Is AO (Aviation Ordnanceman) a Good Rating?

AIT / Training

8 weeks

Training Location

NATTC Pensacola, FL

Career Field

Aviation

What the Recruiter Says

You'll handle, inspect, and load ordnance on Navy and Marine Corps aircraft — from 20mm cannon ammunition to AIM-120 AMRAAMs to JDAMs to Harpoon anti-ship missiles. This is some of the most technically precise and safety-critical work in naval aviation, because a loading error or improper fuzing on a weapons system is not a maintenance discrepancy. The weapons knowledge and the handling experience transfer to DoD civilian ordnance positions, defense contractor weapons sustainment roles, and federal law enforcement specialized units. The Navy will not let you do this job carelessly and you will be better at every subsequent job because of it.

What It's Actually Like

Your workspace is the weapons elevator, the bomb farm, and the flight deck, which means you will spend a significant portion of your career in spaces that are either freezing, sweltering, or actively trying to kill you with jet blast. You will build up GBU-32s and MK-84s, load AIM-120s and AIM-9Xs, and do it at a pace that would make a logistics coordinator weep. The safety culture is genuine and real — because a mistake in your rate has a blast radius. Not figuratively. The magazine spaces on a CVN are a claustrophobic steel underworld where the temperature and the stakes are both elevated. Working parties for ammunition onload during UNREP will test your cardiovascular system and your patience simultaneously. Nobody outside the Navy knows what you did. The clearance you hold is real. The explosive ordnance disposal pipeline is a path some AOs walk. More often, you leave with a security clearance, the absolute unshakeable calm of someone who has handled live weapons routinely, and a hiring manager who doesn't know what to do with any of that but feels good about you anyway.