Good luck. Advice to you is to commission as a SWO or another designator for which you qualify. Since you are fluent bilingual, consider lat transferring to FAO at O-3. Language and culture is far more important to FAOs than to Intel. Also, FAO does not have a commissioning source, so O-3 is “entry level” for FAOs. No one will fault you for using SWO as a stepping stone to FAO - because literally every designator is a stepping stone to FAO. They have great careers and get to travel all over. The U.S. Navy needs Spanish-speaking FAOs for attache work and partner capacity building all over Latin America (and in Spain, too).
** Check the Program Auth for FAO, but I think you will need to earn yourself a master’s degree as fast as possible.
Here's some gouge on the Navy FAO community.
1) The Navy isn't hurting for Spanish-speaking FAOs. Knowing Spanish is better than not knowing any language, but you won't stand out by simply having grown up speaking Spanish.
2) No one in the FAO community would fault you for using SWO as a stepping-stone, but you might want to keep that goal to yourself until you get close to the board time and work hard in your parent community.
3) People who seem like they'd be good FAOs but whose skill set is fairly common (i.e. knowing Spanish) can just as soon find themselves in Ghana or Bahrain. These aren't bad jobs, really, but probably not what you think about when you hear "great careers and get to travel all over." You'll also spend time on staffs. Staff in Germany, Japan, or Hawaii (or even DC for that matter) is not bad...but it's still a staff. And if you come into the FAO community because you want a specific billet (Naval Attache in France, for example), you're more than likely to be disappointed.
4) A master's degree is more or less a requirement. Having one will make you more attractive to the community on a lat transfer board. If you don't have one, how you get one will mostly depend on timing. There are limited embassy billets in all AORs for LTs (particularly in EUCOM), so you could end up at a foreign war college. You could also, depending again on timing, be told to do a master's degree or JPME via distance learning.
Hot tip If you really want to be a FAO, try to work in an AOR before becoming a FAO. For a SWO. that would be a ship in Rota or Japan, or a shore tour at a component staff in the AOR you hope to work in. That would make you a solid candidate for lat transfer.
