hi everyone, im 22 and thinking of joining the airforce. i really want to be able to do an exciting career like tacp or combat controller. im color blind though, will this not allow me to do these jobs? if so what suggestions for careers do you have? would it be better to join a different branch of the military? i would really like to be in the air during the course of my career whether it be parachuting or firing weapons. i was also thinking of aerial gunner as an option.
Can you help us out here? What is the degree of your color blindness? Some have a issue with pastel colors and others have a issue with any color. How bad is your color blindness?
honestly ive never had an issue with it, im a mechanic and do wiring all the timme with all different colors and never have had a problem, never have i not been able to see certain colors. recently i took a color blindness test where you look at pictures a ink blotches with numbers in them and i couldnt see anything. i also took a test with blinking red and green lights and bombed that also. ive heard meps can do both of these tests. is it possible to get waivers for certain jobs depending on the severity of my color blindness?
Seriously, the regulation says that Color Blindness is not a automatic disqualification for Enlisted, they check for color blindness only to screen you from some specialties MOS' where they consider it a problem.
However your disqualified from ROTC, OCS and other Officer Commissioning programs if you cannot pass the RED / GREEN test (you know what that is.....I don't). I'm not sure what that is.
Hope that helps and that is basically all it says. You can read the text in paragraph f in section 2-13 of the Army Standards for Medical Enlistment manual in the Waivers post that is at the top of the Army Wannabe Forum. It is in *.pdf format (Adobe Acrobat).
So since your interested in Air Force do a Google on Air Force Medical Enlistment Standards, look in the index and see what you find. My guess if there is such a thing it is close to the Army Standards.
Fenix, your color blindness will greatly restrict the job you can get. I am red/green color blind. In the army I could not fly. In the Coast Guard I could not operate a boat. On the number test you did I can see a little over half of the numbers. If you can see none you are in trouble. If you do an Army MOS search each job will say if it requires color vision. I suggest that you go to an eye doctor and get retested and try hard. Try very hard as it will effect the rest of your life.
The red-green test (actually the Ishihara test for color blindness) uses circles comprised of a variety of dots. Within those dots will be numbers made up of either red or green dots. If you have red-green color blindness (the most common for white males) then you don't see the numbers in the circles.
This vision defect is usually generation skipping as it typically occurs in males but is passed genetically by females. Because of this, if your mother's father is color blind then there is a good chance you may be color blind. You also might not be red-green color blind when younger but then develop some semblance of it after about 40, which is what happened to me. I can read most of the text on my computer screen unless it is in red.
