USAF vs USN. Help!

[justdoit19]

I don’t believe the four years at the academy count toward the 20 year retirement from AD.
And I respectfully disagree with the leadership comment. I’ve had three go through AFROTC and they’ve all had great opportunities to be leaders. Conversely some of the Academy cadets we’ve hosted or academy grads who visit as friends or our AD kids haven’t seemed to be doing similar leadership activities. Over Xmas break I’ve had kids doing ROTC activities and Zoom meetings frequently vs having sponsored cadets not doing any work toward their upcoming position.
On a personal level my kids have had to learn life skills such as apartment hunting, budgeting, cooking, laundry, etc. along with balancing work study jobs.
One other aspect is that ROTC is not 2.0 and go. They have to maintain a 3.0 in AFROTC.
I’m not saying one avenue is better than the other. I'm just pointing out some differences and that there are many leadership lessons via ROTC. And I believe all the Joint Chiefs of Staff are ROTC grads.

I didn’t say that their 4 yrs counts towards AD retirement benefits. Apologies if it came off that way. As OldSWO pointed out, it does count towards other civil service (see above) financial elements. It’s been discussed here on the forums before (search CaptMJ). I’m not an expert in military retirement, at all, but that IS a difference between a SA and ROTC. Which the OP was asking for differences between he two routes.

Separately, a big difference that wasn’t yet mentioned (and why I chimed in), is that a SA is AD and has health/dental and other benefits that come with AD. This is different (other than trainings, is my understanding of ROTC) than ROTC (as asked by OP).

I also agree there are personal leadership opportunities in ROTC. I was (trying) to emphasize however that a SA is a leadership lab. The entire institution…every professor/advisor/mentor/eca is focused on producing leaders. 24/7.

At USNA, there are National Leadership Symposiums, nationally acclaimed Forrestal Leadership Series and others (IDK what similar programs are called at USAFA). The EXPOSURE and participation in these programs are built into their entire 4 yr experience, which is different than ROTC

I’m certainly not trying to discredit ROTC at all. There are other threads in the past that have debated the ‘which is better’ discussion. I was adding to OP’s quest for information about the differences between the two. And two big ones, to me, that hadn’t been mentioned yet were the AD/benefits component, and EXPOSURE (not their personal leader development) to fantastic/esteemed leaders as part of their development. And, again, as discussed with my boys by their uncle, a product of AFROTC who had a very successful career.

Again, OP has two fantastic routes to commissioning as an Officer. And cannot go wrong with either one.

BTW: I’ve always said (and posted) that ROTC imo is more “competitive” as it’s a national competition from the git-go. And that it’s ‘harder’ in the sense that it requires internal drive to manage the non-college and ROTC components, and you must maintain your academics (to your points). So I am not debating SA vs ROTC (other threads for that already exist). I was adding some differences that OP was inquiring about between the two. Or at least trying to