Yep aviators definitely get IA's. Getting on a plane this weekend to head somewhere shitty for a year.
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Guns and your Individual Augmentee (IA) assignment
- Thread starter HeyJoe
- Start date
They pull you in the middle/end of your fleet tour, or did you get GSA'd?
Both. Was an IA but my command got it converted to a GSA so I could leave 5 months early and not come back.
phrogpilot73
Well-Known Member
I still think IAs are bullshit. Is the Army going to fill the Navy's manning shortfalls come the end of Iraq/Afghanistan? Nope.
I could agree with it early on, but now - it's just easier to tap the Navy than manage their own personnel...
I could agree with it early on, but now - it's just easier to tap the Navy than manage their own personnel...
Agreed, but mainly because we handle them poorly. The whole 1/1 FITREP and screwed up career wickets are two aspects that cry "mismanagement." Hell, I bet if they could guarantee that an IA would be career-enhancing, they'd have plenty of volunteers who would do them at reasonable times, rather than having to shotgun people halfway through a sea tour.
As it is now, it's a crappy career move to go do a crappy job in a crappy place. That's a lot of crap working against it. . .
I've heard of some pilots (maybe NFO's too) going as FAC's with combat operations troops. What are the chances/odds/requirements to get an IA like that. Seems like if you had to go over there, you might as well be involved with something you know about.
Worse than your chances of making it through flight school, getting your wings, selecting jets, and becoming a FAC...
IA's have nothing, repeat NOTHING to do with anything you're trained or experienced in. It's all about a warm body in the right paygrade +/-1.
Case in point - my IA was as ASO in Djibouti. Makes sense, right? Guy with wings=air safety. Except of course when I arrived and read the original billet request (which was on SIPR, for some reason). They wanted an O-4 pilot with ASO school and C-12 PIC time. So, 0 for 4 is close enough.
And my boss (Army LTC reservist, and very good dude) said he had no idea why they asked for an aviator - he just wanted an E-6 to help him do paperwork.
But wait, it gets better: The AF was taking over the staff air safety stuff, and there just wasn't enough to do, so with the boss' blessing, I tried to shut off my job. Told them, I'll rotate home on time but don't bother sending my relief. Turns out - there's no mechanism at all to do that. No one knew how to shut down a billet, and no one really cared. And from what I hear, there's a guy from VT-10 filling that job now, 2+ years later. G-d knows how many unneeded billets are still sucking in people in theater.
Case in point - my IA was as ASO in Djibouti. Makes sense, right? Guy with wings=air safety. Except of course when I arrived and read the original billet request (which was on SIPR, for some reason). They wanted an O-4 pilot with ASO school and C-12 PIC time. So, 0 for 4 is close enough.
And my boss (Army LTC reservist, and very good dude) said he had no idea why they asked for an aviator - he just wanted an E-6 to help him do paperwork.
But wait, it gets better: The AF was taking over the staff air safety stuff, and there just wasn't enough to do, so with the boss' blessing, I tried to shut off my job. Told them, I'll rotate home on time but don't bother sending my relief. Turns out - there's no mechanism at all to do that. No one knew how to shut down a billet, and no one really cared. And from what I hear, there's a guy from VT-10 filling that job now, 2+ years later. G-d knows how many unneeded billets are still sucking in people in theater.
Sounds a lot like my IA experience. Billet specified an O-2 to be the OPSEC Officer of a two-star staff with a Secret clearance. I was an O-3 with a Secret, but it was impossible for the OPSEC job to be done by someone with just a Secret - anyway, there was already an Army O-4 doing the job. The guy filling the IA before me (who I knew) had already tried to get the billet turned off. I talked to PERS, who initially told me they were looking for exactly this kind of feedback (back when CNO Mullen was really digging into the JMD), but eventually said "sorry, nothing we can do, you're going anyway".
I got out there and just about every other USN officer on the staff was in the same boat, wondering WTF they were doing there. It took me about 3 months to carve out an ACTUAL job to do, but it ended up being pretty satisfying in the end.
Yes and no. A lot of the billets now are for logistics and admin people, while not versed on the Army way of doing things they are universal skills which are needed in theater. This is especially true now with the supply and logistics folks to help with the giant sucking sound that is all the equipment leaving (or staying in) Iraq, some going home and a lot of it headed to Afghanistan. A lot of the other jobs are 'joint staff' type jobs that suck up any designator and any rank but they are not Army billets, and even others are Seabees and EDO's doing contract and construction oversight along with a few in PRT jobs that are in line with their skills. There are still plenty of bullshit billets out there but they seem to be in the minority now. Even most of the aviators seemed destined for either UAV OIC billets, a ground job that needs an aviation background or even actual flying jobs, only active duty for those though. I did sympathize with the EP-3 NFO who was going to be a Deputy Provost Marshal in Kabul with no training and not much of an idea of what the hell he was going to be doing. Hu-ah.......too easy.
Like I said, still a lot of BS and wasted talent but that is not the only story anymore, plenty of people going to where they will be of some legitimate use instead of just another warm body. Plus, with victory at hand we won't be doing this much longer anyways! Right? Anyone? Bueller?
Clux4
Banned
If Navy PERS works anything like Marine Corps Manpower Management(MM), you will get similar results. If Joint Forces Command(JFCOM) is telling the service equivalent command (MARFORCOM) that they have a requirement, they are expecting MARFORCOM to fill this position whether through Active Duty or Reserve personnel. MM cannot turn the billet off because they are just a supplier of warm bodies. Shutting such a billet requirement has to go through JFCOM which will still be a painful process to say the least. Remember that JFCOM is only going by what the Combatant Commander(CC) has requested in this case, CENTCOM.
Here is a file that explain everything in great details for those that care to know.
Well, the problem seems to be more that someone, at some time, decided there was a requirement. Once that billet is created, there seems to be no feedback mechanism or check-ups or whatever to see if that billet is still needed later on. If the bullshit jobs are disappearing Flash says, I imagine that's more because staffs and task forces are being disbanded as part of the OIF drawdown, than due to any billet QA.
Am I the only one that imagines GSA's will become a permanent part of the landscape, even after we're done with our present adventures in Babylon and Bactria? At least for O's. Maybe take the place of the disassoc. But no one seems to be talking about getting rid of them, except in a vague hand-wave "we hope to reduce the GSA requirements" sort of way.
Am I the only one that imagines GSA's will become a permanent part of the landscape, even after we're done with our present adventures in Babylon and Bactria? At least for O's. Maybe take the place of the disassoc. But no one seems to be talking about getting rid of them, except in a vague hand-wave "we hope to reduce the GSA requirements" sort of way.
Count me in agreement, for the sole reason that the genie is out of the bottle. Long before OEF and OIF, IAs were a shortcut to patch legitimate contingency/emergent/urgent/short-fused/whatever manning problems. Since then they've ballooned into a convenient substitute for proper personnel management. (GSAs aren't really much different than IAs.)
I think I agree with this too.
I've never agreed with it. We wouldn't ask them to do our job with 3 weeks training. If there are Navy specific missions we can do over there...port security, riverine warfare, EOD, ECM, etc....then great. But even still, I don't think they should be done as an IA. They should be done as the normal duty rotation of officers and sailors.
boobcheese
Registered User
Maybe I'm being a bit cynical but I believe that at least part of the reason why there is no simple mechanism to turn off IAs (and part of the reason why they were created in the first place) is that senior leadership likes being able to tout that the Navy has X number of sailors fulfilling BOG roles in the GWOT.