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:
“The people needed to be rehoused, but I feel disgusted and depressed when I see how they have done it. It did not suit the planners to think how they might deal with the community, or the individuals that made up the community. All they could think was, “Sweep it away!” The bureaucrats put their heads together, and if anyone had told them, “A community is people,” they would not have known what they were on about.”
—May Hobbs (b. 1938)
“Every writer is necessarily a critic—that is, each sentence is a skeleton accompanied by enormous activity of rejection; and each selection is governed by general principles concerning truth, force, beauty, and so on.... The critic that is in every fabulist is like the iceberg—nine-tenths of him is under water.”
—Thornton Wilder (1897–1975)