instructors here, who decide if they
want them.’
Once at VP-30, instructors have an
opportunity for further development
by applying for a graduate-level
course known as the Maritime Patrol
and Reconnaissance Weapons School
(MPRWS). This is a specialized course held
periodically at either NAS Jacksonville or
NAS Fallon, and is similar in concept to
other popular courses such as the Navy’s
TOPGUN or the Marine Corps’ Weapons
and Tactics Instructor Course (WTI),
but in this case focused entirely on the
P-3 and P-8.
As the platform matures, so does the
course syllabus. In August 2017, VP-30
performed the rst aerial refueling of the
P-8A and the pilots have begun training
for this important capability.
The Poseidon o ers a more advanced,
e ective and integrated sensor suite,
along with greater payload, range,
endurance, speed and reliability,
although it lacks the P-3C’s ability to
use the AGM-84H SLAM-ER missile and
Maverick against land targets. As the
P-8 is solidi ed as the prime maritime
reconnaissance and patrol aircraft of
the future US Navy, VP-30 will continue
its tradition of supporting the maritime
patrol community in the way to which it
has become accustomed during its rich
history.You’d be
surprised how
fatigued you get fl ying
the P-3 on an eight-
or nine-hour mission.
It’s loud, it’s rough...
the P-8 is a lot more
comfortable and quiet
LT Nick ‘GiGi’ Wilharmpool of at least 40 instructors, all active-
duty. On the contrary, P-3 instructors are a
mixture of active-duty and Navy Reserve,
slowly transitioning to a reserve-only
structure. This is due to the fact that even
after the P-8 has completely replaced the
P-3 in the active-duty force, two reserve
squadrons — VP-69 and VP-62 — will
continue to y Orions for several years and
will continue training, albeit at a much
lower scale, until they are nally replaced
by the MQ-4C Triton.
Meanwhile, the Poseidon community is
growing all the time. For both aircraft, the
process of becoming an instructor with
VP-30 is the same, as Lumsden describes:
‘Everyone comes [to VP-30] initially as a
student. You get trained on your basic
warfare platform, whether it’s P-3 or P-8.
Then you go to your patrol squadron for
about three years. Most of the training
that you get happens in the squadron.
So, they have a whole new syllabus
when they get there. Our goal here is
to qualify them as co-pilots. When they
get to their squadron they will qualify as
pilots, and from there they will qualify as
patrol plane commanders [PPC]. Or for
the operators, from a NAV [navigation
and communication o cer] to a TACCO
[tactical co-ordinator] for the P-3 or COTAC
[co-pilot tactical controller] to a TACCO
for the P-8 syllabus. The command will
then identify those individuals who could
become mission commanders. That’s the
next syllabus — mission commander.
If you achieve that, you may or may not
get selected to be an instructor pilot. If
you are selected to be an instructor pilot,
then another one of our roles here at
VP-30 is that we go visit all the squadron
locations and we will give a training course
called eet IUT [instructor undertraining].
It only lasts about two weeks and four
ights, but our goal at the end of that is
to help those people who are selected
by command to be instructors becomebetter instructors. And being here, we’ve
gotten a lot of experience, especially
with newer pilots and the mistakes that
newer pilots like to make, so we just dump
that knowledge on those guys. We then
give di erent recommendations to the
command. We’ll say if we think this person
should be an instructor or not. Then we
leave and those people will become
instructors within their squadron and
start building instructor time and getting
more experience. Then they’ll put in an
application for their next set of orders after
their three years at the squadron, where
we are just one of the locations they can
choose. The applications come here and
get reviewed by some of the top-tierAbove left to right:
New P-3 students
walk out to their
aircraft with a
fl ight engineer
instructor.
Civilian
maintainers
work on the
P-3s, which
are becoming
increasingly
diffi cult to
support.
Right: A lovely
shot of a P-8A on
fi nals at ‘Jax’.http://www.combataircraft.net // May 2018 61
58-61 NAS Jax C.indd 61 20/03/2018 11:03