CTI's at sea

[cjderr]

I have the opportunity to reclass to CTI possibly and I have a few questions but one in particular. I am interested in being on ships at some point in my career and I haven't seen a clear answer on whether or not CTI's get on ships often. I understand that they aren't part of the ships crew when they do but I was wondering how common/easy will it be to go to sea as a CTI. If I volunteer to will they put me at sea? Also how long do CTI's usually get to go to sea for?

[FlyNavy]

I have the opportunity to reclass to CTI possibly and I have a few questions but one in particular. I am interested in being on ships at some point in my career and I haven't seen a clear answer on whether or not CTI's get on ships often. I understand that they aren't part of the ships crew when they do but I was wondering how common/easy will it be to go to sea as a CTI. If I volunteer to will they put me at sea? Also how long do CTI's usually get to go to sea for?

Really this would depend heavily on what language you get, but as a whole, CTI's don't get out much from shore duty. There ARE chances to get on ships, subs, and aircraft; but it's a small group compared to the rest of the CTI community. They're coveted spots since being deployable as a CTI looks really good on your evals. It's competitive but not impossible, but again it depends heavily on what language we're talking about here.

CTIs get attached to deployable assets on an as-needed basis. So you might only be at sea for a couple weeks of their 6 month deployment. In some cases you'll ride the whole deployment, but that's not suuuper common.

CTTs and CTRs can pretty much go wherever they want: ships, subs, aircraft, or shore. They'll do full tours at whatever they go to as a full time crew member for the most part. So there's that.

/r
CTT1

[jzhaun]

Hi, CTI2 here. Like CTT1 says, it really depends on the language. Some have no opportunities for certain types of dirsup, others are a little bit more open. Your chances to go to sea are better if you stay in past the first enlistment - for Chilings it's less than 20% for E4 or E5, but about 50% as an E6.

You can look on the community manager pages to see the breakdown for a specific language family - "sea" includes ships, subs, and aircrew though.

Of the dirsuppers I know, most go out for a month or two at a time. Longest I've heard of was 9.

[CTI7D7/7DFCTN]

Your only opportunity to get on a ship is through DIRSUP Surface orders. When I went through DLI, the only orders we were allowed to volunteer for were DIRSUP Sub orders, but you may have more say as a fleet returnee.

However, even if you're DIRSUP, you may be farmed-out to a local shop as there are usually only a limited number of opportunities for a bunch of E4-E6 linguists. If this happens to you, as it did me, just make sure you make yourself heard and keep bugging your home division as you could get lost in the shuffle. I was literally forgotten while working a shore mission. After 2 years I showed up to let them know I was ready to deploy if they had a spot and they thought I was coming to volunteer from another division.

I was on a Med tour for about 6 months and our crew left out of Norfolk with the ship. This is rare as most are flown out and flown back for short stints.

I was an Arabic linguist, though. As the others stated, it is probably going to be different depending on your language.