My comments were in comparing commercial sailors/pilots to military sailors/pilots. The point being that the commercial side is virtually always sailing/flying, while military officers are often not sailing/flying during the course of a normal career. Certainly spending too much time away from your community will hurt you in promoting. So, I agree with your comments OldPotatoe. It is a delicate balance to spend enough time flying, while still getting to the Pentagon, be on a staff, pick up a Masters Degree, etc and do all of those things our commercial counterparts don’t necessarily have to do.
But, I’m sure that all of us who have had the honor to serve our country in the US Navy gladly took on those non flying/non sailing assignments, so that we could get back to the fun stuff of operating at sea.
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Originally Posted by bigbill
Operations Department had P3 pilots doing sea tours. Part of the path was to qualify OOD on a carrier and I always felt lucky to get them on my bridge team to train. They didn't like ship driving but understood if they ever wanted to be an Operations Officer or break out against their peers for promotion, they needed that OOD letter. Squadron XO/CO's would come up and I'd let them drive to see if carrier CO/XO was something they wanted.
I used to teach nuclear power and I would get assigned to a Commander who was completing their nuclear training before heading to a carrier for their XO tour. All carriers are nuclear and the CO and XO have to be carrier aviators and graduates of nuclear power school. I was a personal instructor so they could complete their training quickly. IME, the fighter pilots (Tomcats, prior Crusaders) had a harder time with the nuclear training. Maybe it was their previous training pipeline. When I was on the TR, the CO flew (Hornets) a few times a week and even flew a strike over Afghanistan in late 2001.
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