If that was meant as an insult: "epic fail".
The whole thing about a FAC tour gets us right back to the whole "rifleman and officer first" thingies. Weird, huh?
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USMC Maritime
- Thread starter DaveKell
- Start date
The whole thing about a FAC tour gets us right back to the whole "rifleman and officer first" thingies. Weird, huh?
I am pretty sure he is just needling you a bit, not trying to insult you. You almost make it too easy sometimes.
I haven't been to the rifle or pistol range since 1999, when I was at TBS.
R1, you can preach all of those motivated Marine Corps catch phrases you like but at the end of the day, for most Marine aircrew (and I suspect Navy aircrew), the ground job(s) part of being a 75xx (or 13xx for squids) suck when compared to flying. It has nothing to do with not wanting to lead Marines or doing one’s ground job(s) though.
I’d like to assume that back in your “helmet on fire” LTJG/LT days and your grouchy hinge days, you would have rather been raging around in your Phantom or Tomcat than sitting behind a desk typing up some report on your typewriter …I could be wrong though!
To stay on topic, my 2 cents: if I were getting ready to select out of Primary right now… one look at the Miramar flight line would easily sway me to put KC-130’s as my first choice. When the F-35 finally unf*cks itself, I’d put Strike as my first choice...but that’s not happening anytime soon.
What jarhead said. I won't lie, I joined the Marine Corps to fly. I wanted to fly jets for the Navy since I was about 5. When my vision started to go, I realized there was fuckall else I would want to do in the Navy (sorry SWOs) and the Marines seemed cool. Hey, we have tanks and big guns. Thankfully, PRK happened and the rest is (modern) history.
A lot of people say moto shit like "I joined because I wanted to lead Marines!" That's all well and good, but that's not often what gets guys in the door. I didn't know a thing about "leading Marines" when I was a kid or even ROTC in college; I'd never been around any. Unless you grew up around the military, you have no frame of reference. It's one of those things you are more likely to grow to love than know ahead of time. Hell, I'm still learning stuff all the time and I'm a newly-minted field grade.
Nine times out of ten, I'd rather be flying than doing my ground job though (probably 10/10, but that's largely cause I've been in Ops almost my entire career). That doesn't mean that I don't love working with the Marines. I loved my short stint in maintenance, and by far, the most rewarding thing I've done was in a grunt battalion. And while I wasn't flying, I wasn't exactly a "rifleman" (or "provisional rifle platoon commander" either) - I was a trained aviator using my aviation-specific knowledge every single day. None of that means I didn't want to be flying at the time. The two things are not mutually exclusive.
I've shot a rifle twice in my career and been to the pistol range maybe double that (expert rifle/SS pistol since that seems to matter to you). The CMC and everyone else can go all "halls of montezuma" all they want on catch phrases, but my TO weapon is an attack jet or a radio. It's what I am most trained on, what I routinely practice with, and consequently, the only thing(s) I've used repeatedly in combat.
On topic: I won't lie, I'm a bit jealous of the KC-130 lifestyle. Long distance XC's, self-deploying, per diem, autopilot, a head, microwave, ILS, etc... Heck, I've flown a -130T for a couple hours and had fun, but I'm a glutton for punishment, so I'm sticking with jets for now.
/Realist
Not to dogpile or anything, but it's the same for EVERY job in the military. Infantry guys would rather do infantry shit than sit behind a desk in the rear, tankers would rather drive tanks, arty guys would rather wake me up on the damn weekend, etc...
Saying you'd prefer to fly than do your ground job doesn't negate those two points you made...
Funny thing about that statement is that I've had 2 onwings and 3 additional Marines in my class who left the infantry to come fly and know a dozen or so others who were either infantry or did afghanistan or Iraq deployments (if they were prior) in a ground MOS who left their career fields for the opportunity to become a pilot.
