Couple questions I thought of after reading the overrun in Miami thread.
First: What is the upgrade process for crewed airplanes in the military? Based on rank? Time/experience? Ass kissing?
How do you log time as the FO in military ops - SIC, or do you log PIC for your legs?
The main question: can you describe what CRM, if any, the military teaches and how that compares to the airlines. With civil aviation there have been instances of FO's reluctant to call out a Captain for job reasons - does rank in the military act as a suppression mechanism against speaking up (thinking about that B-52 crash practicing for the airshow)?
Anyway, things I thought would be interesting.
Who cares about crewed airplanes? Single seat fighter/attack is the only way to go.
But to answer your question, it depends. For the USAF, if one is a first-assignment from pilot training person to a multi-pilot crewed airplane (as opposed to a crewed airplane with a pilot and a non-pilot such as a Navigator rated WSO or EWO), such as a tanker/transport/bomber, you start as a co-pilot (SIC) and your flight time doing that is logged as such. At a minimum hours threshold and with the recommendation of unit Instructor Pilots, you can be selected for upgrade to Aircraft Commander / PIC, and you’d go back to the central schoolhouse for that airframe to do that, as it’s not a local upgrade (unlike in fighter jets).
There are a few exceptions. Pilots who got a first assignment Instructor Pilot selection upon graduation from pilot training, known as a FAIP in the USAF and a SERGRAD in the USN, where they stayed at pilot training to be a UPT instructor pilot; those pilots upon completion of their three year tour doing that, and if they got a follow-on assignment to a tanker/transport/bomber, would be brought in as an AC to those airframes. They would fly as a co-pilot for a short while, but much like a Direct Entry Capt at a regional, they would very quickly move to the left seat once they learned the operation.
Mil pilots log flight time just as anyone else does, with a couple of differences. In a crew aircraft, they log their time by position: AC (PIC), Co-pilot (SIC), and if it’s a augmented crew for extended range or duty time operations, there is what is called “Other” flight time, for the time when you are aboard as an assigned flight crewmember, but not performing AC or Co duties. Other flight time is a mil thing only, and has no civilian equivalent to it for logging purposes, just as enlisted non-flight deck flying positions and officer non-pilot and non-Nav/NFO flight positions, are logged as mil flight time but have no civilian equivalent. For enlisted this would be positions such as gunner or loadmaster, and for officers this would be positions such as AWACS controller officer, etc. Enlisted flight deck and officer flight deck positions, such as Flight Engineer and Navigator positions, do have FAA recognition under 14 CFR 63.
Rank generally doesn’t have a place in affecting CRM, not like it may have before; and it’s not uncommon to see a higher ranking person flying as SIC or whatnot, depending if training or especially in the case of if there was someone who was already a mil officer doing some non-pilot job, got accepted to pilot training, and went to pilot training later in their career….known as “late rated”. Those guys show up as a higher rank to their unit, but are still brand new pilots starting in the co-pilot / SIC position and undergo the normal progression. Of course, being late rated kind of sucks career wise in terms of peers of the same rank, but not in any huge way.
Rank wise, the US Army has dealt with this for a very long time, as they use Warrant Officer pilots as their primary flyers. A Warrant Officer is essentially an E-5 with an Officer’s Club card, who wears a bar with squares and whose job is to be an expert in a particular field, such as piloting in the case of the US Army. Warrants aren’t leadership track persons, though they can hold some leadership jobs in some cases. In the Army, commissioned officers such as Lieutenant’s and above, are expected to hold the unit command and leadership positions, and hence even if they are aviators, flying isn’t their primary duty. You will see many Army units where the Warrants are the senior PICs and IPs, and commissioned officers are usually only up to PIC, but can become IPs, though again that isn’t their primary duty. It’s even more rare to find a Standards Instuctor or Examiner who is a commissioned officer and not a Warrant, but the Army is kind of an outlier in how they run their aviation world, as they are sort of a bunch of infantry dudes/dudettes who just happen to be at 100 AGL.
The B-52 crash in 1994 performing for the airshow, is a special case, as everyone onboard that jet was a senior officer, three LtCol’s and a full Colonel.
