Going on a military deployment can be stressful. You’re literally going into a hostile environment 2000 miles away and you have no idea what to expect. I have no idea what I’m doing. I’m gonna show you how to prepare for that deployment, and I’m also gonna show you how to level. Level up.
Greg. Everything will be fine.
First things first, let’s define what a deployment is. Generally, a deployment means a scheduled time away from your normal duty station, usually outside of the United States. Most people, when they think deployments, they think grenades, they think bombs, they think gunfire. And that may be true for some personnel, but for the majority of air force personnel, you have a higher chance of getting hurt from a car accident than you do experience in combat while deployed.
So don’t freak out. When I read my comments, a lot of people say the air force deploys, yes, but the air force deploys more in a support role. So when the air force deploys, they provide air support, which basically means that they do anything in the air that the military needs them to do, whether it’s ground support, dropping bombs on people, dropping humanitarian aid for people, doing surveillance, and sometimes even recovering personnel. So whatever job you have in the air force, you’re going to be, in some form of fashion helping support these kind of missions.
Most likely, you won’t deploy until you get some experience first. When you’re home station all the work you’re doing, that’s just training for the real thing. So before the air force sends you to the real thing, they got to make sure that you’re capable first. So they typically have you wait until you’re a seasoned e three, or airmen first class, or they wait until you get your e four stripes or senior airmen. And that usually takes anywhere from about two to three years.
And the duration of your deployment is going to depend on your job and also which magcom you work for. Most people deploy anywhere from four to six months, six months being the average, and sometimes even up to twelve months. Some people deploy twelve months after they get back and some people, they don’t deploy until 48 months after they get back. It all depends on your situation. Me, myself, I haven’t deployed since 2011.
I know some of y’all are upset right now. I’m sorry, Tyler Murphy. It was an accident and don’t worry about that. That’s just the way the cars landed for me. But in all seriousness, that’s really rare.
So don’t expect that unless you get into a career field like recruiting or something like that. Hell, yeah. Now, if you just received the notification that you’re going to be deploying soon. There’s a lot that you need to do before you just show up to ensure that your trip goes smoothly. In order to not bore you all, I put a link to all the checklists that you need to do before you leave in the description box below.
There are some important things I do want to talk about. The service member Civil Relief act if you are in a lease of any kind, you probably had to sign an agreement stating that you’re going to be in a lease for one year, two years, however long you signed it for. This service member civil Relief act can help you terminate that lease so you don’t have to make any payments towards that while you deploy and you’re still going to get your housing allowance, so you just stack all that money up. I also recommend once you found out your address of where you’re going to mail yourself some stuff. So if you’re going to mail yourself something, I highly recommend you mail yourself a good pillow and a mattress topper.
That way you get some good quality sleep when you’re deployed. Also mail yourself a fake plant. Depending on your location, the way you get deployed, it’s probably going to be all brown. Sometimes seeing a little bit of green can go a long way. I did not know that.
Keep in mind, most of the deployed locations have like a BX or Nex or something where you could purchase items so you don’t need to pack everything. Also, in most deployed locations they have a public Wi Fi. So I highly recommend y’all get yourselves a VPN. This is basically protection for your Internet experience. That way nobody can get your personal information.
The VPN I recommend is Surfshark. I’ve actually partnered up with them and if you use my code in the description box below, that will get you a discount off of their VPN packages. Thank you very much. So when you get to your location, there’s some things that you should be doing and there’s some things that you shouldn’t be doing. Let’s start with what you shouldn’t be doing.
So you go to your deployment and after a month of being there, you start getting lonely. You start missing home. And now all of a sudden, some of them girls, some of them guys that you didn’t think was that attractive when you first got there, they start becoming attractive. We call that Desert goggle. What this means is after being deployed so long, your vision gets a little blurry.
People who don’t normally look attractive to you look attractive now last thing you want to do is start a relationship with somebody. When you deploy, when your judgment isn’t all the way clear, some deploy locations let you kick back a little bit, and they allow up to three alcoholic beverages a day. Now, there’s other deploy locations that you can’t drink at all. And if they catch you with the drink, that is strictly prohibited. You’re probably going to be working six to seven days a week straight twelve hour days.
Damn. The last thing I would hate for you all to do is stay in your room and not make relationships. I’m going to show you why. Because one of the relationships I made was with one of the supply troops when you deployed. Everybody’s AFSC comes together.
It doesn’t matter what job you do, people just start coming together and kicking it that normally wouldn’t have kicked it before. So I made a relationship with this supply troop, and the next thing you know, they started hooking me up with all kind of gear that I wouldn’t have normally got. I was a plug. So if you needed any type of supply stuff, people came to me. So I can go to my guy, he’ll hook me up, we’ll get it back to the people on the line.
Those kind of relationships are priceless. On your deployment. Ain’t come here to make friends, but I’d like it to happen. The first two weeks of your deployment is going to be a blur. It’s going to be a lot going on.
It’s going to be a lot to learn. It’s not until about two weeks to three weeks when things start settling down. But then when things start settling down, it seems like time is moving slow. If you don’t create some type of day to day schedule, it’s going to be a long time. So this is how my day went.
I worked the day shift so I would wake up and I would put on my sunglasses. I’m telling y’all, when you come outside of your room and that sun hits you, it feels like the sun is right there. So I put my sunglasses on so I could go to the bathroom or the cadillac is what we called it, and I would go brush my teeth, shower, shave, do everything I needed to to get my day started. Highly recommend y’all have a pair of shower shoes when you go shower. Then I would slide over to one of the chow halls.
These chow halls are pretty cool, at least when I went. I got some of the best food when I was deployed. I don’t know if it’s still like that. If it is type it in the comments. Y’all tell me what kind of food y’all eating.
When y’all there, I’ll start my day off with a cheesecake and a rip and I’ll be good. So when I got to work, it’s work time, or at least partly. And what I mean by that is we worked day shift so our job was to work on the planes and make sure that they could take off to go do what they needed to do. When the planes had left, we didn’t really have much to do. So that’s your free time.
That’s when you’re going to be making these relationship. Th that’s when you’re going to be playing ping pong, you might be playing pool, you might be watching whole tv seasons in like a week. Now when you get off work, you can’t just shower and go to bed, but that will be late. I highly recommend about 30 minutes before you get off work, you get yourself a nice pre workout, shake it up, drink it. That way when you get off work you can go exercise.
I also recommend if you can find a time to get with an education center while you deploy and see what type of classes that they hold. My unit used to let us go take Clep test. It’s basically a test you can take for a college course. And if you score a 50 or higher on that test, you get a college credit for that entire course. Wow.
Some of y’all are dead broke. I know I was before I deployed. Now, one thing about being deployed is there’s really nothing to spend your money on unless you like to go online and shop on Amazon, which I highly don’t recommend. So realistically, you’re just stacking up your cash and you’re also getting paid more than normal. You may be getting combat pay, you may be getting family separation pay, and a couple more pays depending on your situation.
The best part about it is it’s all tax free. I highly recommend you all take a lot of that money and you put it into your thrift savings plan. That way you don’t spend it and you invest some of that money so you can have it later in life. Last thing I want you all doing, saving up 18 $20,000, coming back and spending it all on a vehicle or something like that. Don’t do that.
Please don’t do that. And y’all make sure y’all write your loved ones or you make phone calls. They are highly worried about you. They think that you’re getting shot at. So you got to maintain that communication with them so they can rest easy at night.
I know some of y’all just got into the air force, and you’re still trying to figure out what to do with your dorm room. I got a video on the screen right now that it help you upgrade your dorm room so you can make it more comfortable. Like I always say, I hope this video brought value to you. Stay beautiful, stay classy, and until next time, check me out.