I'm afraid we are going to agree to disagree here.
Agree, certainly, with the first part. An interview is an interview…be prepared.
Disagree whole-heartedly with the second part. WTF? Who TF knows what kind of job one might have, or where one might be deployed? Is this a modern luxury?
Knowing that as say, a SWO, you may be a DIVO on a ship that deploys in the Pacific on the west coast or the Atlantic on the east coast is a modern luxury? From there, you can take a wild guess and know where you will deploy. I understand that Aviation is more dynamic than that, but elsewhere the path is fairly even across the board. And yeah, I would want a nuke hopeful to know what being a nuke will entail early on before they commit to that with my recommendation.
Asking someone where they will go if they commissioned tomorrow is a fair assumption of knowledge, especially if they have a personal preference. If they have a wife or kid, they
owe it to them to know alot more about what they are getting them into. No, no one is going to have the foresight to have the billet list in their hand at interview phase, but if I find that they are too surprised and haven't researched, I'm going to tell them to come back another day and try again.
Fuck current events…know how to make every switch position and every sensor/weapon in or on your platform cockpit or bridge/weapons suite "work as advertised" and you'll do fine. F-it…leave the "where and why" to those who get paid bigger bucks. Show up ready to contribute.
This is the shit we do in peacetime screening interviews, I guess. None of which matters, of course, except that the interviewers can puff a cigar at the end go the day over a single malt and say "Well, damn my eyes, we picked the best of the best!" Which they probably didn't...
And as far as current events, I find it immature that an adult would "dream" of entering the armed forces as an Officer and not know what is going on. We have been in conflict for over a decade. They owe it to the men they may lead to "look into it" a little. A novice understanding of what they saw on CNN last week is enough, but zero clue is a red flag for a civilian. As far as a prior goes, if I see a warfare pin they best have a softball understanding of what their platform does in the world today if they tell me they want to return to it as an Officer.