If these questions have been answered before I'm sorry, i searched around a bit and didn't find what i was really looking for.
OK so i went to the recruitment office yesterday, and talked about joining up. My first interest was int he security forces. The officer told me that the only difference between the AFSF and the Army MP is that we have better living conditions and the way the air force treats it's people. I'm just looking for a little more validation on that (as it sounds too good )
I was told that generally in that field i would be deployed 6 months, then off for a minimum of 15 months. Someone said deployment was changing to 12 months, anyone know about this?
And if anyone has any experience in this field and could give me more insight into it i would greatly appreciate it.
according to the airforce times and some other places my husband was *****ing about yesterday is it will be 12 months out 6 months home then out again but NOT to iraq or afganistan, it would be somewhere like kuwait something to do with the location then home again then out again to wherever
Well, that is one diference between us and the Army MP's, however that is true of the Air Force in general. Our living conditions are better most of the time than the Army. I say most of the time because there are certain times when that is not true, I've lived in some pretty poor places, but overall, it's pretty good.
As far as deployment goes, it all depends on the base and MAJCOM you are assigned to. Right now we operate in what's called one to one dwel. That means you are supposed to be home for at least as many days as you were deployed for. I say supposed to be, again, there are exceptions to any rule. And again, that only counts for deployments, you can still go TDY to any number of place around the world so long as they don't count as an actual deployment.
In regards to the 12 month thing, I've been hearing that rumor for years now and have never heard anything official on it. When I came in the rest of the Air Force (not counting all the high speed career fields like PJs, CCT, EOD etc) deployed for three months and cops did four months. Now, they all do four months and we do "six" (it ends up being a bit longer than that). There are voluntary year long deployments out there and I've heard whispers of people being non-voled for those but I've never actually seen it happen. Is it possible for us start deploying for a year at a time? Absolutley. Will it happen? Maybe someone out there has a crystal ball and can tell us.
If you have any questions, feel free to ask. Hope this helped.
I recently read Air Force Times, it stated that as of 25 Sept 09 deployments for certain career fields have changed. PJ, CCT, TACP, EOD, and Security Forces can be deployed for a year at a time and the dwell time would be 6 months. After that 6 months personnel can be placed back in the "bucket" and cycled back overseas. This also includes those that have done a 365. MGen Hertog in the past made a rule that Security Forces troops would be given a 2 year break from deployment coming back from a 365 but with this change so does the previous rule that MGen Hertog put into effect. AFPC is addressing the issue as "they" believe it is unfair too. Apparently the reason behind the changes is obviously due to the tempo down range. Everyone hates us, but they are begging for us...weird aint it!
What I got from the article on dwell time is that our standard 6-month deployments should still have that 1:1 dwell ratio, even though it usually doesn't work out that way. But for the deployments designed to be 12 months long there is no longer going to be the requirement that troops be given 12 months back at home station. (My main concern is that they may use this as grounds to play around with the 6-month deployments, too.)
I've heard of, but don't remember seeing, the idea that when they go back out it's to a less intense area. Even if that's not official policy, I think the AF would do well to try and make that happen.
I know we've all been seeing these changes lately and scratching our heads. I know I had a good friend who came back from a 365 less than two years ago and when the most recent one came down (sometime in October I think) it still had the restriction that any previous 365 volunteers had to have been home for two years. Although, like everyone else in the career field I see this changing sometime in the near future. I think we all know that the 6 gone 6 home turns into 8 gone and 4 home. But, I guess that's what it has come to these days. Could be worse I guess, we could be deploying for 18 months, or maybe that's next.
