Welcome to the Weather AFSC discussion blog. The purpose of this blog is to foster discussion between future Air Force officers interested in Weather and current officers in the Weather career field. The views expressed in this blog are solely the opinions of the individual authors and not of the United States Air Force nor the Department of Defense.
As a Special Operations Weather Team OIC, when you're not deployed, you'll likely start each day off with PT from about 7am to 830am, get cleaned up, then prepare for a meteorological discussion for some location random location like Abuja, Nigeria. This will get you prepared for forecasting for challenging places, using whatever tools are available. Everyone with gather around and listen to your interpretation of the weather and how it might impact a particular SOF mission, then the NCOs will likely offer feedback. This discussion may carry through the rest of the morning, you'll go hit lunch, then come back and train on some piece of equipment or maybe head out for a jump with the Army SF guys you work with. The hours aren't too terribly demanding when you're not deployed, as pretty much everyone believes in the "work hard, play hard" mentality. When you're home, it's time to train and relax and hang with friends and family some.
When deployed however, the hours are long. As an OIC, you'll likely be working with an Army Colonel, an SF Group Commander, and you'll be his meteorological and oceanographic (METOC) expert. YOu'll brief him each day on the environmental impact of his SOF air/ground mission but your primary job will be gathering data from the battlefield, so folks have observations to work with rather than just a satellite image. That will take most of your energy. I had a 5 person team. My MSgt and myself held down the fort at the HQ and pushed three SSgts to various locations and they observed once each hour for about 16hrs each day, so that everyone knew what the current wind speed, ceiling or precipitation type was. Keeping all of their equipment up, recording and sharing that real-time data with everyone who needed it made for some very long days and nights. You'll get up early to prepare for a brief and find yourself up REAL late trying to solve some type of problem for your folks that are deployed forward, or taking part in a planning session for a mission coming up next week. It'll take all your energy and then some. Then you'll get up the next day, not knowing whether it's WED or SUN and do it all over again. You'll love it. All 5 members of my team were put in for and awarded the bronze star for the impact those forward observations had on the SOF and conventional mission during that critical time back in 2002. Hopefully that gives you a good idea what deployed life is like as an SOWT.
2 comments:
What does a typical day look like when you're not deployed as a combat weather person?
What about when you're deployed?
As a Special Operations Weather Team OIC, when you're not deployed, you'll likely start each day off with PT from about 7am to 830am, get cleaned up, then prepare for a meteorological discussion for some location random location like Abuja, Nigeria. This will get you prepared for forecasting for challenging places, using whatever tools are available. Everyone with gather around and listen to your interpretation of the weather and how it might impact a particular SOF mission, then the NCOs will likely offer feedback. This discussion may carry through the rest of the morning, you'll go hit lunch, then come back and train on some piece of equipment or maybe head out for a jump with the Army SF guys you work with. The hours aren't too terribly demanding when you're not deployed, as pretty much everyone believes in the "work hard, play hard" mentality. When you're home, it's time to train and relax and hang with friends and family some.
When deployed however, the hours are long. As an OIC, you'll likely be working with an Army Colonel, an SF Group Commander, and you'll be his meteorological and oceanographic (METOC) expert. YOu'll brief him each day on the environmental impact of his SOF air/ground mission but your primary job will be gathering data from the battlefield, so folks have observations to work with rather than just a satellite image. That will take most of your energy. I had a 5 person team. My MSgt and myself held down the fort at the HQ and pushed three SSgts to various locations and they observed once each hour for about 16hrs each day, so that everyone knew what the current wind speed, ceiling or precipitation type was. Keeping all of their equipment up, recording and sharing that real-time data with everyone who needed it made for some very long days and nights. You'll get up early to prepare for a brief and find yourself up REAL late trying to solve some type of problem for your folks that are deployed forward, or taking part in a planning session for a mission coming up next week. It'll take all your energy and then some. Then you'll get up the next day, not knowing whether it's WED or SUN and do it all over again. You'll love it. All 5 members of my team were put in for and awarded the bronze star for the impact those forward observations had on the SOF and conventional mission during that critical time back in 2002. Hopefully that gives you a good idea what deployed life is like as an SOWT.
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