Navy flying Warrant O program

[bobbybrock]

Gentlemen,
As an Army Aviation Warrant type I find this topic very interesting. To me it just seems like there is to much tradition in naval aviation to go this route. The army program has been around since the mid 50's. There has been some major growing pains and there has alway been an us against them mentality between warrants and the O's. Probably like the JOPA.
The best part of the program is that you get very skilled aviators who stay in the cockpit their entire career. The down side is the O's get the short end of the stick when it comes to flying. I'm an I.P. and over the last few years I have seen my fair share of 0-4's and 0-5's with less than 1000 hours.And most of these guys have never been PIC's ( HAC's) . So you have an 0-5 w/ less than a thousand hours leading a bunch of warrants with 2000 to 3000 hours. It doesn't work that well at times.
Over the past year the idea of LDO's replacing aviation warrnats has come up. Like a previous post said, most army warrant would rather go the route of LDO.
It will be intresting to see what actually happens with all of this.

 

[A4sForever]

The Navy was making "noise" about a program in the late '70's where one could be "guaranteed" 20 years and O-4 .... all you would do is fly. Little/no collateral duties --- just be the Navy commissioned officer resemblance/equivalent(?) of a Flying Warrant. The desired purpose was to cultivate a hard-core "prof*f*f*f*ff*f*ffesional" Aviator cadre who would not be lured away by the siren song of the airlines . The airlines, of course, started hiring BIG TIME in the late '70's and stripped some Ready Rooms to the tune of 85% of their LT's.

The proposed program seemed to make sense, there was a lot of Aviator interest in it --- I might have foregone the airlines if it was in place/gonna happen ... and then it just faded away. The "gouge" reason for the failure of the potential program was politics --- and here I'm talking about politicians in Navy Blue suits with gold buttons and really big gold stripes on their sleeves.

.....a sample of Old, WW2 uni's ....



20 years? LCDR Aviator ?? Sounds like most of the VQ-1 Whale drivers who came to the ship --- all solid, good sticks.

And it doesn't sound too bad overall --- especially, with the benefit of hindsight and EEOC decisions --- you could have flown 20 years --hardcore-- for UNCLE -- and then got hired by your favorite flying bus company -- to supplement your retirement check.

Just the thought of it makes me ....

 

[Road Program]

Back to LDO NFOs in P-3s...there's a stud in my squadron who's doing this. From what I gather, he's doing alright.

 

[bobbybrock]

I put a search in one day for Aviation LDO. Okay I'm bored. Not much to do when you aren't flying in Iraq. Anyway there was a Mustang home page that mentioned a LDO/CWO to NFO section. If I remember right it was about two to three years old. Again I'm an Army helo guy so I didn't know squat about the whole thing. Just that the concept was pretty intresting.

 

[ip568]

The Navy tries something new every once and a while, based upon immediate need. Whn I got to my first VP squadron in 1969 there were sixteen crews and 15 NFOs, which was typical of VP then. So, the Navy sent its newest pilots/PP3Ps to Corpus Christi (home of Navy Nav School then) for a cram six-week, "junior navigator course." Tgey then joined a squadron crew as "navigator." They were hopeless, ranging on a scale between "This is a chart, right?" to "This is not a drill! Prepare to Ditch!" So the crew NFO had to fly both TACCO and NAV at the same time. It wasn't until 1971 that we got enough NFOs to make two per crew.

Some years later, after I had left active duty and was flying P-3s in the Reserves, another NFO shortage struck. So BuPers decided to take former enlisted who had become LDOs or AIs and let them complete the NFO syllabus in the squadron and then get their NFO wings. We had one guy who did the training (former AW, A/C), and let me tell you, if you think it's tough making NFO on active duty, try it in the Reserved. This guy did so many drills he was basically on active duty at the squadron. Then. as the two year mark approached for his training, the Navy had a hissy-fit between BuPers and Chief of Naval Air Training. The upshot was that the BuPers program was cancelled after this guy had busted his balls for two years to become an NFO. He was already close to 20 years, so he finished to be able to retire, but it was a bitter disappointment.

Navy flying warrants? I personally doubt it will happen in any significant numbers with too many NAs and no shortage of NFOs at present.

ip568
http://www.navlog.org

 

[BigIron]

Spoke with CWO assist. community manager. A plan is in work, but not enough info to put out yet. I bet we are going to see some kind of pilot program in the near future.

 

[snoopusmaximus]

It is only a Test!

Heard from the Bureau that it is only a test, 30 personnel over a couple of years across the big wardroom communities, sometime after 2006. It will be evaluated as to its legitimacy a couple of years down the road.

 

[Pap]

across the big wardroom communities,

Could you clarify which communities you mean by that statement?

 

[Cyclic]

Pap...not to worry, the CAPT from PERS-43 said no CWO's for pointy noses..., which is bad for you since you guys need it the most!!!

 

[bobbybrock]

For all you guys out in the fleet. Do you think if this ever comes to fruition that it would work?The army has had 50 plus years to iron out the wrinkles and the system is still jacked up. They pretty much started from scratch without a large aviation branch. Most the pilots left with the Air Force .
From the outside is seems as if Naval Aviation has way to much tradition to make such a big change. The Army actually tried to bring back the Flying NCO's program in the late 80's. I guess paying Warrants to fly seemed even to expensive for Army. The major commands over here aren't to aviation friendly. It never took off though.
My point, I see the navy recieving the Warrant program in the same way.

 

[Flash]

Could you clarify which communities you mean by that statement?

That would mean VP and VQ for starters, maybe the helo squadrons too. A VP or VQ squadron has about 60-80 flying officers, a Tacair squadron has 18-25 normally.