 I joined the Air Force because it was something that I just always knew I was going to do. It was more I was always gonna join the military and I just had to figure out what branch. I grew up around the military. My dad was in the army for 24 years so that lifestyle just seemed very familiar and comfortable and then I picked the Air Force just simply for the quality of living versus the other branches. So I've been in two years now. I am an A1C. I am going to be up for promotion pretty soon for senior airmen. I am technically a munitions specialist which is a 2WO but it's more commonly known as ammo. I unfortunately signed an open contract, open mechanical and ended up not finding out until the end of BMT and I will say from my experience I don't recommend that. I know people say they don't recommend it but I wanted to get out of our small town. I don't know what you're gonna get and I know that's all over YouTube telling you not to do that and I still did it because I just wanted to get out of dodge. So when I found out I really didn't know because I had no clue what it was. Someone said oh you're an ammo and they kept saying if you ain't ammo you ain't and I had no clue until I got to tech school and I asked the tech school instructors what ammo was and they asked how I got to this job. I originally on my lists I forget what it's called but the list of all your jobs that you put in when you sign an open contract that you'd like to have or that you're waiting on all of them were crew chief jobs. I wanted to work on planes however I could I wanted to work on planes and what's ironic about that is the job I have isn't even weapons it's ammo so I don't touch planes at all. I signed a six-year open mechanical contract so tech school is at Shepherd Air Force Base. The length of tech school is I believe like 32 days or so but I went so I was there for like two months but part of it was because we had almost 14 days of what they call like exodus where we went home for the holidays. To sugarcoat it I hated it I absolutely hated it but you do have to remember to some of this they have to do with your experience based on male or female. I feel like it's a commonly known thing that females don't interact as well together when there's a big group of them it just seems to happen they're just a lot more conflict and pettiness I noticed that in basic and I stayed out of most of it. You just kind of get pulled into people's drama and it's super obnoxious plus I had two other roommates in tech school so we're kind of jam-packed and Shepherd in the winter is just not a fun place to be plus I was still super upset about getting the job that I did because I realized I didn't like it and that obviously is gonna negatively affect your opinion on your experience in tech school if you don't like the job you're studying for but overall like how they taught you and stuff that wasn't really bad we didn't have hardly any homework us were super easy like I only think one girl in our whole like like for ammo failed I think one test and she retook it and she was fine so our stuff is super easy as well so I with ammo can pretty much be stationed wherever certain bases are going to require a higher clearance than others but pretty much wherever there are planes training equipment anything that you're gonna need ammo they have positions even security forces obviously needs ammo because there's things called custody accounts that you have to manage along with like at our base we have bird of patrol so there's custody accounts for that what else are there they're pretty much anywhere that you could possibly need any sort of ammunition you're going to have ammo it may not be as high of ranking so any base that you're at you're gonna have ammo I haven't even really heard of a base that does not have an ammo position but your rank is gonna depend though on which bases you can go to with ammo because there are a lot of bases when they're smaller and they require basically more effort because you're managing more stuff at one base there's a lot of bases that you can't go if you are below a tech sergeant I know I've been told Randolph Air Force Base is one example of that that was just one that got brought up at work one day you can go there unless you are I believe a tech sergeant or higher because there are special things you have to do and they don't really teach that to you or want lower ranking people to do that so basically it's more of a logistical job but it also depends on what shop you're in so there are a bunch of different shops within our ammo flight we're broken up into three different groups and then within those groups they have the different shops so those like our flights are groups and then our shops and I was most recently in line delivery which is extremely logistical because we're not doing any maintenance on munitions we basically pick up the trailer make sure that it's tied down correctly with all the munitions on it and tow it to the flight line but there's also like the missile shop there's storage there's conventional maintenance control AFK there's basically different shops that do different things so we have like combat plans AFK those are more office jobs control is very logistical as long with line delivery and then we have like conventional PGM storage those are definitely gonna be more maintenance of the munitions and building tearing down munitions I think you should want to expect you're gonna be hot and sweaty or cold all the time whatever your weather's like you're gonna be outside in that weather so if you don't want that definitely don't take this job I don't have an issue with that but I know some people complain about it all the time I'm stationed in Arizona and it's super hot and it's hot and sweaty and just not fun in the summer but that's part of the job basically expect that you're gonna be uncomfortable because you're working outside all the time if you are in line delivery or control you're not gonna get lunch breaks you're gonna work straight eight nine-hour shifts and if you're working 12s you're gonna work a straight 12-hour shift you don't have a break because the flight line doesn't stop for us you still have to support the line that's what we always say so going to events going to PT your priority is to support the line so just know that you are basically waiting on the flight line and whatever their demands are if you're in like the other shops where it isn't based off the flight line you're just tearing down building up munitions expect a lot of crazy people are super intense about ammo if you say you don't like ammo people will definitely look at you funny there's a lot of morale and ammo that being said the morale definitely dies off in line delivery because we don't get to participate in the same things that everyone else does but there's a lot of activities that they try to invite you to they want to bring everyone together we do a lot of cookouts they go drinking a lot there's just a lot of camaraderie with ammo hence the if you ain't ammo you ain't that's just their thing they teach you that in tech school because they just want to be this big happy family typically we work 40 hours a week if there's a lot going on we may work like 50 just because we end up kind of needing the extra help in between shift change and then if we're working an exercise it's usually 12 hour days straight for two weeks but those we only do a few times a year and it also depends on your base how often you do those so there's not a ton that does transfer into the civilian world and if you do get into that job and you kind of need some help with it supervision is a great resource to talk to to help you figure out what transfers because I was recently talking with this with our shop chief and basically the information I got was learning how to drive a forklift if you get certified on that that transfers over super well and then any sort of logistical warehouse job because we're managing the transportation of munitions so for example I was dispatching recently I'm dispatching drivers from the MSA the munitions storage area to the flight line which means I am essentially making sure in a logistical way that this thing gets for point A to point B so pretty much anything that requires some sort of logistical experience but certification wise there's not a whole lot unless you're going to do the same thing that you're doing but as a civilian like contractor so pretty much just comes down to your forklift training and then you're dealing with hazardous stuff you have to keep up with your yearly safety training for munitions transportation of them safety all that stuff but it comes down to the experience not the certifications as much so so I know it does vary from base to base but overall it's pretty much six months on a year and a half off and they do have deployments in between there that you'll go with like rescue squadrons for like four months at a time instead of six months but then you're just going with maybe two other people instead of an entire pretty much the whole flight going my specific situation I've had some health issues come up and my job is very flexible when it comes to that stuff so I am glad that I'm in the job that I am just simply for the fact that it has allowed me to also deal with my health specifically but if that was in better condition and I could do anything else I would it's also extremely hard to cross train out of ammo everyone just should know that right away you can't specifically just cross train because we're so low manned that it's actually considered critical manning so if you don't like the job you can't just think oh I'm just gonna cross train because there's a very low chance of that but that's just a side note you should know about ammo right now because they've been critically manned for years if I could do anything else I still really would like to try a crew chief job but I'm just kind of middle ground right now with my job I super hated it before now I'm just coming to kind of accept it that this is my job and I just go about my business and do my job and I just look at it as a job because that's the only way that you can really get through something that you don't like is this is what I'm doing this is what I've been assigned to do I'm here I just need to do my job and earn my paycheck in ammo there's a lot of drinking it's just part of their culture and it's not overall like the air force culture it's just ammo culture that's what they want to do don't underage drink there's no reason to don't get caught doing dumb things I know we have people get caught getting in trouble for basically being dumb and doing what you're told not to do don't do that stuff and don't feel peer pressured by other people within your career field to go and party with them you know what go beat the DD like I've done that plenty of times people will call me at midnight when they're out and about downtown they'll be like hey can you give me a ride cool be that person that picks them up don't be that person that gets caught underage drinking I hope this information helps if you want to check out my youtube channel or instagram that'll be linked down below thanks for watching