Got this question in my inbox:
Quote:
Do CTT's travel a lot?
Is A and C school extremely hard?
Do they do a lot of maintenance or "fixing" with the technology or do they mostly operate it?
Are you likely to be able to get a good first duty station being a CTT? (Italy, Hawaii, or anywhere overseas?)
Does the CTT rate have a large amount of people in it?
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Travel: I went to 30 countries on 3 continents onboard my first ship. Now that can vary; I was on a small boy that could get into more ports and was also an independent deployer, whereas a Carrier couldn't do that much. But it all depends on the ship and deployment schedule. In a nutshell though, we have the capability to travel a ton.
School: A-school for us is at Corry Station in Pensacola, FL...THE BEST DAMN A-SCHOOL LOCATION IN THE NAVY. You'll start with Entry Level ELINT (known simply as ELE). The hardest part about the class for most people is memorizing things, but practice makes perfect and rarely does someone fail enough to drop. C-school if you're a tech consists of a few more months learning to fix the gear. If you're going to a ship, you'll also go through Shipboard Operations (Shipboard Ops) to learn to operate the AN/SLQ-32 (pronounced Slick-32). Overall, if you qualified for the job then mentally you should be fine.
Maintenance: There is a specific NEC for the school to repair the gear (If your contract is for 6 years, this is you). But what separates us from other rates is that we also operate our equipment. 4 year guys are strictly operators, but you're gonna be helping with the maintenance anyway so don't stress. Your watch station will be in the Combat Information Center (CIC, aka "Combat") manning the SLQ-32. CTT's are responsible for all Electronic Warfare duties onboard as well as Anti-Ship Missile Defense (ASMD). If the ship gets shot at with a missile, it's our job to stop that sh!t; and you have seconds to respond so you better know your sh!t or people die. That dovetails nicely with doing maintenance on the gear as well as operating it, because you get a chance to become a technical expert with your equipment.
Duty Stations: This totally depends on what's going on for the detailer at the specific time you're up for orders. As a first tour Sailor, you really don't get much say in where you go. When it comes time to re-enlist, that's when you get options. As a whole though, CTT's can go basically anywhere in the world. I landed in Florida, but 2 guys went to Japan, 1 to Washington state, 3 to Cali, and a couple to Norfolk. Just depends on the needs of the Navy when you're applying for orders.
Rate size: We're larger than some of the other CT rates, but compared to the rest of the Navy it's a small community. Stay in long enough and you'll start knowing people all over the place. I love our rate and I love the people in it. We all see pretty like minded and like what we do.
/r
CTT1