Best of Luck

Jet

 

[chuckfurniss]

Coast Guard...

Chuck 8)

 

[mao0720]

Josh, congraduations on wanting to go in the military. That said what do you want to do? A lot of people go in the military to learn a trade. All the services have medical personnel, law enforcement and all the trades. I don't know about the other services but the Army has always been short medical corpsmen. Choose this occupation and you will be deployed. Whether your a combat medic, Special Forces medical specialist, PA, or RN your going. Where you go is the question. I know you want to stay as close to the family as possible but remember you serve at the need of the military.

I was a medic in the Army for the past 8 years (literally just got out on the 18th) and the are WAY over strength on Medics. Also, I made it 8 years without deploying, and not by choice either. As you said, needs of the military and they decided I needed to be stateside. As for my recommendation... Whatever branch you go, go officer. Not only is the pay better, but the housing and the general treatment is far better than enlisted. If I knew 8 years ago what I know now I would have joined either Airforce or Navy and gone through ROTC and come in as an officer.

 

[BigDMT]

I couldnt even start to tell you about how many marriages I saw get ruined while serving 4 years in the Navy. not sure how that Navy recruiter weasled her way out of sea duty, but women have their ways if you know what I mean. Navy is 3 years sea duty, then 3 years shore duty. That rotation is pretty strict in most cases. Your sea duty service comes FIRST.

The Navy is a great place for a single guy who has no worries in life, but no place for a family man. Cuz when you are gone for 6 months over seas, wives and husbands get lonely, especially if there is any drinking involved. Just not a good family environment.

Can't speak for the other branches, but not sure why you think the military is a career choice this late in life? I joined at the ripe old age of 17. I am now 32 years old and the money I made in the Navy put me as close to poverty as I have ever been. It was by far the lowest paying job I have ever had. The military helps with job resumes and some training in certain fields, and gives you some money to go to a cheap college when you get out, but it's not a career move i would recommend for grown men with families. I think your time would be better spent at school in the civilian world.....for your family's sake at least.

Officer is a good way to go, but you have to go to college on their dime for 4+ years, then serve a minimum of 6 years to pay it back. So that's 10 years of your life making crappy money right there. The other option is you pay your own way through college, then go OC, but that's not cheap and you are still using your degree for a low paying job. I find it laughable that I am only 32 years old and now make way more money that the full bird captain of my ship of 20+ years when I was in. If only I would have known better to get a jump on my current career a little earlier and not waste all that time dinking around serving a government that does not give a rat's a** about any soldier who has or is serving....

 

[pburr]

I did 20 years in the Navy and retired in 2006. That was time on 5 different ships, shore duty in Hawaii, STRATCOM assignment at Tinker AFB, and finally an assignment with Naval Special Warfare before I retired. If spending as much time with your family is the most important thing, dont join the Navy! As a corpman or MA, even if you are not assigned to a ship, you will most likely be working long shifts on erratic schedules. In 20 years of service, I only had 1 command where I was able to work a normal schedule with weekends off! And that was when I was working on an Airforce base of all things in Oklahoma City.

If you want a semi-normal family life, like others have said..........join the Airforce!

I would like to add though; you may not become rich serving, but being a veteren at least gives you the Post 911 GI bill, and being from Texas, also made me eligible for State college tuition for free! I gave my state benifits to my daughter and I will use my Federal Post 911 myself. That plus my retirement check I get and Tricare for medical coverage. Sorry, but all that combined would cost you a pretty penny out of your own pocket! Serving does have merits to it.

 

[benjamin199]

I spent 9 years in the Navy in the Nuclear power program, 2 years in training, 4 years on board the USS George Washington, and 3 years as an instructor.
Since you have a family, I would recommend the USAF. Yes there are people who don't go to sea in the Navy, but very few.
The Navy did give me a great start in life.
Good luck,
Ben

 

[Josh11]

Thanks to all that replied. What are some of the jobs i should try to look into in the usaf? There are just too many options to choose from.

 

[johnu]

Thanks to all that replied. What are some of the jobs i should try to look into in the usaf? There are just too many options to choose from.

Well, the AF (or which ever service you choose) will largely make that determination based on your ASVAB score. They don't want to waste a lot of time and money training you for something that you won't be good at.

 

[RandyD]

@Josh11,

I believe you need to look closer at your motives and what life is like in the armed forces before you proceed. Joining because you have a family, seems out of place. Yes, there are many military families, but a very high percentage of those servicemen started their families after they joined, and after they accumulated a rank that provided them with sufficient pay to support the family. I am assuming that you are enlisting, and the pay for an E-1 through E-3 is very minimal. When I was in the service, I saw a couple people like you, who were at the beginning of their career, and their priorities were family first. Consequently, they did not fit in, and were not considered for promotion.

Your desire to stay with your family is admirable, but in the armed forces the mission comes first. You will find yourself, many times, required to work all night and on weekends and holidays to accomplish what someone else desires to be done. Frequently, you will not find value in the tasks that you are assigned to accomplish after normal working hours especially when you have a family waiting for you at home. This will lead to disappointment and may be a shock on your wife and children.

I am a family law attorney, in San Diego, California, which is a military town, and I can emphatically state that military life is not conducive to marriage. That is why there is a high percentage of divorces among military personnel, and the lower your rank, the higher the percentage of divorce.

The military is designed to take in new recruits that are young and single who are between the ages of 17 and 22. It is unusual to see 24 year old recruits going through boot camp or basic training. Military life has a lot of demands and it works for those who are young and single.

 

[Jet]

Really depends on what you qualify for. The ASVAB test will define that. There are some on line tools to prep you for it.

Aircrew, LE to medic? That's a big gap. My son joined five years ago and is a fire fighter. Great training and he enjoys it.

As for aircrew. As an enlisted guy, load master duty is hard to beat. You are gone a lot with whatever type cargo aircraft (C17, C5, C130, etc) you are assigned to.

Air Force medics mostly work in a hospital/clinic environment and do not perform duties like USN Corpmen. Para Rescue is the USAF combat medic. They spend 3+ years training to perfrom medic roles in hostile/hazardous environments. Primary role is to rescue/recover aircrew behind enemy lines. These guys are studs

Law Enforcement is performed by Security Forces. They perform a few roles for the AF and LE is one of them. Their primary role is the protection of Air Bases in deployed locations and the defense of nuclear weapons. The base defense work in hostile environments can be exciting and the defense of bases in the states can get pretty boring. is it important, you bet, but not a lot happening. The biggest man power draw for these guys is protecting the nuclear missiles spread across the US Northern plains. Thousands of square miles require a lot of folks to protect. Absolutely important but very boring work. When they are in the rank of E-4 to E-7 they can apply for dog handler (drug/explosive) or weapons instructor/maintenance duty.

AF recruiters can be selective depending on location. Roughly, only 1 out of every 100 applicants is accepted. This is due to prior drug use, no high school diploma, criminal record. Also, many AF personnel reenlist so the need to recruit is lower.

Go into a recruiter office and just ask some questions. They will push you into the high demand career fields (security forces and aircraft maintenance). Just ask a lot of questions, listen, take notes, and spend time thinking it over. If you want to talk on the phone about this, shoot me a PM and I'll send you my #

Jet

 

[KT]

Josh11,
I have been active duty Navy for the last 16 years. I have went from E-2 to E-7 then to the officer side. I have worked on both sides. I applaude you for wanting to join the service, however there are some questions you need to ask yourself.

Can your wife make it with out you?
Can you child make it with out you?
Can you survive on 1787.40 bucks a month? This is base pay for an E-3.

Ships do deploy, but they also do work ups. These are two and three week underways getting ready for deployment. You go out for two weeks and come back for a week and then do it again. In most cases the work ups are just as hard as the deployments.

I have completed 8 deployments in 16 years. I have seen some of the coolest places in the world and some of the worst. Your recruiter is right not all people go to ships in the Navy, but most do. And if you don't go to a ship your likely to deploy on the ground. I have done both.

The military in general is very hard on families. The Navy is extremely hard on families. My daughter is 12 years old. I have been deployed for 6 years of her life. This not the case with everyone in the Navy, but it is a possiblily.

Any questions you have about the Navy feel free to PM me. I'm happy to help.

Like someone earlier said. You can't look at the service as a job. It's a career. You must treat it as such. Whether you say for 4 or 20.

On the good side. I have been to over 30 different countries. See places and things most people only read about or watch on TV. I got to play golf at the old course at St Andrews. I got to see Rome. I got to swim with Sharks off the coast of South Africa. I went on a Safari. All of this stuff was due tot he Navy.

KT

 

[Josh11]

Thanks for the truthful replies on the family side of it. The first questions i asked my wife when we started taking about the military was "do you think we are a strong enough family?" i knew her answer but i was wanting to see and make sure. The very last thing i want tks do is make it really hard on my family. I've always wanted tks join he military since i can remember.

The three different types of jobs are just some interests i have. I really didn't even think about bbecoming a emt until my college required it for my law enforcement degree. But then i got to really like it.