In which a TACRON CO wants some respect

[nittany03]

There Is No ‘T’ for Training in the Warfighting TACRons

Tactical air control squadrons are operational units and should be resourced and managed as such.

www.usni.org

Aside from being driven absolutely bugshit by the "TACRon" formatting over and over (thanks USNI style guide, I guess), the TL;DR is to establish a VTC-related career path to retain corporate knowledge, and code it from OP-T to OP at the DH/CO levels.

 

[robav8r]

The author is obviously trying to "lean in to the wind" a bit here and illuminate some very long standing issues and concerns within the community. Unfortunately (my opinion here), until the PHIBRON/ARG/MEU construct is better resourced (they have no ASW capability, do not deploy with dedicated SSN support, and have very limited ASUW/AAW capabilities), i'm not sure big Navy is ready to resource and employ them the way the author desires. Of course, the integration of the F-35B brings new capabilities and places a much bigger bullseye on the ARGs operating over the horizon. TACRONs have long been a dumping ground for officers that, for whatever reason, were not evaluated as competitive as their peers as JOs. An argument could certainly be made for more AC/OS LDO/CWOs which could bring some stability and corporate knowledge to the community long term.

 

[nittany03]

With 5 years of my career as a SELRES TACRONite, it was a very weird vibe that we were still all competitive for promotion and trying to do a good job, and certain of our AC counterparts . . . weren't. Not all, but some.

 

[taxi1]

With 5 years of my career as a SELRES TACRONite, it was a very weird vibe that we were still all competitive for promotion and trying to do a good job, and certain of our AC counterparts . . . weren't. Not all, but some.

Reserves seems like a good home for TACRON. Long term steady manning for an important, but fringe to the rest of the navy, mission.

 

[nittany03]

Reserves seems like a good home for TACRON. Long term steady manning for an important, but fringe to the rest of the navy, mission.

Wouldn't work. You'd have to MOB a det for every LHA float, plus workups. You'd basically be asking people to volunteer to be in a non-flying hardware squadron, and even the SELRES hardware squadrons don't do full-length deployments. Or find some way to rotate TACC dets on and off the boat in 2- or 3-month intervals, which would cause its own issues. Imagine CAG Ops, Air Ops, or Strike Ops were staffed with reservists who got rotated out on 8-week intervals during cruise. Bet you INDOPACOM and PACFLT aren't going to plan their ESG port calls around that nonsense.

SELRES TACRON is hypothetically manned, trained, and equipped to provide 4 additional TACC dets (1 per TACRON SAU) to the fleet on a full mobilization. After 5 years, I still have no idea what NR TACGRU 1 is really for, other than providing additional CAOC bodies for AT every year and giving one post-command SELRES O-6 the ability to be called "Commodore." We tried getting folks afloat when I was 12's reserve OPSO, it was a huge pain train, and we ultimately got told "stuff it, there's no overflow berthing on board ship." Everyone just wants to hit the easy button and send the reservists off to the CAOC, and the heck with them being TACCWO qualled.

Plus it's not long-term steady manning when folks have PRDs just like the AC.

 

[Hotdogs]

Fold the entirety of all TACRONs into the MACG. You only need that capability when a full ACE is embarked anyways.

 

[Gatordev]

Bet you INDOPACOM and PACFLT aren't going to plan their ESG port calls around that nonsense.

Nobody else plans their port calls around that nonsense either. There's an internal plan to get the SELRES off, but if the plan falls apart, the SELRES stays and/or gets flown off, when possible.

 

[taxi1]

Plus it's not long-term steady manning when folks have PRDs just like the AC.

Treat it like a reserve HW unit. Or give it to the national guard. But...your points on are point.

Give it to med down aviators who can still crawl their way out of a burning ship and want to stay in the fight? Their own community? If it becomes hot, guys can poke an eye out to qualify for service.

Back in the day, I spent my first 13 years as a weekend warrior SELRES in the same unit at Willow Grove. I argued that I didn't need to change units, because the entire unit kept changing around me.

Eventually got told to stop homesteading.

 

[SteveHolt!!!]

The authors proposals all left me with way more questions.

If you want tacron cos to have prior tacron experience, it would come at disassociated or dh level. Making a path from tacron dh to tacron co means that tacron dh has to be operational to be competitive at screen boards. So far, I’m on board with the logic.

From there I start getting fuzzy on the details. How are you slating the dhs? Are we drafting top performers? Would there be volunteers? If we’re not taking top performers, then should they have equal career prospects? Is it good for naval aviation as a whole to off-ramp top performing aviators to tacron? “Make tacron operational” is a nice bumper sticker, but there’s a lot of functional challenges that seem to need explanation.

 

[Uncle Fester]

Well, TACRONs are a well-known career black hole for VAW bubbas. Unless you deliberately get yourself on some other track early on, eventually you cross that event horizon and there's no escape. Even then it's not necessarily enough; I knew some very sharp dudes, TPS grads looking for post-VX tours, get pulled into Tacron, which I'm sure was a fantastic use of their extensive flight test training and experience. But anyway.

That said, I've heard the idea batted around once or twice of disbanding TACGRU and putting the TACRONs under ACCLOGWING (which would basically be acknowledging reality), or just giving the mission entirely over to the Marines. Neither went anywhere but either would seem a better fit than the current construct.

 

[jollygreen07]

Dude hasn’t accepted his fate as a terminal O-5 yet. Welcome to OP-T, where careers go to die.

 

[robav8r]

Dude hasn’t accepted his fate as a terminal O-5 yet. Welcome to OP-T, where careers go to die.

Yes & no. I've seen several post-command TACRON CO's make O6, but it came at an excruciating level of pain (CVN Gator, multiple overseas staff assignments, etc). Bottom line - unless & until Big Navy views the VTC community as a viable & relevant community that needs quality manpower (oops, woman power too , then it will stay exactly where it is. Like I said previously, with everything going on currently wrt resources, budgets, war fighting priorities, etc . . . . . I don't see that happening.

 

[CommodoreMid]

Only way I could see cycling back talent in would be to send guys there for dissociated tours that still have hope of picking up DH. That way if they get OP-T they get cycled back in the community. I don’t know of a single JO who has gone there who has screened for DH.

I don’t know enough (read really anything) about TACRON to say whether or not this guy is overinflating what he does, but the author’s argument seems to center on the fact that they participate in so many things that it justifies more talent. That then begs the question of what balls are getting dropped in those exercises, operations, etc, that would be solved with having more talent? In VP the TOCs are now OP-T CO gigs because we collectively realized that sending only people with no futures to the organization that maintains a heavy load in our C2 nodes and basically allows us to do our mission wasn’t working (read failing). Has that change solved everything? Absolutely not, but I will say compared to where we were 4 years ago we’re in a much better spot.

 

[sevenhelmet]

Eventually got told to stop homesteading.

Ugh. Perhaps taken out of context, but what a horrible statement. Active duty folks can’t settle down, it seems. One of the biggest benefits to leaving AD is I can continue to develop my career and community ties in one place. It’s not seen as a negative to “homestead”.

Obviously some movement needs to happen, but I wonder how much we could save on PCSs if we ditched that “you must move constantly to move up” mindset.

 

[nittany03]

Ugh. Perhaps taken out of context, but what a horrible statement. Active duty folks can’t settle down, it seems. One of the biggest benefits to leaving AD is I can continue to develop my career and community ties in one place. It’s not seen as a negative to “homestead”.

Obviously some movement needs to happen, but I wonder how much we could save on PCSs if we ditched that “you must move constantly to move up” mindset.

The even crazier part in reserve land is that you've got no limit on where you can commute to monthly as an O-5+ if you really want to. So the people who really want to be upwardly mobile will find ways to fly cross-country *on their own dime* for the right billets. Helps to be an airline pilot, independently wealthy, or a flat-out workaholic. One of my COs in a WA State unit supporting a HI gaining command lived in FL. I don't know how he did it.