GI Bill® – Top 5 Things to Know

The GI Bill® is doing a great deal to help military professionals join civilian life, transitioning their experience into skills that can help them in today’s job market.

Pacific West Academy has several GI Bill® approved programs to make the best use of the skills you already have, including courses like the Certified Executive Security Specialist Program and the Certified Protection Specialist Program. If you want to use your GI Bill® benefits to their fullest potential, here are a few facts you need to know.

FACT #1. SOME PEOPLE HAVE 10-15 YEARS TO USE THEIR GI BILL® BENEFITS, OTHERS HAVE NO TIME LIMIT

You might have a time limit or none at all to use your GI Bill®. It all depends on when you got out of the military as well as which GI Bill® you’re using.

If you have left the military before January 1st, 2013, you have between 10 to fifteen years to use your benefits. You have 10 years to use all the benefits under the Montgomery GI Bill® and 15 years to use benefits provided by the Post-9/11 GI Bill®. As soon as you leave the service, the deadline starts counting down. However, joining active-duty service once again for longer than 90 days resets the clock.

If you left the military after January 1st, 2013, or you join active-duty service again for longer than 90 days, you have no limit on using your GI Bill®. There’s no deadline to be worried about.

FACT #2. THE GI BILL® ISN’T TRADITIONAL FEDERAL FINANCIAL AID

Your GI Bill® benefits are considered separate from traditional sources of financial aid. This raises a few factors to consider when dealing with college and university financial aid departments. Because the benefits from the GI Bill® are paid directly to you instead of the school. The GI Bill® benefit payments aren’t taxable, but they can reduce how much student financial aid you are eligible for as a result.

If joining a school, you will most likely have to sign a promissory note or apply for student loans to pay for tuition. The GI Bill® can help you pay these loans, but you are also able to apply for scholarships and Pell Grants.

FACT #3. YOU DON’T HAVE TO STAY ENROLLED IN SCHOOL TO USE THE FULL BENEFITS

The GI Bill® benefits can be stopped and started as you want to. So long as you consider the deadlines mentioned in fact #1, you can use it in any period of time. You can take time off for a course, then re-apply for your benefits later when you get back into education. If used correctly, the GI Bill® benefits can be used for associate’s, bachelor’s, and master’s degree programs. Besides using the GI Bill® to complete one of Pacific West Academy’s programs to attend classes like Medical Training or Tactical Emergency Casualty Care, you could use it to broaden and deepen your education even further beyond. Even with our courses, you can go on to use your benefits to complete a professional resume complete with the training and certification you need to start a high-end military career.

FACT #4. THERE ARE A FEW WAYS TO MEASURE A “MONTH” OF BENEFITS

Both types of the GI Bill® offer 36 months of benefits towards your education. However, there is some confusion in what, exactly, this means. Common misconceptions include the idea that you have 36 months to use it (more on that in Fact #1) or that you have to use it all in 36 months when you start using it (see Fact #3 to clear that up.)

The way the months of your benefits are used change depending on whether you’re on active duty or whether you are a veteran. For instance, if you’re using the Post-9/11 GI Bill® and you go to full-time classes for 30 days or a full month, you use a month of benefits. For instance, even though February has less than 30 days in it, it still counts as a full calendar month. Whereas, 15 days of any month always counts as a half a month. A 33-day course like our CESS program would take only a little more than a month’s worth of benefits, allowing you plenty of GI Bill® left over to further pursue education and job placement training.

The Montgomery GI Bill’s® definition of months when you are a veteran is slightly different. One month of benefits is used for every month of full-time training or education. If you are on active duty instead, a full-time month’s worth of education or job placement training counts as a month regardless of what tuition costs are. There are slightly different rules for using the GI Bill® for training that isn’t in college or vocational, so you need to do some research on those.

Either way, if you use 3 months of your 36 months’ worth of benefits for education, take a break for 3 months, then use it for another 3 months of education, you have used 6 months’ worth of benefits and have 30 months’ worth left. Those 3 months you took a break aren’t used if you stop the benefits.

FACT #5. HOW MUCH YOU GET IN BENEFITS FROM THE GI BILL® PAYS DEPENDS ON A FEW FACTORS

The pay received from both GI Bills® depends on a few different factors. For the Post-9/11 GI Bill®, the primary focus is how many months you served on active duty and how much credit you are pursuing. For a public-school program, it could pay the entire tuition to the school as well as a housing allowance, which is provided monthly and up to $1000 for supplies like books, which is awarded annually. How much you get for housing allowance is a percentage of the full costs based on months in active duty and credit load. Meanwhile, the primary factor considered when applying for pay on the Montgomery GI Bill® is your credit load. You can receive up to $1,928 a month for full-time training and education, while you will get half the amount if you’re pursuing half-time education or training.

YOUR GI BILL® BENEFITS COULD HELP YOU PURSUE A CAREER IN HIGH-END SECURITY AND EXECUTIVE PROTECTION WITH PACIFIC WEST ACADEMY

Pacific West Academy’s primary objective is to help veterans of our US Military transition from military service to a career that makes the best use of the skills they have already developed as well as new skills like attending interviews. Our GI Bill® approved programs offer classroom and physical training and education to guide our students to successful careers in high-end security services. If you want to know more about how you can use your GI Bill® to pursue a real career, get in touch about our CPS and CESS programs.

At Pacific West Academy, our executive protection training program approaches CQB not as a set of pre-rehearsed actions, but as a cognitive skill set. It’s a thinking game, and the ultimate goal is not just to win a gunfight, but to dominate the battlespace through superior information processing. This article breaks down our unique philosophy, moving beyond the myths to show you what truly effective CQB looks like in a professional bodyguard training context.

The Foundation: Separating Marksmanship from Tactics

Before we can even discuss tactics, we must address the fundamental skill of shooting. CQB is a theory and a tactic, but shooting is simply shooting. We believe these two skills must be trained separately before they can be effectively integrated.

Why this separation? An elite competition shooter with no tactical experience can learn CQB relatively quickly because their weapon handling and accuracy are already second nature. Conversely, an operator who knows all the tactics but struggles with marksmanship will find it much harder to get up to speed, but will have better tools to handle any emergency. Our executive protection school builds its curriculum on this principle: master the firearm first, so you can dedicate your mental bandwidth to tactics when it matters most.

The Core Concept: CQB as Information Dominance

The central pillar of our CQB philosophy is this: Controlling the amount of information you gain, maintain, or lose within an enclosed space. Forget complex choreography; success in CQB is about managing what your senses are processing. “Information” is anything and everything you can perceive in the environment.

What constitutes information in a tactical environment?

• What you see: Threats, exits, light, darkness, obstacles, shell casings, blood, and shadows.
• What you feel: The temperature of a room, something underfoot like blood, or the distinct tactile feedback of your slide locking to the rear—a stimulus that tells you to reload.
• What you hear: Talking, walking, screaming, or bangs.

Your goal is to intake all this data and make an educated decision based on it. To manage this flow, we teach three primary solutions:

1. To Gain Information: You must start “pying” or methodically clearing angles.
2. To Maintain Information: If you see a certain amount of a room and don’t want to gain or lose anything, you either hold your position or move in a straight line to adjust your distance without changing your angle.
3. To Lose Information: This is a deliberate trade-off. You only give up information on one area to gain more valuable information on another. An example is clearing a center-fed room; you must lose sight of one side to fully clear the other.

The Geometry of Survival: Correcting a Fatal CQB Flaw

One of the most common and dangerous mistakes we see is using the center of a doorway as a pivot point. When an operator does this, their line of sight arcs through the room, but their body becomes exposed to un-cleared areas long before they can see them. We’ve seen this lead to operators being late to the gunfight—turning to engage a threat they’ve been exposed to for critical seconds.

This method is a no-go in our training.

The solution is to change your axis of rotation. Instead of pivoting on the threshold, you use the nearest wall of the entryway as your axis. By “pying” off this near wall, you remain concealed from every part of the room you haven’t yet cleared. You slice the room into small, manageable pieces, processing information all the way until you reach the point of entry. This isn’t some esoteric tactic; it’s the fundamental principle of shooting from a barricade.

Context is Key: Adapting CQB for Close Protection Training

Military CQB tactics are often designed for a team. The goal of “flowing” into a room is to get as many guns in the fight as possible, with each operator responsible for only a small 15% slice of the room. This method is built for speed and overwhelming force, but it comes at a cost. The first person through the door faces a notoriously high mortality rate—as high as 87%, according to instructor cadres.

In executive protection, you are often the only one. There are no six dudes behind you to take up the slack. Rushing to your death isn’t an option.

Furthermore, your objective is different. In the military, the mission was to take over the building, clearing every single room. In EP, if you have your client, your primary duty may be to barricade yourselves and wait for law enforcement. If an active shooter is present, your goal might be to simply draw their attention to yourself to keep them from shooting anyone else, a psychological tactic to protect others. The context of your close protection certification dictates a more deliberate and thoughtful approach.

Pace and Precision: The Hasty vs. Deliberate Method

Because context is everything, operators must be able to control their tempo. We teach two modes: hasty and deliberate.

• Deliberate: This is a slower, safer method that allows you to take the time to process small bits of information. The closer you get to a known threat or “indication,” the more deliberate you become.
• Hasty: A faster technique, you gain information quickly, but take on more risk. This is used when dealing with “maybes” on the way to a known threat. If you hear shooting down a long hallway, you’re not going to deliberately pie every open door along the way; you’re going to move hastily toward the indication to engage.

The Gateway to Danger: A Smarter Approach to Doors

Doors are one of the most dangerous thresholds. Our bodyguard school teaches a specific, methodical process for handling them.

1. Classification: First, understand what you’re dealing with. We simplify it to four types: push, pull, lift, and slide. For most structures, you’ll face push or pull doors. You can tell the difference by looking for the hinges; if you can’t see them, it’s a push door.
2. Easy Side vs. Hard Side: The “easy side” is the side with the doorknob; the “hard side” is the hinge side. You always want to work from the easy side if possible. Opening a door from the hard side exposes you in the fatal funnel of the doorway for a dangerously long time.
3. Let the Room Breathe: Before you commit to opening a door, check if it’s unlocked. A quiet turn of the handle tells you if the door is free-floating. After confirming it’s unlocked, back off the door. This prevents you from being right in front of it if someone decides to shoot through it. This small step avoids the loud mistake of trying to kick or ram a door that was simply locked with a deadbolt.
4. Weapon Position: When manipulating a doorknob, your weapon should be positioned to deliver effective shots to a high-thoracic region on an average-sized male. It should be in a structured, single-handed position that allows for immediate, accurate fire if necessary.

Conclusion: Earn Your Bodyguard Certification with Real-World Skills

Effective CQB isn’t about looking cool or replicating military tactics without understanding their context. It’s about managing information, controlling your exposure, and making smart decisions under pressure. It’s a skill set that must be adapted for the unique challenges of the executive protection field, where you are often a solo operator whose primary duty is defense and client safety.

Ready to move beyond the Hollywood version of close protection? Explore our executive protection training courses and earn your certification with instructors who prioritize what actually works.