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Making Decision for BDCP Application

Töadlove

Töadlove

New Member
Good morning, gents. I'm a 27 year old prior-service Marine working on my BDCP application for NFO right now. I'm in my sophomore year of electrical engineering. Naval Aviation has been my passion since I was a kid. Top Gun and all. Did 5 years active in the HMLA community, got my CDI, came back to the Reserves for 2 years pretty much for fun because I liked avionics that much. I've been pretty set on doing NFO for awhile now, my dream is to wind up in the VAQ community. I intend to retire from the Navy, regardless of what platform or community I wind up in though.

I know this question has been asked ad-nauseam but I'm having a tough time deciding between SNA and SNFO. I want to be an NFO for all the "right" reasons- I'm really into the idea of being a systems operator or "mission specialist" if you will on fixed-wing. I've never really been dead-set on the stick-and-throttle side of things (not that I don't think it'd be fkn cool). This is my biggest dilemma- and I know I'm placing the cart miles before the horse here but I'm very turned on to the idea of potentially winding up full-time in the Reserves (FTS??) or switching over to Guard/AFRC at some point near the end of my time in the service. It's my understanding from reading up around here that flying Reserve NFO billets are few and far between, meanwhile a pilot can go fly C-40s in a VR at some point if they want. Another factor influencing my decision here is that straight-up, I don't want to end up with helos. Been in a helo community for 7 years, I would really like to wind up in fixed wing and with NFO I don't need to worry about that. Unfortunately as a BDCP applicant, I can only apply to one designator- I can't do the tried and true "apply to both, take whatever they give you" approach like a standard OCS or NROTC applicant.

My TLDR here is I'm curious as to how much flexibility there is for NFOs to transition over to Reserves vs that of a pilot at say, post-1st Shore Tour. Thanks, y'all.
 
Töadlove said:
Good morning, gents. I'm a 27 year old prior-service Marine working on my BDCP application for NFO right now. I'm in my sophomore year of electrical engineering. Naval Aviation has been my passion since I was a kid. Top Gun and all. Did 5 years active in the HMLA community, got my CDI, came back to the Reserves for 2 years pretty much for fun because I liked avionics that much. I've been pretty set on doing NFO for awhile now, my dream is to wind up in the VAQ community. I intend to retire from the Navy, regardless of what platform or community I wind up in though.

I know this question has been asked ad-nauseam but I'm having a tough time deciding between SNA and SNFO. I want to be an NFO for all the "right" reasons- I'm really into the idea of being a systems operator or "mission specialist" if you will on fixed-wing. I've never really been dead-set on the stick-and-throttle side of things (not that I don't think it'd be fkn cool). This is my biggest dilemma- and I know I'm placing the cart miles before the horse here but I'm very turned on to the idea of potentially winding up full-time in the Reserves (FTS??) or switching over to Guard/AFRC at some point near the end of my time in the service. It's my understanding from reading up around here that flying Reserve NFO billets are few and far between, meanwhile a pilot can go fly C-40s in a VR at some point if they want. Another factor influencing my decision here is that straight-up, I don't want to end up with helos. Been in a helo community for 7 years, I would really like to wind up in fixed wing and with NFO I don't need to worry about that. Unfortunately as a BDCP applicant, I can only apply to one designator- I can't do the tried and true "apply to both, take whatever they give you" approach like a standard OCS or NROTC applicant.

My TLDR here is I'm curious as to how much flexibility there is for NFOs to transition over to Reserves vs that of a pilot at say, post-1st Shore Tour. Thanks, y'all.
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Two things you are a bit confused on:

1. Full Time Support/Training for Active Reservist. While it is part of the Reserve Component, FTS/TAR is almost like you are active duty.

2. In order to go FTS/TAR, you need to resign your commission and hope you get picked up for FTS/TAR after you’ve completed your Minimum Service Requirement (MSR) for winging [6 years for NFO; 8 years for Naval Aviator]. Depending on timing, both MSRs will most likely take you into your 2nd Sea Tour.
 
Töadlove said:
switching over to Guard/AFRC
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Just a heads up on this, there is a major push within the ANG/AFRC to recruit more people without a lot of time in service.

By the time you're shopping around for ANG units you'll have about 21 years of service (I'm still assuming BDCP counts towards good years of service for points) of which 17 years are active. That's 7 active prior service years, 4 reserve years in BDCP, and 10ish active years for your ADSC depending on how long it takes you to get through flight school- take two off if you stay an NFO) You'll already be eligible to retire the moment you swear in. It will be very tough to find a unit willing to send you to training and put you on orders in hopes of MAYBE getting one mobilization out of you before you have enough points to retire with an AD pension.

If you want to go Guard/Reserve you need to do it now.
 
ea6bflyr said:
Two things you are a bit confused on:

1. Full Time Support/Training for Active Reservist. While it is part of the Reserve Component, FTS/TAR is almost like you are active duty.

2. In order to go FTS/TAR, you need to resign your commission and hope you get picked up for FTS/TAR after you’ve completed your Minimum Service Requirement (MSR) for winging [6 years for NFO; 8 years for Naval Aviator]. Depending on timing, both MSRs will most likely take you into your 2nd Sea Tour.
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Okay so it looks like FTS is the equivalent of what we call Active Reserves on the green side. There were a couple of old-timer Majors in my Reserve squadron doing that as OpsO and Maintenance Officer and it seemed like a pretty sweet deal for them. Is it difficult to stay flying as an FTS NFO?
 
Swanee said:
Just a heads up on this, there is a major push within the ANG/AFRC to recruit more people without a lot of time in service.

By the time you're shopping around for ANG units you'll have about 21 years of service (I'm still assuming BDCP counts towards good years of service for points) of which 17 years are active. That's 7 active prior service years, 4 reserve years in BDCP, and 10ish active years for your ADSC depending on how long it takes you to get through flight school- take two off if you stay an NFO) You'll already be eligible to retire the moment you swear in. It will be very tough to find a unit willing to send you to training and put you on orders in hopes of MAYBE getting one mobilization out of you before you have enough points to retire with an AD pension.

If you want to go Guard/Reserve you need to do it now.
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Yeah I figured it would be more difficult once I'm that far in and that much older. Thank you for the insight.
 
I would also keep in mind that historically TAR hasn't been very friendly to prior-enlisted guys with a lot of time on the books. These things come in cycles and I'll defer to the current TAR guys, but in the past if you're getting anywhere near the 17 year mark during your DH tour, TAR would just exclude you from eligibility.

If you want to be a NFO, then go for NFO. If you want to be a pilot, be a pilot. I would offer that if there's any community out there that ISN'T NFO-like, it would be VR.

Meanwhile, you can do a lot of very NFO things as a pilot. For VFA, you're literally doing the same job as the NFO (plus flying). If you go helos, there will be many days in the HSM world where most of your day in the cockpit will be spent doing NFO-like jobs (managing sensors and information).

(Also, the Navy helo world is not like the Marine helo world...especially HMLA, for better or worse. Probably both).

All that said, I don't really see you excited about being a pilot, just about the idea of staying in the cockpit. If I'm reading that wrong, fair enough, but if that statement rings true, then maybe NFO is your jam.
 
Gatordev said:
Meanwhile, you can do a lot of very NFO things as a pilot. For VFA, you're literally doing the same job as the NFO (plus flying). If you go helos, there will be many days in the HSM world where most of your day in the cockpit will be spent doing NFO-like jobs (managing sensors and information).
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I'm going to hijack my own thread here, would you care to "sell" me on HSM? For me personally that would be my preferred helo community if that's what wound up happening (as an SNA). I'm into the whole sensor operation stuff and the Romeo seems to have that in spades with the radar and ESM suite.
Gatordev said:
All that said, I don't really see you excited about being a pilot, just about the idea of staying in the cockpit. If I'm reading that wrong, fair enough, but if that statement rings true, then maybe NFO is your jam.
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You aren't wrong at all, I'd say I'm just most interested in being part of the tactical and weapons employment operations of this business of ours. Whether it's with a stick and throttle in the front or an HCU in the back doesn't matter to me too much, although the communities I find the most interesting do seem to be more NFO-centric like VP and VAQ. If Toadlove could snap his fingers to make fantasy into reality, it would be to be an EWO. I know I'm sorta going all over the place here.
 
Töadlove said:
If Toadlove could snap his fingers to make fantasy into reality, it would be to be an EWO
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It sounds like that's your answer. You could have VP as your backup/#2 plan.

Töadlove said:
I'm going to hijack my own thread here, would you care to "sell" me on HSM?
Click to expand...

I didn't deploy with HSM, just HSL, but I did transition to the Romeo and flew them for a bunch of years. There's several here that post regularly that were operational with HSM and can give you some good perspective (@IKE et al).

That said from a sensor point of view, the fundamentals are the same as HSL, just with a lot more capability. Day to day, you're going to be an ISR platform, integrating your EW, radar, and MTS. You'll be ID'ing targets and interfacing with whomever is controlling you to provide the information gathered, both via link and voice. You'll also be expected to control other assets like other helos and have them go do your busy work for you.

You'll also expected to be able to conduct ASW. This is half of the CAT 1 syllabus, so there's a lot to learn. It might seem kind of slow and boring, but it can actually be pretty interesting as you get good at it.

Some days you'll be mostly the pilot, some days you may be mostly the ATO, but in Romeo you can switch back and forth on the fly if you want.

This is a very basic, LVL 100 view of the community, but it gives you a general idea.
 
Gatordev said:
I didn't deploy with HSM, just HSL, but I did transition to the Romeo and flew them for a bunch of years. There's several here that post regularly that were operational with HSM and can give you some good perspective (@IKE et al).

That said from a sensor point of view, the fundamentals are the same as HSL, just with a lot more capability. Day to day, you're going to be an ISR platform, integrating your EW, radar, and MTS. You'll be ID'ing targets and interfacing with whomever is controlling you to provide the information gathered, both via link and voice. You'll also be expected to control other assets like other helos and have them go do your busy work for you.

You'll also expected to be able to conduct ASW. This is half of the CAT 1 syllabus, so there's a lot to learn. It might seem kind of slow and boring, but it can actually be pretty interesting as you get good at it.

Some days you'll be mostly the pilot, some days you may be mostly the ATO, but in Romeo you can switch back and forth on the fly if you want.

This is a very basic, LVL 100 view of the community, but it gives you a general idea.
Click to expand...
That pretty much covers it. I could give more details, but I'm an old man now--7 years away from an HSM squadron and 9 years since my last deployment.
@Meyerkord , maybe?

I loved both the dual-piloted and pilots-doing-NFO-things aspects of HSM. Unless you're lazy, you're training every flight. Two pilots can smack talk each other into being better stick monkeys, and whenever you're not at the stick, you can get better at the buttonology...or button-ism.

There is more than enough room and need in HSM for people to nerd out on ESM and fusing that with radar/AIS. Acoustics are also interesting. And, now that it's in the public news...Seahawks are in for a service life modernization that will bring a new cockpit and, I believe, new sensors around 2030-31. Could be an exciting time for anyone in a WTI/FRS gig, or especially a TPS grad.
 
IKE said:
Seahawks are in for a service life modernization that will bring a new cockpit and, I believe, new sensors around 2030-31.
Click to expand...

Any chance of a link? I remember the subject of SLEP/SLAP coming up initially at the NARG ~10 years ago.
 
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