I would have to agree 100% with what pdm said. I was in the airforce and got out in 1992. The job I had was a good job and I made alot of good frieds, some I keep in touch with still today. I must say that I was glad that I was single with the job that I had. I worked on the Minuteman 3 ICBM nuclear missle silos.
We would go out into the missle field for days at a time. We would leave on Mondays and usually come back to base on wedndsday or thursday, it just depeneded on what the maintance shedule was. Sometimes we would just go out for one day but those one day trips were long 16 hour days. In the course of so many days out in the missle field I saw quite a few marriages not last this kind of strain. Pay is not all that good at first but does get a little better as time goes on.
What ever branch of service you decide to go into good luck and choose wisely.Give some long hard thought as to why you want to join, what career field you want to pursue, and how can that training benifit you when you get out of the service. If I could do it all over again I think I would go either army or marines. The airforce was pretty easy as far as basic went, mostly just a lot of mind games,lots of marching,lots of classes on UCMJ and Airforce policies,lots of getting yelled at,lots of cleaning the dorm after the TI(Training Instructor) would totally destroy the dorm by flipping up all of the beds, putting scuff marks all over the waxed floors, flooding the latrine with a couple of inches of water, and then say to the whole dorm you have 2 hours to have the dorm back in inspection order or we will do this all over again but come back in about an hour with a few of there buddies and totally go off and yell and hurl lots of insults. Personally i thought it was pretty funny. I learned early on that the whole point of this was to get everyone to work together as a team under extreme stress. I even broke out into laughter a few times because to me it was just funny to see these TI's get all worked up and then to see how some people handled the stress. Too me it was too easy.
My laughter though got me a few chew marks on my behind because the TI's knew that I knew that it was all a mind game.I spent quite a few times scrubbing pigion manure with a tooth brush, I thought that was funny because at least my ears would get a break from all of there yelling.
Basic in the Air Force was Not very mentally or physically challenging. Unfortunetly there really is no real deep weapons training and no real learning on combat or soldeiring in the airforce. You would have to pick a specific career field that deals with those things. Pretty much the only weapons handling you get in basic is you go to the range for 1 day and get trained on how to fire an M-16 and then you do your qualifying shooting that day. The obstical course is pretty much a joke, it was fun but a real joke, it was not very physically challenging. I learned a good trade and am thankful for that but as far as being a soldier I was very disappointed. I look back know and wish I would have either chosen a different career field like para-rescue or something related to aircraft,or joined a different branch of the military.
When I got out I had seriously thought about going into the army and looking into either para-troopers or rangers, but with clinton in office I decided to not rejoin. I was not wiling to serve such an idiot as him.Well hope this helps.