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A lot of people think that every branch of the military is basically the same as all of the others are. This could not be any further from the truth, short of being an out right lie. Every different military branch does stress awareness, personal safety and a commitment to something greater than ones self, this is true. But beyond those basic principles, the differences could not be any more extreme. After all, the life (especially in combat) or a sailor is vastly different than that of the Marines who leave the ship in order to storm the beaches. These differences are even more extreme in the basic training that air force recruits have to go through, in order to prove themselves worthy.
The Air Force has a relatively high wash out rate among its basic training flights (what they call a group of recruits), compared to the other branches of the armed forces. For one thing, they intentionally deprive their recruits of sleep, as they make them roll up their socks, t-shirts and other articles of clothing. This is all during the regular process, like with every branch of the military, of a combination of class room training and physical training. In many cases, during an eight and a half week training period, the recruits may end up getting an average of only three to four hours per night of sleep.
This is intentional, because the Air Force requires very strict, often very tiny actions to be performed by their airmen as part of their standard duties. An aircraft is an extremely expensive, potentially very dangerous piece of hardware, and no one wants a plane to explode or crash because a bolt was screwed in incorrectly (either too tightly or too loosely) by someone, regardless of whether or not they had a refreshing eight hours of sleep the night before. Air Force personnel have to be pushed to their limits, so they understand them.











