Military Job Eligibility by Branch: How MOS, Ratings, and AFSCs Are Gated

The three gates, identical across every branch

No matter which service you are looking at, eligibility for a specific job comes down to three checks. First, the ASVAB composite gate: the job lists one or more composite scores and a minimum for each, and you have to meet every one of them. Second, the physical gate: the military summarizes your body in a six-part PULHES profile (Physical capacity, Upper extremities, Lower extremities, Hearing, Eyes, pSychiatric), each rated 1 to 4, and a job that demands a 1 in a category will turn away an applicant who only rates a 2 or 3 there. Third, the clearance gate: intelligence, cyber, and signals roles require eligibility for a secret or top-secret clearance, which depends on your background, not your test scores.

premil checks the composite gate the same way a classifier does. When it compares your line scores against a job, it reports any composite where you fall short and tells you exactly how many points you are missing on that composite — not just "ineligible." If a job needs a Skilled Technical score of 101 and you have 95, premil tells you the shortfall is six points on ST specifically, which points your study at the right subtests. That per-composite, per-point detail is the same logic an Army classifier uses, just shown to you before you ever sit with a recruiter.

Army (MOS) — the data-rich branch

The Army is where premil carries the most complete, requirement-level data: 141 catalog entries spanning more than twenty career management fields, and nearly all of them list the specific composite minimums that gate them. Army jobs are organized by career field — Infantry, Signal, Medical, Military Intelligence, Ordnance, Aviation, and so on — and the gating composite usually tracks the nature of the work. Combat roles lean on the Combat composite; technical roles lean on Electronics or Skilled Technical.

Concrete examples from the real catalog make this vivid. The 11X Infantry enlistment option requires a Combat (CO) composite of 77 and a clean PULHES profile of 111111 — the work is physical and direct, so the gate is a combat composite plus top physical ratings. Signal and electronics roles tell a different story: 25S, the Satellite Communications Systems Operator, requires an Electronics (EL) composite of 107, while 25H, the Network Communications Systems Specialist, requires EL 100 and a Skilled Technical (ST) score of 102. Skilled-technical jobs cluster around the ST composite: 35F Intelligence Analyst and 68C Practical Nursing Specialist both require ST 101 — and the intelligence role additionally requires clearance eligibility, with a PULHES like 222111 reflecting the desk-and-analysis nature of the work.

The pattern to take away is that the Army composite tells you which family of jobs is in reach. A strong Combat score opens infantry, armor, and field-artillery doors. A strong Electronics or Skilled Technical score opens signal, intelligence, and medical-technician doors. If a single composite a job needs falls short, that one number blocks the job even when your AFQT is excellent — which is exactly why premil reports the gap composite-by-composite.

• 11X Infantry — Combat (CO) 77; PULHES 111111; civilian parallel: security / law enforcement.
• 25S Satellite Communications Systems Operator — Electronics (EL) 107; IT / network civilian parallel.
• 25H Network Communications Systems Specialist — EL 100 and Skilled Technical (ST) 102.
• 35F Intelligence Analyst — Skilled Technical (ST) 101; clearance-gated; PULHES 222111.
• 68C Practical Nursing Specialist — Skilled Technical (ST) 101; civilian parallel: Licensed Practical Nurse.

Coast Guard (ratings) — rich job structure, verify cut scores

The Coast Guard organizes its enlisted workforce into ratings rather than MOS codes, and premil carries the full set of twenty ratings with their career fields, duty descriptions, civilian equivalents, and physical profiles. What the catalog deliberately does not assert is a composite cut score for each rating, because Coast Guard qualification combines ASVAB results with rating-specific standards and current openings that shift over time — so this guide describes the rating structure rather than publishing a number premil would not stand behind.

The ratings map cleanly onto maritime mission areas. Deck and boat operations is the Boatswain's Mate (BM); law enforcement and security is the Maritime Enforcement Specialist (ME); electronics and communications is the Electronics Technician (ET); engineering and maintenance includes the Machinery Technician (MK) and the Damage Controlman (DC); and information technology is the Information Systems Technician (IT). Each rating has a clear civilian translation — the Boatswain's Mate parallels a maritime vessel operator, the Electronics Technician parallels an avionics or electronics technician — which is one of the most useful things to weigh when you choose. To see the exact ASVAB and physical standards a Coast Guard rating asks for, check the Coast Guard's official source and premil's branch page; treat any specific number you read elsewhere as subject to change and confirm it with a recruiter.

Space Force (SFSC) — the newest service, structured data

The Space Force uses Space Force Specialty Codes (SFSCs), which it inherited from the Air Force AFSC numbering scheme — so a code like 1C6X1 or 3D0X2 reads the same way an Air Force specialty code does. premil carries thirty SFSCs across career fields including Space Operations, Cyberspace Operations, Intelligence, Space Systems Maintenance, Civil Engineering, and Force Support. As with the Coast Guard, the catalog records each role's career field, duty description, and physical profile but not a per-code composite cut score, because Space Force classification leans heavily on clearance eligibility and technical aptitude that vary by specialty and over time.

A few real codes show the shape of the force. 1C6X1 Space Systems Operations and 5C0X1 Command and Control Battle Management Operations sit in Space Operations. 3D0X2 Cyber Systems Operations and 3D1X2 Cyber Transport Systems sit in Cyberspace Operations. 1N0X1 All Source Intelligence Analyst and 1N2X1 Signals Intelligence Analyst sit in Intelligence. Almost every one of these carries a clearance requirement and a PULHES profile around 222111 or 222222 — these are technical, screen-and-system roles, not high-impact physical ones, so the medical gate emphasizes vision, hearing, and psychiatric factors over raw physical capacity. For the exact aptitude bars on a given SFSC, go to the official Space Force source and premil's branch page rather than treating any single published figure as fixed.

Navy, Air Force, and Marines — explained structurally

For the Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps, premil today carries only a single sample entry each, so this guide explains how those branches gate jobs without pretending to a per-job requirement table that does not exist in the dataset. Honesty here matters more than padding: inventing cut scores for hundreds of roles would be exactly the kind of unreliable content this library is built to avoid.

The Navy gates ratings on its own composite formulas, which are built by adding specific ASVAB subtests together rather than reusing the Army composite names. The single Navy sample in the catalog — the Gunner's Mate rating — illustrates this: its requirement is expressed as raw subtest sums (a GS+AR+MK+EI total and a VE+AR+MK+MC total), not as a named "Electronics" or "Skilled Technical" composite. The Air Force uses MAGE composites — Mechanical, Administrative, General, and Electronics — and an AFSC lists minimums in those buckets; the catalog's Air Force sample, an Airborne Cryptologic Language Analyst, gates on a General and an Administrative score. The Marine Corps borrows the Army-style composite names such as GT and CL, as its single sample, the 0311 Rifleman, shows. The takeaway is structural: each service has a coherent system, but premil's deepest, job-by-job data right now is for the Army, Coast Guard, and Space Force, so for the other three you should rely on the official branch classification source and use premil to understand the mechanics rather than to read off a specific Navy or Air Force cut score.

Comparing jobs across branches

Because the same career often exists under different names in several branches, the most useful move is to compare across services rather than fixate on one. A cyber or IT path exists as the Army's 25-series Signal MOS, the Coast Guard's Information Systems Technician rating, and the Space Force's 3D0X2 Cyber Systems Operations SFSC. An intelligence path exists as the Army's 35-series, the Coast Guard's Operations Specialist, and the Space Force's 1N-series analyst codes. Each version gates differently, but the work and the civilian transferability rhyme across branches.

premil's MOS Explorer is built for exactly this comparison: it lets you browse all six branches side by side, filter by career field, and — for the Army, where the cut-score data is complete — see a gap analysis between your line scores and a job's composite minimums. Start there, narrow to the branches and fields that fit your interests and your scores, and then take any specific aptitude number you find for the Navy, Air Force, or Marines back to a recruiter to confirm, because those minimums move with the needs of the service.