Contracted as NFO for OCC 209

I am now under contract for the January 2012 officer candidate course (OCC) in the Naval Flight Officer program. This post explains what that means and provides an update on my physical fitness goals.

Officer Candidate Course

Officer Candidates Course (OCC) is a 10-week commissioning program for those who already hold a bachelor's degree from an accredited institution. OCC classes are held three times a year, in fall, winter, and summer. It is one of two options at Officer Candidates School (OCS) at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Quantico, Virginia—the other option being the Platoon Leaders Course (PLC) which is a combination of two 6-week programs spread out over two summers for candidates who have not finished college. Upon successful completion of OCC, candidates are immediately offered a commission as an officer in the United States Marine Corps, while those who complete PLC must wait until they have completed their college degree.

I have completed paperwork and signed the contract for OCC 209, which is scheduled to begin on 20 January 2012.
I previously applied for OCC 208 but was not selected for it.

Naval Flight Officer

If you've ever seen the movie Top Gun, you'll know who Goose is. Goose was Maverick's NFO.

The Naval Flight Officer is a second pilot paired up with the main pilot. The NFO is still a pilot, he still has his wings, but his primary responsibility while in flight is not to fly the plane. While the pilot focuses on flying, the NFO conducts electronic warfare, operates the weapons systems, and provides an additional set of eyes for threats or targets. I have been told that if the weather is particularly bad, the NFO is responsible for flying the aircraft "by instruments." With my background in computers and my general technical savvy, the NFO role should be one that suits me very well.

For additional information on what the NFO does, plus a cool video, check out this page: MarineOfficer.com - Naval Flight Officer.

The only aircraft that have NFOs are jets: F/A-18 Hornets and EA-6B Prowlers. Of course, both of these jets should be replaced by the new F-35B Lightning II [Wikipedia link], the Joint Strike Fighter variant designed for the Marine Corps, so there's even a chance I'll end up in that airframe.

In my personal history, when I first started talking to the Marine Corps in the summer of 2008, the Officer Selection Officer (OSO) was Captain Blaine (now he is Major Blaine), and he was the one who actually suggested I consider doing NFO instead of a ground-based job. So this is something I've considered before, and it was only after my eyes were corrected to better-than-20/20 that I started thinking of doing the pilot program.

My current OSO, Captain Kline, has indicated that he believes my chances for selection are much higher with the NFO option than they are with the Pilot option. There are considerably fewer people applying to be an NFO, which works in my favor.

Contracted (Enlisted)

I have signed a conditional enlistment contract. I took the oath of enlistment, so administratively, I am now an E1 (Private), but I am not a Marine. My enlistment is conditional upon these criteria:

1. A review and certification of all documents contained within the Officer Candidate Application.
2. Being found physically qualified for enlistment as determined by the Commander, Naval Command in concurrence with the Commandant of the Marine Corps.
3. Being selected for enrollment in the subject program by the Commandant of the Marine Corps.

Should any of these criteria not be met, my enlistment contract is null and void, which is what happened when I was not selected for OCC 208 a few months ago.

While the contract specifically indicates the Commandant of the Marine Corps must approve, he has delegated responsibility of screening OCS applicants to a selection board. The selection board for OCC 209 will convene on 14 November 2011, and I should get my results soon thereafter. In order to actually get selected, I will need to continue to improve my physical fitness test score.

Enlistment Details

My contract is for 8 years, which begin once I receive orders to an NFO role. That is, no time that I spend in training will count towards my 8 years. When you consider that The Basic School (TBS) is 6 months, then flight school runs 2-3 years, and then you add on the 8 years on my contract, I'll be a Marine for about the next 11 years.

In the event that I am unable to complete my training as an NFO (for example, Major Blaine was in the pilot program, but he was unable to complete it because he was just a hair too tall and kept hitting his head on the canopy), then my contract becomes like that of a ground Marine officer, 8 years with the option to be in the Reserves instead of being active duty the entire time.

It is important to remember that before I ever considered being in the air for the Marine Corps, I wanted to be a Marine. I'd rather be a Marine officer on the ground than a pilot in another branch of the United States Armed Forces.
I had a couple people emphasize to me that I should make sure that I have dates on my contract for attending TBS, flight school, and so forth. What the contract says is "next available" for each of those.

Physical Fitness Test

The day I contracted for OCC 209, I ran a 243 PFT consisting of 100 crunches, 15 pull-ups, and a 23:15 3-mile run.

These are not good enough for me to get selected, but I have improved overall. My Officer Selection Officer emphasized that he could tell I looked stronger and that my pull-ups looked a lot better than before. I have 4 weeks to increase my pull-ups to the maximum of 20 and to get my run time down—I'd like to get about 2 minutes off that time. With 100 crunches, 20 pull-ups, and a 21:30 run time, I would score 279. The average score of those selected for OCC 208 was 278.

I have been focusing a lot on my weight training and clearly have not been running. Now that I am confident that my strength has shown improvement, I can continue to work on pull-ups while really focusing on running more. I've only gone for 2-3 runs in the past 4 weeks, so I'm not too surprised that my run time was so slow. I believe that taking two minutes off that time in the next 4 weeks (when I'll run another PFT for the purpose of getting a better score to submit) is very much doable. On my previous PFTs, my run times were under 22 minutes, so the slower time when I contracted for OCC 209 was actually the unusual one.

If you are interested, you can follow my progress on my runs by viewing my Runtastic profile. A link to this is available from every page on this blog in the Links section.