The Air Force got me by mentioning that college was practically free (became 100% free a couple years into my service) and that my job training counted toward a degree in my field. Also, I would get food and housing allowances on top of my paycheck, so I could afford to live anywhere they stationed me without spending my own paycheck on bills and food. Plus, free travel around the world on the govt’s dime.
I also was given the option to retire and collect a pension for life after only 20 years served, which I took advantage of. At 38 years old, I retired and now I don’t need to work anymore. Granted, my wife and I both earned 100% disability from our military service, which pays out more than my pithy 20-yr pension and allows us to be fully retired. But still, the military took pretty good care of me while I was in.
I’ll admit though, I signed up one month before 9/11 happened, and as soon as the planes hit the World Trade Center, my first thought was, “Fuck… I just signed up to die in some foreign war.” Thankfully, I survived that conflict; although my disability rating might suggest otherwise…
I worked in IT, fixing computers. Spent 20 years in the Air Force and I know absolutely nothing about planes, haha.
I didn’t get 100% disability from one specific thing; a whole bunch of smaller things across 20 years of service added up to a 100% rating.
The biggest thing was a PTSD evaluation, which gave me 70% alone. I was in Iraq and saw some shit; nearly died a few times, so that kind of messed me up for a while. I don’t have the stereotypical “go nuts and murder your family in your sleep” kind of PTSD; it’s more just mild anxiety and insomnia that strike randomly. But the military is trying to make up for decades of neglecting PTSD symptoms, so they’re hyper-vigilant about identifying/treating it nowadays, hence the high rating.
On top of that, I broke my leg while serving and it never healed properly, so I’ve had leg pain for the past decade. I barely made it to retirement. I almost got medically separated, but a doctor decided at the last minute that I didn’t need my legs to sit at a desk and do my job, so they put me on a medical waiver and let me finish the last few years of my career. That earned me a pretty decent disability rating as well
Plus I’ve had a few other minor medical issues throughout the years that got small ratings. They have some weird diminishing returns formula for calculating disability ratings, so 20% + 20% ≠ 40%. It’s more like 25%. It’s super hard to earn a 100% rating. I got approved for about 30 independent ratings, which barely made it to the 100% cutoff once added up.
I don’t quite understand why the air force would send an IT guy to a place in Iraq where it’s actually dangerous and not somewhere there’s computers. But I don’t know anything.
We need computers at every base, and we need people in place to maintain those systems. Especially at remote bases like in Iraq; they can’t communicate with the rest of the world if they don’t have any communications set up.
My original job title when I joined the Air Force was Communications-Computers Systems Operator. We were essentially a jack-of-all-trades IT profession. If it touched a computer network, we fixed it. So I learned how to maintain and repair satellites, phones, radios, servers, desktop computers, laptops, tablets, GPS trackers, etc. We even built these computer networks from scratch every time we set up a new forward base somewhere, so we needed IT guys in place to get it done.
In 2009, our profession modernized and we were split into dedicated specialties under a new “cyber” umbrella. At that point, I became solely a server administrator; although it took many years for the Air Force to adapt to the change and I ended up being a jack-of-all-trades IT guy for the rest of my career.
A half year before I retired in 2022, the Air Force started shifting our maintenance and repair over to civilian companies and they moved our Cyber Support career field into a Cyber Warfare one; identifying and mitigating cyber threats instead of just being the support/repair guys behind the scenes. But I never got to see that vision play out, as I retired before they’d figured out how to transfer us into the new roles.
When I was in Iraq, I wasn’t allowed to leave our base because it was too dangerous, and us IT guys didn’t have any sort of field missions that required us to be physically present with boots-on-ground forces. Still, that didn’t keep war from coming to our doorstep, and our base was regularly mortared the whole time I was there. I had a few close calls, and even suffered a concussion from a nearby blast that killed 3 of my customers. If I hadn’t gone back to my truck to grab a tool, I would’ve been there in the building with them. That was probably the closest I came to dying, and definitely made me feel less safe, even living and working in bunkers on a military base.
Thank you for sharing your story. It was a very compelling read. I wish you the best of luck and hope that you can still recover from what must have been a truly terrifying time in your young life.
Tbh I’m surprised any recruitment strategy works in peacetime at all
The Air Force got me by mentioning that college was practically free (became 100% free a couple years into my service) and that my job training counted toward a degree in my field. Also, I would get food and housing allowances on top of my paycheck, so I could afford to live anywhere they stationed me without spending my own paycheck on bills and food. Plus, free travel around the world on the govt’s dime.
I also was given the option to retire and collect a pension for life after only 20 years served, which I took advantage of. At 38 years old, I retired and now I don’t need to work anymore. Granted, my wife and I both earned 100% disability from our military service, which pays out more than my pithy 20-yr pension and allows us to be fully retired. But still, the military took pretty good care of me while I was in.
I’ll admit though, I signed up one month before 9/11 happened, and as soon as the planes hit the World Trade Center, my first thought was, “Fuck… I just signed up to die in some foreign war.” Thankfully, I survived that conflict; although my disability rating might suggest otherwise…
Might I ask what you did in the air force and what gave you your disability? Feel free to decline.
I worked in IT, fixing computers. Spent 20 years in the Air Force and I know absolutely nothing about planes, haha.
I didn’t get 100% disability from one specific thing; a whole bunch of smaller things across 20 years of service added up to a 100% rating.
The biggest thing was a PTSD evaluation, which gave me 70% alone. I was in Iraq and saw some shit; nearly died a few times, so that kind of messed me up for a while. I don’t have the stereotypical “go nuts and murder your family in your sleep” kind of PTSD; it’s more just mild anxiety and insomnia that strike randomly. But the military is trying to make up for decades of neglecting PTSD symptoms, so they’re hyper-vigilant about identifying/treating it nowadays, hence the high rating.
On top of that, I broke my leg while serving and it never healed properly, so I’ve had leg pain for the past decade. I barely made it to retirement. I almost got medically separated, but a doctor decided at the last minute that I didn’t need my legs to sit at a desk and do my job, so they put me on a medical waiver and let me finish the last few years of my career. That earned me a pretty decent disability rating as well
Plus I’ve had a few other minor medical issues throughout the years that got small ratings. They have some weird diminishing returns formula for calculating disability ratings, so 20% + 20% ≠ 40%. It’s more like 25%. It’s super hard to earn a 100% rating. I got approved for about 30 independent ratings, which barely made it to the 100% cutoff once added up.
Thank you for taking the time to answer!
I don’t quite understand why the air force would send an IT guy to a place in Iraq where it’s actually dangerous and not somewhere there’s computers. But I don’t know anything.
We need computers at every base, and we need people in place to maintain those systems. Especially at remote bases like in Iraq; they can’t communicate with the rest of the world if they don’t have any communications set up.
My original job title when I joined the Air Force was Communications-Computers Systems Operator. We were essentially a jack-of-all-trades IT profession. If it touched a computer network, we fixed it. So I learned how to maintain and repair satellites, phones, radios, servers, desktop computers, laptops, tablets, GPS trackers, etc. We even built these computer networks from scratch every time we set up a new forward base somewhere, so we needed IT guys in place to get it done.
In 2009, our profession modernized and we were split into dedicated specialties under a new “cyber” umbrella. At that point, I became solely a server administrator; although it took many years for the Air Force to adapt to the change and I ended up being a jack-of-all-trades IT guy for the rest of my career.
A half year before I retired in 2022, the Air Force started shifting our maintenance and repair over to civilian companies and they moved our Cyber Support career field into a Cyber Warfare one; identifying and mitigating cyber threats instead of just being the support/repair guys behind the scenes. But I never got to see that vision play out, as I retired before they’d figured out how to transfer us into the new roles.
When I was in Iraq, I wasn’t allowed to leave our base because it was too dangerous, and us IT guys didn’t have any sort of field missions that required us to be physically present with boots-on-ground forces. Still, that didn’t keep war from coming to our doorstep, and our base was regularly mortared the whole time I was there. I had a few close calls, and even suffered a concussion from a nearby blast that killed 3 of my customers. If I hadn’t gone back to my truck to grab a tool, I would’ve been there in the building with them. That was probably the closest I came to dying, and definitely made me feel less safe, even living and working in bunkers on a military base.
Thank you for sharing your story. It was a very compelling read. I wish you the best of luck and hope that you can still recover from what must have been a truly terrifying time in your young life.