Bruno, thanks for some great suggestions towards getting this thread back on track. Allow me to spend a few paragraphs discussing your topics. Granted, this will be biased towards my experiences in the fighter communities; I ask for others on here with different perspectives and backgrounds to provide a sanity check and expound on areas I miss...
1) The MISSION. Again, IMO the number #1 reason any future flyer should be considering as they make their "dream sheets". For the fighter community, it can be summed-up in some simple words, hammered into me at the beginning of my career by some of the older folks in my first squadron: "we kill people and break things." The new saying popular in the Pentagon and in the HQs around the world is: "war-heads on fore-heads." Pretty blunt, pretty dramatic in their tone, but that is the true reason the US taxpayer spends all those big dollars to put the world's best air force in the air.
When the balloon goes up, you will be called upon to face the enemy, go right into his homeland, and rain death and destruction on his doorstep, all in the name of US policy. This is what you train for, to succeed in that mission. The enemy usually won't just sit back and let you do that to them; that's where the dangerous aspect of our job comes from. Your missions back home will be focused on learning and practicing how to do this better, how to survive the threats, and how to get that target struck. The air-to-air guys focus on how to make sure the strike guys can get through the enemies' own air-to-air screens and to their targets, or how to protect our OWN assets from meeting the same fates as our strike guys are trying to do to the enemy.
Now, the TACTICAL application of airpower is not the domain of our fighters alone. There are LOTS of heavy bombers and gunships (like the AC-130) that also participate in allowing our enemies to die for thier country / fanatical leaders. They typically have similar missions, but longer durations. We also have STRATEGIC assets like the B-2, who are in existence for the even worse scenarios.
Plus, there are quite a few other platforms out there that provide critical support to the mission, such as tankers, Command and Control birds, Combat Search and Rescue platforms, and Recconassaince birds (which have been gaining huge support recently due to the fantastic roles they have played in our current wars). Will they be "downtown" like our stike fighters and bombers? Most likely not. But can our fighters and bombers get there without them? Again, most likely not.
As to our airlift community, they also have a vital mission; the strategic and tactical lift of material and personnel throughout the word and particular theaters. Delivering the beans and bullets required to keep America's forces able to fight. Not as glamorous as the guys who get their gun camera footage on CNN, but just as important. However, they also perform TACTICAL delivery of forces, such as para-drops of troops and supplies in theater. As a guy who once served with the 82nd Airborne, I can tell you it is an AWESOME sight to see literally DOZENS of C-130s and C-17s flying overhead, parachutes popping into the air behind them.
The HOMEFRONT:
One of the bigger differences in the two communities outside of the mission. Fighters and tactical aircraft spend most of their time TRAINING for thier jobs (I mean, we are not engaging the enemy everyday, and blowing things up all over the country would just simply send the wrong message to the American public
). So, most of your flying time is in training, practicing the tactics and procedures you would need in combat. In fact, when I first got in, America hadn't been in heavy combat in over a decade, and wouldn't be in one again for another 5 years. I knew lots of guys with hundreds if not thousands of hours in an airframe, and not one hour of combat time. It's like the kid who goes to basketball practice everyday, takes thousands of free throws after practice, but his team never gets to play against anyone.
Of course, in today's air force, things are a little different. With two wars going on, EVERYONE will get downrange every once in a while. In fact, the AF hasn't stopped flying combat sorties over Iraq since Desert Storm! My own experience with Mr. Sadam not-so-kindly asking me to leave his airspace (via a Surface to Air Missile) happened in 1999, when most of America wasn't even aware that we had military members actively engaged against him. But I digress. Today, most of our tactical forces fall in the Air Expeditionary Forces (AEF) cycle, which is 4 months downrange, 18 months back home, then another 4 months downrange. Rinse, repeat. With most of the tactical flyers staying with one unit for 2 1/2 - 3 years, this means they will most likely get to bad-guy land usually twice per tour.
This doesn't count the times away from home for temporary duty as part of your training. Exercises like Red Flag and Cope Thunder also take you away from home for a couple of weeks at a time, usually two or three times in the 18-month "home" period.
The same things go for our tactical heavy and support forces, but since there aren't as many of them, they end up deploying for the "real mission" more often, and are away from home more frequently. Our Strategic assets like the B-2 or the B-52 aren't deployed in the current conflict, but still do quite a bit of temporary deployments for training (however, they were HEAVILY involved in the initial, heavy combat ops of the two current wars).
Now, for our airlift guys, almost 90% of THIER flying is on their actual mission. A few training sorties typically here and there (especially the tactical air-drop types), but they get to walk out of the door everyday and say, "today's sortie, I'm actually doing something important". They get to know that if they do't fly that day, someone, somewhere will go without. I miss a sortie for a broken jet, oh well, less learning for me that day. They miss a sortie, PFC Johnny Grunt may not eat that night! A real motivator.
Typically, one third of the airlift squadron is off some WHERE, doing some THING. They are also part of the AEF cycles, but usually a third of the jets will go "downrange", performing duties in that area for that AEF. The next cyle, the next third goes, and so on.
Not sure if the forum tools will allow me to publish a "novel" in one shot. So, I'm going to break this up into a second post. Next up: the community, and a typical career...
