Combat Control

“As a Combat Controller, you'll be an elite special operations forces member, establishing assault zones, directing airstrikes, and operating as a joint terminal attack controller embedded with Army Special Forces and Navy SEALs. You'll earn the scarlet beret, airborne and combat diver qualifications, and join one of the most decorated career fields in Air Force history.”

You are Combat Control — an Air Force special operator who embeds with Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs to call in airstrikes and establish assault zones in denied territory. You are a JTAC, a pathfinder, a combat ATC, and a special tactics operator rolled into one person who also has to keep up with SOF ground forces on 20-mile movements with 80 pounds of radios. Your training pipeline is two-plus years of pure suffering — dive school, airborne, freefall, combat control school, and advanced skills training — with an attrition rate that makes BUD/S look like summer camp orientation. You are arguably the most capable and least known enlisted person in the Air Force. Fighter pilots at your own base don't know you exist. The Army and Navy teams you deploy with would die for you, literally, because you've been the difference between their survival and a very bad day more times than anyone will declassify. When you call 'cleared hot,' aircraft deliver. When you throw a smoke grenade on an airfield in hostile territory, C-130s land. You are the Air Force's dirtiest, most special-operations-capable secret, and the CCT community is the smallest and most elite enlisted force in the DoD. Your post-service career in defense contracting, three-letter agencies, or private security is yours for the asking.