This tale is set many years ago, way back in 1987.
I and my best friend were in the Civil Air Patrol in high school. If you were in it for a while and went to one of their two week campouts on a military base and took some tests then when you joined the Air Force you went in the Air Force as an E3 and only had to go to two weeks of boot camp. We had both done all that.
I went in to the Marine Corps and he went into the Air Guard at about the same time. They gave me E2 and him E3, but when he got to boot they told him that because he was going into the Guard he had to do all 6 weeks (but he could do 2 if he went AD). He took the 6 weeks.
Afterwards we traded stories. Mine were standard Marine MCRD San Diego stories (which have been told here and elsewhere many many times by others). His were cool. They started running 200 yards, and worked up to a mile and a half in formation.
They didn't get yelled at, they did have to pretend to guard the dorms and check everyone's ID card who wanted to come in, and if they forgot to check the name on the card then they got scolded.
They spent half a day looking at movie about the M-16 and shooting them with 22LR.
They spent a week on pay and bennies.
The big mind game came half-way through, when the instructors played up how cool the rec center was going to be that night because of a special event, but then told them at the last minute that they failed an inspection and could not go. Lucky enough, no one killed themselves over it. After the first week they went to a rec center every night.....(but that one).....

A holder of a Billy Mitchell Award?

Yup, that's Uncle Sam's Flying Circus.

Damn, that's pathetic.  I went through Lackland AFB in 1983, and I'm not claiming it was like The Island, but it was certainly tougher than what your friend described.

Funny Air Force story:

I was a Security Police K-9 handler stationed at Kunsan AB, ROK in 1986.  One of the nice things about being overseas was that you had access to equipment (like night-vision devices)that it would have taken an act of congress to check out stateside.

Well we had one lieutenant who must have thought he was a ninja-in-training because he was always trying to sneak up on posts undetected.  One particular night I was posted out at Kilo-25, a stretch of fenceline on the ass-end of the base which was completely unlit.  About halfway through my shift, the lieutenant calls for me to meet him.  I arrive, give my post briefing, and he tells me that I should have detected him in my area sooner.  I tell him that I've been watching him for the last twenty minutes and describe the route that he took.  He asks how I could have seen him, and I swing around my CAR-15 with attached Starlight scope and tell him I've been watching him through this.

Funny, I never saw him out on my post again.

I'm not calling bullshit on your tale.  I'm just questioning the two weeks of basic training thing.  I did four years of active duty AF and I'm now in the Air Guard and yes AF basic is a cake walk but I don't see how being in the CAP is worth four weeks of basic.

Got me, that was just the way it was. You got E3 and short boot.

That is the way I remember it also.  It got me E-3 in the Army as well.