Bubbles

Bubbles, those dreaded down times between portions of flight school! While there are still some bubbles, many have been reduced and nearly eliminated. Students used to take 18 to 24 months to complete their training and might wait in bubbles for months between portions of training. Now, nearly all flight students are done in less than 18 months with many being done in just over a year. The longest bubbles at this time are about a month in length. So, what should students expect during a bubble? The Army tries to make use of their soldiers and students can expect some taskings. Most are sent to either Funeral Detail or the SERE Detail. A majority of the Funeral Detail is taken care of by the warrants who gained prior experience between WOCS and BOLC. That leaves a lot of the LTs for the SERE Detail. Students who are assigned to Funeral Detail will spend a couple hours a day practicing (after their initial couple days of learning what to do) and will go anywhere within a three or four state region around Alabama to provide honors at funerals as they are needed. There is usually lots of time off but funerals kind of have a way of being unplanned. The SERE Detail students will have a set schedule, but it will be all hours of the day; SERE does run 24/7 after all. For both details, there is time off, however, getting a pass can be a nightmare as it has to be approved by the detail and by B Co. Pass or no pass, there is plenty of free time to study or make up some time with the family you’ve hardly seen during the blocks of training.

Aviation BOLC

The first of the many schools involved in becoming an Army Aviator is the Aviation Basic Officer Leadership Course (BOLC). This course is seven weeks in length and provides an introduction to the world of Army Aviation and the basic knowledge that is required to become a successful Army Officer. Most BOLC classes are composed of both Lieutenants and Warrant Officers with some of both coming from Active Duty, Guard, and Reserve components. The members of the class will remain together until primary aircraft selection. The exact order of BOLC varies by class but all BOLC classes are similar. The first three weeks of BOLC consist solely of classroom exercises covering a wide range of topics from assault and attack operations to ground vehicle maintenance to supply operations. There are four tests during this time period: aviation tactics exam, combat vehicle identification (CVID) exam, combined arms doctrine exam, and a maintenance/sustainment exam. The next week is "field week." During this week the officers conduct land navigation, M-16 qualification, M9 qualification, and convoy operations. The week following consists of classroom in the morning and combatives training in the afternoon. The last week is spent continuing classes from the week before over topics such as counseling, OERs, ORB, SERE inbrief, and UCMJ. None of these are testable with the exception of the UCMJ class. Following graduation from BOLC, there is often a period of time, known as a "bubble" before SERE school starts. In the past these bubbles could be months in length. Current changes in flight school have narrowed most bubbles to a few weeks or less. If there was not time scheduled into BOLC for it, this bubble is an opportunity to complete flight physicals and the swim test and HOST (Dunker) training.