Search and Rescue for NFO's?

[hitgrndrunnin]

Hi,

I searched the forums with no luck; I have a question about NFO's and search and rescue. Are the majority of the officers in search and rescue squadrons pilots? I would imagine so just thinking that helicopters are a big deal for those types of missions. Is there any option/plane for an NFO that would allow them to have this type of job? In the Marine Corps or the Navy? Thanks.

I'm new to the military world and I'm looking for lots of advice.

 

[Uncle Fester]

By Search and Rescue squadrons, you mean helo squadrons? There are no "dedicated" SAR squadrons these days. There are some which specialize in CSAR and SpecWar support, and there are SAR Dets at a few air stations, but "Search and Rescue" isn't a career field in Naval Aviation, per se.

That being said, there are no NFOs in the helo world (I know one or two who have wrangled good deals, but it's so uncommon as to be effectively non-existant). I've heard they've occasionally kicked around the idea of replacing the AW in the 60B/F/R with an NFO, but there's no real interest in it.

On a Combat SAR where the whole air wing plays, there is NFO involvement in the form of Rhino WSOs acting as FAC(A)s, but that's about as close as you get. Generally speaking, SAR and NFO are not two acronyms you commonly see put together.

 

[HalfBreed]

If you want an idea about various jobs NFOs perform I recommend reading through some of the training pipeline summaries in the NFO forum. As Fester mentioned, SAR is a tertiary function of most aircraft NFOs fly in.