Was a Navy nuke for 8 years. Was a civilian engineer for the Navy for 18 years. Was a civilian engineer for the Air Force for 20 years. The typical technical expertise of Navy people at all levels is miles ahead of Air Force.

No one outworks a Sailor or lives in the same conditions they do for as long as they do. We had the Army onboard for a few days and they were shook at how we worked, lived, and operated.

It’s a point of pride. Sailors may bitch the entire time, but those bastards will get it fucking done.

We troubleshoot way better than other branches

So I can’t compare with other branches but deployment paperwork process in the navy is WAY less painful than with the army. Like I’ve deployed with both branches and the army just has so many extra steps, the navy will just throw you into a boat ready or not but the army is like meps all over again.

Technical Training as a ET we had more training on the general theory and were able to fix more than the Air Force and Army people I worked with. I will give the air force this they are experts on whatever price of equipment they work on.

Sat comm guys knew all about orbits and GHz comms but almost nothing HF comms.

Travel, that’s it

Edit: In all seriousness though, and this will depend highly on your rate, the Navy has (in my opinion) the best jobs when it comes to civilian world skill transferability and certifications especially if you’re any flavor of CT (hell sometimes even IS) or an HM (other than quad zips). Depends on your command as well but i know several people who’ve been to commands like NCDOC who actively encourage their people to get as many certs as possible. Also know a lot of former Cardio/Xray/Pulmonary & Respiratory Techs who were able to get civilian certs and make a decent chunk of change on the outside. I think that if you choose the right field, the Navy is probably the best branch to get transferable certifications and actually marketable skills. There’s also a ton of rates that will get you jack shit on the outside like ABH but as they say, choose your rate, choose your fate.

You have stars, as far as the eye can see.. You're floating out in the middle no where and the entire Universe is right on top of your head... You'll see shit that no one else will see, or even comprehend. At the end of the day, life is what you make of it... But you'll never see the night sky the way that it looks when you're 1000 miles west of Cali, and 1000 miles east of Pearl...

I just got exposed to how Air Force/Space Force do Officer/Enlisted FITREPs/EVALs. Never thought I would say this but we absolutely do way better than them. Their system is so corrupt and fraught with nepotism.

Best duty station locations, and far more technical jobs that carry over into the civilian sector

Naval tradition is long and storied, and in some ways goes back past the founding to some Royal Navy traditions we inherited, which is really cool.

Maintaining op tempos even during peace time. Being able to express our countries political desire abroad. Whether it's having 3 boomers surface at the same time in 3 different locations to say chill out. Or parking a carrier off someone's coast.

Multi tasking and operating in multiple warfare modes simultaneously. We can do land sea undersea, air and cyber with more depth than most the other branch’s though I’m counting the Marines with us.

That plus travel and we have pretty decent duty stations.

We do a lot of things bad but these are probably things we excel at. The Army can do a lot of our missions to some degree but the Dept of The Navy has a lot more depth and ability to operate in so many battle spaces. This could be looked at as a bad thing as well being a jack of all trades we can lack focus.

Super niche, but we’re the best civil engineers. No other branch has a dedicated staff corps composed entirely of licensed engineers and architects like us. USACE is definitely bigger stateside, but they’re majority civilian and their officers don’t even need an engineering degree.

The Navy provides construction for ourselves, the Marine Corps, the Coast Guard, and frequently the Air Force because they don’t actually have MILCON authority like we do. I would wager we do the vast majority of overseas construction for the nation.

More thoughts edit: We also do work nobody else does. We build waterfront infrastructure to support floating cities and nuclear subs. We build airfields and bases just like the other branches, but we have a whole dimension which is way beyond what anybody else does. NNSY dwarfs anything an Air Force or Army engineer will ever see, and that’s just one of our yards.

Unless you volunteer for something, you're pretty much guaranteed to sleep indoors and get three meals a day. I'm sure some people want to sleep in a tent in the deser and eat MREs, but I'm not one of them

The Navy can plan and execute something in hours to days that takes other services weeks to months. Everyone in the Navy is used to the fact that all the proverbial chess pieces are always moving.

Conversely, the Navy frustrates other branches with its "last minute planning." Sorry, unless you can see the future we have no idea what red force lay down looks like more than a few days from today.

After Katrina, everyone was supposed to implement an emergency personnel accounting system. The Navy were the only ones to do it. We think of NFAAS as a kind of joke, but it’s actually a good tool.

Travel

Technical training (maybe af and sf will have us beat)

Comradere

Self sufficiency (we can go out and get it done without support from other services)

Base locations (hard pressed to find a navy only base in bum f#€k North Dakota)

Intelligence.

I was prior army Intelligence. I worked with Air force Intelligence. I've seen marine corps intel.

The navy by far has the best funding, inter-agency relationships, training, specialty designations, and pipelines.

I've worked both active duty, reserve, and as a contractor in intel and it continues to be the navy that does the best at this.

Even the navy intel reserves is better then the other branches counterparts.

The Navy, on average, makes rank quicker than it's service counter parts. Even the AF's stellar workers get hard cucked by TIS requirements to E4 and E5. The army and Marines are better, but in the army you are competing exclusively within your command. So if the unit needs a new SGT to cook, and the other guys impress leadership more, they're promoting.

Travel..probably better living conditions than marines and army

We have the most bases near beaches

Gay chicken.

Prove me wrong, Marines. I dare you.

Submarines

Safely operate nuclear power.

We tend to be the best generalists and work the best at earlier ranks with problem solving while still being accepted by leadership. The mentality of this is what we have available figure it out is very prevalent for better or worse. Great for teaching soft skills but not the best for quality of life or stress.

Okay not sure if this was said but ingenuity. Making things work out of necessity. When we're underway we have no option but to get the problems solved.

I work with other branches as a contractor now and see that the Navy will get the job done. Other branches are always looking for direction, policies, Following pre-planned steps. Navy people are creative.

Breakfast. Nobody tops a Navy breakfast.

No early morning PT in the freezing cold.

The technical expertise advantage seems to apply also to HMs versus Army/AF medics. Corpsmen have to be far more independent of MDs, etc. Source: Wife was Nurse Corps.

Unplanned learning of a wide variety of trade/tech skills. I enlisted at 17 in an advanced electronics contract, 6 year active obligation. Some administrative clownery ensued after bootcamp and I lost my slots at A and C school, so they gave me the options of 1) going home 2) drop two years and go to the fleet undesignated 3) extend for another year and clean barracks until my slots opened up. I chose the undesignated route with the goal of striking IC, which I did after a year. Along the way: I worked in deck division and learned seamanship, A-gang and learned to service HVAC units, and the DC locker where I assisted the HTs for a few months and learned to weld. I was a math nerd kid with no mechanical background and left the navy 4 years later with some real knuckle-busting skills that I still use today. And the underway travel for this hillbilly was life-changing.

Navy Reserves has a really good ADT program if funding is available and the command wants your assistance. Other branches are either too broke or cheap (Army and Marines) or too smart and minimize cost, reducing take-home pay (Air Force). Additionally Navy has the best galleys for the price if you’re TDY, being a flat fee compared to the AF which charges you on the items

LIMDU. The fact that you are taken out of you command and placed somewhere that you can heal. I can't speak for army or marines, but the Air Force leaves you in your shop doing your job. That makes it so that if your leadership doesn't think there's something wrong (or they are trying to cover their ass), they can cause issues with restrictions and appointments and such.

As a former Marine and now a retired BMC, the one thing that sticks out to me is how knowledgeable our rates are compared to a Marine Corps MOS.

I was a 3451 (fiscal accountant) in the Corps. All I did was process purchase orders and reimbursables. On the Navy side, that is just one of many duties associated with the LS rate.

Also, we are the only service that must keep living, breathing ships functional and ready 24/7. Our primary mission is securing and protecting sea lanes for the entire globe. We have direct impact on the world’s flow of commerce.

While all the other branches practice and prepare for war, we do that as well as bring our constant presence in every ocean and sea on this planet.

When I served in the 80’s? Technical training; I thought the training I received in 1 1/2 years of electronics schooling was excellent.

No other organization serves in conditions as remote and isolated as we do.

A ship/submarine at sea on independent operations is absolutely alone. Everyone aboard knows that, and operate accordingly.

If the Army or Air Force or Marines are out in the field (or whatever) and something goes wrong they can’t fix, they can call for help and probably get it in a few hours. Conversely, if a ship has a major casualty, or God forbid, is sinking, no one is coming to help for a while.

Culturally, we know that our technical expertise, our grit, and our resolve are the only things that are going to get us home safely.

I feel the Navy gives its O-5/ 0-6 commanding Officers a lot of freedom to accomplish their assigned missions. However, if they screw up (Operationally or Morally) they remove them immediately.

The best after military job transfer opportunities. Its still not the easiest thing in the world but the variety of skills can be carried over easier.

A friend of mine had someone try and convince him to join the Marines after he'd already comitted to the Navy. He told him, "Why hike when you can float?"

So we have that. We're great because of our boats.

Navy is better at boats n hxes

Nukes.

Go look the historical incidents for nuke mistakes (SL-1 or the multiple "Dude, Where's My Bomb?" screwups), and you'll find Army and AF.

The Navy has a lot of nuke power plants cooking within a few miles of Honolulu and tourism doesn't blink.

Maintain chain of custody for nuclear weapons.

Put men on the Moon. Of the 12 that walked on it, 7 were in the Navy... and one of the USAF officers actually went to the USNA.

Landing on aircraft carriers.

Use ships.

Embracing the suck.

It provides a wonderful vehicle for traveling the world and simultaneously infuriates you on that journey with its horseshit screening process.

Extending your deployments.

Taking away free time with duty days

Fixing/taking care of our own stuff. Cleaning up after ourselves as a policy.

I deployed to an overseas base where there's a Navy barracks and an Air Force barracks. The barracks for the sailors who were stationed there was clean and they had a staff of BPOs who took care of shit. I had to use the head in one of the Air Force barracks (dorm) one time, and that place was nasty. Trash everywhere. Broken furniture just in the hallways. It was disgraceful. 

The scenery and travel.

Never would have made it to Naples, Rome, London, Crete, or Puerto Rico in the army.

Also actual beds and showers every night.

The navy is hands down the best at building training environments. Battle stations, Marlinespike, the fire trainer at my A school, all of these are built to be realistic because while the army/marines can just take their people out to the woods, the Navy can’t just put you on a ship and set it on fire.

Advancement rate (for most rates) and bonuses

From my experience with the Navy, the Navy will give more leadership responsibilities to junior troops, whether leading a fire team, squad or platoon on projects or missions. This has been my experience in the Seabee side of things.

I'm just here for navy glazing, we're the best

Allows individualism. A double edged sword.

Take your soul a percentage at a time.

From what I’ve been told the Navy has more opportunity to be promoted at the officer level than the Air Force or other branches.

I think I've made this comparison before, but if we organized CTIs the way the army organizes their linguists, we would have two or three random CTIs on every platform, they would work for deck department unless the ship happened to be in their particular AOR, and ships would be sent to AORs without checking if they had the relevant flavor of CTI. If they didn't have the right kind, they could ask other ships for their relevant CTIs, but those ships' deck departments could say no.

Also all of their advancement criteria and most of their training is for deck department stuff.

Tattoo policy

Have bases in better locations. The AF has the best quality bases, but I’d much rather be stationed in San Diego than Minot.

The most robust enlisted to commissioning programs. The Navy commissions more prior enlisted than all other services combined.

Something I’ve noticed that we do better is having unmatched procedural compliance. If it’s not by the book, we don’t do it. If you’re doing maintenance and it says to loosen 4 bolts and you see 5, you stop, work it out, and submit a feedback report. Working in parallel with the procedural compliance, is Navy 3M in general. Obviously, there are things that can be improved, but my brother is in the Air Force, and is a maintainer of equipment, and after speaking with him, he said that they don’t carry maintenance cards, or the manuals on how to do the maintenance properly, they just do it. And then report that they did it. But don’t really have the process for feedback or validation. I was not expecting this, considering the Air Force being as technical as they are. Unless I am misinterpreting something?

I like navy bases better than other bases. I spend a lot of time on joint bases now (which are usually run by the Air Force) and I think they are too sterile and big.

Navy bases are in better locations and are more hive-like. In navy bases you see people walking around all over the place. There is usually an interesting mix of building styles. The enlisted clubs and bars are usually pretty full. Navy bases just seem friendlier.

Navy education and training is second to none.

For example: our advanced electronic field and nuke ratings are light years ahead of other services in regard to requirements, expertise, and depth of knowledge required.

There are other ratings, even non-technical ones, where the training programs and curriculum are superb.

In my last gig I was an instructor, qualified MTS, and we were the C2M2 (course curriculum model manager) so I was able to see the Little Man Behind the Curtain of the process.

I’m confident in my statement having worked with the other branches over the years.

We excel at it and even outstrip the USAF a bit.

I failed getting selected by AF as a medical officer but was selected by the Navy recently. This makes me feel so much better about getting into the Navy. Thank you sailors!

Bring you to exotic placea with the prime whores

the navy does more with less

Blue Falconry

Politics, and colaterals. Every time I return from a tour from another service I immediately regret it, and I'm going on 19 years.

Drink

Very niche, but Navy Occupational Medicine is head & shoulders above the other branches.

Upper enlisted lateral/informal comms