Enlisted or Officer for someone who's interested in joining

>>30803426
If you can commission, do it. But realize that you'll get to do hard charging shit early in your career but making a full 20 year career out of it will require political finesse and you'll live behind a desk for the last 12 years of your career, minimum. You also run a very real risk of not getting picked up for promotion and making it 20 years at all.
Enlisting will make you a better officer if you decide to commission later on, but it is going to suck a lot more especially at lower enlisted ranks. But you will likely be able to operate operationally for more of your career, and commissioning is usually always an option if you're not a shitbag at being enlisted and you have a 4 year degree. But you might operate hard early in your career only to commission and get assigned as a platoon leader of some maintenance platoon. But that's the suck for you.

>>30803474
Right now I'm in College, majoring in Econ with a minor in French, because I am primarily interested in the Green Berets. On one hand, all of my friends and relatives who know about my desire to go into the Military are telling me to do ROTC/OCS instead of enlisting. On the other hand, I'm not sure how I personally feel on whether or not being an Officer straight out of College is a good idea. I don't want to be baby sat by NCOs, so I thought it might be better to enlist for more hands on time, and then commission if I decide I want to make a career out of it. If I don't want to make a career out of it, I'll have my degree as a fallback.

Is it true that officers in SOF only spend like 18-24 months in the platoon level, and then they move on to some sort of command post?

Saying this probably doesn't really matter because it's, no offense, pretty unlikely that you're going to make it, if you even try at all, considering you're...coming to 4chan to ask this, but I'd highly advise Enlisted if you want anything close to the kinds of things you're probably imagining your life would be like. SOF isn't really much of an Officer's world, for the most part.

Anyone on /k/ a member of an orienteering club? I'm joining one at my college to try and get up to speed with land nav.

>>30803584
I'm aware that success is unlikely and by no means guaranteed, but this is something I've wanted to do since I was a kid, so I've got to at least try.

Plus, I've done extensive research elsewhere on this question. I like to post inquiries like this on /k/ after I've exhausted all of my other options, because why not?

>>30803426
are you /fit/
if y then step one complete
I am to drunk to give other steps just don't join the airforce unless you are a women or hardcore anti gun pro clinton lover.

>>30804260
I'd say I'm /fit/. I do boxing twice a week and also participate on a club Wrestling Team. Probably need to start working on getting ready for rucking and shit.

>>30803426

I'll start this out with what I do so you can infer what ever you want. I'm a E-7 in Washington DC working for Navsea 08. I work in the personnel and policy section of active duty component here.

I would try both paths, you can easily tell a recruiter you're not ready any time before your actual commissioning or enlistment. Look at each contract and what they promise.

From what I've seen all the active components are interested in commissioned personnel with the exception of services that have hard times retaining officers past the 10 year point. They tend to black list officers that are previously enlisted.

I would look to people from the same component that you want to join and see what they say about converting from enlisted and commissioned.

In my field you are prohibited from being a engineer on a submarine, second sea tour, if you were previously enlisted, because at the point you're able to retire you would have just finished with your post engineer shore tour. This makes it hard for the detailer personnel to match a executive officer with a commanding officer with each other if you need a post engineer as either the XO or CO.

A lot of the time I see officers and enlisted told that they are going to get a certain program and they don't either meet the requirements or don't have the aptitude to make it in that field. This is after they have made the plunge of enlisting or commissioning and then they are stuck with a binding contract where they have to do a job they are not interested in.

TLDR: Read the fucking contract that the asshole is trying to peddle.

>>30805295
First, thanks for taking the time to post this, I appreciate the insight. Second, I'll definitely make sure that I'm reading the fine print to make sure that the recruiter doesn't sell me up bullshit river. Lastly, why do you think that those services blacklist officers who are prior-enlisted?

>>30804260
A lot of us air force fucks hate clinton

>>30804260
Wait, you're telling me the air force is full of retards that make me look better, and women? Holy shit where's that dotted line, I've already got my pen.

>>30804260
>are you /fit/

lmao, those fucks aren't fit at all

>>30804260
That's not even true. Not a single person in my shop is voting for Clinton.

>>30804260
>I am to drunk to give other steps just don't join the airforce unless you are a women or hardcore anti gun pro clinton lover.
The airforce has a bunch of hard-core scary true-believing christians

>>30803575
>>30803575
How old are you, and how many years of college do you have left?
I myself am interested in becoming a SF soldier as well.

File: 1468856064882.jpg (25KB, 569x428px) Image search: [Google]

25KB, 569x428px

>>30806477
Because prior enlisted officers don't think like standard officers. They actually use common sense and think using experience as a guide, as opposed to strictly by the book officer stuff. If enough prior enlisted officers got high up enough, there'd be a total shift in how the military was run. And politicians, be they civilians or Generals, don't want that.

>>30808698
Different person, by the way. Just my two cents.

>>30805295
>Navsea 08
we hate you all
from the waterfront.

Ok all jokes aside yeah, but (at least LDO wise, I don't know about the nuke academy pickups/OCS in the pipeline but this is 100% true for non LDO pickups just because of retirement.

(I assume you mean you get picked up at 6 year point, 4 years of school for OCS + college, whops you are at 10 and even with 54 month tours, you will do one sea one shore and thats still a year which with say a 60 month or so tour,, you can literally coast to retire as an O3-E (at the 20 year point) (which still beats out E9 retirement pay which is the legit big reason to commission).

I thought this was bullshit, before I did the mental math, and at least for the sub force this is well.. kinda beyond true. I assume this post assumes a 20 year path to being an experienced captain, since all sub drivers have to be engineers FIRST, and that requires a lot of time.

>>30808664
I'm 19, and I'm an incoming Sophomore. So, I've got a decent amount of time to prepare.

>>30808698
This is also why I'm not really sure I want to be an Officer off the bat. The Military right now seems very political for Officers past O-2/O-3. Do you guys think this will improve in the future, or will it get worse?

I want to go the OCS route, and I'm wondering how competitive it is to get into OCS.

I have a shitton of extra curriculars, a STEM degree from a better-than-state-school university, but will only be graduating with about a 3.0

Is that good enough? (I am very fit and have well above the minimums on all parts of the army fitness test and I'm medium swole, which I know doesn't matter that much)

Why is it exactly that Officers in SOF aren't really allowed to stay on a field Team/Squad for longer than 2 years usually? I doubt the Military would lose that many officers, if they had some sort of option to just remain an O-1,O-2,O-3 and stay in the field. If Special Ops are the best, shouldn't the officers be the best of the best?

Ordinarily I would always say choose officer over enlisted; but that's not necessarily the case in SF, where officers truly are a third wheel instead of an important function.

>>30809905
Which is exactly why I'm considering enlisted because:

a) They're there because, they're needed
b) They can spend as long as they like operating up into their 40s barring injury/death
c) How can I feel confident leading men who all have years of experience on me?

In my head, I want to say that I would enlist after college, spend 5-6 years as enlisted, and then apply for OCS.

>>30809810
Because SF are good quality, they are trained to do all the things pleb soldiers normally need officers for, such as calling in air strikes, handling paperwork for logistics, and commanding large numbers of dudes, in this case assisting local troops.

So there's nothing for officers to contribute, especially since SF work in small groups, and thus rarely need officers for internal admin because they can staff their management councils with non-retarded E8s instead.

In the past, SF had fewer commissions. They may seem to have only a few today (compared to big army), but they're positively overrun with them compared to past memory and it's not good for the institution.

If SOCOM threw away all it's O's below O4, and half of them over O4, it would probably only help them. But the WOT made SF fashionable and now a lot of officers want to dip in and look cool instead of do the right thing for the institution.

So SOCOM shuffles them through as fast a possible, not unlike a garbage disposal. The BN scale commanders have to come from somewhere, so might-as-well have them dip in with teams if you're forced to do that anyway.