Individual Augmentee (IA) info & questions

[skidkid]

Agreed, it is poor personnel planning and Im sure it could be done better what pissed me off is the "this is horsesh!t comment" as though shore tours were sacred and the very tought of deploying during one was wrong. Im guessing the guys in WWII didnt get too many shore tours over the course of that war.
I dont even pretend to have the answers to Navy personnel planning, I have enough on my plate with a maint division, I just had issue with the flavor of that post (which I might have misread, it is only words on a screen)

 

[rjack14]

Granted I am pretty inexperienced in all this deployment stuff, but didn't we sign up realizing that we were putting service for our country over everything else? Talk to some of these Army guys who are pulling nearly constant year long tours with a few months in between. I bet they would take back to back sea tours any day. They probably would even take Iraq-Sea Tour-Iraq to what they pull sometimes.

 

[Gatordev]

Yeah, I love the idea that the Navy wasnt doing their fair share. I guess deployments and long periods at sea and away from home being part of the job doesnt count. Especially considering the real deployments for the Army and Air Force are a relatively recent thing.

Just wait till they start pulling people out of deployment billets to fill the IA's. Eventually this will get to the point where the Navy's combat readiness suffers.

<Sigh>. This gets said in every one of these threads, but here it goes again. We're not talking about operational participation. We're talking about Joint billets being filled. Historically, the Navy has been blowing these off because it's already stretched pretty thin. Circa 2003 or so, a bunch of Generals raised the flag and said there needs to be more particiaption. This was documented in Proceedings as well (I don't have the issue handy to reference). So, the CNO rogered up and said he would make it a priority to help fill billets.

So, while it may be executed poorly, and it might be more than can be handled over time, it's not like anyone was saying the Navy wasn't doing its fair share operationally. And again, this directive came from the CNO, whether we all agree with it or not, and not the Army.

 

[Flash]

<Sigh>. This gets said in every one of these threads, but here it goes again. We're not talking about operational participation. We're talking about Joint billets being filled. Historically, the Navy has been blowing these off because it's already stretched pretty thin. Circa 2003 or so, a bunch of Generals raised the flag and said there needs to be more particiaption. This was documented in Proceedings as well (I don't have the issue handy to reference). So, the CNO rogered up and said he would make it a priority to help fill billets.

So, while it may be executed poorly, and it might be more than can be handled over time, it's not like anyone was saying the Navy wasn't doing its fair share operationally. And again, this directive came from the CNO, whether we all agree with it or not, and not the Army.

The big IA push is not a joint billet thing but Navy initiative, planned jointly with the other services, to do a particular job. While most of the IA billets in teh past were joint ones, this is not the case with the one I am talking about.

 

[Flash]

Granted I am pretty inexperienced in all this deployment stuff, but didn't we sign up realizing that we were putting service for our country over everything else? Talk to some of these Army guys who are pulling nearly constant year long tours with a few months in between. I bet they would take back to back sea tours any day. They probably would even take Iraq-Sea Tour-Iraq to what they pull sometimes.

Like I said in one of my earlier posts, the Army is making a huge push to ensure their people have a 'good deal' non-operational tour. They have learned the hard way, as will the Navy if they continue to do some poor personnel planning, that endless deployments have cost them dearly when it comes to rentention. Among the intiatives is to guarantee grad school for JO's who extend their original commitment, up to 3 years off after their operational tours. There was a big artilce about it in Army Times recently, that is the advantage to being 'joint'.......:icon_smil

 

[lowflier03]

The big IA push is not a joint billet thing but Navy initiative, planned jointly with the other services, to do a particular job. While most of the IA billets in teh past were joint ones, this is not the case with the one I am talking about.

Exactly. Sure there were IA's in the past...of course they had a different name. But those lasted from a few weeks to maybe a few months. These new ones are a completely different thing. Also your "expertise" coming into play is mostly for show now. Most of the people I know pulled for IA's are being sent to do things that have absolutely no relation to what they do, or have experience in. Its just a "warm body" thing.

 

[Jeff29]

Many Navy IA's are placed in positions that have little to do with their "real" job. The Army wants you for your leadership, organizational, and planning abilities; at least in Afghanistan, most IA's are mentoring Staff Officers in base and (non-combat) unit operations. Very few Navy or Air Force IA's have anything to do with combat.

For the Army and MC combat-types, these tours seem to help retention. For the Navy, these tours are hurting retention.

 

[Fred]

What I'm saying is instead of being under-way on ship, pull the guys in their deployment cycle to assist with those in the ground. It sounds like the need more people in support of the army than the do on ship anyway, so it seems pretty feasible.

They are.

 

[Steve Wilkins]

What I'm saying is instead of being under-way on ship, pull the guys in their deployment cycle to assist with those in the ground. It sounds like the need more people in support of the army than the do on ship anyway, so it seems pretty feasible.

They are.

Yes, actually they are pulling guys from the ships to fill IA billets. IMHO, it's bullsh!t. CORPSviation, what in hell are you talking about? It appears to me you have no clue of shipboard operations because if you did, you wouldn't be saying what you just said about pulling guys off ships. While I don't particulary like seeing guys getting pulled from shore duty to go fill IA billets (billets the Army can't fill) I can at least understand the rationale. However, to pull an officer from an operational, seagoing vessel to fill another operational billet is simply wrong.

 

[Gatordev]

The big IA push is not a joint billet thing but Navy initiative, planned jointly with the other services, to do a particular job. While most of the IA billets in teh past were joint ones, this is not the case with the one I am talking about.

Thanks for the clarification. I intended for my post to say what you did, but yours was put more succinctly. Not joint in the sense of a "Joint tour," but joint in the sense that it helps support the overall Joint cause.

 

[McNamara]

A billet as "battalion EWO" in Afghanistan came up for O-2 to O-4 and I volunteered for it. Don't know when I'll find out if I get it or not, but I'm trying to gouge myself up on it.

Anyone know guys that have done one of these tours? My OIC forwarded me a generic 'welcome aboard' document from the Navy det in Afghanistan, but I was trying to find more specific information about what I might be in for, good stuff to bring, training, etc.

 

[Steve Wilkins]

You can try over on SailorBob.com....there's a whole section about IA gouge. No, you're not a SWO, but I imagine they'll help you out if you tell em why you want access to the boards.

http://www.sailorbob.com/phpBB2/profile.php?mode=register&sid=4a428fc116ef42a65cd825afd26153e5

 

[McNamara]

Thanks for the help. Are there a ton of SWOs in the IA billets? I imagine they'd have more experience with joint ops at a given rank than aviators.

 

[Brett327]

A billet as "battalion EWO" in Afghanistan came up for O-2 to O-4 and I volunteered for it. Don't know when I'll find out if I get it or not, but I'm trying to gouge myself up on it.

Anyone know guys that have done one of these tours? My OIC forwarded me a generic 'welcome aboard' document from the Navy det in Afghanistan, but I was trying to find more specific information about what I might be in for, good stuff to bring, training, etc.

For the EWO jobs, you're probably going to attend a short school at the Electronic Attack Weapons School in Whidbey. Basically EW 101 and how that applies to ops in Iraq.

Brett

 

[McNamara]

The only additional info on the billet was "electronic warfare experience preferred, but not mandatory" so that school sounds like a good bet. Google also found a page on an Army ASE/EWO course.