I think I could chime in with my info, being that I am currently AF for 6 years and serving another 5 right now.
My thoughts -
NAVY - Good school if you go to Annapolis (Can't say for NROTC, but I can't imagine it being any worse...
AF - Good school if you go to the Academy (AFROTC Is not bad either)
I Love serving in the
military. I really do. I'm a bit of a historian, and an AF Junkie you could say cause I love all things flying and the history and all that. And I love military movies and the brotherhood of the military. I was the kid watchin the military movies and wanting to be those guys who've got best friends forever cause of what they went through together. Even now movies like Black Hawk Down, Band of Brothers, Patton, Saving Private Ryan (Before they find Matt Damon), those are what get me soggy chinned... Cause I love that sort of stuff.
Now, the military today is NOT what you would think. It is not a machine that when it gets revved up into action it is an unstoppable force. Not anymore. It is a chained animal, but not by laws or government... But by it's own incompetance. Here's what I mean... FOR EXAMPLE:
I reenlisted in March of this year... Lucily enough, I was able to get a Re-enlistment bonus based on my career field and how low manned it was for me to stay. Cool right, $36,000 not bad! Shouldn't be a big deal, just like winning a golf tourney, where's my check right?! WRONG. A month goes by, still no check... I go to finance (I'll explain my original point here in a second), they say that they never received the reenlistment contract paperwork that I signed to give me a bonus... OK No big deal, I'll walk to the NEXT BUILDING OVER to Re-Enlistments and ask them WTF? So They said, then ran the papers over to finance, finance must have lost them... OOOOOK. So I go over to finance again. They have no recolection of it... So I go BACK to Re-Enlistments and ask them can they send another copy over. They said well its finances goof, but ok they'll do it. Alright, situation averted right? WRONG.
2 weeks go by... Still no $$$ At this point, I'm just a bit perterbed.. I go back over to finance, WTF?! Still no paper... I go over to Re-enlistment, they sent the paper... Finance even Signed for it. I said ok enough. GIVE ME THE PAPER. And I walked it to finance myself, scanned a copy and WATCHED him enter it into the computer. He said, ok it's done... should be 7-10 Buisiness days... OHHHH Right, the AF has moved all of its central finacing into one location in South Dakota, which means the actual 'finance' shop on base has now been Voided of all abilities. So yeah I had to wait another week, but finally I got it.
The point is, you can be the best Officer, Senior NCO, NCO or Airman, but you will still get F-ked over by the lowest of the low. That is our military nowadays. Either that, or everything is done via electroics... Which means when you can't access the one webpage thats designed to give you access to everything, you can't do anything.... It's not fun.
And about the promotion piece, the reason why the AF/Navy have Lower promotion rates is WHAT exactly your being tested on. The reason the Army/Marines have such high rates is because a big portion of their Promotion criteria is PT. Pass your PT test, don't get an Article 15, and your sure to get promoted. Or if your Company First Sgt takes a hit, someones gonna have to get promoted to replace him... Thats how it is.
In the AF from my own experience, and the Navy as well (i think), our testing consists of a Points system. You get rated each year by your supervisor on how good he things you have done based on 5 categories. You need to be a well rounded individual, not just a rifle toater who can do 500 push-ups. They want to see educational advancement, community service, base/squadron representation, and of course solid work performance. You take that plus your awards and decorations, and you get points. You then take 1 test based on general Air Force Knowlege, and 1 based on your particular AFSC/NEC/MOS. Those two test scores, plus your rating scores, give you a number. The AF/Navy then say we can promote XX people this year from Grade A to B. So they take the scores, stack them, and count from the top down XX people. That last person becomes the cutoff score, if you didn't make the cut, you don't get promoted. Simple as that. The AF Actually has a HIGH promotion rate right now. E-5 AF avg this year was 49%. Alot of people are hitting their post 9-11 enlistments and bailing now they got their education. And the rest are getting out cause the AF Ops Temp is getting increased alot. People are deploying more and more, and they don't like that.
Ok, that was alot and I'm really not even close to being done lol. But I don't wanna kill another thread lol. So with that, I'll at least try to end with something comical...
