female USAF C-130 pilot for 13 years
Pros
Job security, adventure, travel, technical skills spoon-fed to each candidate at practically every level, very hard to "fail" at any job if you do the work. Young airman almost always blow me away with their job knowledge and professionalism. You will get to lead very smart, driven, dedicated people. Professionalism among the officer corps can vary, but most of my higher level leadership in my staff job at the end of my career understood integrity and would go out of their way to ensure members were being treated fairly. Pilots and aircrews in general are very very clique-ish, and will ostracize those different from them. If you like stiff competition and constant personal and professional judgment, and you enjoy continually be pushed almost to your limit, this is the job for you. Values of the USAF vary so much from job to job, it's hard to really "rate" it as a whole. What I can say is that a flying career is a gift, and a great job for young people right out of college because of the job security and adventure. Doing all the things I learned to do taught me to be a much more independent, strong woman and I'll never truly regret it. It's just a very rough sea to navigate. I know things and have done things that most people will never do, nor could they even imagine. Being an accomplished female officer and pilot is a proud life, but a hard, exceedingly lonely one.
Cons
As a pilot going to and from combat all the time, just realize you're not signing up to have a career, you are signing up for a life-encompassing obsession that will rule you. Either that, or you don't make it. Leadership will let you die on the vine without feedback even though there are "mandatory feedback" sessions. I almost never had a leader give me any real feedback until I was in a staff job. With aircrew, it's all a big popularity contest and it feels like a very exclusive club that some are locked out of. Which ruins your morale and even your self esteem if you let it. Waste, fraud and abuse are rampant. Lots of high paid civilians camping out in jobs that could be eliminated. Leadership at lower levels in the flying community was a challenge for me personally. I found flying in a SOF unit to be an uphill battle against sexism. Sexual harassment is on the wane in terms of its "public acceptance" but it's very much alive and well in the flying world. There is so much prejudice against women pilots, I can't even get into it. I've had people say things like, "you let your little stewardess wear a flight suit?" Yes, this is 2015. Not 1975. Another complication for women later on in your career if you want to have a family, or any sort of a real marriage/relationship: You are on call 24/7. That's the reality. When you have a baby, you're out. Out of flying, out of the club, off the map, and unless you can manage a very stressful staff job working for a general, you're out of the career game, too. During deployments, you never get to go home from the stress, so you'll face your haters, day and night- the people who talk behind your back and who are easy to ignore when you are home, and you can drive your car to your house and close the door and live your life and have weekends. Sometimes- the worst times, your haters will be your crew. The people you fly with on life and death missions. Just go into it with your eyes open and watch your back. Sometimes you have to be more professional than your leaders and certainly more professional than some of your subordinates, and hope that they will catch up with you and have your back when it matters.
