Depending on where you are in the college process the PLC program with the Marine Corps is a excellent option. The latest you can start the PLC process is the fall of your junior year. They will give you a aviation guarantee upfront if you pass the testing. This assures you will go to Pensacola after completing the basic school. Once in flight school as others mentioned it comes down to your flight grades. When I went through if you were above the jet cutting score you were going jets even if you wanted helos as not enough people were meeting the jet minimum.
How difficult/competitive is it to get a fighter slot in the Marine corps?
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Ventucky Red
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Warrants just say that when they don’t want to admit they didn’t get accepted into other services.Knew plenty of guys who did an inter service transfer to fly jets. Only advantages that WOFT provides is that warrants slip under the radar and don’t have nearly as much BS as RLOs. Also, unlike other services, if you play your cards right, you can do 20 years and stay in an operational flying position. The later might not even be desirable depending on the individual.
Of course the OP wouldn’t necessarily be restricted to helos either. They can get fixed wing assigned out of flight school now. He could be flying race track patterns in a King Air for hours on end...that would be a blast!
May be so, but not with the gent... Said flying choppers is all he wanted to do.. I think he told me he did 20 years Army a lot of that time was in Germany, 10 years with law enforcement, and 10 more flying charters in the NYC area.
GrummanBear
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Some flyers are just in love with their own legend. If I was a kid looking at military flying, I would want a warthog or a path to the 160th (rotary).
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Yeah he could always try and reclass later. My dad asked if I had any pull to get him into flight school. I just kinda laughed. Only someone with stars on their collar could get him in. X number of slots are allotted to USMA and ROTC each year. With probably 80 % of the pilots in the Army as WOs, just not very many positions for RLOs.
Ventucky Red
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hindsight2020
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If I had a quarter for this question being asked. My buddy Mover has made a YT cult of personality out of this question alone LOL!
Make sure you manage expectations if you go the Active Duty route. Fighters are the statistical minority of allocations. If you're not emotionally prepared to accept the statistical majority heavy (USAF) or helo (USN) allocations, whether by performance, relative grades, or plain bad timing (ask me how I know, google BRAC '05 and TAMI-21) you're setting yourself up for a lot of resentment and disappointment. Nothing worse than working with a bunch of people who resent not getting fighters. I've even had to attend funerals on account of that emotional hangup.
Make sure you manage expectations if you go the Active Duty route. Fighters are the statistical minority of allocations. If you're not emotionally prepared to accept the statistical majority heavy (USAF) or helo (USN) allocations, whether by performance, relative grades, or plain bad timing (ask me how I know, google BRAC '05 and TAMI-21) you're setting yourself up for a lot of resentment and disappointment. Nothing worse than working with a bunch of people who resent not getting fighters. I've even had to attend funerals on account of that emotional hangup.
35 AoA
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Yeah, I forgot about that option. We had a few PLC folks who would do random events with us when I was in NROTC. Seemed like a good deal for them. The "jet draft" was real in my time as well, for the Marine folks. I always just thought it was a statistical bet to throw as many candidates out there at the problem, in hopes that enough would meet the (higher) NSS cutoff for Harriers down the road in advanced. Also, the Marines have been known to dabble in "quality spread", though that might be beyond the scope of things the OP should be worried about
35 AoA
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hahaha
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I worked at a private F-5 flight training facility in Tempe Az in the mid 80's. One of the IPs had started in KC-135s during the Vietnam war and transferred to F-4s because of attrition in fighters (his story). He said if you were stupid enough to want fighters at that time, you'd get them. I'm only quoting here...
GrummanBear
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After 9/11 tried to join Marine infantry, but was rejected due to traffic tickets. Got picked up by sof in another service. Go figure. But I’d still take a well run squad of 0311s over prima donnas from Group any day of the week. Marine combat arms officers were also the best damn officers I had the pleasure to serve with.
Put another way, if you’re getting sent to Hell, you wanna go with a devil dog.
Couldn’t resist.
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He was right. Because they were losing so many fighter pilots from shoot downs, they started taking transport/ tanker guys. Heard also that many of them sucked and were in way over their heads in fighters.
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Based on comments by the other IPs, he apparently was not in over his head. Also he survived.
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I’m sure he did fine but a lot of the transfers from the MAC side had issues adapting to dynamics of tactical single pilot jet flying.
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I almost had to get a waiver for a $360 speeding ticket. Pleaded no contest and got the judge to reduce the ticket to $100...no waiver!
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I can imagine. I know all the other IPs where I was respected him a lot.
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When you apply to join the military, you will either be offered a pilot (UPT) slot or not. If you don't get a slot, you can perhaps take another career field and apply again (and again) before you age out. Later in my career I had a young lieutenant (engineer) working for me that I helped get selected for UPT. He went on to F15s out of Sheppard.
I went to OTS with a UNT (navigator) slot and got it switched over to UPT with the help of another OT that had been a SNCO in Personnel. I have WSO friends who ended up going to UPT after their first operational tour as a WSO. Full disclosure, I washed out of UPT (as did 66% of my UPT class) and ended up a WSO/EWO. I truly believe I would have aced UPT if I had gone through it as a rated WSO but such is life. I came into the Air Force with a ppl and I have to say it didn't help and probably hurt some if anything. One of my classmates was type rated in a corporate jet and he washed out before me. The military has a certain way of doing things and you have to be flexible enough to do it that way or hit the highway. My tablemate in T37s got killed in an F16 (CFIT) on his first operational tour while I was flying F111s in Europe. I often think that could have been me. Success in a career in the military depends a lot on hard work, being in the right place at the right time, and luck. Sometimes the latter two are the more important factors.
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You can have this nonsense. Knees be a shakin’ just watching it!
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John Bussard
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Just found this, haven’t been on in a while... I’m currently in the USMC on year 20, most of them as an F-18 WSO...
If you, like most, have some intangible interest in being a United States Marine, AND you love to fly, Marine Aviation is a fantastic way to go.
IF you want some guarantees about flying a particular aircraft in any branch of service, I think you need to rethink your options. You need to be prepared to accept whatever X service gives you the opportunity to fly, AND immerse yourself in it. Every platform in every service has its peculiarities, but each is demanding and demands your utmost- So that has to be the mindset going in.
The good news in the Marine Corps is that even if you don’t get your first choice, I find our service the most egalitarian- We spend more time building a community of officers first, and that builds a far less stratified culture between different communities within the Marine Corps, in my opinion. Further, any Marine assault platform is truly blessed to be able to kick out a load of true SAVAGES into a low light, brownout, LZ. Not a bad backup.
If you, like most, have some intangible interest in being a United States Marine, AND you love to fly, Marine Aviation is a fantastic way to go.
IF you want some guarantees about flying a particular aircraft in any branch of service, I think you need to rethink your options. You need to be prepared to accept whatever X service gives you the opportunity to fly, AND immerse yourself in it. Every platform in every service has its peculiarities, but each is demanding and demands your utmost- So that has to be the mindset going in.
The good news in the Marine Corps is that even if you don’t get your first choice, I find our service the most egalitarian- We spend more time building a community of officers first, and that builds a far less stratified culture between different communities within the Marine Corps, in my opinion. Further, any Marine assault platform is truly blessed to be able to kick out a load of true SAVAGES into a low light, brownout, LZ. Not a bad backup.