Well, YES: Reestablish AOCS at NAS Pensacola

Aviation Officer Candidate School (AOCS) was its own department at Naval Aviation Schools Command (NASC) at Naval Air Station Pensacola until 1993, when, during the post–Cold War drawdown, it was merged with traditional Officer Candidate School (OCS). In 2007, under the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure, OCS moved to its current location in Newport, Rhode Island.¹

Reestablishing AOCS at NAS Pensacola, the “cradle of naval aviation,” would close training gaps, allow for expansion, and build esprit de corps earlier in an aviation officer’s career.

As Chief of Naval Air Training (CNATRA) Rear Admiral Richard Brophy noted in a recent Proceedings article, managing the flight training pipeline is a “24/7/365 endeavor.”² In 2023, to address growing pretraining A-Pool wait times at NASC, CNATRA set a 105-percent production goal for training after Naval Introductory Flight Evaluation. Reestablishing AOCS would give CNATRA tailored control over the training population and accession arrivals.

Board selections and class sizes would reflect pipeline requirements free from other communities’ demands. A shorter lead time for adjustments would make scaling up or down more manageable, so backlogs and buildups could be addressed sooner. CNATRA could dictate and then monitor production rates while AOCS remains under the umbrella of Naval Education Training Command and NASC. The ability to train today means capability in the future.