Branching Aviation New Commitment

[Army Al]

Carey

For the flight students who Commissioned or received their Warrant in FY 2020 or earlier will fall under the old ADSO of 6 years upon graduation. 10 years upon completion if Commissioned/Warrant in FY2021.

 

[Casey]

Carey

For the flight students who Commissioned or received their Warrant in FY 2020 or earlier will fall under the old ADSO of 6 years upon graduation. 10 years upon completion if Commissioned/Warrant in FY2021.

I saw discussion some other places that clarified it the same which is awesome. Not a good way to start a career with a bad taste in your mouth if they had gone a different way with it.

Also I realize I’ve been using the terms RLO and WO a lot. From context, I hope it makes sense but RLO is slang for our O-grade/commissioned types as technically a CW2 and higher is a commissioned officer as well. RLO stands for regular line officer or real life officer depending on who you talk to

 

[Hurricane12]

Casey thanks for the response, makes sense to me. It also seems like that if you're just trying to fill seats with asses, ensuring WOs have to stick around a little longer seems reasonable. Out of curiosity, would part of the genesis for this be longer timelines for commissioning to wings for pilots? My understanding is your guy's flight school moves a little faster so total TIS with the new regs would be 11-12 years?

For perspective, for us (RW specifically), the commitment varies between 6-8 years based on projected manning requirements. 6 years puts guys at 8-9 years TIS (senior Capt), 8 years at 10-11 (junior Major or passed Capt). Since our commitment starts at wings, guys sometimes get into weird spots if they get hurt in flight school/experience delays or something where they check into the fleet as Captains which is doubly wild since typically we don't pin on Capt until the 4.5-5 year mark. If a guy fails out of flight school, he'll get reassigned to another MOS but only serves out the remainder of the commitment he owes from his commissioning source.
The advantage for the longer commitment is filling numerous non-line squadron billets that require aviators (Air Officers at infantry units, flight school IP, etc). Since rotor pilots spend 4+ years in the squadron (I'll likely be over 6 but that's unusual), that realistically gets you a guy through a full fleet tour and then a full staff/B-Billet on his initial time. With a 6 year guy, he often has too little time post his first squadron to PCS.

The RLO vs. WO thing is still interesting to me though I think structurally it wouldn't gain any traction in the USMC.

I apologise for the total threadjack, this is just interesting to me

 

[Casey]

I think you're right that the initial difference between our ADSO and other branches probably did have something to do with our flight school length as well as the fact that we used to pull folks with quite a bit of enlisted time over to be WO's before we started restricting TIS requirements. A 10 year ADSO on a guy that already is a senior E6/E7 probably didn't make a lot of sense at the time as well.

In regards to our flight school length, the AF and Navy actually won't recognize our flight school as a valid flight school for earning wings if we try to branch transfer as part of it which I do find amusing. Plus if anything, they're finding more and more ways to cut hours out of flight school, and there have been huge efforts to reduce the "bubbles" to get aviators out of flight school. To put it into perspective, I lucked out and made it through flight school in just about 19 months while most of my peers at the time spent closer to 24-28 months, particularly if they were Apache pilots. For someone to show up to their unit as a 2LT was basically like a unicorn for a little while. When it started happening as I was leaving my last assignment, it was a sign that they've definitely made progress. I think if/when they finally make the move to "freeze" 2LT/WO1 rank essentially during flight school that you don't start building TIG until you have your wings, it'll have with timelines more so on that part.

Some of this also though has been at the expense of training that we expect our units to cover down on. We already only get about half the flight hours from talking to my friends during flight school. I showed up to my unit with somewhere just over 150 hours. That was with doing the UH-72 track where I got goggle time folks in the legacy TH-67/OH-58 track didn't and doing the full UH-60A/M track (walked away with quals in both the UH-60A/L and UH-60M straight from flight school versus having to get one at the unit) which was another extra 30-40 hours. I had cats showing up to my last unit that had just over 120 hours that had just earned their wings. Big difference in control touch for those newer pilots initially.



And I definitely appreciate the history and culture of our WO corps even if they are like herding cats. Historically, it was one of the original way the Army found to say screw it to the Air Force when they separated from the Army Air Corps and Congress limited the number of officer billets we were allowed to have in Army Aviation. Warrants didn't count so the Army could make a bunch of them and increase the number of pilots they had without the Air Force being able to complain. The way we got the Cobra is another fun story as well that similarly worked out like that haha. It has its pros and cons. Now WOs just tend to be cheaper than paying a RLO to do the same job so I don't think we'll see it going away anytime soon.

 

[joestonehenge]

Carey

For the flight students who Commissioned or received their Warrant in FY 2020 or earlier will fall under the old ADSO of 6 years upon graduation. 10 years upon completion if Commissioned/Warrant in FY2021.

This applies to me. Is there a source for this? I commissioned in May, so I hope you're right!

 

[UHBlackhawk]

My branch is weird. I love helicopters but there are some days when I wonder why I turned down USAFA...

The memo when I read it makes it sound like the commitment begins upon completion or termination of flight training so no, it doesn’t start counting down once you commission. I imagine that’s to account for differences in lengths of time from graduation/commissioning and actual AD activation dates to start flight school among commissioning sources but yes, sounds like if you drop, you still owe the time. I’m curious how other services handle the flight school commitment? Is it only if you graduate flight school?

Six year ADSO after completing flight school for RLOs put you post command and prior to your first look for O4. Issue there they’ve found is people don’t want to be a MAJ and have been peacing out, leaving our O4 population unhealthy leading to increased KD time requirements. It evens out at O5/O6 but not fun for the O4s not that I think that rank would be fun even under good conditions. Ten year ADSO will get you to your second look for MAJ.

For WOs, prior to reducing the max TIS as mentioned above, you would see folks coming over and making senior CW2/junior CW3 and being able to retire based on prior enlisted time. Ideally, a WO will have made PC, spent a year or two as an untracked PC in a company gaining experience as a line pilot, and then track as a mid CW2. This gives them time as a CW2 to then learn their specialization at the company level. When they promote to CW3 is when they can then start to serve in staff roles based on their track, but for the most part, will still stay at the company building experience.
Right now, their timeline is too compressed to allow this to happen in a lot of cases, and we don’t have the pilots to let people sit in one place and just build experience.

As a result, we’re promoting folks to CW3 without a track (and in some cases without ever having made PC). When a commander looks to the CW3 for the field grade experience they’re expecting for advice, it isn’t necessarily happening, but since they’ve promoted, they’re in the window they can make sanctuary to stick around until retirement.

Increasing to a ten year ADSO for the WOs means that we’re going to get a better return on investment and build them time to build experience. Couple that with adjusting their rank to not allow promotion to CW2 until after flight school also will definitely help with this.

Most of the fixes in the branch right now are focused on the WO population, not RLO population. RLOs are just going to feel the impacts and we’ll see what second and third order effects happen down the road. I just picked up a new ADSO for some training I’m in so I’m sure I’ll be around to see some it.

I can see this. I punched out just after pinning on O-4 and being offered a staff job in either Bosnia or Korea. My choice. I was a Reserve Officer on Active Duty, so I took the RFRAD (Release From Active Duty) instead of the RA oath. Two weeks later they called offering me FW to Australia if I stayed. It was tempting...
At about the same time frame, 4 other senior O-3s left active duty from the same BN, and this was the 160th. Two went to the Coast Guard, one left the Army to attend grad school, one other joined me at the airlines. Another reverted to WO, but stayed in the BN.

 

[Army Al]

I can see this. I punched out just after pinning on O-4 and being offered a staff job in either Bosnia or Korea. My choice. I was a Reserve Officer on Active Duty, so I took the RFRAD (Release From Active Duty) instead of the RA oath. Two weeks later they called offering me FW to Australia if I stayed. It was tempting...
At about the same time frame, 4 other senior O-3s left active duty from the same BN, and this was the 160th. Two went to the Coast Guard, one left the Army to attend grad school, one other joined me at the airlines. Another reverted to WO, but stayed in the BN.

Were you flying fixed wing upon separating?

 

[UHBlackhawk]

Were you flying fixed wing upon separating?

Yes. But I did not fly fixed-wing in the Army. All my FW training was on the side while I was active duty.

 

[toomuchtimeonmyhands]

BRADSO should run concurrent as it’s part of the commissioning ADSO. It’s not added to the flight school ADSO so a three year BRADSO added to the five year ADSO from USMA comes out to 8 years total for anyone who takes a BRADSO for any branch out of the Academy. It’ll run out before this 10 year ADSO for flight school specific completion

@Casey When does your service obligation end? I have a lot of friends (both BRADSO and not BRADSO) who graduated from 2017-2020 and we all have conflicting information on when our service obligation actually begins and ends. If you have any references, that would be much appreciated. Thanks!

 

[Casey]

@Casey When does your service obligation end? I have a lot of friends (both BRADSO and not BRADSO) who graduated from 2017-2020 and we all have conflicting information on when our service obligation actually begins and ends. If you have any references, that would be much appreciated. Thanks!

I’ve picked up a new ADSO for some additional training so the Army owns me until 2024 right now, but to get at what you’re asking, flight school ADSO is calculated from graduation of flight school, not commissioning date which is where most of the confusion comes from because the branch managers don’t always update your ORB to reflect that accurately. Non BRADSO, flight school commitment will be the driving ADSO for calculating date. Add six years to whatever month and year you graduated flight school and that’s when you should be complete based on the year groups you’re talking. If you didn’t finish flight school for whatever reason, it’s six years from the month you terminated training.

For the folks with BRADSO, it being the additional three year obligation from commissioning, it’ll be the driving factor since commissioning and flight school are served concurrently. Add eight years from when you started AD (same as commissioning date if you’re West Point...slightly more complicated if you’re ROTC) and that should get you to where you’re complete with your ADSO (assuming eight years total ADSO from West Point. ROTC would be slightly different)

References to check would be your orders to flight school and contract for BRADSO. It’ll tell you when commitments start and end