Photo By Sgt. Micha Pierce | U.S. Marines and Sailors attended a ground breaking ribbon cutting ceremony for the...... read more read more
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On February 10, 2019, The Center for Naval Aviation Technical Training (CNATT) at Marine Corps Air Station (MCAS) Cherry Point, held a ribbon cutting ceremony officially marking the opening of the new RQ-21A Blackjack maintenance course. The RQ-21A Blackjack is an American Unmanned Aircraft System (UAS) designed and produced by Boeing Insitu, and it is making a name for itself within the Navy and Marine Corps UAS community.
Unmanned aircrafts have been used in all branches of the military for decades. However, there has not been a RQ-21A Blackjack maintenance course instructed through the United States Marine Corps until now.
“This class is unique. It’s going to be the first RQ-21 Alpha maintenance course taught though the Marine Corps,” said U.S. Marine Corps Capt. Jesse Rodriguez, the course Officer in Charge “It’s the first UAS maintenance course the Marine Corps has ever taught.”
“We’ve had UAS in the Marine Corps for quite some time now, the great thing about it, is that now we have an organic ability to teach an entire military occupational specialty (MOS) course within the Navy and Marine Corps,” said U.S. Marine Corps Lt. Col. Teagan Owen, the Commanding Officer of CNATT. “I think that’s the real groundbreaking aspect of this course.”
The UAS community is always evolving and making new advancements in their line of work. Now that the Marine Corps is officially instructing a class about maintaining these aircrafts, the Marine Corps will have an even bigger part in the development of these systems.
With the new course being taught at MCAS Cherry Point, it gives MCAS Cherry Point CNATT the ability to modify the way the course is taught as new developments are made in these systems. Not only will it impact the effectiveness of training the new Marines and Sailors, but those that are already in the fleet doing their job won’t have to wait as long for follow-on training since the schoolhouse is Marine Corps ran.
Since 1775, Marines have operated from Naval vessels and with the RQ-21A Blackjack’s ability to be launched and received from sea or ground, it allows the Marines in the UAS squadrons to operate on all fronts.
“The RQ-21 is special because we can implement these systems on ships and we can now participate in Marine Expeditionary Units,” said Sgt. Leonard Hahn, the supervisor for the new RQ-21A Blackjack course. “These vehicles utilize a pneumatic launcher and receiver so we don’t need to use runways, we can safely and efficiently launch and recover the birds from land or sea.”
MCAS Cherry Point is the only Marine Corps Installation, as of now, that offers this course so the role they played in assisting with writing the curriculum was fairly large. “It was actually a really awesome experience,” said Owen. “We were retrieving data for Headquarters Marine Corps and other private contractors and they essentially wrote the course material using our own words. We also had Marines from each of the four Marine Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Squadrons (VMU) sending us data that we would input with ours.”
The course will take place over eight weeks and one day where Marines, Sailors and Foreign Nationals will be taught low level maintenance of unmanned aircrafts, allowing them to have a basic understanding of the occupational specialty so they can go on to master their trade in the fleet.
The course will offer seven different modules with lots of hands-on experience. Students will learn the basics of what an aircraft is, what a ground control station is, how all the different components work, and handling unscheduled maintenance. They will also learn about all the software dedicated to flying the aircraft, scheduled maintenance, troubleshooting, and operations.
“The vehicles we will use here are considered training props but they are identical to the systems utilized in the fleet,” said Hahn “We use actual assets here, there are zero differences between these birds and the ones each squadron has, so every problem they could potentially have in the fleet, we will give them instruction on how to mitigate that issue.”
This course could prove to be groundbreaking for the Naval and Marine Corps UAS programs. The technological and systematic advancement and evolutions will be experienced firsthand by all Sailors and Marines who are taught in this MOS.
“Along with being front and center with all these new developments that are being made in this occupation, being able to teach these young men and women in an organic Marine Corps curriculum will make work that much easier for the instructors that go back to the fleet,” said Hahn “When the instructors finally get back to their units, they’ll have their same students under their charge so they’ll reap the fruits of labor.”
| Date Taken: | 02.10.2020 |
| Date Posted: | 02.13.2020 15:45 |
| Story ID: | 362445 |
| Location: | US |
| Web Views: | 429 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
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