FlyingGator
Member
What is an airplanes gender? Is the real question. I go to a super liberal college too, I’m talking pride parades, affirmative action , the whole 9 yards. And i don’t even think they would go that far lol.
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AVO warrant program and more
- Thread starter FlyingGator
- Start date
First designated air vehicle pilots earn Wings of Gold
The first four air vehicle pilots (AVP) completed flight training and earned their “Wings of Gold,” during a ceremony aboard Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola, May 25.
Cool!First designated air vehicle pilots earn Wings of Gold
The first four air vehicle pilots (AVP) completed flight training and earned their “Wings of Gold,” during a ceremony aboard Naval Air Station (NAS) Pensacola, May 25.www.dvidshub.net
Those wings look VERY similar to the Marine AVO wings.
Pretty sure they're the same. I can't spot any obvious differences.
Belay my last - looks like the Navy ones have the silver V; the Marine AVO officer wings are all gold.
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villo0692
Well-Known Member
You will go through NIFE just as every other student aviator, except that you won’t do water survival or physio, but you will fly the Cessna. Then you will move on into NFO primary, but you will not fly in the T6. After that you will move on to big wing intermediate and advanced, and then you wing. All this takes place in Pensacola, FRS as far as I know is in Pax River, but like they’ve been saying, it doesn’t seem they have an aircraft ready for them. I went to OCS with all of them newly winged AVOs, proud of them
Interesting; the way they described it in the CNATRA press releases made it sound like their syllabus was mostly identical to VP/VQ NFO, including flying the T-6.
Pax is the only place that’s doing any MQ-25 work right now but I think the ultimate plan is to have the FRS at Mugu. Getting in on the absolute ground floor of a program, while it’s still in DT, def has its pros and cons. For good or ill these cats have the potential to shape a lot of the future of the community. Certainly a lot more than any other Cat 1 nuggets out there.
How does that work?
Poorly.
They follow the AF model but make it worse- whereas in the AF they do all of the pilot T-6 syllabus in the sims except for forms, they do the same but the NFO syllabus. The AF also gives RPA folks 45ish hours in a DA-20 at the start. I don't know if the Navy is following suit or if AVOs will only get the normal 13.
Both are dumb, one is worse than the other. It is cheaper and faster though.
One thing to note through all of this is that the NFO pipeline is not an aircraft commander pipeline. That's going to be a problem when you need MQ-25 crews to be aircraft commanders.
Is that a USAF, DoD and/or FAA requirement?
The qual is irrelevant. Whoever is in the seat in the pilot in command. Pilot primary is step 1 in a very long aircraft commander syllabus. Training someone to be an NFO and then putting them in the pilot seat (for single pilot airplanes no less) and expecting them to make the proper decisions is a bad idea.
There was a noticeable difference in the decision making skills between folks who were trained to be pilots vs NFOs when the USMC would allow NFOs to skip the line and go right to the RQ-21 FRD. The USMC thusly made NFOs who wanted to transition go through the full USAF RPA pilot course. The AF won't let a CSO or EWO or NAV even go to the RQ-4 or RQ-170 without going through RPA Pilot, much less the MQ-9.
Pilots are pilots, NFOs are NFOs. Just because the physical pilot skills aren't as tough, doesn't mean that the knowledge and attitudes aren't any easier or less important.
Rambling...we trained up a cadre of drone pilots a bunch of years ago, sending them to the USAF MQ1 pipeline. We had some failures...and they were all single anchors. Couldn't mentally visualize they plane operating in space without their derriere in the seat.
An awful lot of the block & tackle work of drone ops can be gained by operating the smaller Part 107-sized drones. Plan the flight, fly the plan, good briefs, WX, etc. Aviate, navigate, navigate, communicate. Signing for the plane. You also get to crash some and if disciplined, do investigations. I wonder if mixing that into the pipeline wouldn't have value. You could literally get someone a thousand hours flight time in a year hand-flying, first person video, GCS ops, night over the horizon and so on.
Just spitballing...
That is exactly what the Navy might think right now.
Speaking as an NFO who has about 800 hours G4/5 UAC time (and no Class A’s!) it can be done.
That being said, I am a huge foe of the idea that sim time is as good as live time for UAS training. Live training in manned aircraft and flying unmanned is absolutely necessary if you want operators who are in any way proficient, not just “trained in procedures.”Those are two different things in UAS just as they are in a manned aircraft.
That being said, I am a huge foe of the idea that sim time is as good as live time for UAS training. Live training in manned aircraft and flying unmanned is absolutely necessary if you want operators who are in any way proficient, not just “trained in procedures.”Those are two different things in UAS just as they are in a manned aircraft.