Additional Doodies

I promise! No air ground integration gripes today. Today we are going to let the company commanders of the Army Aviation community breathe a collective sigh of liberating relief. We're going to talk about something near and dear to your hearts: additional duties. And then we're going to say all the things you always wished you could say to the people who gripe about them…

Catharsis, my fellow signers of the commander’s hand receipt. It's healthy.   

Ahh, additional duties. We’ve all had them. The AER officer, the Aviation Life Support Equipment dude, the voting assistance officer, the snack-o… all of these duties are assigned for three reasons:

Additional duty orders dating to the Civil War. And you
thought you had it rough when you were getting ready
for the Command Inspection Program!

1. Provide diligent oversight and management of critical tasks within the company or troop that one person cannot manage alone to ensure accountability, safety, good performance, and standardization.

2. Provide a school-trained or certified point of contact for issues or concerns regarding the maintenance or management of a specific program, who is also a user of their own program and thereby provides a sense of “ownership” to ensuring that systems function smoothly.

3. Give the commander something to discuss on your OER… other than your self-proclaimed awesome skills at flying. Which really? You’re not as awesome as you think you are, especially when you’re a CW2 with 310 hours and you’re six months out of flight school.

The positive side of additional duties is the benefit of being able to give a diligent officer a measure of additional responsibility... one that extends beyond their primary duty of sitting around the pilots’ office, telling dick and fart jokes, and pretending to study emergency procedures and limitations in order to avoid the wrath of the company’s standardization pilot. The commander, 1SG, and platoon leaders cannot hold down all the jobs associated with a functioning line aviation company, and still effectively manage the primary task of leading that company. If they attempted this, they would be huddled under their desk, nursing the hidden fifth of Jack Daniels in their desk drawer and chain smoking.

In embracing the fact that, if you’re an untracked warrant officer, you’ll probably have an additional duty, you will realize that this is part and parcel to being an officer in Army Aviation. Suck it up. Drive on. Get over yourself.

With that said, don’t write an Observations, Insights and Lessons Learned paper about why your additional duty blows. In the subversive wording, we didn’t find a single viable solution to any of the problems you posed that would benefit the Army. An OIL paper is supposed to propose a viable Army-wide solution to problems. Your paper proposed one underlying theme: that you didn’t really want to do your assigned duty.

I’m sorry you got stuck with that additional duty (not really). I’m sorry that you had several additional duties to manage, along with being a competent pilot in command (also not really). Seriously? Everyone has to do that. Your whines, gripes, and general malaise about your pitiful situation in life while deployed to a large and well-furnished base in Iraq don’t impress me.

Well, if your additional duties are really that difficult to manage, I guess we can make them your primary duties… and you can enjoy the remainder of your deployment watching your buddies “act as a combat multiplier for the commander by moving parts, people and things throughout the southwest part of Iraq.” If you really believe that your job is to “get things done,” then part of that means that you might have to say no to the occasional game of Call of Duty with your buddies at their CHU or B-hut while you’re deployed, and buckle down, and get your chores done.

And anyway, everything we do in aviation supports the GROUND FORCE COMMANDER, not the aviation commander. Perhaps a little perspective is in order…

PERSPECTIVE. Now you have it.

… Well, okay… maybe a little AGI. Come on. Can you blame me?

Okay, now for an actual “lesson” for Aviation Company and Troop commanders:

In preparation for deployment, you’ll have to ensure that your night vision goggle (NVG) program is functioning smoothly because your goggles will break the moment you get downrange and take them out of their stylish, padded purse. Part of this program is completing period inspections for adequate function and safety. You don’t have to go off the FOB to find a certified inspector. Inspections can be done internally to the unit, provided you have inspectors assigned and trained with orders. Link in with your CECOM LAR and the Army Material Command and to have several people in your company attend this one-day training. Do it before you deploy, if you can. Get your fellow company commanders on board and make it a group thing (kinky). You can even have your trainer to come to you (help Uncle Sugar get his money’s worth from their services). This limits having to take your NVGs off-FOB for inspection and keeps your resources in the fight.