
The Navy Electricity and Electronics Training Series (1998) - kick
https://archive.org/search.php?query=subject%3A%22The+Navy+Electricity+and+Electronics+Training+Series%22&sort=publicdate
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kjs3
The Navy is good at training; I assume the other branches are as well. The
Navy took both of my grandfathers, one urban, one rural, both very poor, both
of very modest education but apparent potential, and in months turned them
into electricians. They both made careers of being in the Navy based on that
training, one as an electrician and one moving into logistics, both becoming
Master Chiefs. They had the 1940s versions of these books and I learned a lot
from them.

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phaus
>I assume the other branches are as well.

I have got some rather sad news for you. Joking aside, I was in the Army for
16 years. Almost all of the technical training is complete garbage. In fact,
the best part of my training in Satellite Communications (at the time one of
the longest and supposedly "toughest" technical courses the Army had) used the
Navy's Electronics program from OP. We only used about 20 pages worth of it
and that was our introduction to electronics.

The only technical training I did that was actually pretty good was run by the
National Guard in Utah. It was a basic Information Technology course. The
instructors were all really into what they were doing and had professional
careers outside the Army before they volunteered to teach full time.

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readme
Things have changed since you were in. The Army leads the other branches in
infosec training now. Other branches send their people to gordon for it.

~~~
phaus
I got out a couple of years ago. Their Cyber program is much better than most
of their other technical training but it was heavily influenced by what other
branches were doing. Maybe they changed it but another thing is that their
cyber training was mostly SANS courses and the joint course someone else
already mentioned. So it was good because it was some of the better training
offered by the private sector.

I have met some ex NSA guys from the Army that were amazing. Not really sure
what kind of training they got. Their experience isn't really a good
representation of IT as a whole in the Army.

There are exceptions to everything. There are small teams/groups within every
branch of the military doing really cool stuff. Some of them have many more
opportunities for excellent training that the average person in a similar role
in the Army will have.

>Other branches send their people to gordon for it.

Also, a lot of the technical schools at Gordon had instructors from the Air
Force and the Navy teaching alongside the Army.

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supernova87a
There is something about how the military used to be a huge repository of
technical talent as we entered WW2 and the incentives were still there for
people to build their careers in the military as experts.

Think about all the stories of experts who developed technology for the
military, solved interesting problems for the military, public defense, all
the aircraft and vehicle/vessel designs, systems that came out of that domain.
And spun off useful companies that created whole industries of their own.

And then over time, we as a country lost the desire to pay for that expertise
(and lost an urgent need for it), and just like other areas of government, the
expertise that was no longer being rewarded migrated to contractors to the
point that the government agencies themselves do not know how to measure what
they want to happen -- and have to ask the contractor to do that assessment
for them... Just think of the FAA and Boeing lately...

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Ahmd72
Recommended for people wanting to learn about this subject, I still keep this
as my go to reading whenever I want to check something again. Though there is
an updated version too which you can find at:
[https://www.fcctests.com/neets/Neets.htm](https://www.fcctests.com/neets/Neets.htm)

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jwithington
These training materials are supremelyyyyy underrated. So much of what people
are looking for is training--not education. And there's a difference! The Navy
is best-in-class in training.

Excited to see these materials made their way to HackerNews.

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jkhdigital
Yep, I was trained by the US Navy to perform electronics calibration, and
basically learned how to troubleshoot and fix almost any electronic device
(given schematics and a manual) in about 9 months of training, total.

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dkhenry
My first job out of college was working for the navy as a civilian engineer.
At the time I read through all these and found them on par with the education
I got at my university. With the training found in these books a sailor could
understand and repair almost any analog system on the ship. They did not keep
up this training for the digital age, and its a shame because on a modern
naval ship almost everything is done via computer control and the current
training is swap out the digital parts if anything breaks.

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vonmoltke
> They did not keep up this training for the digital age, and its a shame
> because on a modern naval ship almost everything is done via computer
> control and the current training is swap out the digital parts if anything
> breaks.

I have a fair bit of experience with this from the civilian contractor side.

The main problem with these modern Line Replaceable Modules (LRMs) and Line
Replaceable Units (LRUs)[1] is that they require specialized tooling and
equipment to properly troubleshoot, repair/rework, and test. They also each
require some parts that are specific to the LRM/LRU. Shipboard technicians
could be given the training to do the work (mostly), but there would be no
space for all the other physical elements required to actually do it.

At first the DOD pushed all this back on the contractors (any failed LRM/LRU
was shipped back to the factory), but when I left that world they were moving
towards a model where branch depots could receive the failed LRM/LRU, test it,
and perform basic repair/rework without contractor intervention; they would
only ship the hairy cases back. That's about as good as they can get, because
it just in feasible or cost effective to spread that capability out to every
base and ship around the world.

[1] Those are Air Force terms, but the Navy as similar concepts.

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jki275
Navy CVNs have micro miniature repair shops onboard, and no Depot level
repairable leaves the ship without screening by them to see if they can repair
it. They have a significant incentive to do so, as the money they save is
something they can take credit for, and the ship's budget is significantly
helped out by their repairs.

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jkhdigital
I still list a bullet point on my resume of the approximate dollar value of
all the equipment I repaired myself during the ~3 years I was stationed in the
calibration lab on a CVN. My favorite is the $20k precision power sensor
standard that I troubleshooted down to a single transistor which cost a couple
bucks to replace.

I’ll add that on my ship, the “screening” you speak of was most often
performed by the cal lab, since we were the only ones trained in component-
level repair on general electronics. The 2M shop just did the soldering for us
;-)

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rwmurrayVT
And that's how you retire and go to work at an AIT :-)

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untangle
They are available directly:
[http://www.compatt.com/Tutorials/NEETS/NEETS.html](http://www.compatt.com/Tutorials/NEETS/NEETS.html)

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notadev
I spent nearly two decades in the Navy as an IT. The "NEETS modules" were
always required study material for portions of the IT/ET/IC, etc. advancement
exams.

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indymike
Was in the Navy in the early 90s and concur with everyone on the quality of
training being incredible. The NEETS Modules were designed for independent
study and were incredibly useful. The last one wasn't on electronics... it was
on Blueprint Reading has been outrageously useful in life for me.

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killjoywashere
My first job out of college with a degree in Physics was electrical officer on
a Navy ship in 1999. I remember flipping through these because my guys had
them to study for their rating exams and thinking they were surprisingly good.

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graycat
Maybe from, say, 1950 to 1970 or so, some of that Navy training in electronics
was in Millington, TN, in particular at the NATTC, Naval Aviation Technical
Training Center, with about 40,000 students at a time?

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christophergray
I was there in '79.

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graycat
Dad worked there 1948 to 1964 as the main _education theory and organizing_
guy -- Educational Consultant to the Director of Training. We lived in
Memphis. Starting in 1964 he was at the Pentagon for the rest of his career.
So, by '79 he was in DC!

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andrewxdiamond
Why is this labeled (1998)? All of these books look to be from 2013.

Great find either way. I'll add these to the collection of books I want to
read but probably never find time for

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jonsen
It clearly says “September 1998” on the front page and “1998 edition ...”
after the preface. 2013 could be the year it’s archived?

