Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzzy2964
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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The Navy uses USNS vessels for oilers, munitions ship, hospital, and supply ships. They are manned by civilian mariners who are civil servants who follow the path you describe. Professional shiphandlers on bridge and engineers in the engineroom. I spent several months doing salvage work on the USNS Grasp to clean up an Italian harbor. There was just a handful of active duty Navy on board, everyone else was a civilian mariner. In the past, all of these ships were manned by the Navy, there's been a shift towards civilians for this kind of deep draft duty. Much of this is forward deployed so crews rotate out after 3 or so months.
I transited the Panama Canal on a USNS ship as the Repair Officer, for me it was like being on a cruise ship. I've conned carriers through the Suez Canal, that was nerve-wracking every time. The Egyptian Pilot didn't add much value unless we were in the Bitter Lake.