How do the Army and Air Force compare?

Having worked beside the Army for the past 6+ years (out of 10 years in the Air Force), I found that the fundamental difference is that the Army is more rank conscious than the Air Force. While I do find a lot of respect from lower enlisted to upper enlisted or officers, the Army grinds the parade rest/attention and "Sergeant"/"Sir/Ma'am" mentality very hard. The Air Force is more people oriented; Leaders try to get to know their people, not just from a work viewpoint, but from a personal one as well.

Personally, I have seen SPC and PV2s openly defy and disrespect CPTs and 1LTs, while I have not seen the corresponding lack of respect from SrA and A1Cs to Capts or 1st Lts. I think a lot of this has to do with the mentality of how the two services treat their lower ranks. The Air Force generally tries to better the person, while the Army tries to better the worker.

All this being said, I have the utmost respect for my Army brethren. I love working alongside them.

I started as an Army Medic, now am an Air Force nurse..... ok, so Enlisted with the Army and Officer with Air Force, but still medical field. Also, keep in mind that this is stretching across time and space....I have been playing in the military since 1987, so much has changed.....

Army: very mission focused. Family was distant second. Quarters, entertainment, and other off duty quality of life aspects were often worn out, old....just less.
Air Force: Very mission focused, but also family was an important aspect. Quarters, and off duty aspects were often much nicer. More offered.

Day to day work: Army is much more of a field operations thought process. Air Force is less so as they have combat reach with aircraft. Just a different feel to things.

Nothing wrong with either one. I for one, miss some of the aspects (tradition, enforced standards, etc) of the Army, but really enjoy the perks of the Air Force in regards to family and facilities.

Comparing Army and Air Force daily life and operations between the two branches is like comparing apples and oranges in some cases but I'll give it a try:
- Mission. Very different missions and orientations. The Army is land based and generally tactically focused while the Air Force is air based and generally strategically focused.
- MOS. The Army has about 125 MOSs. I do not know the number of MOSs in the Air Force. Some MOSs are the same or similar such as engineers, firefighters, and logisticians that are common to both. Others have similar names but different functions such as MPs vs SPs. Others have no counterpart in the other service at all such as infantry, armor, or field artillery MOSs.
- Installations. The Air Force generally has more success with their facilities (barracks, housing, headquarters) than the Army does based upon a different philosophical and tactical approach.
- Deployments. Due to differences in missions, the service approach to deployments is different. Army deployments are 9-12 months because close team work and consistency on the ground are key while Air Force deployments are 3-6 months since air crews themselves should stick together but units are more interchangeable.
- Therefore daily life and operations within the two services depends a lot upon the MOS a person is in within the service. This drives a lot of the other considerations (mission, installation, deployments, etc).

Compare the Motel 6 to the Hilton that should be a good starting point

I would say from experiences in the AF are that we are 95% a combat support agency. We are the Fedex and United airlines for the DOD. A small percent of my service is at the tip of the spear with their fangs out. Most of the service is to support those operations.

When someone joins the Air Force the mindset is on this support. What I notice is that the AF enlisted have very diverse and specific career fields that are not parallel to most of the officer positions. The thing I notice from this site is that it seems that this is not always the case with the Army. In the Army if someone becomes an Infantry officer they must learn learn the same corps basics as an enlisted in the infantry. I base this off of previous discussions on this board.

In the Air Force that is not how we do things with minor exceptions to some very specific careers. The AF has officers that oversee enlisted, but the officer is more of a generalist in the specialties and do not get into the very specific details of how their enlisted actually do their jobs. They understand the big picture of the enlisted technical specialty and know what the end product is supposed to be but they are trained at the myopic level as the technician. Take Aircraft MX for instance. The MX officer is not going to be turning wrenches on an airplane. However that person will be responsible for making sure they get the appropriate parts in time and can make sure that the fleet is being managed properly.

As a pilot in a Tanker. My job was to know how to fly the plane. My enlisted boom operator was the expert in the back of the plane to actually do the in flight refueling. I did not know what the exact technical details on how he/she did their job, but I knew what I needed to do in the front to keep a stable platform for them to do theirs.
We put a lot of responsibility on the boom operator. They were my eyes in the back. I relied on the Booms judgement to prevent another aircraft from crashing into us.

In some respects the AF expects a lot of responsibility from our junior enlisted personnel to autonomously do their job without a great deal of supervision. That is because they get the very specialized training and are certified to accomplish what they have been charged to do. We generally do not interfere with their ability since they are technical experts in their realm.

Father was lifer in Air Force I myself choose Army after leaving the Air Force Academy. The biggest difference I noticed was that the Air Force was very procedure focused as apposed to Army was more mission focused. You will never see an F-22 pilot have 2 day stubble as with an M1 tank jockey. Look at it as differences in corporate culture. The Army is focused on a very dynamic environment as Air Force is more static in flying sorties out of a controlled air field. As to housing a very good example was when I lived at Ft. Monroe and then we moved to Langley AFB. Everything was nicer on the AFB. PX, commissary housing, ect...

I was at an Air Force Unit in Germany that had an MI Detachment assigned and a Marine Detachment as well.

Both my Marine and Army counterparts remarked positively on the Air Force standards for quarters and chow. The Marines described it as Embassy duty without standing out front.

We were all there to do the same mission. Provide Intelligence to the European Theater. My Army counterparts spent more than 50% of their time training for their job and doing daily PT. I never understood why they needed to train for the job. They went to tech school like I did and we were doing the job in real life right there, no simulations and no exercises. We in the Air Force were expected to accomplish our PT on our own and during our off-duty time.

They also made rank faster in the Army then we did and this resulted in many of us working for NCOs with less experience.

Please do not take any of this as negative. It just was strange to me that the day to day requirements of the Army could not be adapted to the mission.

The best officer I worked for during my service was an Army Ranger. He was driven and committed. In contrast the best NCO I ever worked for was an Air Force CMSgt and I worked for a SPC4, 2 GySgt, 2 SSGs, an SFC and 2 TSgts during my 6 years.

An Air Force Colonel once remarked to me that "The AF treats its enlisted personnel well because they maintain and support the aircraft flown by the officers. An unhappy airman would result in downed aircraft and dead pilots."

On a lighter note the Marines, always and consistently, down to a man, looked sharp every day. The AF and the Army had individuals that looked great everyday, but not everyone had the esprit de corps.

Having spent 10 years in the Air Force enlisted and 3 years in the Army as a Warrant Officer I can see a vast difference in the two Signal fields. I worked primarily in tactical communications for the vast majority of my career and the difference I see is the checks and balances. For example, in the Air Force I had a list of tasks in my training record and was required as a lower enlisted to have an SrA train me and an NCO certify me on a task. At any point QA could pull my training record and force me to perform any task I was signed off on to standard. With the Army it seems the commander can say that a soldier is qualified even if that person cannot perform the task. This then leads into my second point in accountability with the Air Force if I screwed up or if one of my subordinates screwed up they were held to account for their actions. It seems in the Army if a person screws up the first question I have heard asked is what actions did the leadership do to ensure that Soldier would not screw up. There is a shifting of accountability from the culprit to the first line or even the Company Commander.

Best example I can give was when we went into Haiti in the late 90's for Operation Uphold Democracy. I was with the 10th Mountain Division and we were on Port-Au-Prince Airfield just a couple of days after the operation began. I was literally sleeping on an AF pallet in the open and eating MRE's, while my AF brethren already had air-conditioned tents erected and were flying in fresh fruits and vegetables for their airmen.
Not complaining...just sayin'