Civ to Mil

[SPilot]

How are the opportunities for joining the Air Force these days? Do they need people?
Is it possible to get a green card in return for four or five years of service?

 

[frog_flyer]

quite the opposite; air force is cuttin people left and right. 40k officers by 2012.

Go green, they're dying for people.

 

[Tweetdrvr]

All branches of the services are still recruiting enlisted folks, even when they do a reduction in forces, they have to bring in new people on both the bottom of the enlisted and officer ranks. Otherwise it screws up the balance of the total force way down the road. Notice none of the recruiting stations have shut their doors.

There have always been ways to earn citizenship by serving in the armed forces. The current administration has made this easier. I know of a dude who was a Hungarian AF officer, went to USAF pilot training, married a US Citizen, went back home to Europe, got out due to his country cutting back forces, came back to the USA, enlisted in the US Army as a helicopter crewchief, got his citizenship and came back to AF pilot training as a US citizen and officer in less than 6 years total time.

Good luck
Aim High

 

[flyingnerd]

How are the opportunities for joining the Air Force these days? Do they need people?
Is it possible to get a green card in return for four or five years of service?

You need to be a citizen to be an officer.

 

[Papyco]

and came back to AF pilot training as a US citizen ...

Anyone know why the AF made the guy go through flight school twice in 6 years?

 

[JimNtexas]

Anyone know why the AF made the guy go through flight school twice in 6 years?

IIRC the dude went to the Hungarian Air Force Academy which incorporates their version of UPT. He was assigned to a Mig-21 squadron after graduation, but only flew about 20 hours in the course of a year because that Air Force was broke at the time. So he joined our Army as an enlisted troop, became a U.S. citizen, and wound up in our UPT.

I think every Air Force pilot has had the UPT experience except the former squids and misguided children, which we had several of in the EF-111.

I don't know the current rules for the Army, but I know that at one time they had a kind of mini-UPT to convert Army rotor wing pilots to the One True Way of flying.

 

[Papyco]

IIRC the dude went to the Hungarian Air Force Academy which incorporates their version of UPT.

I was under the impression that he went through AF UPT once as a foreign stud and then went through UPT again as an AF Officer. I assumed that foreign studs got the exact same training at UPT as everyone else. That is way I was curious as to why they had him do it all over again just 6 years later.

 

[Tweetdrvr]

There is no simple answer.

He went through UPT in 98 and did the Aviation Leadership Program (ALP syllabus) which was for primarily for South American students who were going back to fly A-37s. They went through 37s twice, the first time their syllabus looked like a normal USAF flow with a few differences. After track select they went back six weeks to a class that had just done their first few midphases and then did lots of advanced contact, formation, mid-level low levelesque navigation, and instruments. Due to syllabus flow requirements, their four checkrides all happened in the last month of the program instead of the one meal at a time the way it happens in current Phase II. Some barely got through and some could fly and think almost as good as IPs by the time they finished. Total Tweet time they received was something like 190 hours.

Post Soviet collapse many of our non NATO friends were not eligible for Sheppard/ENJJPT, so they sent them on some exchange programs on the ALPS syllabus to go to USAF pilot training. I have seen a South African, a Ukranian, and a stud from the former Soviet Georgian Republic, and a few Hungarians come through over the years. When they graduated from AF training program PV number something different from US syllabus number they got a pair of silver wings and a blue certificate of aeronautical rating for pilot that looks exactly like my graduation certificate.

He was tops in Tweets and would have had a T-38 if he had been competing against his US classmates the first time through, and he was tops in T-6s and got a 38 the second time through. It would have been nice to save us all some JP-8 and sent him directly to 38s, but then again the IPs that flew with him the second time were happy to have such a gifted student and genuine nice person in the class.

He got a great deal since his wife and her family were all from the local area, so they got to spend a whole year near her family and had a great support system for his stressful year of SUPT. After what he went through to gain citizenship and get back into the cockpit of jets, he deserved a lucky deal like that.

 

[C-141/C-5]

not true we have a guy in our squadron who never went to Af UPT. He was an Army chopper and fixed wing guy. I don't know how he got away with it, but trust me IT STILL SHOWS!

 

[Papyco]

Tweetdrvr,

Thanks for clearing that up.

 

[sandman2122]

So what a/c did this former foreign student get out of -38's?

 

[Huggyu2]

not true we have a guy in our squadron who never went to Af UPT. He was an Army chopper and fixed wing guy. I don't know how he got away with it, but trust me IT STILL SHOWS!

A few of these Army rotorwing pilots did the interservice transfer into the USAF a few years back, but that deal is off. Unless a military pilot went through a fixed wing pilot training (SUPT or the Navy/Marine version are the only ones I know about), they won't get an interservice transfer. As I understand it, the Army guys do a fixed-wing conversion through a contractor. Although approved by the Army, it is not a military UPT course.