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Recruiting for the Air Force

The Air Force is one of the hardest services for you to join, tied with the Coast Guard. There are approximately 27,800 recruits that are enlisted every single year, which is a big difference in comparison to the Army, which recruits an average of 80,000 brand new recruits every single year. In the 2009 fiscal year, the Air Force decided to increase their goal as a means of making up for downsizing in previous years, and so they raised their goal to 31,980 new recruits. In the 2010 fiscal year the goal for active duty recruiting became 31,750.

In the past several years, more people have volunteered for the Air Force than the service really has room for. They have actually met if not exceeded all of their recruitment goals for the last ten years. What this means is that the Air Force is a service that can be a little pickier about who they do and do not let in since there are so many exceptionally qualified applicants trying to join.

The Air Force has a minimum ASVAB score requirement which is 36 in order to enlist. If you score at a 50 or higher then you are going to have a better chance of getting in, especially considering how competitive it is. The Air Force seems to like to bring in new recruits that score at a 75 or higher, with the maximum score being 100. Testing well on the ASVAB can play a very important role in helping you to get recruited to the air force when this is the service that you definitely want to work for.

The number of prior service applications that the Air Force accepts on an annual basis is generally very low. Typically in order to enlist in the air force, a prior service applicant should already be pre qualified for an Air Force job that is considered to be critically undermanned at current, or they must otherwise qualify for a special operations job and agree to enlist in that job in order to be recruited.