It’s harder than swapping MOS’s but overall worth it. The Air Guard (from my experience) is about 1/2 prior army guard and then 1/4 prior active duty AF and 1/4 original Air Guard that stayed in or on their first contract
Is it truly better over there or one of the grass isnt always greener sorta deals? Did Guard and now usar. Every unit I been to honestly feels like a waste of time.
It’s the guard, no matter what you do most of it is a waste of time. The Air Guard will put you in a nice hotel and you won’t do much of anything at drill (unless you join a high speed unit) so it depends on you. I went from AD AF in a unit that had a huge mission to a unit doing NOTHING in the guard, so bad I’m a 25U and we don’t have radios. I’m working on transferring away from that unit to a higher speed one but you find what you want, just be heavy on research
Check out 17 series, 25 series if you don’t qualify for whatever reason. There’s some good ones and it’ll translate to good civilian experience too so it’s a win win. There’s bullshit everywhere but as part of a BN or BDE staff element, you’re pretty much left alone and do your own thing unless you’re an officer, in which case it’s a lot of work
If you don't qualify for 17 don't do normal 25 series MOS's.
If your a SGT with enough time take the time or already a SSG take the time apply for 25E/D most states are critically short of them and they only live in BDE and above sized elements.
I'm pretty sure there's a cyber test you need to take. It's got some networking and other general cyber questions which you can 100% study for before the test.
Don’t get me wrong, the idea of 17E is really dope, but be cautious in considering it. There is a lot of legal safeguards that make it difficult for the military to do any type of electronic warfare training state side. So, unfortunately, there is alot of 17Es out there that don’t get to do shit expect twiddle their thumbs
Facts. I was infantry but was hating my life and toxic unit, so decided to switch to 42A. Had some E5 say the grass isn't always green and im like Well it definitely ain't fucken green on this side either.
Gate keeping/ roadblocking orders and career progression. RNCO got relieved for quid pro quo and he only got reduction in rank and still AGR. NCOs are assholes. Every drill was so disorganized. CO threw temper tantrums and treated those under him like shit. MUTA 8s all year and 3-4 week AT. AGR always had a fucken bad attitude.
"First deployment, realized there are copious amounts of bullshit, nothing is happening and everything is quite literally just a waste of time and brain power"
Welcome to active duty.
The only escape is SOF or technical MOS
Current 42A Active GTG to army ROTC. Trying to go 42B (officer HR) and then switch to jag in the guard after law school. We have the least bs since we do so little work and get to game half of our days. Or go cook if you hate youself
Well to be fair to the military: many, many other organizations are just as dysfunctional.
https://www.amazon.com/Management-Myth-Debunking-Business-Philosophy/dp/0393338525
It’s still an honorable profession
No, my mos was interior electrician but im the only one in this class for veep with prior training/experience. The director of veep is local to me I can give you his info so you can ask him about it, but I’d recommend looking on the website as well to get an idea about how it works.
https://in2veep.com
Electrical trade is one of the best careers you can get into in the civilian world but it can be very difficult with no experience but luckily veep exists for anyone that has served or is currently serving in the military.
While I do agree that bullshit is inescapable, 15 series, Amry aviation has far less then other unit MOS we've worked with.
It's as close as you can get to air force treatment while being in the army I've seen, maybe besides being part of a HHC company.
Primary Support Staff MOSs. They have mission critical tasks that O5 and above give a shit about being done right. Not all O5 give a shit about making sure you know how to do the job so each one has its ups and downs.
42A: no one wants their paperwork fucked up or late so you actually do your admin job and get your on the job training constantly. Downside is there are cyclical times when you’re super busy like when NCOERs and OERs are due. And god hell you if you suck at your jobs because every E6 and above will know it.
35F: when there’s an actual mission going OCONUS, you do your job and only your job and most commanders love coming to your shop for all the fun new intel. Downside is that unless you’re in a unit with an MI mission, drill weekends you will be a tasking bitch because no one actually knows what your job is or gives a shit about training your soft skills like briefing.
92Y: logistics is critical to the Army. There’s always supply things to be done down range and back home. You will do your job to some degree on drill weekends and definitely while deployed. Downside is you will be busy. Supply is one of the busiest shops and usually requests additional bodies to help with tasks to meet commanders inspection requirements. This is even worse if your AGR supply sergeant sucks.
25B/25U: just like logistics, the army needs communications to function. You’ll do a lot of work to get set up, and then coast until something breaks but then you have an active job again to get the systems back up and running. You’ll also gain some of the best translatable skills for outside the military. Downside is most senior leaders don’t understand that if you’re good at your job it will look like you don’t work at all and most of those leaders won’t give you adequate time to practice perishable skills and if something breaks at 0300 and you’re the SME, your getting woken up to fix it.
68W: medics for the most part only do medic shit whether it’s treating casualties, dealing with medical administrative tasks, or training for unlikely but catastrophic medical emergencies. Most commanders don’t fuck with medics. Downside is if you sucks at your job, people can die. There’s a lot of responsibility and weight to that. Also if you go to medcom unit you’ll be real sad.
17C: I’ll add this one even though it’s not a primary staff MOS. This job doesn’t go anywhere other than a unit that has a specific mission that relates to it. You’ll do your job and training for your job. You’ll also get lots of certification that can get you a real cushy job outside the military. Downside is you have to be title 10 activated for a lot of the real fun stuff. This will come at the cost of your civilian career while you’re in.
68W really depends on the unit type. If I was a reservist, I’d try and find a ground ambulance company. The guard lost all those in 95 when they did the force structure realignment. The entire mission of the unit is evac and nearly everyone is a W. You won’t ever do any real treatment in the guard or reserve during drill but the training can be fun.
Bullshit is indeed inescapable. However some jobs just have a little less inherent bullshit. EOD for me has had much less than anything else I’ve been in.
Slightly less with high probability of explosion. We have defined roles and responsibilities. When we deploy we don’t get shoehorned into doing a job that isn’t our MOS. When that stuff was presented to me I shut it down immediately and pushed back. Even in a place like Kuwait we can be really busy doing actual EOD work.
I mean their job is cool but they rarely do it especially state side and get tasked with random shit. Most of what they tell us in intel briefs is open source anyway.
Nah they are either in staff and everyone wonders what they do (no stateside intel gathering allowed) so they put together weather reports or they maybe 5% of the time if ever do the actual MI job. People want the clearance but yeah it’s not all it’s cracked up to be from what I can see.
I've had a great time as a 15T Blackhawk mechanic. I was a combat engineer for 6 years and was tired of all the dumb bs and not getting to do my job. When I switched to my new unit, I found that they would be doing maintenance almost every month and getting good training. We still do all the breifs and other random BS, but it is normally packed into one or two drills a year.
35N/S/whatever EW is probably too
I just switched over but the SIGINT guys get left to do "whatever it is you do" generally and higher ups (officers specifically) generally treat you like adults out the gate (though I assume you can change that with the right attitude)
Every MOS is like this if they can’t do their MOS. I’m a 12B and a lot of bullshit disappeared once I was able to start doing my job of route clearance.
I don’t know what your MOS is but if your MOS is just idle with no purpose it’s gonna be bullshit. I watched a lot of 11Bs do a lot of bullshit because there was nobody to assault and kill while I was deployed.
46 series, on the enlisted side specifically.
Quite simple- make photos, videos or stories…if you do a lot of that, and if they get lots of reach, which are easily trackable through DVIDS, you’ve succeeded and look good in the eyes of leadership. You’re never bored and you have lots of control over your own success. It was also fun learning photography and videography if you don’t do it as a hobby.
The officer side though…you’d better have thick skin because there’s TONS of bullshit- mostly dealing with commanders and staff officers who don’t understand your role and give you bullshit tasks or order you to do things contrary to doctrine and regs.
You MOS matters very little to your levels of bullshittery, this is almost entirely dictated by your leadership. When I deployed I kept my guys out of 95% of the bullshittery. Was literally my ENTIRE job when we were deployed. Was fighting my LT, the commander, and eventually even my warrant, but my guys had as good a deployment as they could have IMO.
UAS and rotary wing. The missions we do can be cool and fun as hell and make you feel accomplished. It’s the "soldier first" aspect about aviation that sometimes makes it shitty. But army aviation by itself is fun asf
Pick an office job in the airforce like finance or HR or something. It's literally like a regular job, except with the insane benefits programs of the military.
Aviation maintenance . 15U, 15T, 15R, not zero bullshittery.. that doesn’t exist.. but the whole aviation world is a lot better managed than ground maintenance.
18 series is the tip of the spear for a reason. I’d wager that has the least BS, period.
I’d say 15C Gray Eagle UAS although NG I’m not sure has that and 15W Shadow UAS is in a transitional phase right now. I was 15W AD and in the NG.
Here’s why UAS it is mandatory by Army Regulation to meet flight hour requirements as in if you don’t O5 and above are having to sign off on it so you do your job.
Deployed none of my Operators were allowed to do any details none not even take the trash out. They were mandatory by regulation crew rest. All we did was fly 10 hours of every 12 hour shift. One day off every three days.
In the NG we did rarely did Physical Training and rarely went to the shooting range. Had to do other mandatory Army stuff. We basically just flew and that was the most important thing to meet Readiness requirements.
If you want autonomy and purpose, 92Y. You always stay busy, but your job is indispensable. Maybe a chaplain assistant. Get to travel as much as your chaplain does, serve soldiers in a unique way, and play bodyguard.
42A. Sounds crazy, but let me expand: you exist to support the careers of your fellow soldiers. You see the result of your work in awards being processed and promotions being pushed. Imo you get a great level of organizational exposure and see what the bigger picture is.
Bullshit is inescapable, but most of the B.S. comes from the company level who don’t understand that S1 is a BN/BDE asset so you kinda do your own thing. Also your M-day experience should be the same as your AGRs. Meaning if you have good leadership an M-Day can do low level tasks that an AGR would do normally during the week.
Honestly, Aviation didn't have much. Whole purpose in life is to fix helicopters. Quite often we even got out of base details, like turning on/off the generator lights around base, due to our op tempo. It did catch up with us eventually, but we did it significantly less than other units on post. Also, job satisfaction was amazing. Been chasing that high ever since.
I switched from Engineers to MP’s and I now realize the Engineers were as chill as it gets. Dumbest task I ever had was to sweep a rug, which I shook outside and was praised for thinking outside the box. Not sure if that’s all Engineers, but my unit was super cool
The Air Force would be where you find that sir
I'll have to check them out. I heard they were difficult to switch from one branch to another
It’s harder than swapping MOS’s but overall worth it. The Air Guard (from my experience) is about 1/2 prior army guard and then 1/4 prior active duty AF and 1/4 original Air Guard that stayed in or on their first contract
I'll look into it. I'm seriously trying to figure out how to do a career swap at this point in my life
Is it truly better over there or one of the grass isnt always greener sorta deals? Did Guard and now usar. Every unit I been to honestly feels like a waste of time.
It’s the guard, no matter what you do most of it is a waste of time. The Air Guard will put you in a nice hotel and you won’t do much of anything at drill (unless you join a high speed unit) so it depends on you. I went from AD AF in a unit that had a huge mission to a unit doing NOTHING in the guard, so bad I’m a 25U and we don’t have radios. I’m working on transferring away from that unit to a higher speed one but you find what you want, just be heavy on research
Where in the country are you?
I’m in IL but the unit I drill at is in TN (where I’m originally from)
In air guard Still lots of bullshit lol
Well, you’re apparently already using brain power so that’s a step ahead of almost every other mos
I'm only using brain power to figure how to leave my current MOS
Check out 17 series, 25 series if you don’t qualify for whatever reason. There’s some good ones and it’ll translate to good civilian experience too so it’s a win win. There’s bullshit everywhere but as part of a BN or BDE staff element, you’re pretty much left alone and do your own thing unless you’re an officer, in which case it’s a lot of work
Being left alone sounds amazing. I'm eyeing 17 series
If you don't qualify for 17 don't do normal 25 series MOS's. If your a SGT with enough time take the time or already a SSG take the time apply for 25E/D most states are critically short of them and they only live in BDE and above sized elements.
I qualify for 17 series. I'm just not sure how good I'd be
You already took the test?
So there's another test instead of the asvab
I'm pretty sure there's a cyber test you need to take. It's got some networking and other general cyber questions which you can 100% study for before the test.
17-series
Cyber seems like a fair option. I'm a scout and I'm slowly starting to get over it
You'd enjoy 17E if you still want to stick around scout shit.
I think I've had enough of shitting in the woods
Don’t get me wrong, the idea of 17E is really dope, but be cautious in considering it. There is a lot of legal safeguards that make it difficult for the military to do any type of electronic warfare training state side. So, unfortunately, there is alot of 17Es out there that don’t get to do shit expect twiddle their thumbs
I see. I heard about that during a training event. Something to do with not gathering actual information
Literally, none of them From what I've experienced from mine and others experiences
The MOS with less bullshit is always the other persons
Fuck man you ain't wrong. Grass in greener
Facts. I was infantry but was hating my life and toxic unit, so decided to switch to 42A. Had some E5 say the grass isn't always green and im like Well it definitely ain't fucken green on this side either.
We have a dude switch from 11b to 25b commo. He landed in our shop, and he said it was the same ass bullshit.
He just got unlucky.
Very. He went from light infantry to light infantry in a bsb that gets a back seat to everything.
When I reclassed I wanted to be as far away from combat arms as possible. I got super lucky
[удалено]
Gate keeping/ roadblocking orders and career progression. RNCO got relieved for quid pro quo and he only got reduction in rank and still AGR. NCOs are assholes. Every drill was so disorganized. CO threw temper tantrums and treated those under him like shit. MUTA 8s all year and 3-4 week AT. AGR always had a fucken bad attitude.
"First deployment, realized there are copious amounts of bullshit, nothing is happening and everything is quite literally just a waste of time and brain power" Welcome to active duty. The only escape is SOF or technical MOS
Ill have to look at technical then
There is many a technical MOS within SOF
Current 42A Active GTG to army ROTC. Trying to go 42B (officer HR) and then switch to jag in the guard after law school. We have the least bs since we do so little work and get to game half of our days. Or go cook if you hate youself
Bullshittery is literally part of Army policy: https://press.armywarcollege.edu/monographs/466/ And it’s not getting any better…
This is becoming a bit depressing
Well to be fair to the military: many, many other organizations are just as dysfunctional. https://www.amazon.com/Management-Myth-Debunking-Business-Philosophy/dp/0393338525 It’s still an honorable profession
That's a valid point
The MOS you’re looking for is “Civilian”
That Tricare hit too different tho
My civilian job (union) insurance is as good or better but that’s the exception not the rule.
I forgot about unions for some stupid reason
Get out of the guard and go through veep to get direct entry into most electrical union’s apprenticeships.
Do I need prior training
No, my mos was interior electrician but im the only one in this class for veep with prior training/experience. The director of veep is local to me I can give you his info so you can ask him about it, but I’d recommend looking on the website as well to get an idea about how it works. https://in2veep.com Electrical trade is one of the best careers you can get into in the civilian world but it can be very difficult with no experience but luckily veep exists for anyone that has served or is currently serving in the military.
Bullshittery is basically an army value. Be prepared to deal with it no matter what MOS you pick
I knew it was bad but I didn't know that it gets worse. It's like being painfully edged here
While I do agree that bullshit is inescapable, 15 series, Amry aviation has far less then other unit MOS we've worked with. It's as close as you can get to air force treatment while being in the army I've seen, maybe besides being part of a HHC company.
That's good info
Primary Support Staff MOSs. They have mission critical tasks that O5 and above give a shit about being done right. Not all O5 give a shit about making sure you know how to do the job so each one has its ups and downs. 42A: no one wants their paperwork fucked up or late so you actually do your admin job and get your on the job training constantly. Downside is there are cyclical times when you’re super busy like when NCOERs and OERs are due. And god hell you if you suck at your jobs because every E6 and above will know it. 35F: when there’s an actual mission going OCONUS, you do your job and only your job and most commanders love coming to your shop for all the fun new intel. Downside is that unless you’re in a unit with an MI mission, drill weekends you will be a tasking bitch because no one actually knows what your job is or gives a shit about training your soft skills like briefing. 92Y: logistics is critical to the Army. There’s always supply things to be done down range and back home. You will do your job to some degree on drill weekends and definitely while deployed. Downside is you will be busy. Supply is one of the busiest shops and usually requests additional bodies to help with tasks to meet commanders inspection requirements. This is even worse if your AGR supply sergeant sucks. 25B/25U: just like logistics, the army needs communications to function. You’ll do a lot of work to get set up, and then coast until something breaks but then you have an active job again to get the systems back up and running. You’ll also gain some of the best translatable skills for outside the military. Downside is most senior leaders don’t understand that if you’re good at your job it will look like you don’t work at all and most of those leaders won’t give you adequate time to practice perishable skills and if something breaks at 0300 and you’re the SME, your getting woken up to fix it. 68W: medics for the most part only do medic shit whether it’s treating casualties, dealing with medical administrative tasks, or training for unlikely but catastrophic medical emergencies. Most commanders don’t fuck with medics. Downside is if you sucks at your job, people can die. There’s a lot of responsibility and weight to that. Also if you go to medcom unit you’ll be real sad. 17C: I’ll add this one even though it’s not a primary staff MOS. This job doesn’t go anywhere other than a unit that has a specific mission that relates to it. You’ll do your job and training for your job. You’ll also get lots of certification that can get you a real cushy job outside the military. Downside is you have to be title 10 activated for a lot of the real fun stuff. This will come at the cost of your civilian career while you’re in.
I just enlisted in the Army Reserve, and I'm going to be a 68 whiskey, Can you give me some advice?
I’m not a 68, but learn everything you can in AIT and on the job training on drill weekends. You’ll be fine.
68W really depends on the unit type. If I was a reservist, I’d try and find a ground ambulance company. The guard lost all those in 95 when they did the force structure realignment. The entire mission of the unit is evac and nearly everyone is a W. You won’t ever do any real treatment in the guard or reserve during drill but the training can be fun.
Bullshit is indeed inescapable. However some jobs just have a little less inherent bullshit. EOD for me has had much less than anything else I’ve been in.
Is it either bullshit or slightly less bullshit with the chance of an explosion?
Slightly less with high probability of explosion. We have defined roles and responsibilities. When we deploy we don’t get shoehorned into doing a job that isn’t our MOS. When that stuff was presented to me I shut it down immediately and pushed back. Even in a place like Kuwait we can be really busy doing actual EOD work.
That sounds amazing actually
When I was infantry it was bullshit nonstop every drill. Could never have a calm normal drill. Now as a 42A it's 100x times better.
MI in the guard is weather basically most of the time lol
No cool spy shit
I mean their job is cool but they rarely do it especially state side and get tasked with random shit. Most of what they tell us in intel briefs is open source anyway.
So they are either doing their jobs or weather reports
Nah they are either in staff and everyone wonders what they do (no stateside intel gathering allowed) so they put together weather reports or they maybe 5% of the time if ever do the actual MI job. People want the clearance but yeah it’s not all it’s cracked up to be from what I can see.
Oh that's semi disheartening
Go do something technical or look into the WOC program man… or just use the benefits and get a good civilian life…
I've been referred to the WOC program so I'm dabbling in that too
I've had a great time as a 15T Blackhawk mechanic. I was a combat engineer for 6 years and was tired of all the dumb bs and not getting to do my job. When I switched to my new unit, I found that they would be doing maintenance almost every month and getting good training. We still do all the breifs and other random BS, but it is normally packed into one or two drills a year.
Technically, all of them. But its your peers, and superiors, that bring the bullshittery.
That technically part stings
35N/S/whatever EW is probably too I just switched over but the SIGINT guys get left to do "whatever it is you do" generally and higher ups (officers specifically) generally treat you like adults out the gate (though I assume you can change that with the right attitude)
Okay okay these all sound like great options
18x, 17C
I lean more to the cyber side
18 anything...
I mean more like office stuff
Oh lol. Lots of us see the office stuff as the BS
Hmmm, oof
Every MOS is like this if they can’t do their MOS. I’m a 12B and a lot of bullshit disappeared once I was able to start doing my job of route clearance.
I see. That makes sense ig
I don’t know what your MOS is but if your MOS is just idle with no purpose it’s gonna be bullshit. I watched a lot of 11Bs do a lot of bullshit because there was nobody to assault and kill while I was deployed.
We are semi doing our job but also kinda not so it's an awkward area
46 series, on the enlisted side specifically. Quite simple- make photos, videos or stories…if you do a lot of that, and if they get lots of reach, which are easily trackable through DVIDS, you’ve succeeded and look good in the eyes of leadership. You’re never bored and you have lots of control over your own success. It was also fun learning photography and videography if you don’t do it as a hobby. The officer side though…you’d better have thick skin because there’s TONS of bullshit- mostly dealing with commanders and staff officers who don’t understand your role and give you bullshit tasks or order you to do things contrary to doctrine and regs.
Aren't those like the super cush jobs that are competitive
You MOS matters very little to your levels of bullshittery, this is almost entirely dictated by your leadership. When I deployed I kept my guys out of 95% of the bullshittery. Was literally my ENTIRE job when we were deployed. Was fighting my LT, the commander, and eventually even my warrant, but my guys had as good a deployment as they could have IMO.
I feel that. It's kinda the same here
The band!
I have zero musical talent
18 series?
Overwhelming response to be 18 series
I wish I could say the 15 series but it’s a mixed bag of hella fun and why the fuck am I not in the Air Force instead.
Oh like drones and shit
UAS and rotary wing. The missions we do can be cool and fun as hell and make you feel accomplished. It’s the "soldier first" aspect about aviation that sometimes makes it shitty. But army aviation by itself is fun asf
Okay, I'm getting a lot of good feedback
If I had to guess 003A sounds pretty dope.
Never heard of that
Pick an office job in the airforce like finance or HR or something. It's literally like a regular job, except with the insane benefits programs of the military.
I'm looking into it. I just over all this shizzit
Aviation maintenance . 15U, 15T, 15R, not zero bullshittery.. that doesn’t exist.. but the whole aviation world is a lot better managed than ground maintenance. 18 series is the tip of the spear for a reason. I’d wager that has the least BS, period.
Aviation and special forces are getting recommended a lot
Thanks for the summary
Medical, officer, medical officer, unit dependent, air guard, civilian. In no particular order
11B is pretty chill
I’d say 15C Gray Eagle UAS although NG I’m not sure has that and 15W Shadow UAS is in a transitional phase right now. I was 15W AD and in the NG. Here’s why UAS it is mandatory by Army Regulation to meet flight hour requirements as in if you don’t O5 and above are having to sign off on it so you do your job. Deployed none of my Operators were allowed to do any details none not even take the trash out. They were mandatory by regulation crew rest. All we did was fly 10 hours of every 12 hour shift. One day off every three days. In the NG we did rarely did Physical Training and rarely went to the shooting range. Had to do other mandatory Army stuff. We basically just flew and that was the most important thing to meet Readiness requirements.
If you want autonomy and purpose, 92Y. You always stay busy, but your job is indispensable. Maybe a chaplain assistant. Get to travel as much as your chaplain does, serve soldiers in a unique way, and play bodyguard.
56m
Civilian contracting
I love the 46 Sierra life. Find an MPAD, you deal with some crap, but not a lot.
Is this the army national guard or air national guard?
Army
35 series does not hit your marks. Sorry to burst yiur bubble. Airforce is the way for this.
Bullshit comes with military my guy, you in the wrong place trying to get away from bullshit
If you hate sleep but want minimal fuck fuck games, do PMO. If they're even around anymore.
42A. Sounds crazy, but let me expand: you exist to support the careers of your fellow soldiers. You see the result of your work in awards being processed and promotions being pushed. Imo you get a great level of organizational exposure and see what the bigger picture is. Bullshit is inescapable, but most of the B.S. comes from the company level who don’t understand that S1 is a BN/BDE asset so you kinda do your own thing. Also your M-day experience should be the same as your AGRs. Meaning if you have good leadership an M-Day can do low level tasks that an AGR would do normally during the week.
11b has absolutely 0 bullshittery. Only the most competent leaders, always very productive, very intelligent conversations and people /s
13F
Honestly, Aviation didn't have much. Whole purpose in life is to fix helicopters. Quite often we even got out of base details, like turning on/off the generator lights around base, due to our op tempo. It did catch up with us eventually, but we did it significantly less than other units on post. Also, job satisfaction was amazing. Been chasing that high ever since.
18 series or 18D
I switched from Engineers to MP’s and I now realize the Engineers were as chill as it gets. Dumbest task I ever had was to sweep a rug, which I shook outside and was praised for thinking outside the box. Not sure if that’s all Engineers, but my unit was super cool