You make an excellent point in regards to culture.
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TH-73
- Thread starter KWpilot58
- Start date
I started drafting this several days ago but had a busy last couple of days at work.
I'm certainly painting with a broad brush here, but a general theme seems to be much less emphasis on independent thought. Asking why something is being done a certain way or digging deeper and applying a concept that isn't directly spelled out in a pub. To be fair, this can come with more experience or seniority (not necessarily the same thing). My perception is this is at the macro level and not at the "in-the-moment," in the cockpit micro level, although I've seen that happen too (but that happens in the Naval services, as well).
It also seems to help to have less middle management in the way of the path to the ultimate decision maker which helps with this. The NATOPS O can go straight to the CO. The QAO can go straight to the MO and CO. The OpsO and MO, who may not fly as much as the JOs, is still flying regularly AND has advanced quals can go straight to the CO. There's more nuance to this that I fear I'm probably not communicating effectively, but it seems to boil down to having the daily operators also being in the immediate direct chain of command.
Another major culture difference is instrument flying. I don't mean flying IFR (speaking from a helo point of view), but where being IMC daily is normal, operationally (made even more dramatic by flying over water). It's just the environment Naval services have to operate. Yes, NVGs do make it less common sometimes, but it's still very common even on NVGs.
Lastly, the Army IP culture seems to breed an adversarial instructing environment versus a collaborative one, which seems to be a common observation among many, including Army types.
Again, broad strokes and there are plenty of head scratchers in the Navy, as well. But it's what I've taken away over time.
This was a common thing when I dealt and worked with with the Army in general, and not just with aviation. An Army Colonel I worked for once asked me and another Navy guy one day "Why the hell is it when I tell Navy reservists to do something do I get told it is stupid and that it shouldn't be done that way, but when I tell my soldiers to do something they just do it?" My fellow Navy reservist in his thick Boston accent responded "Because what you tell us to do is usually stupid." He was half-joking but also half-serious, knowing what he was asking of us was stupid but that the General we worked for wanted it that way, he took it well but still made us do the work.
I can absolutely second this.
granted, my personal anecdote is almost 20 years old now, but I and several good friends were in the "Voluntold to Vance" group circa the initial purchase of AF T-6's. When three of us came back for advanced helos in whiting, the CO of HT-18 (forget his name, awesome straight shooting redheaded marine) brought us all in for a "come to jesus meeting" before we started training. He said the following almost verbatim:
"Congratulations and welcome to advanced. Almost nobody washes out of here. However, 9 out of 10 of the people that I do wash out of the HT's did their primary flight training with the Air Force"
It was an eye-opening slap to the face in the differences of how training was done, and nobody told us. A certain Marine I know (who went on to fly Cobras) showed up to his day-1 cockpit trainer and UNSAT'd it because he was unprepared. He thought it would be like day-1 of our trainers at Vance... where you showed up as a blank slate and an instructor taught you how to do the checklists. That was not the Navy way. You were expected to know your checklists and switchology down pat on that first session... nobody told us that. He got an UNSAT and then he gave me an emergency phonecall as I had my first session the next day and I also would have UNSAT'd except I had his experience to warn me.
It was a long night of studying and chair flying checklists that night to prepare for what I had originally expected would be a spoon-fed learning experience the next morning.
The AF/Army/Navy training styles, and flight styles, and squadron climates are VASTLY different and can be major mountains sometimes. When I crossed over to Airlines, I did time building with a lot of Army Warrants and the way they studied/trained/flew was totally alien to my styles. Also, it blew my mind that a 2500 hour Rotary Pilot could have never shot a single actual instrument approach before. The branches are just very different in our styles, and the product of aviator each service creates and desires.
Was it Col "Caveman" Holzworth? He was the HT-18 CO when I went through in the early aughts.
Damn, that’s a throwback. He was a sim instructor at the V-22 FRS when I was going through the CAT-I syllabus.
Great leader, and one of the funniest motherfuckers I've ever been around.?
I think it would have been Joe “Redman” Richards. He’s still kicking around, works for Leonardo.
He’s still a sim instructor on the 57 side! Everyone says you never remember the guest speaker at your winging. I do, it was Caveman ?
I received the greatest ass chewing of my career from Caveman, as a 1st LT at HT-18, and still love the dude. BTW, I deserved it.?
With the job description being “PFI” and all, one would expect you to be semi-permanently posted as stan or NI. Yet, I’m not surprised by this at all.
Indeed. That was the intent of my front office at first, but various other factors lead to me standing OPSO instead ?