Air Force Blackhawk Pilots
I don't know if anyone will be able to help me even a little with this question, but here goes.
Does anyone know how frequently a blackhawk pilot in the Air Force could expect to deploy, and how long the deployments are usually for?
DH has 7 yrs of active duty Army experience and is currently in the Army guard and is deploying soon. He mentioned an idea of switching to active duty Air Force when he gets back from deployment, to finish out his last 13 years of active duty and be eligible for retirement. We just thought of this today, and haven't even looked in to whether or not it would be possible. I'm not too excited about him going active at all b/c I hate deployments (and they only happen about every 5 yrs in DH's guard unit). But I've heard Air Force deployments are typically shorter than Army so I thought I'd see if you ladies had any info. Thank you!
Re: Air Force Blackhawk Pilots
DH works at the Rescue Helicopter squadron at Nellis. They have the pave hawk, which I think is the AF version of the black hawk. It's the HH-60 if you wanna google it. DH is weapons, so he's not a pilot, but they deploy for 3 - 4 months at a time once a year max. DH has been there for 18 months and has not deployed yet. He said he thinks the pilots go for 6 months, but he wasn't sure. They are usually home for 9 months before they will deploy them again, so at the most, they'd go once a year. I know some guys have been there for 4 years and gone twice.. I know other guys who've love going and have been 5 times in 6 years. At least here, they take volunteers before they start assigning people to go.
Rescue is probably the most family friendly shop at Nellis. DH works 6 - 8 hours a day and has weekend duty every 2 months or so.. and even then it's usually on-call so he doesn't actually have to go in. His commander came to visit us when I had LO. He came in on a Saturday afternoon and drove across town to see her in the NICU.. They don't usually do that in the other shops here. At his old shop, he was working 10 - 14 hour days and had weekend duty for at least 8 hours about once a month.
AF deployments are shorter. They have a 6 month max in the AF (at least with DH) so they don't really go longer. It's a $$ thing and has something to do with a deployment being different than a PCS.. and if they are somewhere for 6 months then it's a PCS or a PCA or something. I don't remember why exactly. My friend's boyfriend is in the Army and his deployment is 18 months.