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.
Thursday, February 1, 2007
Questions
Cadets, post questions here as comments on this post that you'd like to see turn into new threads.
As a 2Lt in weather, you are going to go to an OWS, or hub. They are at Hickam AFB in Hawaii, Sembach AFB in Germany, Scott AFB in IL, Shaw AFB in SC or Barksdale AFB in LA. Elmendorf OWS in AK is being absorbed by Hickam AFB over the next year. Those first few years at a hub is where you gain valuable technical and forecasting skills. One can't apply for Special Operations Weather Team (SOWT) until you've proven yourself at an OWS. You'll need those skills when you deploy with Army Special Forces. Once you volunteer, tryout and are selected as SOWT, then that's when your career track will start to differ from that of your wx peers, who'll likely PCS to another OWS or go to a CWT (combat wx team) like at Peterson AFB or Randolph AFB and support the birds flying in or out of there.
As SOWT, you will, at a minimum, attend Airborne School at Ft Benning, survival, water survival and one or two phases of Advanced Skills Training at Hurlburt. As time goes on, you may have the opportunity to attend static line jumpmaster, HALO, scuba, advanced survival courses, etc, etc. From the point where you become fully trained, you'll concentrate on maintaining your technical and tactical skills, so that when you deploy, you can add value to the SOF mission in CENTCOM or elsewhere in the world. When deployed, you are tasked with "sensing the battlefield," most often in places that don't have indigenous observations (like Afghanistan or Iraq).
You (likely at the headquarters) and your enlisted SOWT team (forward deployed with Army SF teams) will send hourly observations back to commanders, flyers, OWSs, model ingest points, so that decision makers can decide whether to launch birds to certain locations and so that OWS can make more accurate forecasts. Without that real-time data, they don't have anything but a satellite image to forecast from.
You'll get to deploy plenty once you're all trained up. As an officer, you need to lead from the front, so you go through all the training that enlisted SOWT go through. There's always paperwork to accomplish (EPRs/OPRs/decorations/etc) but that's to be expected in every AF job. Hope that helps answer your questions.
I'm not sure of the specific rules at this time, but I majored in Geography there and then went to Texas A&M for a year to take the required courses to be a weather officer. It's called BMP or Basic Met Program and I believe they're sending everyone who qualifies (need a certain GPA) to NPS in Monterey.
This program comes and goes, depending on the needs of the Air Force at the time. As to your other question, you'll learn all you need to know about the dynamics of the atmosphere at school and then you'll go to your unit, then attend a three month Weather Officer Course at Kessler, MS, then attend ASBC (maybe not in that order) and then come back for 3-4 months of lab training and then you'll be all ready to forecast for AF assets, with the help of your NCOs and Airmen. It'll really take another 6 months to a year to get comfortable with each position... but then you'll thrive. Those first few years as an LT and early Captain are really the only ones in which officers really get to forecast, so the AF wants you to do a lot of it. Once you migrate to a back office position and take over as a flight commander, you'll do very little forecasting and a whole lot of paperwork (EPRs / OPRs / awards / decs / LORs / Memorandums of Agreements / etc). It's not bad though, it makes for some very challenging leadership opportunities trying to keep everyone motivated to do good work and to show up at shift changes on time. YOu'll get a kick out of it... it's a true leadership laboratory.
Do you have any suggestions on how to prepare or what programs to participate in for cadets looking into Combat weather? (Ex:Jump, Army Airborne, Sandhurst, etc.)
Sure, you'll want to do all that you can. Wings of Blue jump program is awesome, but totally different from Army Airborne static-line course. All you can really do to prepare for those courses like airborne is be in generally good shape and keep a positive attitude. As an officer there, you stick out. Being an AF officer at these army type schools is difficult because everything you do, or don't do, attracts extra attention. Army airborne school isn't that hard however and you shouldn't have any problems physically.
Can't really think of anything else. They'll get you all the training you need, and then some, once you get selected.
By the way, 'combat weather' has turned into sort of a general term for every wx unit on every Air Force base. 'SOWT' or Special Operations Weather Team is the term used for Special Tactics wx guys working with Army Special Forces. Sort of confusing, but important to know the difference. www.specialtactics.com has a wealth of information about CCT, CRO and SOWT preparation, employment, etc.
6 comments:
How do you get into combat weather? Is there special training that you apply for after you graduate? Do you have to choose weather, first, as a cadet?
What kinds of things do you get to do that are different from a regular weather job? & what do the regular weather people do all day?
How often do you get to deploy?
Do you get to jump in with the enlisted troops? Or is it mostly paperwork as an officer?
As a 2Lt in weather, you are going to go to an OWS, or hub. They are at Hickam AFB in Hawaii, Sembach AFB in Germany, Scott AFB in IL, Shaw AFB in SC or Barksdale AFB in LA. Elmendorf OWS in AK is being absorbed by Hickam AFB over the next year. Those first few years at a hub is where you gain valuable technical and forecasting skills. One can't apply for Special Operations Weather Team (SOWT) until you've proven yourself at an OWS. You'll need those skills when you deploy with Army Special Forces. Once you volunteer, tryout and are selected as SOWT, then that's when your career track will start to differ from that of your wx peers, who'll likely PCS to another OWS or go to a CWT (combat wx team) like at Peterson AFB or Randolph AFB and support the birds flying in or out of there.
As SOWT, you will, at a minimum, attend Airborne School at Ft Benning, survival, water survival and one or two phases of Advanced Skills Training at Hurlburt. As time goes on, you may have the opportunity to attend static line jumpmaster, HALO, scuba, advanced survival courses, etc, etc. From the point where you become fully trained, you'll concentrate on maintaining your technical and tactical skills, so that when you deploy, you can add value to the SOF mission in CENTCOM or elsewhere in the world. When deployed, you are tasked with "sensing the battlefield," most often in places that don't have indigenous observations (like Afghanistan or Iraq).
You (likely at the headquarters) and your enlisted SOWT team (forward deployed with Army SF teams) will send hourly observations back to commanders, flyers, OWSs, model ingest points, so that decision makers can decide whether to launch birds to certain locations and so that OWS can make more accurate forecasts. Without that real-time data, they don't have anything but a satellite image to forecast from.
You'll get to deploy plenty once you're all trained up. As an officer, you need to lead from the front, so you go through all the training that enlisted SOWT go through. There's always paperwork to accomplish (EPRs/OPRs/decorations/etc) but that's to be expected in every AF job. Hope that helps answer your questions.
I'm not sure of the specific rules at this time, but I majored in Geography there and then went to Texas A&M for a year to take the required courses to be a weather officer. It's called BMP or Basic Met Program and I believe they're sending everyone who qualifies (need a certain GPA) to NPS in Monterey.
This program comes and goes, depending on the needs of the Air Force at the time. As to your other question, you'll learn all you need to know about the dynamics of the atmosphere at school and then you'll go to your unit, then attend a three month Weather Officer Course at Kessler, MS, then attend ASBC (maybe not in that order) and then come back for 3-4 months of lab training and then you'll be all ready to forecast for AF assets, with the help of your NCOs and Airmen. It'll really take another 6 months to a year to get comfortable with each position... but then you'll thrive. Those first few years as an LT and early Captain are really the only ones in which officers really get to forecast, so the AF wants you to do a lot of it. Once you migrate to a back office position and take over as a flight commander, you'll do very little forecasting and a whole lot of paperwork (EPRs / OPRs / awards / decs / LORs / Memorandums of Agreements / etc). It's not bad though, it makes for some very challenging leadership opportunities trying to keep everyone motivated to do good work and to show up at shift changes on time. YOu'll get a kick out of it... it's a true leadership laboratory.
Do you have any suggestions on how to prepare or what programs to participate in for cadets looking into Combat weather? (Ex:Jump, Army Airborne, Sandhurst, etc.)
Sure, you'll want to do all that you can. Wings of Blue jump program is awesome, but totally different from Army Airborne static-line course. All you can really do to prepare for those courses like airborne is be in generally good shape and keep a positive attitude. As an officer there, you stick out. Being an AF officer at these army type schools is difficult because everything you do, or don't do, attracts extra attention. Army airborne school isn't that hard however and you shouldn't have any problems physically.
Can't really think of anything else. They'll get you all the training you need, and then some, once you get selected.
By the way, 'combat weather' has turned into sort of a general term for every wx unit on every Air Force base. 'SOWT' or Special Operations Weather Team is the term used for Special Tactics wx guys working with Army Special Forces. Sort of confusing, but important to know the difference. www.specialtactics.com has a wealth of information about CCT, CRO and SOWT preparation, employment, etc.
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