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Becoming a SWO, what to look forward to
- Thread starter Matthew10
- Start date
When I pulled into Lima on one of my deployments, the pier we were on was used as a livestock load/unload area. I think it was goats or sheep. The entire pier had this permanent black tar-like layer across the entire surface, almost like newly laid asphalt when it's really hot . Once we were back underway, we had to throw the carpet that was in our stateroom overboard and no one wanted to get near anyone's boot soles for weeks.
I would wait until you get to your ship and talk to people who have done it. Many SWOs, and it seems some posters in this thread, have a healthy dislike for anything "special" that excludes them. I enjoyed being off of the watchbill for most of deployment and getting a full night's sleep. While I definitely boarded a lot of bobbing dhows and had to reason with many-a-pissed off fisherman (usually through an interpreter that kind of knew a couple words of the local dialect), we did some very fun and exciting missions as well. VBSS is a rare opportunity for a Navy JO to get that kind of small unit leadership.
The school alone is a hell of a lot of fun, if you're into that kind of stuff. It's not for everyone though.
You're right. Many ships are now deploying with a "circadian" watch rotation for officers where you stand the same 4 hours of watch every day, instead of using a sliding rotation; they switch time slots every few weeks. So even when you get stuck with the 2200-0200 watch for a few weeks, you can build a predictable daily sleep, work , and personal schedule around that watch.
Having done it for a short amount of time I can say it's a lot easier on the body - and likely much safer as well.
It's a lot more like COPS than it is Act Of Valor. If you want to do VBSS, get used to doing weighted pull-ups now. The school is lots of fun, not crazy hardcore PT-wise, but you do a LOT of climbing up caving ladders in full gear. I'm a big guy so I was hauling close to 300 pounds up the ladder, and I got bad tendonitis because I wasn't just to doing that motion with that much weight repeatedly.
Who do you think was providing overwatch? I'm special, and people like me!
That said, while (short-term) this won't be an issue for now as they go away, not all the ships take their VBSS guys off the watchbill. On FFGs, they got to stand watch AND got to bob around on that dhow. Yay! The next thing you'll tell me is that guys on CGs and DDGs get to have access to this thing called the "internet" and can update their "Facebook." That's just crazy talk.
Hopefully, Scan Eagle; it's much quieter and doesn't have to go off-station every 2 hours!
Seriously though, I deployed to C5F with an awesome Bravo det and have nothing but good things to say about their support of VBSS ops.
Yes, you see, there's this thing called SHF. Nevermind... I won't ruin the surprise for you.
Have you only deployed on FFGs? Let me guess, you're an FTS guy that's made 17 "deployments" to the Caribbean?
While I'm FTS, it's only been for 2 deployments. The other two were as AC and, yes, on FFGs. I've been on CGs and DDGs for weeks or so at a time, but my primary exposure has been the mighty battle frigate. That said, don't take this to mean I don't understand how ridiculous the bandwidth allocation is for FFGs. My personal favorite was, while in Haiti, one of the DDGs stole our NMARSAT time because their two other internet systems were "down." Really, that's all we got! We couldn't even receive ATOs from the carrier and had to fly over every morning to find out what we were supposed to be doing.
Several days later, I was on the same DDG, wandering around like it was your local shopping mall, getting haircuts and various sundries. What do I see in the galley (!!!!), but sailors surfing their Facebook pages. Must be nice. Not that I'm bitter, of course.
That's old school right there. We at least had CBSP on the Fightin' 56. But I did deploy on USS UNDERWOOD during her last cruise and she still had NMARSAT which was no bueno.
Hey, that WAS the UND for me too! We had no NMARSAT, a TACAN that would randomly catch fire and only occasionally work, and HAWK that was completely broken and never was fixed the entire deployment. Also DTS would rarely work, except when something like the SuperBowl was on. Then all of a sudden they could get lock.
The lack of TACAN and HAWK was especially fun during some pretty extreme blue-water ops and search phases that had us far beyond what we should probably have been doing without those two working.
BTW, what's CBSP?
Sadly, not much had changed when I was on board. The plant was held together with blood, sweat, and tears. They had lost a potable water tank due to intrusion from the sea, had to swab up fuel oil from the deck plates every morning because it wept from all of the tanks, and the GPS would randomly shit the bed. And that's not to mention their entire combat systems didn't exactly function as advertised. There were times when we were navigating by Furuno and seaman's eye. When were you on board?
CBSP is the next step up from NMARSAT. It stands for Commercial Broadband Satellite Provider and is essentially the same internet service you would find on any other vessel.
2010. She was actually a pretty good ship, aside from the non-functioning systems I mentioned and the boob of an OpsO. But she was definitely falling victim to lack of funding, and the RAST system was literally held together with bailing wire.
That was part of my Young Shoe Experience. Spend eight hours boarding some shit-reeking Ecuadorian panga, come back aboard and fresh water's secured, the galley's closed (stale bread and peanut butter scrapings if you want them), and my fellow Ensigns bitching at me that "they had to take my watch" and so I owed them.
I made a point of wearing brown shoes when I went down the brow heading for Pensacola.
That's nice. Thanks for trying- have a nice day!
And thanks for providing another example.