I see that the HSC community has the DWA, DWB, DWC, and DWD AQDs for its various mission sets. Are these AQDs helpful in managing the human capital, or not so helpful? Do pilots have to go through special schools to earn those AQDs?
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Should I stay or should I go? Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying And Love HSC.
- Thread starter Wareal
- Start date
Does anyone even really care about ADQs on the ACDU URL side? Wasnt a thing I ever heard discussed when I was in.
It's not really like the 183x world where you just need to hit a milestone job at each rank and grab AQDs. On the AD Helo side, there isn't enough time to really care. DY1 is FRS Instructor and DY2 is Seahawk WTI, which are already "top runner" jobs you'd see reflected on the pilot's first shore tour location. The selection process for those is happening slightly before the 2.5 year mark of a 3 year JO tour and determines a lot of your career track.
You could maybe say business rules "You should have DWC for Operational DH", but by there are other things at play by then.
DWE mattered for HSC-84/85 stuff and they could discern for that on the SELRES selection boards. Unsure how much it still does.
Hey now, it's not about the size of the sub, it's all about the potency of the torpedo and motion of the ocean.
SWO community does for post-DH tours. They are used for slotting you into various specialty jobs like finance, Congressional liaisons, and various DC jobs, and even which ship you get command of. How much AQDs matter depends on the job, timing, needs of the Navy, and all the usual detailing hoopla. There are also a number of other ways to flag certain skills and experiences. For instance, because I was on a PC, I have a red flag in my record somewhere that almost assured that I would spend the rest of my career within the LCS community because I had that small boat stink on me.
What I take away from your posts is that the Navy needs to develop a longer range capability. Do I think the Navy helo bubbas can do it? I genuinely do, but not without funding and excess capacity to train. The myriad of missions HSC is trying to support (not to mention all the crap they are trying to bolt into it) means they don’t have time, money, or aircraft to get truly good at overland CSAR.
I’d hazard to guess I’ve been around a lot more Army helo dudes than you and while they aren’t as well versed in CSAR, they have a much better capability to operate in an overland environment and could easily fit an RV roll in a contingency.
I was once in your shoes and fought the fight you are in, and did it for 10 years in both active and reserves with HSC-85. It’s frustrating because of how little Big Navy cares about helos other than around the battle group, and the battle group doesn’t go overland.
One thing that I personallysaw (and I truly hope you can influence in a positive manner), is that whenever there was a joint PR/CSAR development conference, the regular HSC bubbas were never there, but someone from 85 always was. The reasons I always heard from both East and west coast HSC weapons schools was they were too busy with everything else to send someone. Now the joint CSAR TTP is out and no regular HSC bubbas had input. Sort of defines Navy CSAR in a nutshell. (I truly hope that involvement has changed since I was involved with a lot of the TTP writing).
And a point of clarity, PR =/= CSAR. CSAR is but a small subset of PR, and the joint doctrine says each service provides a PR capability, not specifically a CSAR capability.
If you have the means to do so, if you haven’t already, I recommend finding as many OPLANS, etc, as you can and read the PR sections. It’s quite enlightening on how PR/CSAR is dealt with by each service.
Believe it or not, after all of what I typed, I agree with you and I think Navy helo bubbas can 100% do CSAR. Unfortunately everything boils down to money and the opportunity cost just isn’t worth it to Big Navy.
In this forum; it's high/hot/heavy hover and landing capabilities. The rest on another medium. There is a place for the -22, just not the one stop shop.
The fact that a relevant AQD for SELRES anybody happens to be “DWE” entertains me.
I wonder if there's a GMT one too.The fact that a relevant AQD for SELRES anybody happens to be “DWE” entertains me.
Or use a knife hand and tell it to just go anywhere.CSAR asset? I'm thinking a hammock between the skids.
Semi-seriously on the JTAC of Opportunity comment too. Send the drone to within proximity, have the downed dude execute line of sight close control, hop on or in it, and hit the "Go home" button.
I thought it was five.
Do we need high/hot/heavy or is that another niche requirement driven specifically by AFG experience? Or put another way, do we need CSAR asserts to be able to get anywhere on earth or just the most likely places?
This is why CSAR will never get the attention it needs in the USN (or really anywhere). If you start stacking up the requirements of, to name a few:
-long range
-high speed
-AAR
-capable ASE
-high/hot/heavy capable
-RVL capabilities
-self defense weapons
-highly proficient crews
-resources to train in relevant environment (CVW)
-Shipboard capable
-LO
Add these all up and you get an insanely expensive aircraft with an insanely expensive operating cost for what is a arguably a suicide mission if you're talking about going behind the lines in a peer conflict. Cost aside you even have to ask yourself if you'd be able to launch a CSAR into a peer enemy during open war. There was little to no CSAR feet dry in WWII and I can't imagine it would be very different in a future peer conflict. If feet wet your requirements go down a lot.
At the end of the day there isn't a bottomless pit of money and if the choice is between a super sweet CSAR chopper or more F-35s, BlkIII Hornets, FFG(X), or SMs then I can guess who gets the mark.
And yet the AF is procuring 112 new HH-60W's that more or less fit the req's you listed - at cost of $7.9B. It has to be more than a Good Idea Fairy to get that kind of funding legs....
Chuck, no matter how much you want it, the USN isn't the USAF.
And at the end of the day the 60W is a nice 60. It's closer to what I described but I doubt it would meet a serious analysis in its ability to meet the requirements for recovering a pilot behind the lines in a peer conflict.
First - I agree we have the same frustration and are saying many of the same things. Your last line is the absolutely the bottom line when it comes to this mission and how it will be approached by the Navy. But here is the catch, as we look to FVL and how the RW side is going to change, FVL could solve a lot of these problems.
On your first point: Yes I know Navy helo dudes can do it. In many areas we are at a great disadvantage compared to RQS (HSC is multi-mission, no HAAR, no dedicated tanker, no AFTRS-R, no PJ's, LARS-650 vs DALS, etc). On the flip side being multi-mission provides an entire different set of tools to bring (weapon load outs, L16, closer integration with package assets ie. CVW, etc.). We all know a Navy RMC does not equal a Sandy 1. You can say the the same for a RQS flight lead vs a HSC PR flight lead or many other areas to include WTI's. We are apples and oranges when compared to RQS, we care about different things, train people differently, etc., but that does not mean that because there is somebody better we should drop the capability entirely. They also cannot be everywhere and history has proven as we are getting ready for the big war, something else will pop up, and the Navy could be there first.
Army - Yes a great contingency asset. Not a great dedicated asset unless you're talking about SOAR and with the deliberate planning. It's the same category I would put a regular non-CSAR trained HSC EXP squadron without AWF work-ups. They would be a contingency asset only but not dedicated. I have been around many Army guys doing CSAR in exercises or WISINT vuls so I stand by that comment. I also think we are agreeing here if we are talking about contingency operations.
TTP's - Huge problem on the Navy side. Completely agree and I believe this stems from N8 at NAWDC being understaffed and a slave to AWF (or not having the right CSAR SME). The East/West Coast Weapons Schools have no excuse if they are not providing input at the Joint level or were not included in the PR MTTP. That said, I am willing to bet they were involved even if you didn't know they were. If they weren't, flog them.
PR definition, OPLANs, experience, etc. - Aware of all of that and I've had a couple deployments as a dedicated CSAR RV... I still argue that due to the Navy overland strike mission set within the CVW, CSAR is implied part of PR in our service branch. Also it can be a fine line of saying where PR starts and CSAR begins. That is not defined to my knowledge anywhere. Not in force packaging, threat levels, ALR, etc. But for HSC leadership to say "we don't do this overland anymore" I personally believe they don't have that ability. And just to clarify, everything I'm advocating for comes from being a SME and not some random SWO giving their opinion on a Naval Aviation forum without any true concept of what PR or CSAR actually is, or what CSAR will look like in a MCO fight (oops @nittany03 I did it again
). @Pags - No my high/hot/heavy comment about the -22 was not talking about AFG but other relevant places. This is where the layered approach to PR comes into play. Different RV's for different geographic regions of a threat area, NAR, SOF, etc. All part of the process as to how we get out people back. However of note, many of those things you listed in your post are requirements in FVL...
Bottom line guys, there are plenty of places on earth where if somebody goes down, a ride out in a RV is not an option no matter what. If that's what people think I'm advocating for it's not. But yet again I will say to write off the mission set completely as too hard, too expensive, or whatever, is just ignorance to how CSAR works from the RV side within specific ALRs. At some point, it will be needed and it will be performed. Either by adequately equipped and trained crews, or by not adequately equipped and trained crews... I much rather see adequately equipped and trained crews rather than watch history repeat itself.