Community Selection
Upon completion of flight training, a final selection process takes place in which the Student Naval Aviators are assigned a particular fleet aircraft community (e.g., F/A-18, EA-18G, or EA-6B for Strike, E-2/C-2 for Carrier AEW, SH-60 or CH-53 for Rotary-Wing, P-3 or E-6 for Maritime, etc.). This selection is also based upon the needs of the service and performance. Newly-designated Naval Aviators (no longer referred to as "students") are then assigned to a Fleet Replacement Squadron for training on their specific aircraft type. Currently, approximately up to 1,000 pilots are designated each year, and between 1910 and 1995 more than 153,000 Naval Aviators earned their "wings of gold".
Read more about this topic: United States Naval Aviator
Famous quotes containing the words community and/or selection:
“When you have come into the land that the LORD your God is giving you, and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, “I will set a king over me, like all the nations that are around me,” you may indeed set over you a king whom the LORD your God will choose. One of your own community you may set as king over you; you are not permitted to put a foreigner over you, who is not of your own community.”
—Bible: Hebrew, Deuteronomy 17:14,15.
“Historians will have to face the fact that natural selection determined the evolution of cultures in the same manner as it did that of species.”
—Konrad Lorenz (1903–1989)