Re: Video footage of the USAF in Mordor What is the wash out rate for PJ school? I would imagine it to be one of the highest AFSC's out there...I know a lot of guys that were pararescue ended up in my job.
I've heard as high as 80-90%. I'm willing to bet a significant portion of that is due to the dive school requirement, which to my knowledge is the most failed/quit school in the US military. Maybe someone with more knowledge can shed some light.
It's high, but not crazy high. PJ school (just like all the other SOF qualification programs) is very doable. Getting wrapped around the axle about washout rates, especially if you are thinking about attempting a program, is setting yourself up for a nice little bit of cognitive dissonance when you decide to puss out and not go. "I made the right decision. The washout rates are insane! It would have been foolish to try."
I've heard the drop-out rate for indoc is 90%. One of my good friends is on the waiting list for indoc right now and is probably going to the pipeline (if his squadron will release him) in the spring. Now, I know 90% seems ridiculous, but I do specifically recall some of the guys I went to basic with who were attempting the PJ route. There were 3 or 4 that had no business being in the military, let alone in AFSOC. What I'm trying to say is that the qualifications needed to attempt the PJ course are much, much lower than the qualifications you will need to actually complete the pipeline and go on to be a PJ.
Some of you may have seen it, some not, but I completed my Checkride today in the Helo and got to solo with my roommate. The checkride is basically a flight where the instructor tests one's knowledge of maneuvers, emergency procedures, normal flight characteristics, and any other basic Helicopter flight regime. After I completed, I went out on a solo flight with my roommate and no instructor to our practice field where we just happened to get an actual caution light that our fuel filter was going bad, so we had to land and not finish my roommates flight. But we got a ride back to our home field with an instructor and flight ops gave us a new helo so I could solo. It was a pretty boring flight as all we could do was normal approaches and hover taxi a little bit. No big deal, but I still passed a milestone in Helicopter aviation. From here I do a few more flights of normal approaches and basic maneuvers before I move on to the tactics flight. These are the awesome flights where we do highspeed approaches, steep landings, confined area landings, egress drills, external load maneuvering, etc. The stuff you see in movies. After tactics, I get into basic instruments, kind of the same as when I flew them in the plane about 6 months ago, just a lot slower and 100x more boring.
I laughed when I was told "If you get deployed you will get deployed to Germany." That sounds like less of a deployment and more like a vacation, but what do I know.
I just finished contact phase of Helo school. I now feel pretty comfortable flying the helo around during the day. I can land no problem, takeoff no problem, and execute emergencies no problem. I just flew my first night flight though...wow. Totally different. I had to stay at our home airport and fly pattern work for an hour. It sucks. You can't see anything, and when there's other aircraft doing pattern work or coming in to land, the radio's get incredibly annoying and my situational awareness kind of drops off the deep end. Hopefully my second night flight later in the syllabus will allow me to leave home field. I start basic instruments for the Helo tomorrow, too. They are almost exactly the same as when I flew in the airplane about 6 months ago, so everything should be pretty reasonable to catch on to. I have 5 sims and 7 flights all doing basically the same 6 maneuvers, which kind of sucks, but If I'm good at them then I can get good grades. After BI's, I head into radio instrument, which is navigating by instruments for a few weeks. I also have a cross country flight coming up this weekend. 15 of us, 5 instructors, 10 students are flying out to Ft Lauderdale for the weekend to drink and sit on the beach. Since I basically took command and found us a couple sweet condo's on the beach to rent, I'm already up on my grades before we have even taken off. I'm all kinds of excited to get out there as I've never been on a cross country flight before. Plus it's my instructors last flights, so he's going to hook me and my partner up like a boss.
Graduating from MATC Comm school in a month. Unfortunately, they're holding my orders for an "indefinite" period of time. I don't know why, but the gunny's saying that my whole class is going to be stuck in Pensacola until July. We're going to be staff, which means that I can't hang out with students and instead have to hang out with the admin fuckers. Awesome. On top of this, we're basically going to be doing bitch work - the stuff that needs to be done, but the command doesn't want to have sergeants and staff sergeants doing. Or just stuff like "Hey, all the storage containers have pollen on them. Wash them off." I'm hoping that we'll actually be doing productive stuff, (planned maintenance on all the equipment in the school) but my guess is that we're going to be pressure washing the storage containers instead. Gay.
You can dream. I feel like since I graduated tech school I've stopped doing any work and just take out trash, clean, and do paperwork.
Yeah, that's the impression that I've gotten. Sit there and stare at the wall until the one-in-a-hundred situation that actually requires expertise, work, and go back to staring at the wall. In the meantime, pick up trash, stand post, and play nutball (Sit ten feet from your opponent, try to bounce golf ball into opponent's nuts. First one to quit loses). I should have gone O-strand. At least I'd be doing stuff. Hell, I'd probably get promoted faster too.
Still on a cross country flight right now. We went from west Florida to Gainesville, to Orlando, to Ft Lauderdale. Had an awesome time partying with the 15 of us who came. A few guys got callsigns out here, one being Cuz because he met up with his cousin and a friend of hers and we're pretty sure they at least made out after thy grinded on the dance floor for an hour...I was his wing man I guess because I occupied cousins friend for the night. We hit a landmark 14 people packed into a Tahoe also, that was pretty sweet. Now we're stuck in Tampa for the night. Going to the casino to play some blackjack for the night, so its worth it.
This might be better put in the Rant & Rave thread, but... I got orders! Woohoo! Apparently my staff sergeant dicked over another class and stole their orders. They're going to be stuck in Pensacola, and we're leaving. Sucks to be them. I'm going to MCAS Yuma, Arizona. It's not Mirramar or Pendleton, but it's good enough for me. I have an uncle who lives in Tuscon, so things shouldn't be that bad. Anyone who's been to Yooma - advice, admonishment, mocking laughter would be welcome.
How the fuck could this possibly be comfortable?? Spoiler Yes, I saw the "this is an April Fools joke" disclaimer....but not until I said exactly this and clicked on the link in the e-mail, so here you go.
I don't even get to use anything I learned in tech school. There is plenty of stuff going on but because base inprocessing takes most people over a month I have to sit around for so long because I have to take certain classes and complete certain training before I can work on anything they pretty much aren't allowed to let me touch anything.
MATC has two different orders - Detachment and Station. Detachments have mobile gear, (TSQ-120 ATC tower, the Remote Landing Site Tower, and the ATNAVICS It Only Does Everything System) and stations work on fixed civilian equipment. We learned all of the Det stuff for the last six months. Guess where I'm going? A station! So basically, I wasted the last six months of my life learning equipment that I will never see. Awesome. The only thing that will carry onto the Fleet is the stuff I learned with the VHF and UHF radios, and that's only if the station happens to be using the obsolete system that most airports dropped 30 years ago. Yuma has one of the most modern ATC systems in the country, and I have absolutely no training in any of the systems. Sure, I'm intelligent and can read schematics like a mothafucka, but I have absolutely no familiarity with the systems. It's going to be lots of fun adjusting to that. What's even more hilarious is that if they decide that they don't want me to learn the systems while on the job, they're going to send me to station school. Guess where station school is? Back in Pensacola! In other news, I have a Junk On The Bunk inspection on Friday, and I just dropped 140 bucks getting shit for that. The only way the gayness could possibly get any worse would be if 30 Marines smoked spice and killed themselves while fighting the cops. Health & Comfort + Safety Standdown + lockdown. We joke about that sort of crap happening, but it's happened before...
Memo went out, the military's pay has been cut in half across the board this month while Congress pulls its head out of it's ass. This shit is getting ridiculous.
So they reached an agreement by now, correct? I'm still disgusted by what a state of disarray this has been.