Branching Aviation New Commitment

A

Army Al

Member
Joined
Dec 19, 2019
Messages
77
As of FY 2021 (1 Oct 20), upon graduation of Army IERW/IEFW the ADSO commitment is 10 years. This has been in the works for several years now. Finally coming to fruition on 3 Jun 20 by the Secretary of the Army (Ryan D. McCarthy). If you add on the commitment for BRADSO of 3 years, your total active duty time is between 14 and 15 years. That's if you get selected for Major.

Welcome to the recent change for class 2020 and beyond. Previously the ADSO was 6 years upon graduation from IERW/IEFW.
 
Last edited:
For above comment - Six years for rotary. Eights years for fixed wing.

it’s interesting they went to a straight ten year ADSO for all. It brings us into line with the other services, but the original discussion had been eight for rotary and ten for fixed wing. I’ll be interested to see how they manage WO age requirements. Our WOs typically start flight school at a later age than RLOs coming straight from their commissioning source. I get wanting to keep them around so they can’t just bounce to retirement as a CW2, but it would seem that this could end up barring some of the experience our WO corps that’s unique to army aviation from big army
 
It has always been 6 years for IERW since the early 1990s, just a small point. The Army lowered the max TIS to 8 years for WOFT applicants a few years ago without a waiver. So now the prior Enlisted must do at least 11.5 years and advance to the grade of W3. 10 years is a good rate of return for the experience needed in being a pilot. The increase in commitment shouldn't have an affect on non prior service WOFT applicants applying. If it does, just increase the number of career NCOs for WOFT. They are waiting in the wings so to speak in becoming an Officer and the EXTRA pay.
 
Could someone please explain this in regular English? Maybe the acronyms plus how this affects someone that just graduated and branched aviation in class of 2020 without Bradso vs someone that would like to branch aviation and may have to bradso in class of 2022?
Thanks
 
Agree with DDmom. IERW/IEFW/WOFT/RLO, huh?????????

But one question - did 2020 know about this change before they selected Aviation?
 
FY - Fiscal Year 1 Oct to 30 Sep, not 1 Jan to 31 Dec (FY 2020 starts 1 Oct 2019 ends 30 Sep 2020)
IERW- Initial Entry Rotary Wing (helicopter flight training)
IEFW - Initial Entry Fixed Wing (airplane flight training)
ADSO - Active Duty Service Obligation (in years)
RLO - Officer between the rank of 2Lt and General
WO - Warrant Officer
CW2 - Chief Warrant Officer 2 (there are 5 Warrant Officer Grades)
WOFT - Warrant Officer Flight Training
TIS - Time in Service (in years)
NCOs - Enlisted rank between E-5 thru E-9, E-4 depending on the career field
BRADSO - Branch Active Duty Service Obligation

As the new regulation reads, in the best case scenario, if ENTERING flight training BEFORE 1 Oct 2020, 6 year obligation UPON graduation. Flight training last approximately 1.5 years. Add 3 additional years if you select BRADSO. Worse case scenario, if you graduate from flight training after 30 Sep 20, the commitment is 10 years plus 3 years for BRADSO. The other military services obligations are between 10-11.5 years for flight training. The Army is now on par with the other services. Hopefully this is helpful.
 
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
 
jl123 said:
But one question - did 2020 know about this change before they selected Aviation?
Click to expand...

There were rumors to expect it to increase but based on what I’ve seen on some other forums, no, they were not told and there hasn’t been guidance yet of whether they are grandfathered in to the six year ADSO
 
Casey

Stand corrected. I assume for ROTC full scholarship graduates, it's 4 years plus 3 for BRADSO. If that is the case perhaps BRADSO will no longer be an option for branching aviation. 11+ years is enough.
 
Last edited:
Army Al said:
Casey

Stand corrected. I assume for ROTC full scholarship graduates, it's 4 years plus 3 for BRADSO. If that is the case perhaps BRADSO will no longer be an option for branching aviation. 11+ years is enough.
Click to expand...

No worries, but yes ROTC would be four year AD commitment plus the three BRADSO, assuming a four year ROTC scholarship.

I don’t know if it’s something that has been thought through yet on second order effects, but I’m sure the leadership will address it once we see what this does for retention. Demand for accession has never been the issue for Army AV. We will always have enough people willing to go to flight school with or without a BRADSO option.

It’s been a struggle to make through put to keep up with the losses of our experience that the branch has been struggling hard with in recent years. A CW2 straight from flight school can’t replace the role of a senior CW2 or CW3 at the company level. Only time gets you that aviation experience. We’ve been bleeding experience faster than we can make it. A ten year ADSO means that WOs will be committed to basically making CW3 and tracking before they can go do something else. On the RLO side, it will also mean the O4 population should get healthier which is also a huge struggle right now. In a decade of course when this actually starts to have an impact...we’re still going to have a number of year groups under strength for a while, mine included but I guess it’s good job security?
 
Casey, this may take place on 1 Oct 20. It's been in the works for at least a year now. Upon graduating from WOFT, Warrant Officer's date of rank will be readjusted to their date of graduation. They will have almost 2 years as a W1 in the gaining unit.

Being a RLO, do you feel the Lt date of rank should be readjusted after completing flight school as well? More time as a Plt Ldr as a Lt.

Aviation Branch continues in making major changes.
1) Max 8 yrs TIS for WOFT Applicants (Done in 2018)
2) 10 yr IERW/IEFW obligation (3 Jun 2020 approved by Sec of the Army)
3) Readjusting the date of rank for WO and possibly Lts (Very near future)
 
Tracking the DOR adjustment for WO1 and 2LT discussion that comes with it. My comment above was just referencing my last company experience. MG Francis brought this up a couple times when I was at Rucker recently. When it finally happens, it’ll be nice, because much like you have no idea of whether an O3 is a senior or junior CPT, and the expectations for performance go higher versus a LT, that’s what a CW2, the bulk of our company grade WOs, should also fall into. Instead of having to rush to track, they can focus on mastering the airframe and be the SMEs we expect of a WO.

In regards to looking at LTs and applying a similar logic, I’m torn. We already have compensated on the AV side of the house by normalizing PL time bleeding over into your junior O3 time to give time for junior RLOs at the company to make a chance to make PC prior to CCC and command that I think compensates for this, and ultimately, we aren’t paying AV officers to be PCs. We’re paying them to be commanders and staff officers. I’m not taking away from them needing to be good pilots. I made PC/AMC as a LT, and I think it was extremely important to my development as an officer but it wasn’t the end all be all of my job.

There’s also too much variation between airframes right now due to how thru put through flight school has had its issues the last couple years that’s caused a lot of variation in the strength of each airframe at the company level. When there’s a backlog at flight school like there was through ARI’s early years, black hawk pilots are cheaper and faster to make so you’ll see an overpopulation in that community for a very long time to come versus apaches that have had a huge struggle to produce the bare minimum the community needs.

What that means is that AH guys will typically see much longer time as PLs than UH pilots. Giving them more time as 2LTs won’t fix this. It’ll just mean that maybe instead of moving black hawk guys around at 3-6 months like in some CABs, they might get a full year which would be beneficial, but you’re still going to need to fill all the other slots in the ARB/HARS communities that should go to an AH LT normally that black hawk pilots are filling right now (i.e. maintenance or distro PL slots) that I would expect to still end up being black hawk pilots and just keep them out of their airframe longer. Diversification is great because the Army doesn’t care at a certain point what your airframe is, and odds as an O4 you’ll serve as an S3/XO of a different missions set than what you grew up in to make you well rounded, but it takes away from your ability to know your aircraft and base mission set in your formative years.

There’s work being done to fix some of these imbalances at Rucker that will hopefully take affect 4-5 years down the road but by then, army AV will also have hopefully completed its transition to the new CAB model and be 5 years out from integrating new airframes all which are going to continue to make Army AV an interesting place to be for a long while.



My fix for the LT thing, not that it will ever happen, would be model the MEDEVAC setup. Make LTs section leaders, CPTs PLs, and COs MAJs. It fixes the timing to allow commanders to build experience in a progression that’s not at the expense of the WO community, LTs don’t have to learn a new job while they’re still just figuring out an airframe, gives PLs time to build experience that they should have credibility with their WOs, and when you combine this with a 10 year ADSO, you should end up with enough RLOs to fill the spots. I would also imagine it would increase job satisfaction in the RLO world and stop branch having to invent new reasons to not let people revert.

At the very least, if we can’t do the above, let’s normalize having XOs at the flight company. It’s already a common practice, gives the commander someone to look after property versus the random CW2 that may or may not care, and creates extra slots to keep LTs at the company longer. Yes, a 40 man company doesn’t need an XO per se, but it has more benefits than not and is an easy fix.
 
Last edited:
You have to weigh the pros and cons of the 10 year aviation ADSO. On one hand, you will get to be a pilot. On the other hand, you will be required to spend a full decade as a POG. Being a POG will reflect very poorly on you in your future career, as the USMA grad networking system is exclusively for infantrymen. POGs are deferred to the SUNY grad networking program, as they have not met the USMA requirements for serving their country.
 
2LT Barry Mccoconer said:
You have to weigh the pros and cons of the 10 year aviation ADSO. On one hand, you will get to be a pilot. On the other hand, you will be required to spend a full decade as a POG. Being a POG will reflect very poorly on you in your future career, as the USMA grad networking system is exclusively for infantrymen. POGs are deferred to the SUNY grad networking program, as they have not met the USMA requirements for serving their country.
Click to expand...

L...O...L.....You're joking, right buddy?
:popcorn1:
 
Hurricane12 said:
L...O...L.....You're joking, right buddy?
:popcorn1:
Click to expand...
No, I am not joking. Infantryman do not joke. Our job is far to serious for such things, and we have been forged to survive in the heat of combat. Because you are a USNA grad, I implore you to vacate this thread, as you status as a POG is detrimental to the serious and scholarly tone of this discussion.
 
I looked at your other posts, enjoy bringing some levity here.
I've heard ground Marines make (in full seriousness) similar statements about POG pilots so was susceptible.

More relevant to the discussion, I got to admit I am endlessly confused by Army aviation and @Casey's posts are interesting to me.
Does the change now state that the ADSO is on commissioning, not graduation from flight training? What happens to the commitment of guys who drop out? What's the benefit there, does it ultimately end up being operational longer in big Army? If it's a post winging commitment, where do people end up at the end of that commitment now versus the old way in the standard career path (saw the post above about WOs tracking which I'm slightly familiar with)?
 
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.
 
A quick shout out to you all!!!

I'm an AF pilot....fixed-wing (there was that one time with the UH-1...but you do NOT want to hear about that) so the army RW world is foreign to me. This discussion has been very enlightening and done well by all!!!

Thank you!

Steve
USAFA ALO
USAFA '83
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top