Air Force

The Air Force became a separate service in 1947, the youngest of the four in this record. It is organized around airpower: wings, groups and squadrons, with the maintenance, munitions, intelligence and logistics that put aircraft in the air and keep them there. Its people work from bases, and a base runs on a schedule of flying, maintenance and office work.

The Air Force’s intelligence career field is large, and its billets are not all in air wings. Air Force intelligence personnel are assigned to joint commands and national agencies, where the work is done alongside civilians and other services. The B-52 has been in the bomber force since 1955; the last airframe was built in 1962, so the aircraft has outlasted every crew that first flew it. Bomber missions are planned by an operations staff and supported by maintenance, munitions, fuel and logistics.

An assignment to an embassy is a different kind of posting. Military personnel at an embassy work under the chief of mission, the ambassador, and answer to a country team rather than to a wing commander; the work can be defense cooperation, security assistance or liaison, and it is done in a diplomatic mission, not on a base. Most Air Force work never reaches a headline: the intelligence shop, the flight line, the maintenance bay and the paperwork that records what was done.

The Air Force of the fifth generation is smaller than the one that fought the Gulf War, and its intelligence and bomber work is more networked than it was in 2001. The work asks for technical precision and a clearance, for people who can work a shift, keep a log and turn the job over cleanly at the end of it.