9999

The Warrant Officers in the Army are the back bone of Army Aviation. I am not sure what you mean by the comment above, unless you are referring to the other senior RLO types sucking up more flight time than the junior RLOs? That does happen in the Army but not nearly as much as you would think. That really depends on the ability of said officers and the Warrant running flight standards/operations.

Commanders rarely try to pull stuff like this when there is a good Warrant running the flight standardization program. Why? It isn't tolerated. A good Warrant has enough pull and respect to end this type of activity when needed and we can always find an RLO on our side that outranks said offender if need be. I have had to do it. Warrants also realize that the junior RLOs are going to be the senior leaders in the future. Teach them well now and prosper later. RLO stick pigs are few and far between in the Army.

BTW, I flew helicopters 12 years and now fixed wing the last 8 years. You can do both and get enough time and education to qualify to move onto the airlines when you retire. I had my BA prior to my Army service and completed my masters while in the Army. I chose to be a Warrant because I wanted to fly and not have to deal with the administrative issues that the RLO types have to. However, it seems Warrants are becoming cheaper labor in the last 6 to 7 years and are now doing alot of the same duties as the RLO types, only with less pay. My current commander is a CW5 and he is the third CW5 commander I have had.

Our Senior Staff course class actually presented an idea for the Army to adopt a program similar to the LDO program. With the Warrants doing more staff duties, it seemed to make sense. We all thought the limiting factor would be the pay increase issue and it seems to have held true. Warrants are still recieving less pay than the RLOs but gaining much more administrative type duties than we have had to in the past. The Army is lacking in training Warrants properly for command duties as well. The process has been cumberson to say the least.

Spongebob

9999,

Was referring to stories from several friends who defected to the Navy - basically, they never got to fly enough to achieve the quals needed to move on/up. All 6 had stan CWO's who didn't like RLO's... if you were his "boy" you were good to go.

Admittedly, I'm sure that's only 50% of the story, but 6 guys from different communities is enough to know something is up.... and they all swapped teams. And this was 6-7 years ago too. I've heard this from current RLO's that the one sucky part of Army Aviation is that as an RLO you'll never be the aviation "expert"....that from RC-12 folks I know.

Sorry about the generalization, but the general opinion on the Navy side is this program is strictly a cost cutting measure and a bad deal for us.

Spongebob

9999

That is true. That is why I decided to go the Warrant Officer route instead of the RLO route when I signed on. That is how it is in the Army. I guess you could look at a Warrant in the Army being the same as an LDO in another service. Your job is to fly first, the rest is secondary....after being a soldier of course. Thanks for the clarification.

HuronIP

Unfortunately in the navy flying is a collateral duty and your ground job is your primary duty. If I understand correctly the flying CWO’s will not have ground jobs that would interfere with junior officer career progression which basically means they won’t have a ground job. With that being said they won’t have anything else to do except suck up flight time.

On another note, if the navy was concerned about saving money why are they still offering a $125,000 bonus?

HuronIP

I forgot to mention that two years ago the navy reduced the total number of pilots in P-3 squadrons from 36 to 30. I walked away from my squadron with just under 1,400 hours of P-3 flight time and 650 hours of A/C time in 39 months. Today most pilots are walking away with less than 1,000 TOTAL time and as little as 20 hours of A/C time. Those lucky enough to become squadron IP’s are the only ones getting any flight time at all.

OrionFE

That will change in a few years when MMA hits the fleet. Aviation is all about timing and luck!

Velocipede

To your two points: Collateral duty. Exactly why you need CWOs whose primary duty is to fly.

And CWOs will have ground jobs as well. There's no room on a ship for someone who doesn't multitask.

OrionFE

It will leave plenty of time for the JO's to do some serious "Brown Nosing" in order to get those all important tickets punched! That will leave the FCF's, Bounce Hops, crappy schedule to the CWO's.

ADC (Ret)

Spongebob

According to the brief BUPERS gave us, the only ship's they'll see is with HSC dets that are big enough to have LDO's to cover admin and maintenance duties. All they're being paid for is to fly. Nothing else.

Yep, we've got guys on ACTC waivers because they are not getting the flight time to make their upgrades on timeline. And they wonder why the mishap rate is going up...Less practice. E-2 guys are walking out of their first tour with about 1000 E-2 and 200 AC (PIC) if they get 2 cruises in, so they need to go instruct and build up the PIC to have a shot at the majors.
I don't think MMA is going to help...they're only buying about 1/2 the number of P-3's. But we'll see. I'm supposed to work on that program in a year or two.

The bonus is based strictly on making (bribing) the number of JO's staying past their initial commitment match the number of department head billets. FWIW they've been turning folks down for the bonus if it does not look like they'll screen (I know of 4). They were told they'll get it if do screen. Also why the won't do the lump sum, since if you don't screen you lose the rest.
The CWO program is about getting guys in the door for less money. And they will never get a bonus (per the brief).
Never doubt the ability of the Navy to put MESA to shame when it comes to pinching a penny. Unless we're talking about an Admiral and their staff.....

The good part of the program is that it will improve the promotion rates for those who stay.

Split S

It's my belief that this program will contribute to the death of the Maritime/P-3 community as a viable flying billet for JO's. For the past two department head screens, selection rate has been approximately 30% of the the screened year groups. In order to secure a DH billet you now not only need to have spotless fitreps (EP's from your very first JO fitrep) but have been lucky enough to score the perfect billets (ie rag tour etc...) Anything other than this puts you outside the screen window. Almost every P-3 pilot to take a flying shore tour that was not at the rag in the past 2-3 years has failed to make DH screen (not counting TPS billets). Flying CWO's will continue to reduce the amount of operational experience that JO's will recieve, a large portion of which is leadership of a multi-crew platform (P-3's currently have a crew of 11 - 3 pilots, 2 nfo's, 2 fe's, 5 enlisted aircrew). The tremendous MMA (737), while a great aviation opportunity is further reducing the available pilot spots within the squadrons. Do we really want to cultivate communities whose DH's, XO's and CO's are not mission/subject matter/operational experts? You want to be a CWO pilot - join the Army they have a solid program built from the ground up based on a system of CWO's. The conversion of the Navy system to a CWO program as it currently stands will cause more long term harm to the affected communities than it will good.