Careers: Military--Army, Navy, Airforce, Marines, Coast Guard/How to reinlist with re-4 pesonality disorder

Advertisement

Expert: Rod Powers - 8/2/2006


Question
I have been out of the Navy for 6 months now. I was givin an honarable discharge but was also give an RE-4 code on my dd214 because the navy said i had a personality disorder. I had never been in any trouble in the navy and had never had any disapplinary action against me for anything. I had a totaly clean record even went to Iraq 2 times and volantiered to go again. But i was discharged with an RE-4. They said i had stress problems and narsisistic thoughts or something like that. and that was there resoning for giving me the RE-4. What can I do to get this changed so i can join a different service. I was thinking of the Airforce.

Answer
Hi Riley,

I'm afraid I have some bad news for you.  Even if you had an RE Code of "1" (eligible for immediate re-enlistment), your chances of joining the Air Force as a prior service recruit are about 1 in 10,000.  

Unfortunately, the Air Force is currently "down-sizing," and are simply not taking very very prior service enlisted applicants, unless they are already qualified (trained) in a very small handful of critical jobs, such as Pararescue or Combat Controller (in other words, unless you were a Navy SEAL, or Army Special Forces, your chances for a prior service enlistment in the active duty Air Force are almost non-existant.  Sorry, but that's just the way it is, right now for prior service enlistments in the Air Force, and it will probably be this way for at least 5 or 6 years.

Prior Service enlistments are counted against re-enlistment slots, not enlistment slots, and the Air Force has the highest re-enlistment rate of any of the services.  For obvious reasons, a service would rather keep a current person in, than allow a prior service to join, if given the chance.  See my article at: http://usmilitary.about.com/od/joiningthemilitary/a/priorservice.htm for details.


Now, as far as your RE code, the only way to change that is to request a change to your military records, through the applicable Military Records Board.  The only way to do that is to convince the board that your RE Code was issued in error.  Details in my article at:  http://usmilitary.about.com/cs/airforcebase/a/chgrecords.htm

Hope this helps!

Rod Powers
http://usmilitary.about.com

Careers: Military--Army, Navy, Airforce, Marines, Coast Guard

All Answers

Answers by Expert:

Ask Experts

Volunteer

Rod Powers

Expertise

Rod Powers is considered one of the premire experts about U.S. Military career information on the planet. He has more than 30,000 articles about U.S. Military career information on the About.com U.S. Military Careers Information website at: http://usmilitary.about.com. Additionally, he is the author of "ASVAB for Dummies," "ASVAB AFQT for Dummies," (available in Dec 2009), and "Veteran Benefits for Dummies," all published by Wiley Publishing. He is also the author of "Barrons' Guide to Officer Candidate School Tests," published by Barron's Educational Series.

Experience

Rod Powers is a retired Air Force first sergeant, with 23 years of active duty service, 11 of those years as an Air Force First Sergeant. He has helped thousands of military members, recruits, and military applicants since he took over the About.com U.S Military Careers Information site in 1999. He has a reputation for "telling it like it is," so questions may not be answered based on "what you want to hear," but will be answered based of the bast available information, concerning the service/situation.

Education/Credentials
Rod is a distinguished graduate of the Air Force Noncommissioned Officers Academy, the Air Force Senior Noncommissioned Officer Academy, and the Air Force First Sergeant Academy. He also holds an Associates Degree in Personnel Administration from the Community College of the Air Force (CCAF).

©2012 About.com, a part of The New York Times Company. All rights reserved.