Originally Posted by
flybynuts
Another point to ponder is, will you be content as a nav forever? If not, then don't do it becuase this is what you are signing the bottom line as. My best friend did this in 1994 as a senior in college. He never got to make it over to the pilot side due to 9/11 and deployments. He hates the nav job and does other non-flying jobs to avoid the community. he is sticking in for the pension and then bolting. As for transitioning to pilot, the fat budget days are falling fast in the military and there will be less of everything to go around. I anticipate your chances to transition will only get harder. I see the big budget briefs on the Navy/Marine Corps side in flight school and we are cutting a lot. Good luck to you and your decision.
Unless you have a realistic prospect of going to UPT then you probably don't want to wait too long before making a decision to become a rated aviator. Like UPT, there is an age cut-off as well for UNT. I can't speak for the previous posters best friend who hated being a nav, but I suspect some of that was as a result of frustration from not being picked up as a pilot and not necessarily because the nav community was intolerable and the navigator career field unfulfilling.
Having seen both sides of the career field as a nav and pilot, I can say the actual mechanics of manipulating the flight controls is somewhat over-rated (especially on those oceanic crossings when we were all huddled around the laptop watching the movie of the night..you couldn't tell who was the pilot or the nav) unless you're in the takeoff and landing phases of flight. You are no less valuable a crewmember (whether you serve as a pilot or nav) and like everything else in life; you get out of it what you put into it. The alternative is not flying at all...in which case you have to honestly ask yourself if a successful military flying career can only be defined if you're occupying the L/R seat. I suspect their are aviators from the first B-17 crews to Air Force One (which does have a nav) who would say otherwise...