Study: Create TACP officer career field
Permanent nonrated corps would boost morale, expertise, report finds
By Michael Hoffman - Staff writer
Posted : Sunday Nov 30, 2008 10:57:52 EST
Senior Airman Joshua Lockwood just shook his head when a congressional staffer asked him last March if he considered becoming an officer.

Lockwood, named one of the top three tactical air control party airmen in 2007, explained that he loved his job too much, and becoming an officer meant he could no longer be a TACP.

A TACP career field doesn’t exist for nonrated officers in the active-duty Air Force. Instead, the service depends on rated officers to serve two-year tours as air liaison officers and lead the enlisted TACP members.

That could soon change.

A Rand Corp. report sponsored by the Air Force and published in November recommends that the service “establish a nonrated ALO career field” as it would “improve its capability” to perform “the air-ground support mission.”

This report follows two others done by Capt. John Olivero in 1998 and Maj. Mark Wisher in 2004 that also concluded a nonrated officer career field was needed.

The Air Force already has an 18-year test case inside its own service. The Air National Guard has filled its ALO billets with nonrated officers since 1989.

Lt. Col. William Wheeler, the 168th Air Support Operations Squadron commander, who has been an ALO for 18 years without ever flying a plane, said he is proof it doesn’t take a rated officer to succeed as an ALO.

Wheeler said the Guard benefits from having a nonrated officer corps because they have much less turnover and therefore more continuity to build up expertise within the career field.

“We do not have to reinvent the wheel every two years,” he said.

Wheeler, along with other sources for this story, said the decision has already been made to create the career field and now it’s just a matter of time. But Air Force public affairs officials said a final decision hasn’t been made.

Public affairs officials chose not to make any current active-duty air liaison officers or joint terminal attack controllers available to speak for this story since no official decision was made.

OFFICERS, ENLISTEDS AGREE
As they walked around the U.S. Capitol before a ceremony in their honor last March, all three airmen named 2007’s top TACP members said they wished a TACP officer career field existed. So did the senior NCOs walking with them.

“Why wouldn’t you want to be led by an officer who has been doing this for longer than two years and knows what you’re really going through?” said Staff Sgt. Dan Strom, a JTAC with the 5th ASOS.

The Rand report found “TACP enlisted personnel overwhelmingly agree that a nonrated ALO career field will provide greater leadership and morale for the TACP force.”

Lots of officers agree.

Olivero’s report found only 28 percent of surveyed air liaisons felt their position needed to be done by a rated officer, and only 11 percent thought their experience inside a cockpit providing close-air support was essential. Of the 299 Army and Air Force personnel surveyed, 70 percent said it would be “beneficial to both services to have a nonrated ALO career field.”

Wisher, who served as an ALO from 2002 to 2004, deploying twice in 2003, said he felt a nonrated officer could perform his job just as well.

“Any revolutionary idea the Air Force does requires an officer to champion that idea,” he said. “Right now, they lack someone.”

The current ALO system requires an officer to spend almost half his ALO assignment in training. Plus, the two-year limit causes a high turnover rate.

ALOs assigned to a one-year remote tour to South Korea barely finish training before they return to the cockpit, Wisher said.

Returning a pilot to his cockpit after an ALO tour is also costing the Air Force. It costs roughly $700,000 to send an F-15 pilot through a requalification course, according to the Rand report.

The Air Force could benefit from having to fill fewer billets for rated officers, too, especially with the high demand for unmanned aerial vehicle pilots right now. It’s projected that the manning rate for ALOs will drop from 83 percent to 59 percent in October.

Wisher’s research also found many of the ALOs were not happy to be out of the cockpit and serving their two years. “The majority of ALOs are, and will continue to be, nonvolunteers (in the truest sense) — unless a nonrated ALO position is developed,” according to Wisher’s report.

Second Lt. Dan Curtin, a former enlisted JTAC who was recently commissioned and now serves as an ALO with the 169th ASOS, said he saw firsthand how rated officers he trained with didn’t want to be there.

“Of the 12 people I trained with, three were bitter right from the start,” he said. “That’s not fair to the JTACs out there.”

RATED OFFICERS INCLUDED
The Rand report explains not only why a career field is needed, but how it could look.

Thomas Manacapilli and Steve Burhow, who wrote the report, recommend a career force should not completely leave out rated officers, but incorporate them into a larger nonrated officer corps.

The nonrated corps would be supplemented by rated majors and above to ensure pilots from Air Force strike units continue to work with Army ground units, according to the report.

Rand recommends second lieutenants be brought directly into the career field after their commission; other models have suggested new nonrated officers attain the rank of captain before training to become ALOs.

Since ALO positions are presently restricted to captain billets, Rand recommends the lieutenants be placed in the “captain billets, preferably in the air support operations center.”

Wisher disagrees. He said the lieutenants should be placed at an Army battalion level and help provide CAS at the ground floor. “They should be fighting and training with the Army right from the beginning so they get that perspective,” Wisher said.

Right now, senior enlisted TACP members work with Army units as enlisted battalion air liaison officers — known as EBALOs — but Wisher said the Air Force would benefit from having an officer in that position “because the Army is so rank-conscious.”

In September 2004, Wisher devised an 83-week training program, which includes completing the Aerospace Basic Course, Intelligence Officer School, the Joint Firepower Course and the Adversary Tactics Course held at Nellis Air Force Base, Nev. He also proposed a fighter/bomber familiarization course and battlefield airman course along with 24-36 weeks of ALO on-the-job training.

He also recommended consulting with the Guard about the training program they have already set up.

Nonrated ALO Guard officers have to be enlisted JTACs before becoming officers.

Wheeler said this helps to establish credibility with their Army counterparts.

“Most resistance has not come from the Army,” he said. “It has come from the Air Force.”

Both Wisher’s and Rand’s reports say soldiers said they initially look for the wings on an ALO’s uniform, which can establish a certain level of credibility. But, both reports found that the lack of wings was no longer an issue once Guard ALOs proved competent at their jobs.

Wheeler, a former F-4 crew chief, was one of the first nonrated Guard ALOs. He said the change in attitude to nonrated ALOs has been dramatic over his 18 years. “I’m not catching as many spears as I used to,” he said. “There were many who said, ‘You can’t do this job.’ Senior officers didn’t think I’d be really effective, but once I did it, they did a complete 180.”

“Just like us, I think it can work in active duty really easily, it’s just that active duty needs to embrace it.”