 you joined the Air Force? I originally joined the Air Force for a couple reasons. The first one was I was in college originally for a couple years pursuing a wildlife ecology degree and I didn't really have the discipline over time and was not just a really good student. I ended up working pretty much full-time at a Chick-fil-A. I worked there for a while and living paycheck to paycheck and pretty much barely making it through was rough and I knew that life was not supposed to be lived like that and I knew at a young age I had a passion to serve. I feel like that was one thing that I grew up learning is that we're on this earth to serve. So I knew I wanted to have a calling for the military. So I ended up joining a little bit later on. I ended up joining when I was 22. It was a pretty easy choice for me to pick the Air Force because most of my family's all Air Force. Both my grandfathers were Air Force, stepdad Air Force, dad Air Force and two of my close cousins are still active duty in the Air Force. So it was a pretty easy decision for me to choose that. How long have you been in the Air Force and what is your current rank? I've been in the Air Force for three and a half years and my current rank is Senior Airman E4. You're hoping that you made staff this time around? Yep. So you're waiting for results this year? Yep, should find out in a couple weeks but I feel good about it. What is the name of your job and the AFSC? So the name of my job is RPA Sensor Operator and my AFSC is 1U0X1. Did you get this job when you were in depth or did you end up signing an open contract? So I got this job in depth in the depth program I sat in that program for a couple months. Sign a four or six year contract? So I signed a six year contract. I just figured that four years would go by pretty quickly so I at least knew that whatever I was gonna doing in the Air Force, which I had an ideal already but I knew that six years would at least give me a bigger option to get my ducks in a row. What was this something that you wanted to do? I knew I wanted to do any kind of enlisted aircrew job since like my stepdad he was a pilot for over 20 years in the Air Force and then my dad was enlisted aircrew for pretty much his whole career so he was a flight engineer which is a disappearing career field now it's only on a couple airframes in the Air Force but I didn't want to do this job because I don't really know too much about it. Other jobs were you interested in doing when you joined them? Really the only like enlisted aircrew jobs that I knew about was a flight engineer but as a you couldn't be a flight engineer as a first-term airman you had to basically you know you had to have prior aircrew or aviation experience load master because that was one of the only other jobs that I knew about. Where is your tech school located? So we actually go through a couple places for training so once you graduate basic training in your airman's week as a one you as center operator you're going to go to Lackland Air Force Base which so you'll be staying on that base and you'll go to the 344th training squadron and attend something called aircrew fundamentals. All enlisted aircrew jobs go through this course it's about a week long to begin it's a immense amount of information in a short amount of time so one of the things to be prepared for is the demand of studying that you're going to have to do from the moment you get there to even when you stand as career field now you're constantly learning new things so when you show up you're going to be learning about the different kinds of airframes in the air force that enlisted aircrew jobs are on so you'll learn about like AWACS, JSTARS, AC130s, you'll learn about different career career fields and what they do and then you'll have to take this test at the end so immense amount of information short amount of time the thing that gets most people in this career field is anything academic related in this career field that is below an 85 percent as a failing grade so once you understand the importance and how much studying you have to be able to do then you're off to a right start that whole point of that course is to weed the people out that are not serious about doing this job once you complete that course you will go to Randolph Air Force Base which is just on the other side of town of San Antonio kind of about 10 minutes from New Braunfels it's a beautiful base and then you'll go to Beesock which stands for basic sensor operator course it's it's about 41 days but it can end up being a slightly longer so basically you'll go through seven blocks of training where you'll learn about what you operate which is the camera on the dependent on what airframe you get but you're going to learn about your mission sets and either the mq9 or if you get assigned to the rq4 that's a little different but i can't really test to that that side too much because i'm not qualified on the aircraft and then you'll learn about different systems and you'll learn about just some of the basic definitions mission sets navigation and then at the end of each block you'll take a test so you'll basically have a test every week again 85 anything below an 85 is a family grade so you constantly have that pressure so you really only have two shots they might maybe will give you a third chance but you really only have two opportunities before you can get reclassified into another job which you will most likely not be reclassified into another aircrew job if you wash out of that course and then once you finish that course you earn your your wings there which your wings are the enlisted aircrew wings which is any one alpha job in the air force then you'll get your assignment your airframe and then what obviously your science so most people now we do not use mq1s anymore so now you'll either get the mq9 reaper or the rq4 global hawk two completely different mission sets completely different planes most people right now is going through usually getting mq9s so you'll get that in your base depending on where you go so as an mq9 you'll go to hollum and air force base and as a rq4 global hawk guy you'll go to uh bale air force base in northern california once you finish that training you'll go to your operational base hollum and air force base for your initial qualification training or iqt as they call it it's supposed to take about four months but due to um weather that comes in like thunderstorms you know although crazy weather that happens in new mexico it'll usually push your training back about a month or two most of us end up being there about six months before we go to our operational base then once you finish that you'll you'll actually go to your operational base and then you'll have to learn you'll go through mqt there which is your mission qualification training so whatever squadron you go to you'll uh you'll learn the specific mission set before you're actually starting to fly operational so that's whether if you go um for the mq9s again i'm not going to talk too much i don't really know much about the rq4s so i'm not going to talk towards them unfortunately yeah the mq9s you'll either get assigned to launcher recovery element or mission control element um which is uh two different mission sets one involves you uh deploying and the other one involves you working uh rigor shift work at home station overall what was tech school like for you tech school was fun but it was also really stressful you you have to sacrifice a lot to get through if you don't have the dedication to and the discipline to study um and to really learn your job and to ask the questions um even if something seems like a stupid question if you don't have that will on that drive you will not make it through but for me yeah tech school was a lot of fun um i made a lot of great friends and i meant i did a lot of great networking so i know you had kind of mentioned some bases that you can go to uh what are all the bases that you can be stationed at off the top of your head that you know of so far because you're kind of limited to specific bases yeah so um and like i said i can't attest i'm not going to speak fully to rq4s but i can at the same time because i know where where they go as far as home station so if you end up getting assigned to the rq4 um you can get stationed at a belair force base you can fly your operational there or you can get assigned to uh grand forks and north dakota for mq9s you can get assigned at a creature air force base which is just north of vegas um cannon air force base uh in southeast new Mexico Ellsworth air force base which is in south dakota whiteman air force base uh which is in Missouri shaw air force base is a new base for us on the east coast since summer south carolina about 40 minutes from columbia yeah so those are all the uh the bases you can get assigned for an mq9 we do not not uh not uh for mce but for deployments we do yep how would you explain your job to someone else that doesn't really know what it is like you when you were first joining you didn't know what it was so if you could go back and explain to yourself what all does this job do what would you tell yourself well without leaving out some of the fancy terms um like ISR or close air support an easy way to explain to somebody that's new to the job is you're basically a co-pilot for this aircraft you are very much responsible for knowing the aircraft systems just as much as the pilot does that sits on that sits in the left seat um you're going to be controlling a camera that's on this aircraft that is responsible for um locating and finding dangerous and dangerous threats to america also being directly involved with ops so you'll be controlling a laser that uh that that guides in laser guided munitions uh directly so you are directly involved uh in eliminating threats in this career field how many hours a week do you work on average so the amount of hours i work a week on average it depends so right now i'm an instructor for my job so uh it's being in the uh not technically a training squadron but we're training uh large recovery people and you usually work about eight to twelve hours a day usually when you fly training missions it's usually no more than two two and a half hours when you're flying operational depending on your mission set so if you're an mce person so mc is basically somebody who is here in the states and they are uh flying a plane that is overseas so somewhere in a middle eastern or central asian country uh you will work pretty rigorous shift work so you'll be you know sometimes in the seat flying eight hours you know nine hours and uh and then you have to go back home and go to sleep and you know it's uh it's very rigorous shift work and that usually changes every six to seven weeks when you do launcher recovery uh which this the side of the job where you deploy you'll work your shift work downrange and you'll normally work uh nine to twelve hour shifts there as well and it's pretty non it's pretty non-stop depending on the deployment location you were just talking about deployment so what would you say the deployment tempo of your job is it's pretty fast paced depending where you go um a lot of things can affect flight operations so weather is obviously the biggest one um if we have bad weather that rolls through we can't get planes up and obviously if you can't see bad guys on the ground because there's clouds there's no reason for us to be up there so um that obviously affects it but other than that the overall demand for um mq9s on the battlefield today is immense we have a we have a very long time that we can be on station that uh and it's providing that constant overwatch for friendly forces that uh many aircraft just aren't able to do uh in in that amount of time we don't have to you know go up and get aerial refuel every hour and a half two hours we can be there for you know many hours on on station um providing that assuring uh guidance or our guys on the ground i know on this last deployment i was on uh which i did uh six months uh i only had two days where we didn't fly where we technically weren't doing anything because we had bad weather but we were still expected to show up obviously anyway and be ready so it's a very demanding and mission so you'll it'll burn you out for sure a big question that people ask about is transferability to the civilian world so do you get any like certifications or how easy does this job actually transfer out to the civilian job if you want to do the same job and keep your like military benefits and your retirement uh the u.s board of patrol and department of homeland security you can view the same job there with mq9s um obviously you're doing stuff uh directly involving with the united states you can also get jobs uh they're they're they're mainly contractor jobs um so you can do the same job it pays it pays well but um depending on what qualifications you got when you're active duty really helps you on the outside because they're the qualifications you get active duty are a lot harder to get on the civilian side are you planning on making this a career or are you planning on getting out after so i'm planning on making this a career um don't really want to do this as enlisted i'm working on hopefully pushing out my ots application next year but uh even if i could i would even if i was had to choice to stay enlisted i would still stay in i love the air force i would definitely wouldn't leave this career field either what advice do you have for someone that's getting this job first things that is good to evaluate with yourself is if you're a conscientious objector so if you don't know what that means if you're not okay with uh basically killing someone or seeing you know people die or obviously directly doing that then this is not the job for you you have plenty of opportunities um and training to opt out so once that you get to your operational squadron wherever that's at there's pretty much uh it's pretty hard to turn back from there there's a lot of opportunities to wash out and to you know not make it through this training so if you're not committed to studying and uh if you're not disciplined enough you're probably not going to make it through it's it's pretty difficult training but the overall reward of this is you know you're it's not every day that as an enlisted person you're going to be so directly involved in operations especially um actually taking out you know dangerous high value targets advice do you have for someone if they wanted to be successful in this career field if you want to be successful in this career field you you can't just show up to work every day and then uh just do your job and go home it's if you really want to be successful you have to go the extra mile and that's one of the things that that the air force burns out of people you know and I understand you know the military isn't for every for everybody but to be successful career field you have to push yourself to know things so push yourself to read the public understand the publication the publications push yourself to learn the systems aircraft systems knowledge as much as you can those are the things that are going to make you successful and that obviously that desire to learn um it's that getting you know learning from other people that have a lot of experience and then being able to instruct that or pass that on that's that's how you be successful