All: 10 year commitment

All: No more life-long pension upon retirment.  Program now is like a decent 401K, but your pay sucks so it's not like you can put a ton away. 

USAF: GOOD bonuses every so often during career

USA/USMC: crappy bonuses if they think your year group qualifies (and they make bad judgment calls about that typically) 

USAF: Risk flying cargo, refuellers, AWACs, drones, V-22's, or AW139's at sucky bases with sucky missions.  MANY are like spoiled toddlers and/or rich kids with first world problems both on AD and once they get out.  Those that don't let themselves get brainwashed can be really cool guys.  VERY risk averse, regimented, and inside the box community, though.  

USA: Risk flying overly digital V-22 offshoot, crappy Airbus HAA helicopters, or a greyhound bus helicopter; Apache pilots are know-it-all idiots.  Slackhawk pilots are all the kids who couldn't get FW, AH, or CH and therefore are the bottom of the barrel (their accident rates prove it).

USMC: All cool aircraft; but must go through Infantry OBC before flight training (much harder than the OBC of other services, but that's what you expect if you're a Marine); some of the sharpest, most knowledgable pilots I've met, but those that are in the service are much like Apache pilots; they at least metamorphise into really decent guys when they get out.

 USA: Street-to-seat (no need for degree)

USAF: many airframes have crappy bases you're stuck at 1to 3 of for your WHOLE CAREER

USA: some bases suck but some definitely decent options throughout a career; Germany no longer OCONUS with family option for aviators anymore.  

USMC: pretty much all decent bases worldwide

That's enough to stir some thoughts... please add/correct at your leisure...

What about Coasties? 

Flew hawks in the army for awhile, then wised up. Airforce overnights in Hawaii, Guam, Germany, etc. sure is a rough life . 😂

its nice dropping mil leave from the airlines to go have fun with the boys hanging out in nice places hauling cargo. Easy peasy!! 

If fixed wing flying is so great why are you post on a helicopter site all the time. 

 Any place in those operations for a 55 year old hoping to pick a meager pension flying boxes around in some buss. Don't care where. Have no interest in guns or rockets. 30 years flying utility single pilot civilian and an A&P Md-530/ Uh1H, Sic Blackhawk.

Unfortunately, I think you're about 25 years too late.

your nose in to every place that interests you.  Never know 'til u try!!

You get a pension if you do 20 years. 

And everyone gets 401K matching while serving. Even if you don't do 20

Pay sucks compared to what other pilot job? You have to look at total compensation and how it is taxed.

is there a company still out there with any kind of a pension?  Much less one you can ostensibly collect at 38 years old?  Plus you still have a 401k type option through TSP in addition to the pension program.  Unlike a 401k, TSP has an option where you cannnot lose any of the money you invested. 

30 days paid vacation

Educational benefits

Mortgage aisstance through the VA (no down payment) or a FCU (no PMI).

Free legal and tax assistance

Incomplete characterization of pilot groups since you left out the Navy and Coast Guard, both of which have large helicopter communities. Honestly though I think though there are too many pilots and personalities to make any generalizations about what people are like.  

My truth is it's pretty hard to get selected in the first place and military flight school is pretty hard (or they make it that way) to the point you are first, pretty happy to get selected, then just to graduate flight school.  

If you want to fly for the armed forces pick the service that actually selects you for officer training.  Make it through that first, then worry about flight school.

When you get to flight school, forget about picking RW or FW, much less specific airframes.  Make it through Preflight (more people don't than you think) primary, and intermediate (I guess instruments is the equivalent for Army guys) first.  Most people are happy with whatever they get.  

 >

Hey, life can suck as much as you want it to. If all you or anyone is ever worried about is pay or retirement pay then I feel sorry for you. Flew 4 different helicopters around for 25 years in the Army. Got to fly in some incredible and not so incredible places. Frozen to the bone, overheated to exhaustion,  tired into drunkeness state, hungry enough to eat a horse, thirsty enough to blurred vision. I've had to go pee so bad so many times I can't believe my bladder never burst a leak. Been shot at so many times and by so many different weapons its barely worth talking about. Have had the priviledge of meeting so many good and bad people. Yet, wouldn't trade any of it. Oh and by the way a lot of this happened to me as a military pilot and officer and flying in different jobs in the Good ole US of f ing A!!!!!!!!!!!

You forgot to mention that the 10 year commitment only starts AFTER you get your wings pinned, which takes two years on average. Don't worry, after your short 12 year commitment you'll be making a very respectable $61K a year working MANY more hours than pretty much any civilian pilot.

Where did you get $61K?

BASE pay for a 12 year O-4 in $8900 per month, and for a CW3 $6200 per month

Pilots at 12 years of aviation service get an additional $1,000 per month.

Average BAH (which is not taxed) is $1500 per month for the US. 

So a 12 year CW3 is making $8700 per month, which comes to $104,400.  And I am not subtracting the $200-400 per month have to pay for healthcare with a civilian job. 

Your $61K is a little off. 

Where are you getting a $1,000/mo bonus from? But congrats on that money, I think that's what they're starting HAA guys at without having to sign their life away for 12 years.

ACIP for ten years of aviation duty is $1000 per month.

https://www.dfas.mil/militarymembers/payentitlements/Pay-Tables/AVIP3/

You are kidding with this HAA stuff right?  BAH is untaxed and many states also don't tax active duty income.  Any civil job pays federal tax on about one third more of gross their income. Then there is the healthcare you have to pay for out of pocket at any civil job.  So subtract about $5K from whatever your civil job pays you.  To equal CW3 pay at 12 years as a civilian pilot you need to be making at least $94,000 per year at an HAA job, and you have no retirement other than a 401k you have to pay into.  If you are an O-4 civil HAA pay is going to have to around $115K to equal military pay. 

Also no HAA company is going to offer a pension after 20 years.  Is there an HAA company where you can retire at 38 years old after 20 years with the company with any type of a pension?

It is also more likely that civilian jobs will pick you, you won't pick them, so while you have the right to refuse a job, you probably aren't truly picking the location of your job, especially in the beginning of your career, so the amount of control you have is fairly illusionary.  The only real control you have is whether you want to be employed or unemployed.  Then if you work HAA the company can still fire you at any time, pretty much without cause, the hospital can also get you fired, and the med crew can get you fired as well.  At least in the armed forces you have some recourse and legal protections for that sort of thing. 

What you call "signing your life away" is actually lifelong financial security for you and your family if you can manage to make it to 20 years.  The cycle of deployments and sleeping in tents etc. is cyclical, and any assignment rarely lasts longer than three or four years before doing something else.  

You're being disingenous because that high pay you're quoting is at least 10 years into your career. That $1,000/mo bonus isn't until year 10. You need to be in what, seven or eight years before you meet TIG to even be considered for CW3? By the way that pension has been gone for half a decade, you have BRS which is basically just a 401k that yes, you have to pay in to.

Reread the exchange. It was predicated on where someone would be after 12 years of service.  I gave pay for CW3 and O-4 (the likely rank achieved at 12 years service) and 10 year ACIP. 

BRS is not like a 401k.  BRS still uses the retirement annuity formula that has been in place for years, it was just reduced by 0.5% The formula is now 2% of the average of the service member's highest 36 months of basic pay x the number of years of service.  The offset is made up by a montly 1% of base pay contribution into TSP irregardless of what the service member puts into TSP.   TSP also has the no risk G fund option.  I have never seen a no risk 401k.  Either you are unclear on how BRS works, or how 401k's work.  You may want to check into that if doing any retirement planning.  Your PRC probably offers no cost financial counseling.  

BRS did not go into effect until 2018.  For the purposes of this discussion of "where would someone be after the 12 year commitment was up" they would still be under the old retirement system Since they would have entered the service in 2011. They would still be under the 50% plan.

You are the third response from someone who doesnt understand BRS, you can read about BRS here, rather than repeating something you heard.

https://militarypay.defense.gov/Pay/Retirement.aspx

After 20 years with BRS you get 40% of your pay in the last 36 months.  Yes it's not 50%, but it's not nothing either.  The 10 pecent is offset by an automatic monthly one percent of base pay contribution to your TSP that does not require the service member to put in any money.  You are free to invest that money however you like including keeping it in the no risk TSP G fund which still typically has a 3% rate of return.

BRS is not a bad system considering most people who joint the armed forces don't stay 20 years.  Instead of a young person that say, does four years and gets out, getting nothing towards retirement other than what they allotted for TSP, the armed forces have given them 4% of their base pay over the four years, to invest as they see fit, including a no risk option.  That's nearly $5,000 over four years, when before if they left after four years they would have gotten nothing. Even the G fund would have probably paid out about an additional $600 over that time.  

TSP is a hell of a lot better than a 401k.  My TSP has lost nothing, my 401k has lost about 20 percent of its value over the last five years on very conservative income funds.  

Please read the link to understand BRS. 

"A   w h o r  e   is easy to meet." --Ernest K. Gann

Yeah. Sure You're a highly qualified idiot your ownself Nancy.

What's the point?

You have no fkn idea what you're even talking about. You are so far off, man. Do everybody a favor and stop flying whatever it is that you're flying. Whatever self research you've done, you have failed MISERABLY at it. 

the USA four years commitment and six years NG and gave up due to politics and boredom.  Hat off to those who stayed with it.