Long before his first day at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA), Dylan Moore had his sights set high – somewhere around 30,000 feet to be exact.
“I always wanted to be a pilot. I wanted a career that would allow me to see the world, take on new challenges, and experience the variety and complexity of flying that the Air Force offered.”
The Academy seemed like the best place to turn that ambition into something real. So in 2013, Moore arrived at USAFA ready to work towards a degree, a commission, and ultimately, a seat in the cockpit.
However, he didn’t exactly know what that would look like. “I went in with very few expectations,” he recalls. “I knew it was going to be challenging, and I had done my research.”
Like many incoming cadets, he’d collected as much advice as he could before that first day. But there’s a big difference between hearing about life at USAFA, and actually living it. As he puts it, “I don’t think you can ever completely brace yourself for the actual experience. There are so many new things to learn and react to… Going in (somewhat) prepared without having a rigid expectation of what it would be like helped me stay fluid, take things as they came, and roll with the punches (and the pushups).”
Amid the prep work and the pushups, he found his people. The connections Moore formed during Basic Cadet Training (BCT) would become a central and enduring part of his Academy experience. As he states, they’re still his best friends to this day. “Those relationships motivated me to graduate and continue to motivate me in the (nearly) decade since graduation.”
These aren’t your run-of-the-mill college buddies who send Christmas cards and check in on social media. They’ve continued to grow their friendship long after graduation day, celebrating careers, marriages, children, and moves, and even taking an annual trip together with their families.
This is something Moore has come to appreciate about the larger USAFA community, too.
“Being a USAFA alum creates instant connection as you grow through your Air Force career,” he says. “Every new environment I’ve found myself in, there’s an Academy grad I connect with, whether they’re five years younger or 10 years older.”
And there’s been plenty of new environments. Today, Moore is a KC-46 pilot stationed at McConnell Air Force Base in Kansas, living the aviation career he first envisioned all those years ago. He’s also now a husband and father, which has added an entirely different dimension to his career.
“Having children while also being TDY or deployed four to six-plus months out of the year is difficult,” Moore notes.
It’s a challenge that has reshaped his priorities and further emphasized the importance of having the right people in your corner. He credits the resilience of his wife, along with those same friendships that began at USAFA, with helping him navigate the long stretches away, saying “[It] has always helped me stay focused on prioritizing my family first.”
Nearly a decade after graduation, going back to the Academy for the WeVett tailgate brings back countless memories, but also comes with a lot of perspective. The tasks that once felt tedious look different after stepping into a career, navigating deployments, and leading teams. The hard work pays off.
That’s the message Moore says he would give new USAFA cadets.
“Keep working hard on the task at hand every day,” he says. “The menial tasks may seem unnecessary in the moment, but the problem solving and team leadership skills I developed at USAFA have been used on every project I’ve faced in my career.”
Sometimes, you don’t recognize the waypoint when you’re standing in it. It could look like another rule, another assignment, or yet another round of pushups. But years later, you look back and realize that those seemingly ordinary moments forged the skills you now rely on, the friendships you lean on, and the memories waiting for you when you find your way back to the Hill.
