Officer Dynamics in a Flying Squadron

[insanebikerboy]

Heaven forbid we lock them up in a classified training space and let them focus on their rate specific duties and responsibilities. Knowing (and doing to some extent) DTA's and helping on major phases when manpower resources are limited is understandable, but never at the expense of their primary warfighting functions. My .02c . . .

My experiences;

Line shack - junior AWs that have just checked in. It's a NATOPS thing as it lets them learn the helo and see maintenance for a bit. Also, in my squadron, the AWs do all of the preflight so it lets them learn it from the perspective of a DTA so they are really astute at doing preflights. It's amazing to see them check the specs on the rotary girder.

PR/AO shops - more experienced folks that are already qualed level 3 (or almost there) and understand their flying job quite well.

 

[81montedriver]

We have had a similar progression in my community. In the legacy Herks, an FE started life as a flight mech which means his life doubled as a junior aircrewman as well as Powerline Shop worker. Once he pinned on Sgt, he would begin his workups for fully qualled FE and would have had at least his CDI stamp. Engine changes and prop swaps? Yup he was fully qualified to do that.

On the J-model the FE became a crew chief and you no longer had to be a Sgt to be fully qualled. Granted there were 4 levels which demonstrated your ability. CC1 was a basically qualled CC. You could do local flights but you were not a plane captain. CC2: Now you have your plane captain qual and can go on road trips CONUS and OCONUS. CC3: CC2 + Taxi turn and run qualled. CCI: Crew Chief instructor. There was no rank minimum so you had real smart guys who were CC3's by the time they were Corporals and instructors by the time they were Sgt's. Aaaaaaand shitbags who were SNCO's and still only a CC2 qual.

So a certain General who shall remain nameless, decided it would be a great idea in 2011 to combine crew chief and loadmaster into one qual. So now, all we have is Crewmasters (Crew Chief + Loadmaster). For a CC learning the LM syllabus it was a breeze. For an LM learning the CC syllabus, not so much. The problem is the time to train has been significantly increased because of the massive amount of information these young kids have to learn. We are the only service who does it and even now, there is still a significant backlog of CM's becoming fully qualified. Maybe if they would give us a RAG instead of having our own squadron act as a fleet unit + FRS...

I may have gone into a bit of a rant here, but my point was that there are a lot of guys who take a lot of initiative when it comes to the crew chief training. The smart ones spend time on the ground working in the different maintenance shops gaining exposure to all aspects of the aircraft and even assist powerliners with prop assemblies and engine maintenance. I'd be curious to see if these guys can start putting all of this work towards maintenance MATMEPS and even earning a PL CDI stamp like they could in the F/R/T. However the days of having an FE who was an E-5 at a minimum who could troubleshoot or fix dam near anything on your plane are gone. The more likely scenario nowadays is that not only am I the oldest dude on the plane, but also the most experienced with better systems knowledge than my 19 year old CM1.

 

[Mos]

Heaven forbid we lock them up in a classified training space and let them focus on their rate specific duties and responsibilities. Knowing (and doing to some extent) DTA's and helping on major phases when manpower resources are limited is understandable, but never at the expense of their primary warfighting functions. My .02c . . .

AWs in the P-3 world have to acquire a rather complex knowledge and skill set, and we subsequently allocate them to various unrelated duties across the command in the name of 'fairness'. Yet another matter where we're stupid.

 

[Brett327]

Though, so do many of the maintainers, and many of the strokers have to hold some of the time consuming collaterals. Not equivalent to a tactical qual, but not all that different either.

 

[BigJeffray]

It's amazing to see them check the specs on the rotary girder.

Nice.