Any Navy SECF's out there? (Marine, training, enlistment, civilian)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Just swore in last week and have an SECF (Submarine Electronics Computer Field) rating. Met a guy at MEPS who had the same rating and loved it but I didn't really get a chance to talk to him much about it. Anyone else do it? Ship out May 24th and I am pretty excited.
Its not actually a single rating - its a feeder for three ratings, all of which are "forward" submarine ratings related (at least tangentially) to electronics. Honestly, it looked pretty easy in comparison to certain other jobs, such as being a nuke. If you are reasonably intelligent, you'll do fine.
PM Forest Beekeeper on the forum he was a former sub Electronics Technician.. Which is one of the three jobs. Hopefully that will be the one you get. I was offered this while at MEPS but chose surface ET...
Yea sorry I know that once in sub school you get further classified into ET, FT, or STS. Yea it doesn't seem very difficult even though no next to nothing about electronics or computers I know they will teach me. I will PM Forest Beekeeper thank you.
I did 20+ years as a Navigation ET on subs. They were constantly trying to merge rates and move billets around.
I did most of my NECs as a Central Navigation Computer [CNC tech], and then Electronic Surveillance.
Among Forward ETs we had CNC techs [me], SINS techs, Navigation Aids techs, and forward ETs [Radar and Electronic Surveillance].
My A school was combined with MTs, FTBs, and ETs. So there was some cross-over within the MT / FTB / ET field.
In the fleet, we were expected to cross-train with the RMs, QMs, and ICs.
We repaired much of the RM equipment, and some boats required us to qualify to operate all RM watch stations.
Every boat I served on required us to qualify as QMs and to leave the Navigation computer center to stand watch as QMs every time the boat neared the surface.
Some boats required that we stand watches as IC whenever they were undermanned [though it was rare that such was needed].
I saw a few different initiatives to try and merge MT/FTB/ET, but they were never able to work out the kinks. [the C school training for each rate is too long and specialized. Cross training would consume your entire enlistment]
I saw a push to merge QM/ET [ETs can do QM work but QMs can't do ET work] The ET schooling is 18 months, it is just too much for QMs. Besides QMs have a lot of manual labor to do, they are always busy.
When I retired, the fleet was trying to merge ETs with ICs.
Boy thats alot of letters haha, interesting stuff though. I guess I don't really have a preference for either ET, FT, or STS unless you might suggest one over another but I imagine I will probably learn atleast a little bit about them before I request one, but I also figure all three have their advantages and disadvantages but are also very similar just different equipment to be working on. Thank you for your response.
ET would be the one I would pursue if your only going to do 6 years as ET's have with comm experience have good outside employment opportunities due to our comm experience. Companies such Power, Telecomm, and federal jobs "GS-9 to 12" are where we go. The other two rates are both military only jobs and really don't have much application outside of the military industry.
ET would be the one I would pursue if your only going to do 6 years as ET's have with comm experience have good outside employment opportunities due to our comm experience. Companies such Power, Telecomm, and federal jobs "GS-9 to 12" are where we go. The other two rates are both military only jobs and really don't have much application outside of the military industry.
Good to know. To be honest I intend to become a Firefighter in the civilian world after my 5 years in the Navy but being a lifer could be a possibility, I guess I'll decide that when my enlistment is finished.
Boy thats alot of letters haha, interesting stuff though. I guess I don't really have a preference for either ET, FT, or STS unless you might suggest one over another but I imagine I will probably learn atleast a little bit about them before I request one, but I also figure all three have their advantages and disadvantages but are also very similar just different equipment to be working on. Thank you for your response.
I think that all Navy jobs each hold the opportunity to be 'good' fields.
If you can keep a good attitude, then you can have a solid future.
Even if you were to be a MS you can still launch into a solid career.
It is very difficult to predict which rate would be the 'best' for a given person.
If you are interested in 'electronics' than I recommend ET.
As an ST you focus a lot of the analysis of data, with module-level equipment diagnostics.
FTs get more into 'operations'.
In terms of civilian career fields that you could slide into; I am not exactly sure what a ST or FT is best suited for.
Good to know. To be honest I intend to become a Firefighter in the civilian world after my 5 years in the Navy but being a lifer could be a possibility, I guess I'll decide that when my enlistment is finished.
Hold on. Then you want DC.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
