CGA First assignments?

1

#14mom

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Aug 7, 2022
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With Billets going out tonight, i was wondering how long are they at their first assignment? How long is flight school?
 
valtroid said:
Most assignments are to a Cutter as a Deck Watch Officer or Student engineer. These billets are 2 year tours.
Sector prevention assignments and CG Cyber are both 3 years long.

Flight school takes around 2 years.
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Just out of curiosity what is a “sector prevention” assignment?
 
Colorado2026 said:
Just out of curiosity what is a “sector prevention” assignment?
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They look for life jackets on boats to “prevent” disasters before they happen.

In reality they spend a bunch of time first tour studying safety policy and engineering to ensure ships are safe. Then they do vessel inspections and go home and see their family every night. It’s a cushy 8-4 type job
 
Just finished watching the live stream of Billet Night for Class of 2023.

It's possible I missed some while taking notes, but here are the numbers I wrote down:

Flight School: 23
Sectors: 5 (Mobile, New Orleans, San Francisco, Honolulu, Miami)
Marine Safety Units: 2
Cyber Command in Washington DC: 6
International Cadets returning to their home countries: 4

Everyone else on cutters.
Locations including California, New Jersey, Michigan, Oregon, Washington, South Carolina, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, and Puerto Rico.
Portsmouth, VA and Charleston, SC had the most billets assigned
 
How do they determine who gets Deck Watch Officer vs. Student Engineer? Is that based on your major? Or do the cadets pick one or the other when filling out their billet requests?
 
Colorado2026 said:
How do they determine who gets Deck Watch Officer vs. Student Engineer? Is that based on your major? Or do the cadets pick one or the other when filling out their billet requests?
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The cadets can pick either, regardless of major, as long as there are open billets. Their billet says whether they will be a Deck Watch Officer or Student Engineer, but I didn't make notes of how many there were of each.
 
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ProudMom7 said:
Just finished watching the live stream of Billet Night for Class of 2023.

It's possible I missed some while taking notes, but here are the numbers I wrote down:

Flight School: 23
Sectors: 5 (Mobile, New Orleans, San Francisco, Honolulu, Miami)
Marine Safety Units: 2
Cyber Command in Washington DC: 6
International Cadets returning to their home countries: 4

Everyone else on cutters.
Locations including California, New Jersey, Michigan, Oregon, Washington, South Carolina, Rhode Island, North Carolina, Florida, Virginia, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Alaska, Guam, and Puerto Rico.
Portsmouth, VA and Charleston, SC had the most billets assigned
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Thanks for posting @ProudMom7 , I got similar numbers while watching.

I believe the most competitive areas were: Sectors and MSU, Cyber, Ice Breakers and Hawaii this year. I also believe Student Engineer is a little more difficult to get than DWO due in part to their are fewer Student Engineer slots available.

As far as basing, the USCG seems to be clustering the National Security Cutters which take multiple Ensigns on each in Alameda, CA, Charleston, SC and Hawaii. These big cutters need a lot of dock space and supporting land operations so it makes sense to group them together on each coast.

Interesting side note: Afloat billets are for two years so the class of 2025 will be backfilling these class of 2023 billets in two years, so you can predict openings.
 
Haveaniceday said:
I also believe Student Engineer is a little more difficult to get than DWO due in part to their are fewer Student Engineer slots available.
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I wouldn't say the Student Engineering billets are always harder to get per say. There are fewer of them, but also fewer people want them!
 
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