At first when I joined the Army I had my heart set on becoming Airborne. Well about one month ago I signed papers for my medical discharge (before I was even in I was out again) becuase I had to get knee surgery for a torn ACL in my left knee. I highly doubt Airborne will be an option after that. So I was thinking that the only other thing I really wanted to do at the time that I enlisted, 1 July 2004, was Artillery. However my opinion of the military has changed since then. When I enlisted I had a mindset that the only reason I was doing this was to fulfill my sense of duty to my country and that what I wanted didn't matter, what mattered was that my country needs soldiers, the Army knows what it needs and I will just take what they give me. Well now after having been going to DEP meetings for a year I feel I have had a change of heart. Now, I don't want to offend any grunts here but from what I have seen the Army will never run out of Infantry, sure they need a disproportionate number of Infantry to say Apache Airmen, but from what I have seen anyone who gets below a 49 on the ASVAB is basically thrown into the Infantry. I would still like to do Airborne and if that is an option after surgery I will definetly take it, but if not I want to try and become a Pilot in an Apache instead of basic Infantry. Are there any special requirements for this? Does one have to go to flight school before enlisting or can just any recruit become pretty much whatever they want to be?

**Note, my assumption that the Army needs Infantry is not counting logistics personel, I won't even pretend to be smart enough or at least have the proper schooling/experience to truly grasp logistics other than that the US uses like a 7:1 ratio.

Okay, based on this:

Both commissioned officers (CO) and warrant officers (WO) fulfill the Army's aviator requirements.

Except for really rare circumstances, you need to have a bachelor's degree to get a commission as an officer; as for becoming a warrant officer, click here for the requirements.

I'd also imagine a flight physical would be equally demanding as the regular physical for infantry, so you might be outta luck there as well.

I'm not an expert on this, so don't take my word as law but my father was an army aviator all of my life so I have seen the ins and outs of the career field. As AJ already said to be an aviator you have to be an officer or warrant officer. Obviously to be an officer you have to have a bachelors degree and the attend ocs or rotc in college. The army however has a flight warrant officer program that takes high school graduates and commisions them. While its not impossible it is extremely hard to get in the warrant officer program. You have to get seven references from high members in the community exhibiting all these different traits. These references can't be from joe schmo either, they need to be like your local state senator you know something important like that. You also have to write an essay on why you want to be an aviator. You also have to take a test like the asvab but its solely about flying. After you have all that completed your basic information, references, test scores, and essay are sent to a commitee that meets periodically throughtout the year. From the Thousands of applications they receive they choose about forty people to go to warrant officer school. Now for the bad news chances are with your knee problem you will not pass your flight physical. Helicopter pilot's legs are extremely important in flying. Look at like this your legs control your tail rotor and that tail rotor is the only thing keeping you from spinning circles at over 100 mph. So the flight surgeon will say that if your helicopter experiences hydraulic failure, your bad knee would not be able to handle the pressure it would take to handle that tail rotor. Also, if you have vision less that 20/20 you cant count yourself out of getting a pilot job.

Originally Posted by worthless Recruit

Also, if you have vision less that 20/20 you cant count yourself out of getting a pilot job.

Can or can't?

Originally Posted by Damien435

Can or can't?

Figure "can" -- as in, you're not likely to get a pilot job if you don't have 20/20 vision or better.

What if the person got laser correction surgery and their vision was brought to 20/20 or better? Or do they just want born with perfect vision gonna die with pefect vision?

Originally Posted by Damien435

What if the person got laser correction surgery and their vision was brought to 20/20 or better? Or do they just want born with perfect vision gonna die with pefect vision?

Apparently, you can be corrected, but it's not clear to me if laser correction surgery would be allowable:

Vision Requirements Change for Aviator Wannabes

The Office of the Surgeon General recently approved a change in vision requirements for U.S. Army warrant officer aviator candidates to allow for corrected vision. Applicants for MOS 153A, Aviator, now must meet the standards for the Class 1A flight physical (previous standard was Class 1). You are not qualified with uncorrected distant visual acuity worst than 20/50 in each eye and/or not correctable with spectacle lenses to 20/20 in each eye. You can view the full vision standards in para 4.12, AR 40-501. A change will be published to AR 40-501 to reflect the new standards, however, the regulation is currently under revision and is not expected to be published for 6 months to one year. Your local hospital or medical clinic may be unaware of the change so you should print a copy of the approval by clicking here and take with you to your physical appointment.

http://www.usarmyaviation.com/lounge.htm

You may want to download that PDF file to see if there's anything in there that specifies laser correction surgery. Good luck...

Thank you for your help, I think that paragraph told me pretty much what I needed to know, I will check out the PDF file as well as call me recruiter to see if he can get a hold of MEPS and see if he can scrounge up any more information.

Originally Posted by worthless Recruit

The army however has a flight warrant officer program that takes high school graduates and commisions them.

WRONG and RIGHT

They call them Warrant officers for a reaon.

Notice there are 2 types of officers: Commisioned officers and Warrant officers.

Warrant officers 1 recieve a warrant from the chief of staff for their respective service, once the warrant officer is promoted to Chief Warrant officer (Army) they then revieve a commision from the President and has to take an oath like a regular commisioned officer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warrant_officer

IN the past laser surgery wasnt alowed for pilots. and still isnt for civilin. But my freind in the air force said that they had a new procedure that you could get it done but it had to be done by a air force doctor while your in the air force.