[legion]

Originally Posted by emcon5

One thing, regardless of what he does with his life, he will grow up in a hurry.

Something interesting about the military, they are not afraid of giving large amounts of responsibility to junior enlisted.

When I was in the Navy, at 19, I was observer qualified on the P3, to go fly as a crewmember on training flights, not requiring a tactical crew. When I was 20, I was fully qualified as Sensor station One operator. It was my job to determine if the noise in the water was a Soviet submarine or not, and whether or not we should attack it. When I was 22, I gave other aircrewman annual safety check flights, and if I said they were not safe, they couldn't fly as crew until I said they could (NATOPS Blue Card, for those who know what that is).

This is by no means exceptional, that was about the age of many of the people I flew with. There were always second or third tour folks around, but first tour E4 & E5s did a lot of the work.

I know Subs are the same way, my brother was a fast attack Sonar supervisor at ~22.

Excellent point. A lot people now days are afraid to move out of their parent's basement at 25...