Few question about NUPOC

[bmiller.3988]

Hello guys and girls, I am a junior at Texas Tech University studying to be a mechanical engineer with a 3.81 gpa. Any way now that my back round is some what formed I have a few questions and would love to here your guys thoughts. I have been talking to a recruiter about joining the NUPOC program a few questions I have are.

1.) If i chose the ship route and not the submarine route would my tours still be 8 months on water 2 months on land and another tour and my commitment is over? How long our the tours on a ship versus a sub?

2.) Is the 15000 dollar signing bonus not a guarantee if no what are the justifications for getting that?

3.) While I finish school I will be getting paid per month as an e6 correct? Then be an officer after Officer training school?

4.) Is there any advice people who have been through the program could suggest to me whether that be chose "Instructor or Submarine or Ship" and if so whats your reasoning. I don't know if I will be making the navy a career but definitely a huge milestone for my future. Thanks guys and any other thoughts are welcome!

[spekkio]

1) The SWO tours are split up into multiple mini-tours because you need to gain much more broad platform experience. So in both cases you spend about 36mo attached to a sea-going unit. For SWO, it'll be about 18 mo on a conventional ship where you get your warfare qual and an easier DIVO job. Then you'll go through the nuke pipeline and finish 24 months on a carrier in charge of a reactor department division. During the time on the carrier you'll go TAD to PNEO to qualify engineer.

For subs, it's one 36 month JO tour on the same boat as the default. You generally start with an engineering division and finish your last year or so as a forward division officer. After two years-ish you go TAD to PNEO to qualify engineer. After 24 mo on board and once you qualify engineer, you may, subject to CO and detailer approval, volunteer to split tour and go to a PCU Virginia class sub where you'll essentially be attached to the boat out through sea trials.

2) It's a guarantee, you will see about $11k and change in your first Navy paycheck (bonuses are auto-taxed at 25%). But it will be recouperated if you don't complete the training pipeline, unless a certain list of exceptions are met (injury, medical conditions). You also get another $3 or 5k, can't remember which it's been a while, for completing prototype. Google 'pers42' and the instruction/guidelines for nuke bonuses is on the website.

3) Correct. You will collect E6 pay + BAH. You will collect E6 pay + BAH through OCS until you commission as an Ensign. Keep in mind that if you voluntarily drop at OCS then you will go to the fleet as an E3, so make sure you want to do this. Injuries and medically disqualifying conditions don't incur that 'penalty.'

4) Can't give you advice unless you tell us what your career goals are.

[bmiller.3988]

Thank you for the reply! There were a few short hand words you used that im going to have to look up the the information was very understood. So to get it straight I am looking at the same amount of time on a boat and a ship? Because I was reading on the website the boat goes to school then out for a tour back for two years on shore duty then out again? But I couldn't find information on how long the ship was out and docked.

My goals are fairly simple I believe. I want to gain the best experience I can. I know I can make it through the program. I have the drive and the mentality to always do the very best I can. And when i finish my term I want to be someone that people line up to offer jobs. My drive is to do the best I can and prove to others and to myself I can keep up with anyone else out there in the field. I love to learn but I also love hands on work. And my goals one day is to work in the civilian sector as a leader and mentor to the other engineers I work with.

[spekkio]

Sorry, bad habit in the military. The best is when you talk to an Army person and they are practically speaking a different language, even after 6 years of service.

Anywhoo...

JO = Junior Officer. Technically it's any Naval Officer LCDR (O-4) and below, but in the sub force it colloquially means anyone serving on their division officer (DIVO) tour.

DIVO = an officer in charge of a division, the smallest unit of organization onboard a ship.

SWO = Surface Warfare Officer. What you would be if you chose that path, although frequently NUPOC does not entertain applications for SWO unless you are female.

TAD = Temporary Assigned Duty. You go somewhere temporarily while your parent command is somewhere else.

PNEO = Prospective Nuclear Engineer Officer (school). It's an 8 week period of mostly self-study where you prepare to take the Engineer exam from Naval Reactors (NR).

PCU = Pre-Commissioning Unit. The designation given to ships while they are under construction before they are commissioned into service.

"Split tour" = exactly what it says. Nominally as a submarine officer your tour will be 36 months onboard a single submarine. There is an option, if your CO is willing to play along, to detach from your boat early (24-28 mo) and go to a Virginia class boat that is under construction (PCU) until it goes into sea trials, at which point you will go to shore duty. It typically entails extra time on sea duty, since PCU assignments are considered sea duty, to the tune of about 48 months between the two boats. That means a shorter shore duty, but you'll go to the head of the list for shore duty assignments.

[spekkio]

Thank you for the reply! There were a few short hand words you used that im going to have to look up the the information was very understood. So to get it straight I am looking at the same amount of time on a boat and a ship? Because I was reading on the website the boat goes to school then out for a tour back for two years on shore duty then out again? But I couldn't find information on how long the ship was out and docked.

Now the specifics....

There is a difference between being on a 'sea tour' which means being attached to a ship, and being out to sea. Ships aren't out to sea 100% of the time. They need to come back to replenish stores, conduct repairs, etc. You can reasonably expect that somewhere around 35-60% of your time assigned to the ship/boat will be spent underway. There are exceptions to this and some people get less time underway because they are assigned to a unit in extended overhaul, and some people are assigned to ships who get bonus deployments to make up for other ships/subs that have material issues that prevent meeting deployment schedules.

As a concrete example, the Springfield went on a 6 month deployment, 5 month repair period, 6 month deployment toward the end of my tour (I wasn't on the Springfield, but was aware of this). That's not 'normal,' but it can happen. Keep in mind that a large majority of the 6 months preceding deployment is spent at sea doing pre-deployment training and inspections, so if you were assigned to that boat during that time you would have spent about 80% of your time at sea. There's really no way to predict your tempo until you are assigned a boat. I also hear that carrier deployments are now nominally 10 months vice 6, and that ships like the Stennis had ridiculously high operational tempos lately. In other words, they've had it worse than most submariners.

When you are inport you don't just take an easy vacation, though. You stand duty, which on a sub will be 3- or 4- section to start (every 3rd or 4th day you stay on the ship for 24 hours and you get about 4-5 hours of sleep). With 3-section, you never get a weekend off (I don't count the Saturday where you spend your first 8 hours at work a 'day off'), with 4 section you get 1 weekend a month off. On non-duty days you will attend various meetings and do whatever random administration/planning/training needs to be done prior to the ship's next underway evolution, be it inspections, deployment, whatever. And studying for quals and getting checkouts...as a non-qual, you'll be on the boat until at least 1700 everyday if you are a quick learner and can avoid random tasking from the Nav/Weps/XO, and 2000 everyday if not.

My goals are fairly simple I believe. I want to gain the best experience I can. I know I can make it through the program. I have the drive and the mentality to always do the very best I can. And when i finish my term I want to be someone that people line up to offer jobs. My drive is to do the best I can and prove to others and to myself I can keep up with anyone else out there in the field. I love to learn but I also love hands on work. And my goals one day is to work in the civilian sector as a leader and mentor to the other engineers I work with.

The recruiter is going to tell you how the Navy nuke program makes employers line up to hand you 6-figure jobs. That's not true. The nuke program can help you get a foot into the door for utility ops jobs, but outside of that no one is going to differentiate a nuke officer from a pilot from a SWO. They will say 'oh, you were in the Navy, that's cool' unless the guy you are interviewing with also happened to be in the Navy.

It's also going to make you 5 years behind your peers who just graduated from engineering programs and have the theoretical knowledge fresh in their brains. You can offset this by using the GI bill to go to grad school when you get out, which covers $18,700 in tuition to a private university, books up to a certain amount, and you collect BAH. Google the 9/11 GI bill for more details.

[GLW]

............  and some people are assigned to ships who get bonus deployments to make up for other ships/subs that have material issues that prevent meeting deployment schedules....

937 days underway on nuclear power during a 1095 day SSN tour,...

on the other hand, had I been ordered to the Puffer for the same three years, those numbers would have been reversed,...

it's a crap shoot,...

[GLW]

937 days underway on nuclear power during a 1095 day SSN tour,...

on the other hand, had I been ordered to the Puffer for the same three years, those numbers would have been reversed,...

it's a crap shoot,...

the sea tours may be shorter for officers than for enlisted, but as I remember, the officers spent more time on the boat  when in port,...

a good bit more time IIRC,...

[spekkio]

the sea tours may be shorter for officers than for enlisted, but as I remember, the officers spent more time on the boat  when in port,...

a good bit more time IIRC,...

It depends on the boat and what level officer you are referring to. As an officer, you don't really 'do' anything in port. It's all about maintenance planning/admin and training. My Eng typically managed the maintenance planning with the Chiefs and didn't expect a whole lot of involvement from the DIVO end...he probably figured that it was more trouble to him than it was worth and it also allowed us to get qualified more quickly.

The Eng routinely works 12 hour-ish days because of everything going on, but he only stands duty a couple of times a month. Meanwhile, the Nav/Weps would routinely leave at around 16-1700, except during deployment workups, but they were more involved in the duty rotation.

The XO would stay an hour or so past the CO...my first CO would leave at 1600, he felt it was his job to get out of the way. The next one would stay until 1900-2000 because he believed it was his job to be on the boat until everything was finished. The crew tended to prefer the first style. There's always the perception that if the CO is at work, then you should be at work... there's something about mentally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel when you hear that 1MC, like your day is almost over.

The biggest time suck was duty, and I was lucky enough to not be on a boat where the 'senior' JOs, who had a whopping 6-12 months more experience, felt that they were entitled to stand 6- or 7-section SDO at the expense of the 'junior' JOs standing 3-section EDO. I was rarely worse than 4-section for my entire tour, and the enlisted nukes were rarely better than 3-section, even the EDPOs, and if you were an ET that meant port/stbd SRO watches. We never had a fiasco that led to mass disqualification of the wardroom and something crazy like the XO/Eng standing port/stbd senior supervisory watches, the Nav/Weps in a 3-section SDO rotation with a JO and a 3-section EDO rotation.

I always thought the opposite -- that the officers have more to do at sea when the ship is operational. Unless there was an engineering casualty or the boat was training for ORSE, the nukes had very little to do outside of watch.

[GLW]

... there's something about mentally seeing the light at the end of the tunnel when you hear that 1MC, like your day is almost over.....

there's a well described memory I have not recalled in a very long time,...

[GLW]

It depends on the boat..........

I always thought the opposite -- that the officers have more to do at sea when the ship is operational. Unless there was an engineering casualty or the boat was training for ORSE, the nukes had very little to do outside of watch.

still rings true,...

if an enlisted nuke did not lapse into dinq on my 1st boat (SSN) the senior enlisteds pulled every bit as much weight as they asked the nubs to pull,...

good boat,...

the officers worked harder in port and at sea,...

my second boat (SSBN), different story, plus I actually remember only a tenth of the detail for that one vice the SSN,...

[MMM]

Saying you'll be 5 years behind your peers isn't entirely true. If you're looking at getting your PE license, then, yes you will be. If you're looking to go into management, as an officer, you'll actually be more than 5 years ahead of them. They will have spent their time working on projects as part of a group, you will have spent your time managing projects, "supervising" people (really it'll be your chief, but he'll let you pretend to be in charge  ), and generally gaining leadership experience from day one.

[bmiller.3988]

Thank you all for replying. So much information to process I definitely have a lot to think about thanks again for helping me out!

One last question, how hard would it be for one to acquire an internship in the nuclear industry and secure a job in the civilian life with and without the experience the navy has to offer?

[spekkio]

I think that you can infer your answer by lurking and reading these forums.

Judging by posts I've read by people who have hired for nuke utilities, your eligibility for hire is going to depend on whether you actually have the technical knowledge that you say you do and can do well on entrance exams, technical interviews, and initial training.

They also generally don't think very highly of the current crop of former Navy nukes.

[MMM]

They also generally don't think very highly of the current crop of former Navy nukes.

I don't know about this. I don't think anyone I know has had trouble getting a job with a utility when they got out. Granted, everyone I know has been in for 10+ years, so that might have something to do with it or it could be that a lot of utilities are noticing their aging workforce (that was the issue at all three plants I interviewed at).

[cheme09]

Thank you all for replying. So much information to process I definitely have a lot to think about thanks again for helping me out!

One last question, how hard would it be for one to acquire an internship in the nuclear industry and secure a job in the civilian life with and without the experience the navy has to offer?

Mechanical engineering, at a good school, with a high GPA...getting an internship in the nuclear industry, or any industry for that matter shouldn't be a problem. Navy experience is definitly not required to get an internship at a nuclear company. Also remember that working in the nuclear industry doesn't only mean working at a nuclear power plant.

[spekkio]

I don't know about this. I don't think anyone I know has had trouble getting a job with a utility when they got out. Granted, everyone I know has been in for 10+ years, so that might have something to do with it or it could be that a lot of utilities are noticing their aging workforce (that was the issue at all three plants I interviewed at).

"Not too highly" might have been too negative. What I mean is that it appears to be neutral at best for Ops, and I've read a lot of posts by the management types on this site that state they've seen former Navy nukes wash out of training at equal or higher rates than civilian hirees. In other words, it sounds like walking into the office as a post-JO and telling them about the 6 months you stood EOOW for deployment and some vulcans for ORSE workups isn't going to be all that impressive.

Perhaps being a served Eng is more impressive, but most served Eng's stick around for Command at Sea. No reason to leave after you just finished the most arduous tour you'll ever have in the Navy and you're 9 years from a lifetime pension, only 3 1/2 of which will be spent on sea tours.

If he goes in as an officer, he's not going to get the maintenance experience that the enlisted nukes get. Nor will he get any true engineering experience if he goes subs/SWO or instructor. He'd have to apply for Naval Reactors Engineer for that.

[Gamecock]

Nor will he get any true engineering experience if he goes subs/SWO or instructor. He'd have to apply for Naval Reactors Engineer for that.

Very few shops at NR do true engineering work.  If he wants true engineering experience, he should work for Bettis or KAPL in Pittsburgh or Niskayuna.