The Army is looking to fill 108 seats in the School of Advanced Miliary Studies (SAMS) Advanced Military Studies Program (AMSP) for the resident course that begins in June 2016.
Another Broadening Opportunity for Warrants
Warrant Officer Broadening Assignments
The Army is currently looking to fill a number of broadening assignments and this year a number of them are open to warrant officers. Broadening assignments give us an opportunity to spend a period of time (sometimes a few weeks, sometimes a couple of years) away from our normal duties and expand our personal knowledge and help contribute to the Army in a strategic way vs our normal technical way.
FY16 Warrant Officer Selection Board
Recruiting Command released the warrant officer board schedule for FY16 last week (minus Sept for some reason). As of right now, there are two boards that will look at 255A/N (although I expect that Sept will as well once it gets released).
Cisco Discovery Protocol (CDP)
When there is a problem with the network, time matters. We need to be able to quickly move from device to device in order to identify and rectify the problem. In order for this to occur, we have to know where to go to next, and how to get there.
Finding Your Replacement
The Army Warrant Officer is a highly trained and specialized technical expert in their particular field. This has been true since its creation on July 9, 1918, but what a warrant officer is today has changed. Today we are no longer expected to just be the crusty old guy in the corner that drinks coffee and magically fixes things (although that is still true), we are also expected to be part “officer” as well. That means that we are leaders, we are staff officers, we are planners, and still, we are experts. This is a tall task to fill and requires that we continually replenish our ranks with only the most qualified and talented individuals available.
Cyber is Here
For anyone who doesn’t regularly check the MILPER message site you may have missed three separate messages that were released last week that directly affect signal warrants and our Soldiers. As you probably know, the Army is in the process of manning its new Cyber Branch. The officers got their chance to cross over earlier this year and it looks like the same is finally true for the warrants and Soldiers.
Happy Birthday Signal Chief
One year ago today (June 1) is the one year anniversary for Signal Chief. What started out as a side project of mine to help educate Net Techs on the stuff that I see every rotation (in the hopes that they would be able to fix it before they go here) has kind of blown up. And while there is still a lot more that I would like to do with the site, I am pretty damn happy with where it is right now.
Translating Geek to Grunt
“The Linkway attached to the STT for the JNN is has a high BER from the RHN because the PVCs weren’t built correctly.” How many times have we said something like this to the Commander only to watch their eyes glaze over, get pissed off, and walk away mumbling something about “FIX IT”? Signal folks have a language of their own that few people outside of their own group are able to speak or understand. We understand the language of “geek”, but when we walk outside and talk to the people around us, they don’t understand it because they only speak “grunt”.
What Time Is It?
Let me give you a scenario. You are having some problems on the network that are spread across several devices. You go into the log file of each device and see a bunch of messages with a mix-match of various times that mean absolutely nothing to you. In short, you have no idea what is going on with your network.
May Warrant Officer Selection Results
Congrats to all of the NCO’s who were selected to join the warrant officer ranks.