Selection

[Blutonski816]

Top Gun selection is done at the end of your JO sea duty tour in your F/A-18 or F-35 squadron.

wow... looks like milky's being mindful of the future...

back on topic... so from what you're saying, patch-wearers don't do the whole "Go back to the fleet and disseminate what I learned to my squadron bubbas" thing??

I was under the impression that the idea of an SFTI was to make sure fleet aircrews had the latest tactics, not just for guys headed straight for Weapons school, VX & RAG shore tours...
(just thinking out loud here) *shrug*

 

[TrickyFish]

Top Gun selection is done at the end of your JO sea duty tour in your F/A-18 or F-35 squadron.

Regarding this, I am under the impression that this is also the best time to apply for Test Pilot School. I would hope that it's possible to do both, so how is this typically done? Which comes first? Not to sound overambitious, but rather curious, what about the timing of applying for Blue Angels as well?

Also, neptunuslex is an excellent blog to which I am very much addicted.

 

[milky-f18]

wow... looks like milky's being mindful of the future...


back on topic... so from what you're saying, patch-wearers don't do the whole "Go back to the fleet and disseminate what I learned to my squadron bubbas" thing??

I was under the impression that the idea of an SFTI was to make sure fleet aircrews had the latest tactics, not just for guys headed straight for Weapons school, VX & RAG shore tours...
(just thinking out loud here) *shrug*

Well, I included the F-35s since they are on the plan to actually be stood up by 2015. So, the guy who asked the question could actually be flying JSF as his first airplane.

The patch-wearers DO as you say with going back to the fleet and making them smarter. The timeline is as follows:

Go to Top Gun at the start of your JO shore tour.
Go to a shore duty that takes patch guys like I mentioned before (N7, weapons school, etc.)
After your shore duty, you are required to do a 'Training Officer' tour which is usually about 18-24 months in a fleet squadron.

So, that Training O tour is where they are the Tactics SME for their squadron. Before that, they spend time at a weapons school or ast a Top Gun instructor developing/diseminating tactics along with other jobs...

 

[FrankTheTank]

If you do go and screw up just this much... do you end up flying a cargo plane full of rubber dog shit out of Hong Kong?

Hey... I fly rubber dog shit... Oh and definately not a Top Gun grad... Barely a college grad.. Private school will take and keep anyone!

...That might not be so bad, I hear cargo pilots are actually paid pretty good.

Yes... True.. Except for some of those shit wages/work rule ACMI carriers.