Has anyone been a Foreign Area Officer in the Army? Did you love/hate it and why?

Question

My husband is looking into FAO for Europe. What should I expect? I found lots of stuff about what FAOs might do, but not about the process to get there.

I know the training takes 3-4.5 years. Where does the training take place?

I read about the ICT being approx. one year. Is that at the end of the 3-4.5 years?

Any info would be much appreciated.

Answer 1

I looked at it. Europe is hard to get. Everybody wants Europe.

A lot of the training is for a Masters Degree. They waive that requirement a lot now because they need FAOs in the embassies, not school. Even a lot of the language training is not being done all the way. My friend was Sub-Saharan Africa and was only sent to learn French instead of both French and Swahilli and was not sent to get a Masters.

Its a lot of overseas living. You do not get the support you would normally have at a regular military assignment. You often have to live on the economy, so no exchange, hospital, commissary, etc.

If you make the jump to FAO, you often lose touch with the rest of the military. They get used to working with civilians and when they do get assignments to the regular force again, they sometimes have a hard time adapting again and have to play catch-up.

There is the good side, with the travel and seeing a bigger picture of things. I was going to do it until I pulled into deployments and more or less missed my window.

Answer 2

he will probably get assigned to places like Kosovo, Turkimistan,ganghou, jolo,khe sahn, quito, tasmania or some other god forsaken place on this planet!
Have fun!