@MIDNJAC - Again, honest question. Is having 3 DH a show-stopper? I deployed with 4 DHs (one with no quals as a transition guy), and VAQ doesn't have the luxury of an Admin LDO to be AO. Just curious about the impact that has on a single seat squadron and how it differs from my experience.
I am not @MIDNJAC , but I am a DH in a single seat squadron...
There are good reasons we went from 3 to 4 DHs in VFA once upon a time. The variety of flight leadership experience, more experienced folks to field complex issues that arise in a squadron, and the overall workload sharing and dynamic between 4 DHs is generally better for all. Additionally, orders sometimes (often) don't line up with relief, so having 4 means squadrons can go down to 3 sometimes and still be reasonably covered in the interim. 3 to interim 2 DHs leaves a much bigger gap to fill, especially if it's during a high op-tempo. Because of that, squadrons can wind up with DHs being rotated into MO or OPS very early in their tour, and then getting extended to cover gaps or ensure a long enough EP double-tap ticket for CO (>14 months now?), which can really burn guys out. It also doesn't give the DH as much of a chance to matriculate in Admin and Safety as they might normally have. Laugh if you will, but that time is important- I know I learned a lot in those jobs before becoming the MO. And it was still an enormous increase in duties and responsibility.
A super-JO (or several) is a band-aid that is nice to have, but isn't a replacement for a full compliment of DHs (or first tour JOs) in a single seat squadron. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be another option right now. Whether they call it "fully manned at 3" or "75%" manned for DHs, the end result is the same.
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