Ask a Naval Aircrewman

[FlyNavy]

Originally Posted by Haasino

Looking at the current BUPERS manager pages... here's how it looks:

AWO - Open only to AWV's in YG 2006, 2008, & 2011 only.

AWF - Open to "select" E-5 and above personnel to become TACAMO Flight Engineers

AWV - Not open to any personnel

AWS - Not open to any personnel

AWR - Open to YG 2005, 2008, & 2011 personnel only.

So unfortunately it looks like AWO is still off-limits to everyone but select AWV's... you can thank the P-8 Poseidon for that. That might change in a few years though... there were about 1-3 fleet returnees per class in AW "A" School while I was there. I'm currently working with an Acoustic who was a former GM, and an EWO who was an MA.

As far as AWR goes, those guys are the other "AW's"... they work as combined Acoustic/EWO Sensor Operators for the helos doing ASW missions. They're trained as rescue swimmers... but the majority of the job is ASW, ASuW, counter-narco/piracy ops, and CSAR. The helos don't do any ISR stuff though, so you're not going to have as much of the intel work as an AWO... but you'll be closer to the action doing maritime strike stuff.

From what I've seen they can wiggle the year group requirements slightly for specific candidates. I've been avidly reading the community management slides on BUPERS though. I'm actually emailing your ECM right now haha So we'll see. AWO would be my first pick, followed by AWR (assuming the CT manning levels don't budge...Thanks NAT sailors...) so I guess we'll see when he gets back next week.