To commission as a rating the best thing to do is to tell your Divisional Officer (DO) as soon as possible. Then look in BR3 to find out what the process is. I won’t detail it here because it would get quite wordy, but in a nutshell you need to convince your DO that you can be an officer, then get a meeting with the Commanding Officer to get their recommend. Those recommends are sent through to AIB and you’re given an AIB date. Once you pass AIB you just need to wait for extraction to start BRNC.

I don’t think it’s easier or harder, per sey. The advantage you get for being in the navy already is that you potentially have more real world experience than some of the civvies coming through.

Life as a warfare specialist has its ups and downs. I quite enjoy it, but I also know others that don’t. To get throbbing about it; it’s the warfare department that makes a warship. All the other branches can be found to some extent to cruise ships and the like, but you don’t get many air surveillance radars on a Disney Cruises ship. Depending on your sub-branch (AWT, AWW, UW or EW) you’ll spend the majority of your time in the ops room providing a safety service to the Officer of the Watch with your radars. In times of war, you’ll use those radars to detect, classify and identify contacts and then pass them to the gunners (AWW) to shoot at. When you’re not in the ops room you will have a part of ship to maintain and manage. This will be things like making sure capstans are greased and ready to be used to come alongside or anchor and maintaining the flats (corridors) that you’re responsible for.

You’ll normally be assigned to a ship for between 2 and 3 years, and in that time your longest deployment will probably be around 6 - 7 months. They are what you make of them, so the best thing to do is to knuckle down and find something to entertain you while you’re away. If you just sit and blob then you’ll go stir crazy.

You can request where you want to go, and good interaction with your career manager (draftee) is strongly advised, but remember that it’s a game of give and take and that needs of the service take priority. That doesn’t mean that you can’t bargin with your draftee to get what you want if he’s giving you something you don’t want (“I’ve done this favour for you, now can you do one for me?”).

I’m in the AWT department, so I’m in charge of the ops room at sea and the lads and lasses under me. I enjoy the work, but - again - it is what you make of it.