Leigh wrote on Jul 10^th, 2009 at 5:14am:



I would look more at the amount of required aircrew. The Australian air force, is, well, not the largest in the world and therefore, they can be very, very choosy (if Discovery Wings and a series about training F18 pilots is to be believed). I think that there are more personal in the Welsh National Guard  

Matt

USAF - less competition. I mean, less competition from you, for me, I want to fly for the RAAF.   In the ADF it's about 1 in 30,000 applicants that get in, I know that.

Serious answer - I don't know which one. Try both?

I would imagine neither is "easy".  I only know about the Air Force, nothing about the RAAF.  

To be considered for a pilot position, you need a four year college degree and a 3.2 or higher GPA in any program, but the science/engineering/business programs look better than basket weaving and interpretive dance.  You have to take the AFOQT, which is similar to the SAT, but with additional spacial orientation, aviation, and table/chart reading sections.  From that, you get scores in 5 different areas: pilot/navigator/arithmetic reasoning/verbal/quantitative.  Minimum scores for pilot selects are usually in the 90/85/75/75/75.  After that, you have to take the TBAS which tests your hand eye coordination, reaction time, visual tracking abilities, and multitasking.  Your TBAS score, AFOQT pilot score, and previous flight hours are combined to give you a PCSM score, which scores your "chances" of completing flight training.  Average select PCSM scores are in the 90 range.

All in all, it's not "easy", but it's certainly doable if you put the time and effort into it.  Even if you do everything you can and get average scores on everything, you still have to go through the selection process of applications, medical tests, and interviews then your application is reviewed by a group of active duty officers along with all the other applications from the past 6 months and they make the selections.  On my board there were just over 750 applicants and 27 were selected as pilots, and just under ~70 were selected as navigators.  

But, don't let me scare you away at all, in the end, if you do get selected, you'll have the best job in the world, so don't give up and work your behind off, and be ready for long hard days with no end in sight, both before and after you are selected.

C wrote on Jul 10^th, 2009 at 11:21am:

Yeah, the USAF will increase your PCSM score somewhere around 5-10 points for 1-10 hours of flying, then 3-5 points for 10-20 hours, then 1 or 2 points for 20-50 hours, etc..., all the way up to 200 hours of flight time.  From what I understand it's to eliminate the people that get in an airplane for the first time and decide they don't like flying after the Air Force spends time an money training them.  I understand how that can be a problem for the government, and I can't complain about their methods seeing as I had almost 190 hours when I took the test.

Mobius pretty much laid it out for you in relation to the USAF, hes very knowledgeble having gone through the process himself!

I would only add one thing: 1/2 the reason that motivates me is that I love my country and will fight for it to the death. Look, even if you do make it in the USAF, what if you wash out? Are you okay working a desk job or doing some other type of service in which you will have to dig deep in your commintment to your country in order to endure? IF the answer is no, I would say the USAF is not for you. Remember, officer first, pilot second. Of course, the other half of my reason is that I love the hell out of flying

There are alot of new entities that the RAAF are taking online (Super's, F-35s, KC-30 Tanker, C-27J, C-130J, AEW&C Wedgetail, P-8 Poseidon and perhaps more C-17s) within the next decade and they will be requiring new pilots, perhaps there's a chance you could catch a wave.

C wrote on Jul 11^th, 2009 at 3:54pm:

It's strange, but it's the almost the same with the USAF, they give you extra points for having flight hours, but once you're in, they essentially reteach you everything you learned, just in a different way.  An interesting example is the pattern that the USAF flies at their training bases.  There is no ATC, but a huge pattern, with two different circuits and different reporting points and types of approaches so apparently you can have around 15 aircraft in the pattern at a time with a minimum of radio traffic!

Go Navy! 
Air Force is my second option

EJW wrote on Jul 21^st, 2009 at 12:10pm:



Not always a good thing.

Leigh wrote on Jul 24^th, 2009 at 8:07am:



The old "quality versus quantity" argument.