Bandit_Driver
Gold Member
it is movember
Video: F-14 vs Mig dogfight
- Thread starter JeppUpdater
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ryan1234
Desensitized Member
For the AF, the "odds" of you going into specific seats are made by your commissioning source, timing/needs of the AF, and how your packet looks. My OTS board had 9 pilot slots out of 62 "rated" slots. Rated means that you're going to fly as an officer as an A) Pilot B) Combat Systems Officer C) Air Battle Manager D) Remote Piloted Aircraft Pilot. Our overall OTS rated board had 1200 applicants for 62 slots. One of the dudes that got a pilot slot in my OTS flight actually had a PhD in Astrophysics and had been researching in anti-matter propulsion for quite some time... great guy actually. He ended up going to C-17s and just spoke at WIRED in London on the future of Anti-Matter propulsion as he has a company that is developing it.
Anyways... the other commissioning sources (i.e. Academy and ROTC) are much, much, much easier to get a pilot slot... as the AF prioritizes those commissioning sources. OTS fills the voids depending on rated officer production.
If you do get selected for Combat Systems Officer school (after various TDYs) you go through a year long "flight school" where you fly the T-6 from the backseat and then the T-1 from the right seat as well as some sim for nerdy stuff like Electronic Attack and old school Radar Navigation. Right prior to graduation, you then get your aircraft assignment based on your standing in the class and needs of the Air Force. Each class has about 20-23 people.. and there are about 2-3 F-15E slots to be a Weapon System Officer (WSO). You could get selected to do less interesting stuff such as AWACS, JSTAR, or some other fatty aircraft that has a microwave, bathroom and 69 other people on board.
If you do go to the F-15E, you'll then go to a wash out program called "Introduction to Fighter Fundamentals" where you integrate into the fighter community. At IFF you leave the dreaded "CSO" title behind and become a "WSO". IFF is an amazing time and you learn the social aspect of fighter culture as well as the very basics of starting to "tactically" employ the T-38 in BFM (Basic Fighter Maneuvers...i.e. dogfighting) and Surface Attack (Range work / Bomb Patterns). You go through IFF with pilots that are going to fly fighters as well and it lasts about 3-4 months. You then go to the F-15E Basic Course (B-course) for Initial Qualification where you "crew" up with a pilot and then go through a 9 month program to learn to fly the F-15E tactically. Only the first couple rides are for learning the jet, the rest of the rides are how to use the jet as a weapon system. You then get your base assignment for your operational squadron. You then go to your ops squadron and go through Mission Qualification (MQ) where you complete 10-15 rides learning how to fly the F-15E on an operational level. All in all... from commissioning to MQ completion is about 3 years for a pilot or a WSO.
Mine was 3 pilot slots out of 74 total candidates, the rest being non-rated. Managed to get a slot with a non-tech degree and a 2.6 GPA. And still flew the 117. The other two guys, who finished #1 and #2 at OTS (I was #72), both washed out of Sheppard.
That's what I hear.....the CSO term being hated, hence my using the classic nomenclature. There were no so-called D-track people at LIFT/IFF when I was there.
Lawman
Well-Known Member
Might be a community to community thing
I know the U-28 guys I worked with were beside themselves to make sure they included their title "Siso" in everything.
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I think you're right. You'd think there'd be pride in the individual specialties for those who love the CSO term, but maybe not?
ryan1234
Desensitized Member
It seemed like every class at Pensacola had someone that had washed out of pilot training. Prior to going to Combined Undergraduate Navigator Training, there was talk about "swapping" at IFS (Introductory Flight Screening... which I believe has changed names). Since pilots and CSOs go to IFS before they start their respective flight school (although the rules changed now based on prior civilian flight experience), some of the staff wanted to push CSO candidates that did really well into pilot slots of pilot candidates that washed out.
We had a strange group of people where a lot of the CSO candidates had a lot of civilian flight time (some corporate, charter, airline) and the pilot candidates had nearly no civilian time. There were 2 pilots candidates that washed out and one that SIE'd (Self Initiated Elimination) from my flight of about 25 people (mixed CSOs and Pilots) at IFS. The one who SIEd was from an ROTC commissioning source and originally wanted to go to public affairs, her commander convinced her to put pilot first because she had good grades, etc. She had one flight (having never flown before) and then decided she hated flying, she was reassigned to intel. From the remaining 22 people in my graduating flight at IFS... 3 more pilot candidates washed out in T-6s, and one more washed out in T-1s. 4 CSOs washed out of CSO school (One went to be a maintenance officer and the rest separated). So all in all, 15 out of 25 people ended up getting winged. Interestingly, of those 15 that graduated... 10 of them went on to fly fighters (as a WSO or pilot).
@MikeD we also found that performance at OTS was inversely proportional to performance at UPT/UCT. OTS was a strange place, we had a TSgt Combat Controller in our class going back through to be a Guard pilot who spent most of his enlisted time downrange getting shot at... he was paper disciplined in OTS twice for "failure to adapt to a military lifestyle"
Hacker15e
Who am I? Where are my pants?
<snicker>
TUCKnTRUCK
That guy
Having absolutely no idea how it "works" and knowing that yoke mounted switches tend to fail, if almost wonder if the back sweat switches were installed as a "back up" if the pilots release failed.