Welcome back to another episode of Commission ed, the Air Force Officer podcast. Today, we want to take a closer look at the 14 n career field or intelligence officer here, which happens to.
Be what you are.
Reed exactly. Yes.
I’m a 14 n, an intelligence officer, and I think the best career field in the Air Force. And one of the reasons it is my favorite, besides the fact that I get to do it, is how diverse of a career field it is. So in this AFSC series, we’re going to be talking about all the different options, the day in the life, where can you be stationed? What are deployments like? There’s no way I could capture that with intelligence. There are so many options out there. You could be in the day to day jumping out of aircraft and supporting special operations, or you could be working back in the United States, sitting behind a desk between the nine to five and everywhere and everything in between. And that diversity is one of the things that I enjoy the most about the career field.
Yeah.
Because it is such a broad, big, diverse career field. You can literally go anywhere in the Air Force. You can be stationed in the United States. You can go overseas, you can deploy, you can literally go anywhere.
Exactly.
And along with that, you can also have almost any educational background. I myself am a scientist. By training, other people have political science backgrounds, or you name it. And that diversity of thought is really important to the career field. The purpose that it exists for is to use sources and methods to determine the capability and intent and location of foreign adversaries and communicating that information to decision makers. And part of the reason that’s hard is that our adversaries don’t want to know those things. They try to keep those things hidden. And so we have to work really hard to uncover that information in order to communicate it.
But, Reed, it does sound a little bit complicated. There must be some sort of training that goes into becoming an intelligence officer. So take a quick minute here to explain for the audience what does the training look like in order to receive that? Afse sure.
So all 14 N’s will go to Goodfellow Air Force Base in San Angelo, Texas, for at least six months for their basic intelligence officer training course. As I mentioned, it’s six months long. And because it’s such a diverse career field, they try to give you just a baseline that covers just about everything so that you can at least speak to those things that maybe you’re not super focused in at that moment in time, but it just tries to give you enough of the language, if you will. Another key thing is depending on every job that you’re assigned to, and they change every couple of years as you pcs and move around, you’ll be expected to go to other intelligence formal training units, or iftus to get more specific training. So my first assignment out of intelligence school was to go to an air operations center at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, and I went to the AOC, if two in Florida, where I got my training for that, other people will go to, say, support f 15 unit.
They’ll go to the f 15 unit.
Support, if two, to get that training and education.
Yeah.
And what you’re describing here is what you do operationally, but also a little bit of the developmental process for intelligence officers, that the expectation is that you are going to see lots of different types of intelligence or the way that you do intelligence in the air force. And that is going to help you to grow into the kind of intelligence officer that the Air force needs you to be.
Yes, because you’re leading such a diverse group and a diverse mission set. They value breadth in your development, so you’ll be expected to do a lot of different jobs. Again, something I really enjoy. Some people can find that frustrating, and that’s why it’s really important to know who you are and what interests you. But I got to tell you, if you’re interested in supporting operations and in being a part of something that’s bigger than you, I think the intel field could really be something that you should look at. And I should also mention here, Colin, something that I didn’t fully appreciate when I joined this career field is I’m not just in the Air Force. The intelligence community is a much bigger part of the whole of government. Right now there are 18 departments and agencies that make up the United States intelligence community. So not only am I an Air Force officer, I’m an intelligence officer for the Air Force, but I’m also a member of this intelligence community, the IC. And it’s like joining a whole separate Air force almost. It’s really interesting.
Yeah, it sounds very large, very complex, and rather difficult to fully grasp and get your arms around. So what we recommend is that if you want to learn more about the intelligence career field, get in touch with somebody like Reed or some of the other officers that we’ve had, be part of the podcast and start to pick their brain a little bit more, engage with them in the heritage room, reach out to us through our various social media platforms, send us an email. That way you can start to get more information about what is possible and what is expected of you within the intelligence career field.
Yeah, absolutely.
And as always, like and subscribe. We’d love to hear from you, our audience. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out. We’ve got links in the description to ways you can contact us. And we really appreciate you joining us today for commissioned.