Study: Create TACP officer career field

[unhappycamper]

Staff Sgt. Brandon Peterson (left) and Senior Airman Robert Ellis, joint terminal attack controllers with the 21st Air Support Operation Squadron at Wheeler Army Air Field, Hawaii, coordinate air operations during Atlantic Strike III at Avon Park, Fla.


Study: Create TACP officer career field
By Michael Hoffman - Staff writer
Posted : Friday Nov 28, 2008 5:54:52 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.”


Rest of article at: http://www.airforcetimes.com/news/2008/11/airforce_alo_careerfield_112808/%2e

[rakeeb]

1. a study supporting the creation of more officer billets?

What a surprise.
That O is a guy who sits in a brigade level Army staff and quietly explains the capabilities and limitations of close air support platforms, and he periodically forwards an ATO sent up by a TACP.
Everything he does right now could be accomplished by a senior NCO TACP.
What we need today and tomorrow is more TACP's at ground level.
The last thing we need is to make sure the O briefing powerpoint slides 100 miles away from the fight gets a cool guy certificate confirming that technically, he too is a TACP.