Posted by
Stefano on Thursday, September 04, 2008 2:02:09 AM
Of course he does, and I'm not talking about his time in Congress. I'm talking about his time in the Navy. Every Naval Aviator has a job during his career other than his flying job. It may be an administrative job or an executive job. Even junior officers have a "ground job" in things like maintenance shops, scheduling, administrative duties, weapons delivery training, survival training, etc. As a Naval officer, McCain experienced all of these types of jobs and was evaluated periodically through fitness reports throughout his career. After many years of leadership and "executive" evaluation if you perform at a high enough standard you may be assigned to a command position.
The most obvious executive job is titled "Executive Officer". That job is the second in command job in a Navy unit. McCain was the Executive Officer of VA-174 in 1975. He was promoted to Commanding Officer of the squadron in July of 1976. The squadron was responsible for training all the replacement pilots and enlisted maintenance personnel who served in the Atlantic Fleet Light Attack Squadrons. It was the largest aviation squadron in the Navy. We're not talking about a few airplanes and pilots sitting next to a shack on an airfield here. This was a job managing hundreds of millions of dollars in hard assets and hundreds of officers and enlisted personnel. Every single pilot flying an attack aircraft in the Atlantic Fleet was trained to specific standards of performance and safety by this squadron. All maintenance personnel were also trained to exacting standards. Commander McCain was in charge of all of these activities and was fully responsible for the results.
Executive experience? Yes, for 22 years in his Navy career. Tell me about the "executive" experience of the other party's ticket.
ZERO !
VA-174
Commanding one of the RAG squadrons (Replacement Air Group...old nick name) is a big deal. They usually have 4-5 times the number of aircraft that a regular squadron has. There are instructor pilots, pilots transitioning from one aircraft type to another, student pilots fresh from getting their wings, maintenance officers and chiefs, regular maintenance folks, enlisted maintenance instructors, enlisted maintenance trainees, and all of the administrative folks. These squadrons can have birds and personnel all over the place, on training flights, on carrier qualification dets, on det at a bombing range, at an airshow or two. With all of the trainees, there are more mistakes and possibly more accidents. It takes a really good officer to handle that command.
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