zippy said:
Tough to learn about a community and their mission when the people in it don't like to tell you much (I understand why)... but in person seems to work a lot better.
Last time I asked an EP-3 Whidbey guy on this board questions to try to help my VP/VQ selection decision they wigged out somewhat and told to me contact their squadron PAO.
Luckily I ran into an EP-3 IP from my primary squadron who was willing to take the time and answer my questions when he realized I was interested in the community.
I posted the below description on another thread asking details about the EP-3 community. Brett is right by saying that you can talk a lot of general stuff abou the mission without getting into the classified arena. Some decent descriptions of what the EP-3 does mission wise can be found at these links:
Janes:
http://www.janes.com/aerospace/military/news/jema/jema010402_1_n.shtml
GlobalSecurtiy.org:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/systems/ep-3-desc.htm
Federation of American Scientists:
http://www.fas.org/irp/program/collect/ep-3_aries.htm
Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EP-3
For what it is worth I loved the community but take Zab's advice and talk to as many people from the different communitites as possible. There are some in TRACOM from both of my communities that I would have second thoughts about them passing on good gouge, but there are plenty of good guys to balance them out. Here is the thread
http://www.airwarriors.com/forum/showthread.php?p=192896#post192896 and here is the description I gave about the EP-3 life:
Several years ago, before I saw the light and switched to Prowlers, I was an EP-3 NFO. I can tell you that I did not change because I hated flying the [well-hung] Sky Pig, I loved the community. I just wanted something a little faster and cooler.....then I woke up and flew Prowlers
First off, as others have pointed out, there are only two squadrons that fly the EP-3, VQ-1 and VQ-2. VQ-2 just moved from Rota to Whidbey last year so you only have one place to go to fly EP-3's.
What an NFO does on the EP-3 is the same he does on any Navy plane, he helps run the mission, after about a year in NAVCOM purgatory. There are actually three NFO's on the EP-3, the NAV, the EVAL (Evaluator) and the SEVAL (Senior Evaluator). If the titles seem a little innocuous to you, they are suppose to be. While it is the same airframe the mission of the EP-3 is completely different than the P-3. The mission on the on the EP-3 is pretty close to what Zab said,
signal collection and analysis. And that is about all that I will say about the mission, I would be getting into details that don't need to be aired on the internet if I went further.
The NAV does what you learned in flight school, you navigate the plane as well as be the butt boy of vast majority of the jokes among the crew. And jsust like a P-3 NAV, you get to lug around metal boxes full of pubs and special gear. If you survive that you will move EVAL, where you will manage one of the two mission areas in the back of the plane. You sit sideways facing a computer screen and try and learn as much as possible from the SEVAL who sits right next to you and is sleeping half the time (those seats recline pretty far ). You study like mad to learn as much as possible on the mission stuff and prep for your qualification board, which your generally do around the two year mark. If you pass, you will then get to be the SEVAL and run the whole mission in the back.
I make fun of it a little but I really enjoyed the mission, when it was interesting. You had a big picture view of what was going on around you, a lot like the E-2 but as a mostly passive player. And you were one of the few guys in town who could provide an invaluable service. For guys going to Iraq, the EP-3 and the Air Force equivalent were go/no-go birds that were requred for guys to be in the box. It is also a very intelligence oriented mission, so you got to get in the know about a lot of that stuff while still being an 'operational' type.
There were a couple of other key differences other than the mission between P-3's and EP-3's.
-Deployment schedule- You went on the road for 2 months at a time, and generally stayed home for 3 or 4 months before going out again. You went on the road as an individual crew, not with the squadron. About half the squadron was away from home at any given time so the squadron was never together in one place, which sucked a little bit. I did not even meet my mentor in the squadron until I had been in for 8 months, we were on opposite det cycles for a while. Expect to deploy 6 to 8 times (12-18 motnhs out of your tour, add 2-4 months for misc. TAD's and training). I deployed only 6 times because I left early due to my transition. You will deploy to the bigger det sites where P-3's go (Japan and the Middle East) though usually not the more exotic ones (India, Hong Kong etc.) because of the nature of our mission. There are a few times guys get to go to somewhere exotic, though that is relatively rare. There is a certain Carribean island that P-3's are not at but there is a usually an EP-3 there though.......
-Crew composition- The crew is twice as large as a P-3 crew, 24 guys, and is made up of several different specialties. There are 7 officers on board; 3 pilots, 3 NFO's and 1 other and there are a myriad of enlisted types. It was a challenge and a reward to lead the crew and get the job done. There were some....ummmmm....interesting personalities that you had to deal with for one of the mission areas (Zab should know who I am talking about ) and you had to learn to deal with them to accomplish your mission. That being said, some of them were scary smart. I learned more about a certain country's air force from an E-5 than I did reading all my study material.
Oh, yeah, the VP types might hate this but almost every deployed crew was all JO's. Out of my 6 crews I had only one that was had an O-4 and he was on a super JO tour and was not a DH. All of our DH's did half a det to get qualified and then did their DH time at home. It was heaven for a JO. I would say 90% of the MC's that took a crew on the road for a whole det were JO's, including me. It is quite the ego booster when you a 3-month LT who is the Mission Commander for the only EP-3 in theater, and you are covering combat missions. That is one of the things that makes Naval Aviation.
The flight hours are really good too. I walked out of the squadron with 1500 hours and that was considered pretty short for a JO NFO (I left 6 months early), most guys got around 2000. Pilots, generally got around 1600-2000 hours. And with the amount of flying they have done in OIF and OEF, those numbers have gone up a bit. A lot better than a VP-1 pilot in my office who walked out with 950, and he was a little high compared to his buddies.
A littel note for the future. While the ACS (the replacment for the EP-3) has been cancelled, the Navy has taken some of the ACS money and ensuring the EP-3 fleet is viable until 2017. Believe me, I got this straight from the Program Office (random tasker from an RADM). So for those of you worried about community survival, VQ will be around for a bit.
I hope I have answered your questions, and then some . Bottom line, I don't think you can go wrong with EP-3's, especially if you are intereseted in intelligence at all. The community is small but pretty tight knit and a decent one to be in. The flying is a little boring, you burn whole in the sky at FL 250, but the mission can be really exciting in between all the boredom .
Please let me know if you have any more questions.
But I digress......I thought he would go into politics, he always seemed like the type.