• Please take a moment and update your account profile. If you have an updated account profile with basic information on why you are on Air Warriors it will help other people respond to your posts. How do you update your profile you ask?

    Go here:

    Edit Account Details and Profile

Required Training and Qualifications for Reserve Information Warfare Community (IWC) Officers

bubblehead

Registered Member
Contributor
RNIOBC phase one has been waived for certain prior enlisted IS’s who completed A school and earned their EIDWS.
And those are few and far between. I've met two Enlisted who have their EIDWS. The Reserve EIDWS program sucks a big one...
 

Markymark

Member
I really cannot comment to the Navy side, as I have just done the swap over from the Army. But in my decade of experience from the Army Intel side of the house: In the Army 35Fs (All Source Intel Analysts) and 35Ds (Intel Officers) go to the same course, not at the same time of course, its the same curriculum wise.

The course is about 16 weeks long, and quite honestly, in my opinion, if you had good common sense and knew how to use Microsoft office, you'd shown up to your first unit with the same level of knowledge without the course than you did after the course. The primary function of the course was learning briefing skills and how to process information. A huge amount of time wasted in the course itself was how to use DCGS which is a crap software that no other branch utilizes, but the Army uses because a former General Officer received an appealing retirement package for pushing it.

The National Guard offers its own internal 35F re-class course that is a month long the last time i checked, because it cuts out the garbage that fills the active duty course, such as major training on DCGS. Honestly, when i switched to the Guard from Active Duty, my reclass analysts were on par, and in some cases better than my active duty trained analysts.

Again, while i cannot compare the Navy training pipelines, I will say that i believe it is the quality of the person, not the training that makes them valuable as an analyst.
 

bubblehead

Registered Member
Contributor
Again, while i cannot compare the Navy training pipelines, I will say that i believe it is the quality of the person, not the training that makes them valuable as an analyst.
The Navy side is just as sh*tty. I'd prefer that the course focus entirely on briefing skills because, in reality, you have IS's who put together the slides, for the most part.
 

Markymark

Member
The Navy side is just as sh*tty. I'd prefer that the course focus entirely on briefing skills because, in reality, you have IS's who put together the slides, for the most part.

I am actually a huge opponent of that strategy, because it happens very often in the Army as well. If you built the slide, then you should be the one briefing it, because you are the one who has done all the research and can answer questions from the boss pertaining to the slides.

More often than not, when the officers would just brief what the enlisted built, either myself as the NCOIC or my senior analyst would have to sit behind the 1LT or CPT (Army type) and feed them information so they didn't look like idiots, or straight out answer the questions for them, giving them a bad rap in-front of the boss. In one case, the Brigade Commander stopped going to the CPT and directly going to me, which was bad since the BC was his senior rater. I do not believe this method develops an officer's situational knowledge, and teaches them some very bad habits early in their career.

One of my last jobs before deciding to switch over was training new 2LTs fresh out of BOLC (Army's version of NIOBC). I trained all my 2LTs to build their own slides and not rely on the analysts to do the work for them, because honestly in a truly operational unit, they have more important things than to build the slides for the LT.
 

bluemarlin04

Well-Known Member
I think the slide building thing is inherent to the unit or workcenter. I have never had my enlisted build my briefs and anything I brief, I knew I was responsible for what is on the slide.
 
D

Deleted member 67144 scul

Guest
The National Guard offers its own internal 35F re-class course that is a month long the last time i checked, because it cuts out the garbage that fills the active duty course, such as major training on DCGS. Honestly, when i switched to the Guard from Active Duty, my reclass analysts were on par, and in some cases better than my active duty trained analysts.

Would you say the Army should take a hard look at this and potentially cut out the fluff for active duty soldiers as well, or is there a specific operational need for the fluff such as DCGS (other than a General's retirement plan)?
 

Markymark

Member
Would you say the Army should take a hard look at this and potentially cut out the fluff for active duty soldiers as well, or is there a specific operational need for the fluff such as DCGS (other than a General's retirement plan)?

I would say there is zero reason to teach DCGS in the 35F course, i have never met a unit that actually uses it, but big Army keeps buying it and giving it to us, every unit S2 is signed for a million dollar server stack to run the crap program. Most units end up using palantir, cidne, unicorn, tiger or some other software. I dont think the 16 weeks is that unnecessarily long for brand new analysts, but i would replace the emphasis on one program with multiple different software and or more emphasis on critical thinking.

As far as cutting time from the course, the army did do that during the surge. However, the Army is currently on a binge to increase the length of schools to weed out those who end up getting seperated at the unit for failure to adapt (active duty of course).
 

bluemarlin04

Well-Known Member
are we going to have to have weapons training at some point?!

Why would you need weapons training as an intelligence officer?

IF by some chance you end up in a unit that goes downrange the weapons training will be worked into your pre deployment workup. Even in that scenario, there is a very small chance you will ever need to use them.

There are some intelligence officers who have advanced weapons training but they are few and far between and are usually active duty in certain units.
 

bryanteagle6

Well-Known Member
I didn't expect this response...ha.
I knew there wasn't a reason we would need it.... i was just making sure they didn't throw it in there anywhere.
Should i ask about the CS chamber?! ?
 

bluemarlin04

Well-Known Member
I didn't expect this response...ha.
I knew there wasn't a reason we would need it.... i was just making sure they didn't throw it in there anywhere.
Should i ask about the CS chamber?! ?
Only RTC goes through the CS chamber. I can’t recall doing it at OCS.

Besides, CS chamber is used to make you trust your mask and equipment and really isn’t that bad compared to OC spray. You may do it prior to deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. We did it before Iraq.

OC Spray is very very painful. You will get sprayed if you go through a security course like SRF-A/B. Most SWOs and Sub guys do it as part of watch station quals.
 

bubblehead

Registered Member
Contributor
are we going to have to have weapons training at some point?!
Why? You will never use it.

If you MOB you will get the standard Barney Fife familiarization like everyone else. If you are assigned to NR NSW INTEL 17 or 18 you will, prior to deployment (everyone assigned to these units deploys), receive the standard SEAL Team support staff work-up training which is pretty nice and fancy.
 
Top