Naval Flight Officer
Encyclopedia : N : NA : NAV : Naval Flight Officer
A Naval Flight Officer in the United States Navy and Marine Corps is an officer rated for command in the naval aviation community. After completion of schooling, they receive the Naval Flight Officer Badge.
Like Naval Aviators, Naval Flight Officers attend Aviation Preflight Indoctorination at NAS Pensacola, Florida. They also recive basic aviation training up to, but not including, soloing in a primary trainer. They are then assigned to aircraft types based on training scores.
The next stage of training is aircraft specific, with the student Naval Flight Officers reporting to different bases for this stage. There are different schools for each aircraft type. Some of these are colocated with United States Air Force schools for the same job.
In the Fleet, Naval Flight Officers are assigned to Navy and Marine squadrons flying the F/A-18F Super Hornet, F/A-18D Hornet (Marines Only), EA-6B Prowler, E-6 Mercury, E-2C Hawkeye, C-130 Hercules, EP-3 Aries, F-14 Tomcat, and P-3 Orion. In larger aircraft, like the P-3 and C-130, the Naval Flight Officer is designated as the flight engineer or navigator, in the EA-6B, they are designated as Electronic Countermeasures Operators (ECMOs) and navigator. In the F/A-18F and F-14, the position is that of Radar Interception Officer (RIO), and the Marine F/A-18D's are called Weapons System Officers (WSOs), as well as Forward Air Controllers. In the E-2C Hawkeye, they are designated Combat Information Center Officers (CICOs).
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.