Piloting and family life

[JSmitty]

Hello Leatherneck, prospective marine here(dotted line remains un-signed)
I'm VERY interested in piloting as a career choice. I plan to go to college for four years and get a degree in Aerospace Engineering. I'm currently in highschool, and I am trying to maintain As and Bs. The Marines seem to be a pretty great choice for me(aside from a few catches, which I'll mention later), because they offer aviation jobs, and a four year college program.

I am willing to work as hard as it takes, and then even harder to achieve my goals. I'm not going to live my life as another peon to an office manager. I don't want to have a job, I want to have a career that says who I am. Marines have exactly that, so naturally I am drawn to the USMC.

If any of you can provide any of your knowledge or coveted veteran wisdom, I would greatly appreciate it. I have read a decent bit about the process of becoming a marine pilot, and I'm aware that I will need to become an officer, increase my physical strength(I'm a runner already, but I could use some more arm strength), and continuously maintain and create connections with other people in my community(FFA is nice for that). What can I do to increase my chances aside from getting good grades and being fit? What can I do to increase my chances of getting to fly(I'm not picky, flying anything would be great. If it had giant guns on it and I'd be responsible for saving the lives of my fellow Americans, it'd be even greater)?

And a second big paragraph for you all to get bored of halfway through: I am in a relationship. And not a highschool half-assed slightly affectionate friends with benefits deal- this is real. To avoid the mush, I will simply leave it at the fact that her and I are pretty much already married. We are separated already, and will be for another year. We have proven to be capable of facing prolonged separation and being busy. She is a chef, and will actually be benefitted by moving with me if I were a Marine and had to move periodically around the states. We will both be incredibly busy, and we are ready for that, what's important is that we get to come home to each other every night/early morning/whenever it is that our schedules line up. If any of you can tell me about managing a relationship in the corps, that would be great. Aside from the obvious, is there anything I should know about becoming a military family?

Hopefully this is all comprehensible and not excessively worded. I wrote this at night, tired; I don't have much time on my hands between school and work(nothing like being minimum wage unskilled labor, eh?) so the only time I get to ponder my future and pester those who have already experienced theirs is when I'm bleary eyed and running off of coffee.

If you waded through my swamp of barely constructive inquiries and made it to the end, thank you for reading, and for those who reply, thanks for the input.

PS: I am new to the site. So hello, and nice to meet all of you. After some lurking I got the impression that you're all a very helpful and at least somewhat approachable lot. I hope to acquire vast amounts of exasperated responses to my likely naive questions for as long as you all are willing to tolerate me. Cheers, and have a good night.

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[LCPL1341]

If the Officer Selection Officer (OCS recruiter) has flight contracts, you'll be able to secure one granted you: 1) Pass the MEPS physical 2) Pass the ASTB with a qualifying score and 3) Pass a flight physical. If you do all this, and manage to get selected for OCS, you'll be granted the opportunity to attend flight school assuming you complete your degree and complete OCS. The OSO will straight up ask "Do you want a flight or ground contract?" if he has flight contracts available. It's usually first come first serve. So things you can do now are:

1) Keep PT'ing. Take a Marine Corps PFT once a week to see where you're at, then use that baseline score to see where you need to improve. You'll need at least a 285ish PFT to be competitive for selection to OCS

2) If you're 100% sure this is what you want, and you want to get started right away, get in contact with your local OSO your freshman year of college. Make your presence known to him, let him know you're interested in OCS and ask him if he has flight contracts available. He'll schedule you to meet him and you'll go from there. PLC program is your best route through OCS.

3) Look up ASTB study guides online and start studying for that test. You'll need a certain score to qualify for a flight contract. Barron's usually has a few good ones. Check your local library as well.

4) Go to Marine OCS.com and AirWarriors.com. One is geared towards information for Marine officer hopefuls in general, the other is geared towards Naval Aviators in general (Navy and Marine pilots). Wealth of info on both those site.

5) Look up Djj34 on here and message him; he is a Marine officer and a Marine helo pilot. He's your primary source of info on Marine aviation specific knowledge on this site.

Any more questions feel free to ask.

[USMC 2571]

Speaking of djj34, some time ago he gave me permission to copy and paste his long response to someone's question about Marine aviation. So I saved it and will post it in a second for you.

[USMC 2571]

Quote Originally Posted by djj34

Long answer - a Marine is a Marine, no one really cares what you do before you earn any credibility. With respect to getting into flight school, your commissioning source doesn't really matter. The criteria you mention definitely helps getting that commission, whether it be from OCS, USNA or NROTC. By the time you've commissioned (with few exceptions) you will already have that "guarantee" to go to Pensacola. First, you will receive orders to The Basic School which is almost analogous to MCT for enlisted guys/gals. You'll go through six months of working on strengthening your leadership skills. You will qualify on the M16 and M9, read and write more orders than essays you wrote in college. You'll go over doctrine ad-nauseum, as well as tactics, techniques and procedures (TTPs) ranging from the fireteam up to leading a company sized element. That's really it in a nutshell. I'm sure this is that "other assigned position" you mentioned.

Flash forward six months and you're checking in to MATSG-21 at NAS Pensacola. If you do not already possess an FAA private pilot certificate, you'll get a class date for a screener called IFS - Introductory Flight Screening. You'll get civilian ground school shoved down your throat in a matter of 2-3 weeks, and then you'll fly 12 flights in a small single engine airplane with a civilian certified flight instructor. You'll take a checkride and complete a pattern solo in as little as 11 days. It's a good time.

The next step is to begin Aviation Preflight Indoctrination, or API. This is the beginning of your professional aviation training. It has changed since I went through in May 2013, but its mostly the same firehose course of aerodynamics, meteorology, turbine engines, basic aircraft systems, navigation, flight rules & regulations, as well as completing a mile swim for time, and doing various land and water survival requirements. Fail two tests and you can kiss aviation goodbye. It does happen, I have plenty of friends in logistics, finance, admin, comms, and maintenance... Stay in the books and give a damn, and you'll be OK.

After API you will receive orders for primary. Here there are two options. You could go up I-10 to scenic Milton, FL and fly the T-6B Texan II with VT-2, 3 or 6 out of NAS Whiting Field. Or... you can take a 750 mile drive and burn dead dinosaurs around South Texas with VT-27 or 28 at NAS Corpus Christi. You'll go through a ground school syllabus with 5 exams in 3 weeks as well as preparatory simulation rides before going to the real plane. Everything comes hot and heavy, very quickly, and you are expected to be an adult officer and know your sh*t from day one. You'll learn to fly the plane during the day. You'll learn to manhandle it up to 5g's, as well as fine tune it, through some aerobatics. You'll spend quite a bit of time doing this awesome thing called radio instrument navigation, and you'll do a few formation flights with another student 10 feet off your wing at 270mph. All in all, you'll fly about 75 hours, solo 3 times, and learn more than you thought you could. Your confidence as a professional should skyrocket. It's a good time.

At the end of primary you will put our four advanced pipelines in an order of preference. I requested Multiengine, Tiltrotor, Rotary, Strike, in that order. I got Tiltrotor. I won't go into super detail on the advanced phases because that's so far away, and some things are changing soon.

Tiltrotor - you'll go to South Whiting and get some helicopter action. Once again, quick, hot and heavy. Then you'll go to Corpus Christi and learn how to fly a bigger plane with two engines and more complicated systems. You'll learn to fly it, land it, and be safe with an engine out. You'll get really good at using a co pilot. Then you'll move on to the MV-22B Osprey with duty locations at MCAS Miramar, Camp Pendleton, MCAS New River and MCAS Futenma.

Maritime - you'll pack your bags (or stay) and head to Corpus Christi and do the exact same stuff I said above, just without the sexy helicopter stuff, and a smaller, less-powered aircraft. Mission is the same. You'll move on to the KC-130J Hercules with duty locations at MCAS Miramar, MCAS Cherry Point and MCAS Iwakuni. These are very rare and very coveted.

Rotary - helicopter action at South Whiting! Lots of it. Lots of emergencies. Lots of navigation. Lots of studying. Flying a very fun aircraft for 6-8 months and moving on to the AH-1W/Z, UH-1Y, or CH-53E is a hardly a bad deal. Locations include MCAS Kaneohe, MCAS Miramar, Camp Pendleton, MCAS New River and MCAS Cherry Point.

Strike - not really sure what these guys do much of other than look pretty. Joking aside, they go through a very long, very intense syllabus which has you landing on an aircraft carrier as its pinnacle. Over 100 flights and many of them are solo. My two best friends are in this track and they're working their butts off. They describe it as having an instructor in the plane only to make sure the plane doesn't dig nose first into the dirt. Very single pilot minded, jet pilots have to be self reliant. They can select the F/A-18A/C/D, the AV-8B and beginning this summer, the F-35B. Locations include MCAS Iwakuni, MCAS Miramar, MCAS Yuma, MCAS Cherry Point and MCAS Beaufort.

I know that was WAY more than you asked for, but I figure I could put the info down on here since pilot training info is severely lacking on here, and what is on here, is pretty outdated. Maybe now it can be a reference.





Quote Originally Posted by UMDStudent24


I will give some info about the strike pipeline and the F/A-18 specifically, since that was my route.

Strike is very much built to be single piloted. You have, I think about 125 syllabus flights in the T-45C and about 40 of them are solo. That doesn't seem like a lot of solos, but in the aviation community at that point, it is a ton. You have 3 solos in Primary in around 50 flights.

In the Hornet FRS you have about 86 syllabus flights and 62 of them are solo (and only about 4 of the dual flights actually require another pilot in the jet. The rest can be a WSO configured jet with a WSO in the back. I.e., only the front seat can actually fly.) Once you get to the Hornet, the assumption is that after your first 4 or 5 flights, you will forever and ever afterward be the only pilot on board, so you better be able to fly the damn thing. Additionally, flying the Hornet is easier than the T-45C and pretty easy in general. It is doing everything else in the Hornet that is difficult.

Strike seems tough when you go through it, but looking back, it was incredibly easy in scope. You get introduced to a lot of difficult concepts and difficult things to do in formation, but it is all watered down. The entire syllabus really is just exposure. You will have a blast if you go through it. Landing on a carrier makes you feel awesome, orange and white jet or not. You'll have done something that very few others have done. The first time you do section engaged maneuvering you'll think that you're as cool as the dudes on Top Gun. (Even though the entire flight is scripted, and the bandit follows scripted moves, haha.)

It is a lot of work and takes a very long time to get through. You also owe the Marine Corps a very very very long portion of your life so keep that in mind. The contract for fixed wing pilots is 8 years from the date of your winging. I was in the Marine Corps for 3 years and 11 months when I winged. So, essentially, the Marine Corps will own me for at least 12 years before I get the opportunity to make a choice for myself again.

[USMC 2571]

Notice that UMDStudent24 had his own post in there at the end. But PM both of them for tremendous and current insight into Marine Corps aviation.