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Just a silly quick Q


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It was my experience as an operator in a VP squadron, that actually, the more you flew the bird, the less maintenance issues you tended to have. When we'd go on det and fly the crap out of one or two birds, they seemed had fewer problems than the birds back at home base that may sit for 4 or 5 days between flights.

True for all the military aircraft I worked on (Hercs, Twin Otters, Kiowa, Griffon, Twin Huey, and Hornet). They sit they break.

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Concur with Kolja about the #'s being the biggest issue. In each air wing there are 4 Hornet CO's and one each of Prowlers, Hawkeyes and Helos (becoming 2). "Racial" segregation eliminates the helo guys (there's no good reason they couldn't be CAG - it's supposed to be a leadership position!). In my experience, the numbers seem to track close to that ratio.

To me, it's interesting that in Prowlers and E-2's there seem to be more pilots who make CAG than NFO's...pilots from those to communities are probably the LEAST "qualified" to be a CAG if you use the fighter mafia excuse for why they should have exclusive hold of it.

-But-

the going theory, since CAG and Carrier CO are mutually exclusive (and count the same career wise - they both lead about 2500 folks), that if you're smart enough to make it through Nuke Power school, you go CVN CO, if not then to the CAG track. That would explain the low numbers of VAW/VAQ NFO's as CAGs - despite Kolja's act here they are probably the smartest group in Naval Aviation as a whole.

Helo bubbas tend to go off into the amphibious (LHA/D, Phibron) world for their major command tours, with the exception of a couple HS guys going CVN CO. However, the first helo CVN CO (a great dude incidentally) had his midwatch OOD and EOOW (two SWO's') back over their shotgun cruiser and that hurt the helo guys as a community.

HTH

Spongebob

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