My bad, thanks for keeping me honest!
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The XO when I was in primary told us "NSS is not a perfect system, but if you've got something better, wed love to hear about it"
Grades, checkrides, unsats; even attrition have undeniable elements of luck/timing associated with them.
I wrote it in my own primary write up but for every success story, there’s someone who worked just as hard, but it didn’t line up.
However, if you don't try, you will fail out. Attitude and prep are the only two factors you have/ will continue to have in your control.
But for now, celebrate. You finished primary and congrats on selecting jets!
Grades, checkrides, unsats; even attrition have undeniable elements of luck/timing associated with them.
I wrote it in my own primary write up but for every success story, there’s someone who worked just as hard, but it didn’t line up.
However, if you don't try, you will fail out. Attitude and prep are the only two factors you have/ will continue to have in your control.
But for now, celebrate. You finished primary and congrats on selecting jets!
Here's some more platitudes, brought to you by rum punch next to the pool...
I thought a lot about the system I was a small part of during flight school, I wanted to make sense of it for my own reasons. Here are my thoughts.
NSS is not a number that says how good you CAN be. It's a trajectory. "How fast can you get high". But, there's undoubtedly a correlation to how fast someone learns and how much their capable of.
The "luck" of instructors and the whole conduct of a flight is like sandpaper. One pass and it would be very much luck on whether you got the hard ass, a real gnarly piece of grit who leaves a groove, or the Santa claus who barely takes anything, but let's a knot protrude. Enough passes and repetitions and it evens out.
To labor the analogy, there isn't just a mindless belt sander running things, there are skilled craftsmen watching the process. My NSS was nothing special, but I worked my ass off, made a few good catches and calls, and did my best. What I was good at, bad at, and able to learn better was recognized. I still believe my primary squadron Skipper tipped the scales to push me in the direction that would be good for me and the navy.
The process of flight school is dispassionate and can often feel like "the best you can hope for is apathy". IMO the reward won't be praise very often, but rather self actualization.
And on the flip side, would you rather be the guy who got "lucky" and everyone went easy on? Im no navy seal writing a book, but the hard days you have will make you better sooner and in the long run. I'd take that over being the guy who had it easy and got his world rocked later in the pipeline.
The part about taking notes in the debrief are solid, but i challenge any student to come up with notes for the brief. Tattle on yourself for what you aren't great at (2-3 items) come up with what you think will help and ask your IP what they think.
Don't leave it to them and the grade sheets to make you better.
I thought a lot about the system I was a small part of during flight school, I wanted to make sense of it for my own reasons. Here are my thoughts.
NSS is not a number that says how good you CAN be. It's a trajectory. "How fast can you get high". But, there's undoubtedly a correlation to how fast someone learns and how much their capable of.
The "luck" of instructors and the whole conduct of a flight is like sandpaper. One pass and it would be very much luck on whether you got the hard ass, a real gnarly piece of grit who leaves a groove, or the Santa claus who barely takes anything, but let's a knot protrude. Enough passes and repetitions and it evens out.
To labor the analogy, there isn't just a mindless belt sander running things, there are skilled craftsmen watching the process. My NSS was nothing special, but I worked my ass off, made a few good catches and calls, and did my best. What I was good at, bad at, and able to learn better was recognized. I still believe my primary squadron Skipper tipped the scales to push me in the direction that would be good for me and the navy.
The process of flight school is dispassionate and can often feel like "the best you can hope for is apathy". IMO the reward won't be praise very often, but rather self actualization.
And on the flip side, would you rather be the guy who got "lucky" and everyone went easy on? Im no navy seal writing a book, but the hard days you have will make you better sooner and in the long run. I'd take that over being the guy who had it easy and got his world rocked later in the pipeline.
The part about taking notes in the debrief are solid, but i challenge any student to come up with notes for the brief. Tattle on yourself for what you aren't great at (2-3 items) come up with what you think will help and ask your IP what they think.
Don't leave it to them and the grade sheets to make you better.
I saw it happen to a few Marine SNAs way back when. The OV-10 community got a sudden infusion of talent.
The grass is greener where you fertilize.
You can never go wrong by pointing out an area you know needs improvement. Especially with an off wing. The instructor already knows, or will see it anyway. The instructor might have a technique or approach that will work for you.
As far as primary goes, I think you overestimate the universe of things SMAs do that’s novel. We put you in fairly canned scenarios in fairly contained areas to see if you can talk/fly/think at the same time, plus hit the FTI/FWOP points of performance while keeping everyone safe. There’s a reason your FDO debrief from solo is “Congrats. Everything go okay? Anything you should tell me before we see it on the local news? Okay good, wait a few months before posting the cockpit selfies”
Introspection at an SMA level? I’d largely smile, laugh internally, make a note, and thank them.
The reality is orange and white is teaching you how to fly safely in canned regimes and some tactical fundamentals. What the military actually wants you to do is useful shit with the multi million dollar aircraft they gave you. That doesn’t happen until Level 300 type events and *really* doesn’t happen until you have to teach someone.
Very well said. And along those lines, I’d argue that the FRS is also essentially an indoc course, so like you say, the tactics really arent there until SFWT (or whatever your particular TMS calls their tactics syllabus). But you do get to do cool stuff like shoot the gun, drop live bombs, and the leash is longer with which to hang yourself.
I think everyone has hit all of the broad strokes and I would say if you are outside of the standard deviation then you definitely earned the NSS you received. However, there were two glaring issues I saw with the NSS system when I was going through.
If we are really going for a system that measures your capability to learn/how fast you can learn, then the system needs to actually be standard on how much information you are expected to learn in the same given time frame. For example, the wait time in between sims/ground school and flight line ebbed and flowed. Some guys would have zero days in between phases and some would have over 3 weeks. I knew multiple people that went med down in the middle of contacts for like two weeks and other weird pauses in training due to personal issues. Then some squadrons would double you up on every contact flight they possibly could and other squadrons had a policy of not doubling up on any contacts flights. TLDR: there were studs finishing in some squadrons in less than 5 months and others more around 7-8. And not even going to comment on the 10+ month Avenger people. I'm not saying anyone that had to take a break some training didn't deserve it, I mean CO obviously had approved of it so it wasn't nothing. But acting like ingesting the same amount of information in 5 vs 7 months is a significant disparity. This is also not counting that some squadrons have expanded discussion items and others do not. I don't exactly know how to fix this problem other than adding some sort of time multiplier to your final NSS to reflect how quickly you went through.
Second, is PATEs. I'm not sure if they're still a thing or not, but PATEing seemed to really help your NSS. The kicker though is if skeds would allow you to PATE. I knew on multiple occasions studs would've PATEd if the instructor was qualified to, but since they were a newer IP or weren't fully qualled whatever they weren't allowed and had to go do the check the next day and ultimately miss out on the bonus NSS.
Lastly a small bonus, instructor wise, you will get a hammer at some point and you will get a santa at some point. However, it can weigh for or against you, if, for example, you are at a squadron that doubles up on early contact flights and you get a hammer for said early contact out/in. Everyone knows the early flights are where you make your money because the mif is lower and you drew the short straw.
I do agree that you can make your own luck in primary and the harder you try the luckier you will get, but to say your NSS defines your ability or is some sort of end all be all/great equalizer, I would argue is disingenuous. Like Mouselovr said, for every success story there's a story there's someone who worked just as hard and it didn't pan out.
If we are really going for a system that measures your capability to learn/how fast you can learn, then the system needs to actually be standard on how much information you are expected to learn in the same given time frame. For example, the wait time in between sims/ground school and flight line ebbed and flowed. Some guys would have zero days in between phases and some would have over 3 weeks. I knew multiple people that went med down in the middle of contacts for like two weeks and other weird pauses in training due to personal issues. Then some squadrons would double you up on every contact flight they possibly could and other squadrons had a policy of not doubling up on any contacts flights. TLDR: there were studs finishing in some squadrons in less than 5 months and others more around 7-8. And not even going to comment on the 10+ month Avenger people. I'm not saying anyone that had to take a break some training didn't deserve it, I mean CO obviously had approved of it so it wasn't nothing. But acting like ingesting the same amount of information in 5 vs 7 months is a significant disparity. This is also not counting that some squadrons have expanded discussion items and others do not. I don't exactly know how to fix this problem other than adding some sort of time multiplier to your final NSS to reflect how quickly you went through.
Second, is PATEs. I'm not sure if they're still a thing or not, but PATEing seemed to really help your NSS. The kicker though is if skeds would allow you to PATE. I knew on multiple occasions studs would've PATEd if the instructor was qualified to, but since they were a newer IP or weren't fully qualled whatever they weren't allowed and had to go do the check the next day and ultimately miss out on the bonus NSS.
Lastly a small bonus, instructor wise, you will get a hammer at some point and you will get a santa at some point. However, it can weigh for or against you, if, for example, you are at a squadron that doubles up on early contact flights and you get a hammer for said early contact out/in. Everyone knows the early flights are where you make your money because the mif is lower and you drew the short straw.
I do agree that you can make your own luck in primary and the harder you try the luckier you will get, but to say your NSS defines your ability or is some sort of end all be all/great equalizer, I would argue is disingenuous. Like Mouselovr said, for every success story there's a story there's someone who worked just as hard and it didn't pan out.
The system does standardize that, in it's own way. The people that complete in 8 months aren't competing against the people that completed in 5 months, and vice versa. It's only whatever the variable is for the population you're competing against (I think that's 100 previous completers, but I may be misremembering...or it changed).
The squadrons also have an off-set. There will be a period where Squadron X gets 2 points added to a stud's NSS and Squadron Y might have 2 points removed.
As you said, it's not perfect, but there are elements in the MPTS machinery that try to account for the variables.
When did NSS start being used, and is there any available study that evaluates various data points of the pre/post NSS SNA?
johnpauljones1776
I HAVE NOT YET BEGUN TO FIGHT
Proficiency Advance Trigger Event - aka skipping flights to help the squadron get you through quicker. It helps the student with grades in later blocks when the MIF is high but works against you in the early blocks. Some squadrons do it more than they should whether it helps the student or not
NSS has been around since 2000. There’s an entire NSS thread.
I've noticed similar over the years at the FRS on the other side of the briefing table. When you have an entire class "struggling", one might wonder what circumstance of theirs might be different compared to other recent classes. Less time to prepare, study, etc is normally the culprit. Or wildly out of currency is another. They're not all just randomly idiots in the jet. Unfortunately while that "set-up" doesn't make much difference in a single customer/mostly single duty station FRS, it does in the VT's, particularly primary. The system isn't perfect, and everyone gets hosed at one point or another. But I always say "luck favors the prepared", FWIW. I guess the hopeful comment I can make is that we know when the studs are drawing a short straw and can adapt to that understanding. I think I can say with 100% confidence that nobody in the entire CNATRA/flight school/FRS continuum is trying to give you an unfair shake. You're a winged aviator so this isn't directed at you, but to the youngsters, we're on your team if you show up prepared with a good attitude.
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