What does it take??

    Of all the questions I've heard prior to starting this journal, the most common has got to be "What does it take to get into pilot training???" The answer is pretty straightforward... it takes the combination of a number of factors, which I will briefly outline and then go into detail on each one.

 

        The basics:

            Now you're saying "Okay wise-guy. Those are pretty obvious. Care to elaborate?"  Sure. No problem. Let's break both of those down into smaller factors.

 

            To get a commission, you must have earned a college degree. With that in mind, there are THREE ways to earn your commission:

        USAFA is the United States Air Force Academy. This is an extremely competitive college with an extremely rigorous lifestyle. When I was in high school I wanted to go to the Academy. Now I'm glad I didn't. The Academy is very difficult, from what I've heard. Your application must include a recommendation from your state representative or senator. Once you're in, it's like a normal university, in that you go to classes and what-not. In your spare time, however, you're getting your officer's training and what-not. Your summer break is only three weeks long, and until you're a junior you're not permitted to have a car. On the other hand, there are all kinds of cool programs like learning to fly Cessnas and gliders, skydiving, combat survival training, and stuff like that. The United States government pays all expenses. After graduation from USAFA, you earn your commission as a 2d Lieutenant in the Air Force. From what I've heard, going to USAFA is the easiest way to get into pilot training, and my experience here at Columbus seems to have borne that out - there are a HUGE number of "Zoomies" (Academy grads) here. Frankly, I think people are nuts to go to USAFA, but you gotta respect the graduates, because you know they've gone through quite a bit to get here. From what I've heard (although I find it kind of hard to believe,) if a Zoomie is physically qualified to attend pilot training, they are expected to at least give it a try. I dunno.  (Zoomies - if I've made any errors here, please feel free to mail me with corrections!)

        ROTC is the program with which I'm the most familiar, as this is the program via which I was commissioned. AFROTC has been around as long as the Air Force itself - stretching all the way back to 1947, when the Air Force split off from the Army. To participate in the Reserve Officer Training Corps program, you must attend a participating school. (I believe there is a school locator at www.afrotc.com.) Although when I was in the program, they would give scholarships to nearly anyone, due to an influx of applicants, your best bet for earning an AFROTC scholarship is to work on a technical degree, such as Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Engineering, etc. You attend classes just like normal, however you sign up for one additional class each semester, which is your MLA (Military Aerospace Studies) class. In these classes, you learn about the Air Force, it's history and structure, and later you learn leadership skills and officership. Between your sophomore and junior years, you attend a 4 (or sometimes 5, depending) week "Field Training" (or just "camp" for short.) This is where you get your first real test of the things you learned in ROTC. It has been compared to enlisted Boot Camp, in that cadets get up early and exercise a lot in a high-stress environment. It differs from Boot Camp, however, in that on top physical discipline, they must also show leadership when assigned roles requiring said leadership. Cadets at Field Training are continuously evaluated by the instructors present. I attended camp at Tyndall AFB, in Panama City, FL during June 2000. Camps also take place every summer at Lackland AFB in San Antonio, TX, and Ellsworth AFB in South Dakota.

    Earning a pilot slot in  ROTC is a complex equation. Many things are taken into account for each person, which results in everyone getting a numerical score. Let's say for example that there are five hundred pilot slots available to ROTC detachments around the country. If there are 800 applicants, then the people with the 500 highest scores will be accepted. The score is the result of a very bizarre calculation which takes into account the following things:

It isn't actually exactly those numbers, but that's pretty close. What it boils down to is this - try hard to get good grades in school. The average GPA of an accepted candidate was 3.2 (out of 4.0). The Physical Fitness Test (PFT) is a series of exercises that must be completed in a certain amount of time. They give you 2 minutes to do as many sit-ups as possible. You MUST do at least 44 to pass, and if you get to 90 you can stop because that's a top score. Then you get a short break, then you get another 2 minutes to do as many push-ups as possible. This time 40 is passing and 80 is max. Then another break and then you must run 1.5 miles as fast as you can. I believe passing is 12 minutes unless you're over 25, then you get an extra 30 seconds. The other misc. test scores include the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test (like the SAT, kind of,) and the Basic Aptitude Test (sort of like a really old video game.)  To do well on the AFOQT, go to any bookstore and get a volume on military competency tests. There will be sample questions and stuff. To do well on the BAT... play video games. Also - you'll note that your performance at Field Training weighs in here as well - incentive to try your best every day there. The BIGGEST percentage there, you'll notice, is the "class ranking." This is in relation to the other people in your ROTC class who will graduate in the same fiscal year. If there are 30 of you graduating in 2004, for example, you want to be at least in the top half. That means always showing a positive attitude and doing the jobs assigned to you with the best attitude you can. Attitude always counts for a lot in life; especially in the military.

        Benefits of ROTC include your ability to attend the school of your choosing and only having to get up early once or twice a week, rather than every day like at the Academy. You can earn scholarships for as short a time as one semester all the way through to a four-year scholarship. I believe the scholarship is for up to $2000 per semester, so if you're getting in-state tuition like I was at the University of Arizona, that's basically a full-ride. In addition, once on scholarship, you'll earn a lump-sum every semester for books, and a little spending money every month. Last, but certainly not least, you'll meet some really great people who will be life-long friends. For people who make the decision to join the Air Force a little later in their college career, there is the STAR program, for people with just two years of college left, and a new one-year program! Many prior-enlisted people are able to leave their service commitments early to join ROTC for one or two years.

        OTS - or "Officer Training School" - is for those of you who may have already graduated college but are now thinking about joining the Air Force. It is also for enlisted people who have earned a degree in their spare time and now want to become an officer. OTS is an intensive 12-week training program conducted at Maxwell AFB, near Biloxi, Mississippi. OTS is kind of like a 12-week version of ROTC Field Training; but they get an extra 7-8 weeks in lieu of several semesters' worth of classroom instruction on a University Campus.

        Health is important no matter what you do, but especially when it comes to flying jets.  There are forces your body must deal with in the air that it would never encounter on the ground. For this reason, your health must be better-than-average. It goes without saying that while neither smoking nor excessive drinking is not recommended, drug use is an absolute disqualifier. If you've smoked marijuana in the past, (and it has to have been several years ago... not last week) you can get a waiver for that, but anything stronger and you'll be ineligible. 

        Before you can even apply for pilot training in whatever accession program you choose, you must undergo (and pass) a Flying Class 1 physical. This can be done at your nearest Air Force Base. It involves several eye charts, not only the E W M 3 kind and the E F P T O Z K M L R kind, but also a depth-perception test, where you must decide which ring appears to be floating above the others, and the colored-dot test to make sure you're not color-blind. After that they dilate your eyes to look inside, do a red-lens test to make sure the eyes are working as a team, and some other annoying things like the puff-of-air test. Then you go through an ordinary hearing test (the kind where you put on headphones and push a button when you hear a beep.) You'll get an EKG, and have to give urine and blood samples. Assuming you pass that and do well on your PFT (see the ROTC section above) and are accepted into pilot training, you're not done yet!

        On the way to your training base, you'll stop at Brooks AFB in San Antonio, TX. This is the physical that scares everyone, the one you hear all the horror stories about. Nevertheless, when it was all over, I didn't see what all the hullabaloo was about. In the morning you get your height & weight (like in every physical you'll have your whole life,) then you take four computerized psychological tests for baseline research. These tests have no effect on your qualification for SUPT, they're simply for research purposes at this point. After lunch in the afternoon, you get an ultrasound (sonogram) of your heart to make sure there are no structural abnormalities. Odds are, though, if there were any significant structural abnormalities in your heart, you would have noticed long before you ever got this far in the process, so it's not likely that the doctors will find anything wrong. After that they do some more eye tests, which are a repeat of the red-lens test (with a trick added, and no, I can't tell you what it is), another colored-dot test, and then a corneal-topography examination. This was fascinating. You put your chin on a rest and stare at a dot for a few seconds, and a computer maps your cornea! Historically about 2% of people who go through the Medical Flight Screening at Brooks do not pass, although of those people some are still able to ascend to SUPT after applying for a waiver for whatever condition may have been discovered. Read about my journey from my hometown of Tucson, AZ, through Brooks and on to Columbus here.

        When you arrive at your SUPT base, you'll get a Flying Class 2 physical. This is sort-of like a FC1, but less intense. Height and weight (again,) more eye tests (just the colored-dot, depth perception, and eye charts, no dilating or anything weird or painful. You'll also get another hearing test (same as FC1), get your footprints taken, and donate a few drops of blood for use as DNA sample in the unlikely event that it must be used to identify remains.

 

            Historically, about 50% of people who go up for a pilot slot get one. At least, that's roughly the number from my ROTC detachment at the U of A. Of course, people who either aren't medically qualified or otherwise know they probably wouldn't get one if they did try for it don't make the attempt... so that means the people who do apply are nearly always outstanding cadets... Assuming that you, like me, have made it past all of the preceding, THEN you'll have the joy of knowing that you'll soon be moving onto the first phase of SUPT! Between now and then, however... you'll enjoy doing busy-work in the Transition Office.

Last updated - Fri, 7 Mar '03 5:05PM

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