Posted on 01/14/2005 6:03:56 AM PST by pabianice
On Tuesday, January 4th, 2005, CAPT A. J. Gallardo, Jr., commanding officer, US Naval Aviation Schools Command (NASC) aboard NAS Pensacola, FL, spoke to all officers currently waiting to start flight school as pilots in what is called the "Alpha Pool" (A-pool). The purpose of his remarks were to explain the current situation regarding the extreme backlog in the student naval aviator (SNA) pipeline and what course of action will be implemented to resolve the situation. This is a brief explanation of the captain's remarks, as reported by an officer who attended.
'Obviously, the US military is a very complex entity requiring a tremendous amount of planning and forethought. Part of this planning is projecting how many people will be required to fulfill a particular job in the years ahead. In the case of naval aviators, this personnel projection window is 3-7 years based on the longest naval aviator training track, an F/A-18 Hornet strike pilot. For planning purposes, it takes a minimum of 3 years to train an OCS (Officer Candidate School) graduate to be a Hornet pilot. This is because OCS kids already have their college education's. It takes a minimum of 7 years to train Academy and ROTC kids to be a Hornet pilot, because of the 4 years spent in college. Therefore, the Navy must predict 3-7 years in advance how many pilots they are going to need. Clearly, the military is a very dynamic, ever changing organization, just like any large organization. In the 3-7 years leading up to the present time, the naval aviation community changed in ways that were not anticipated. The F-14 Tomcat and S-3 Viking platforms are retiring sooner than expected. The EA-6B Prowler community shrunk by 2 squadrons unexpectedly. The P-3 Orion's are dropping like flies because they are so old. All of these factors have resulted in more pilots than planes.
'Rather than purge trained and experienced aviators as their platforms disappear (they are transitioned into another platform when possible), it is more advantageous to purge those people who are untrained and inexperienced officers. The powers-that-be (up to the highest levels in the naval aviation community, whom I will use NASC as a simple, catch-all designator) determined that 160 student naval aviators need to be purged from the program. They did consider simply firing those individuals who scored just well enough on the ASTB (the standard aviation aptitude test) to qualify for flight training, but did not over-achieve. They decided against this because it would obviously be changing the rules mid-game and cheat individuals who were promised on good-faith a spot in flight training...
Wow. Is he saying that service indebtness incurred by educational programs is simply going to be forgiven?
English major's knead knot apply.
"English major's knead knot apply."
Get a life!
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