Weekly Newbie Thread - Post questions about joining the AF here & here only - week of February 23

3D0X1 is kind of a weird career field and has a pretty long history of being used for a variety of unrelated things. Before the 3D merger, they were Information Management and the joke was that they were coffee makers and admin bitches. Which really wasn't far from the truth.

On the flipside of that coin, though, they were also computer technicians and often times unit CSAs before they all got consolidated into comm (which, IIRC, the Air Force started to slowly move back to having unit specific CSAs).

Then the 3D merger happened and they basically stayed the way they had been, but had an increased presence in comm squadrons by basically manning the help desk and being a core part of the squadron's function. However, they also were doing things like sitting up at the wing level coordinating EPRs and awards/decs to be signed by the wing king. It wasn't uncommon for there to be 3D0X1s (a comm career field) that had never been in a comm squadron or function.

My squadron saw what used to be 3C0X1s, now 3D0X2s, go from being the typical help desk personnel to managing servers and doing DBA work and the 3D0X1s came in and took over the help desk and basic trouble shooting stuff.

Now, however, the career field has split and the Air Force once again has an admin field. This happened after I separated so I can't speak too much on it, but how it's supposed to work is that the 3D0X1 guys have a more defined career field and job task. So they won't be doing two completely unrelated duties at different assignments. The 3D0X1s should be doing more typical comm jobs, whereas the 3As will be doing admin. Before, you could be sitting in a post office sorting mail or sitting at a help desk sifting through tickets.

So I wouldn't expect for you to be doing a whole lot of just office work and paperwork filing, at least not primarily. Just about every comm job requires quite a bit of that, but it should all involve supporting comm in some way. Either as a basic computer tech guy or working in what's called the "comm focal point" which is basically just the people that coordinate functions in comm with customers. The other big responsibility they had was "PWCS" which is just the military way of saying blackberries (although I think they're moving from those). Basically, you shouldn't expect to be a person that's just coordinating paperwork to be signed by the commander or sorting mail.

I'm sure there's a 3D0X1 around that can correct anything I messed up. I was comm for 6 years and worked with them a bit, but wasn't ever a 3D0X1.

/r/AirForce Thread