Agreed on MOS. Anything technical was bigger bucks in the long run.It depends on one's MOS, if you were a Grunt you can make Big Bucks working security but as some found out it can be very dangerous work. Personally I ended up passing on some offers I had and did a a lot of work for Military Contractors and for the DOD itself, and yes it paid very well. The big problem with military contracting is your job is depends on the contract you are working, once it is done if there isn't another project you are out until you can find a new contract, but yes the pay is very good. Plus I can point to some really cool projects that I was part of such as the B1B, really cool plane and got to spend a lot of time crawling around in them, memories..Generally, the move for a lot of kids in the military is to go into the private defense sector and make boatloads of money. It isn't without risk.
In the late 80s-90s enlisted personnel often tripled their salary upon leaving the service for the civilian sector. Officers often took a 50-75% cut in pay but often tripled their service pay in the long run. Mostly through upper-middle management or technical specialties.
