My future hangs in the balance

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SupraDerk

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So as some of you know, I'm in ROTC (college ROTC), and I graduate and commisison in mid December. Well usually in the last semester of your 3rd year in the program, you fill out your job dream sheet. Which if you couldn't guess is a sheet of preferences you want for a job. This is the norm... unless you're a 5 year (ie. engineering...), then you fill it out a year after everyone else. All last year I made fun of my friends who had to play the "hurry up and wait" game, ESPECIALLY the ones that were going for Pilot, Navigator and ABM.

All these guys did (well the pilot and nav wannabe guys) was hang around a couple of the commissioning source forums and contemplate whether or not they were going to get their precious rated slot calculating all kinds of scores, coming up with theoretical rankings formulas and in general, just going crazy. It was sad and I laughed ...a lot!

I guess I should give a little background on these 3 jobs. You have to have a package submitted on yourself from the Detachment commander, and then you compete against everyone commissioning with you in that same fiscal year for the available slots during "Big Week"...you know the time the scores go in and you know the time the announcement will be made of who got what (if anything :( ).

WELL...tomorrow officially marks the 1 month countdown til these scores come out... and yours truly is turning into that guy in the 2nd paragraph that I laughed at last year, hehe. I'm going for navigator, and I have a feeling this is going to be one of the longest months of my life. :aigo: Haha, this is probably a pointless thread, but I'm going NUTS!! I can't tell you how many times I've watched Top Gun and Behind Enemy Lines this weekend, hehe...

BAH!! Ah well, it's my turn to "hurry up and wait"... hopefully in a month I can report back with some good news :biglaugh:
 
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SupraDerk

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Found out last night...





































p546531_1.jpg


WOOT!!! Got my baby wings!! :)
 
Clip

Clip

The Magnificent Seven
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congratulations! and im still waiting for you to finish that fiberglass writeup :D
 
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SupraDerk

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Thanks guys! I was floored, this has seriously been like one of the only things in life (well maybe one of two things, the other being the supra!) that I've REALLY wanted, my heads been in the clouds all day


Clip said:
congratulations! and im still waiting for you to finish that fiberglass writeup :D
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Haha, yeah I ended up getting it done, but my freaking harddrive died so I lost all the pictures. But this summer I've got some more fiberglass stuff planned :naughty:
 
jdub

jdub

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Congrats Derk - Do well in Nav School so you can get to F-15E WSO and blow things up ;)
 
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SupraDerk

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Thanks! I'd LOVE to get WSO, haha blowin stuff up has a nice ring to it. I heard from a couple of different people now that said that if you're an F-15E WSO, that you get quite a bit of stick time, do you know how true that is?
 
jdub

jdub

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Yep! Knew quite a few F-15E guys out at Luke when the RTU was there. The idea is if the pilot is incapacitated, the WSO can get the plane on the ground. It might not be pretty, but a heck of a lot better than the silk let down ;)
 
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SupraDerk

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jdub said:
Yep! Knew quite a few F-15E guys out at Luke when the RTU was there. The idea is if the pilot is incapacitated, the WSO can get the plane on the ground. It might not be pretty, but a heck of a lot better than the silk let down ;)
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That's awesome! This job is getting better and better, haha.

So here's another question for ya (haha, sorry to keep bugging you about this), but one of my friends catergorized last year and he was picked up as a "Nav." I got picked up as a "CSO."

He said one of his buddies that's in Nav school now said CSOs and Navs will be different and I did some snooping around on some other forums and found out that CSOs get trained in Nav (panel nav stuff), EWO and WSO stuff, so do you think that means I could end up almost anywhere? Have you heard anything about the switch?
 
jdub

jdub

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Enlighten me...I have not heard of a dual track for Navs. Is "CSO" Combat Systems Officer?
 
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SupraDerk

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HellsLegion said:
Congrats dude.
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Thanks man!


jdub said:
Enlighten me...I have not heard of a dual track for Navs. Is "CSO" Combat Systems Officer?
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Yep, Combat Systems Officer. I still don't know what separates the two, I asked my friend again and he swears he is categorized as "Nav"...but the impression that I got from some info on Randolph's website was that CSO is the new Nav except CSO's will be trained on more systems than traditional Nav. But the CSO program started in 1994 so I would've thought that every new Nav since then would really be a CSO. I don't know, I'm gonna talk to my commander about it later this week to see if he can clarify some stuff.

But there's another board in September to determine Strike Navs, kind of like how ENJPT people are selected and one site said this is how CSO's are split up, BUT another site said that CSO's are supposed to be trained in Nav, EWO and WSO stuff all together around this or next fiscal year. The first link below says that they wanted to have it all in Pensacola, and the guy who's at Nav school now (the friend's friend), said that all the new CSO's would be going to Pensacola from now on...so I'm just a whole lot of confused now, haha :aigo:

I think it's a lot of I heard from a friend of a friend of a friend type stuff


Article from 2005

and...

af website said:
In addition to pilot training, Nineteenth Air Force provides Combat Systems Officer (CSO) training. CSO training is conducted at Randolph AFB and NAS Pensacola, Fla. These courses provide training for Air Force and Navy student navigators. CSO training combines portions of navigator and electronic warfare training to produce an aviator skilled in advanced navigation systems, electronic warfare and weapons employment. The new training flow, implemented in 2004, gives aviators a cross-flow capability between the two positions on combat aircraft.

Students at Randolph are trained in one of two broad tracks of training. Those completing the Advanced CSO -- Navigation track fly in the T-43A and move to follow-on assignments as navigators in the B-52 Stratofortress, KC/RC-135 Stratotanker, E-3 Sentry (AWACS), E-8C Joint Surveillance Target Attack Radar System (JSTARS) and all C-130 variants. Students completing the Advanced CSO -- Electronic Warfare track complete training in the T-43A and track to follow-on assignments as Electronic Warfare Officers in the B-52, RC-135 and EC/MC/AC-130.

Students at NAS Pensacola, Fla., complete primary and intermediate training in the T-6A and T-1 aircraft. These students then enter one of two tracks. Students in the strike track will serve as weapon systems officers in the B-1B Lancer. WSOs assigned to the B-1B attend Electronic Warfare Upgrade training at Randolph. Students in the strike/fighter track receive follow-on assignments to the F-15E Strike Eagle as weapon systems officers and attend additional training in the Introduction to Fighter Fundamentals course.
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http://www.af.mil/factsheets/factsheet.asp?fsID=138
 
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